Welcome back everyone! This week we had 28 players show up for Monday night Highlander which meant that we had a large and diverse metagame! This week was marked by a departure away from the GBx decks that had previously been dominating the metagame. This may well be partly due to the recent changes to the points list, Mind twist and Treasure Cruise both went to 1 point and Intuition and Grim Tutor both went to 0. These changes were largely motivated by the power of Twist and Cruise in Midrange decks and the relative lack of power of both Intuition and Grim Tutor. So far the changes do not appear to have an enormous impact on the format though it is worth noting that all 4 of the cards did not see a great deal of play on Monday.
The biggest change that occurred this week was that players actually began to play aggressive decks. Prior to this week there were only a few aggro decks in the meta each week however this week there were many more. This was probably in reaction to the fact that more people had chosen to play midrange decks. The faster aggro decks have the potential to go under some of midrange decks and more importantly they pressure the combo decks that have cropped up as a response to the midrange decks.
There are some very interesting tensions that developed from the shift in the meta. While the Tempo decks that cropped up this week perform well against the combo decks they tend to struggle greatly against the aggressive decks. Similarly the aggressive decks that perform well against the tempo decks and have some game against the midrange decks and control decks but struggle to interact with some of the extremely fast combo decks like storm and eggs. There’s a great deal of pushing and pulling going in the meta right now and working out the best deck is no easy task. I look forward to seeing how players attempt to compensate for how varied their potential opponents might be. Above all else it is clear that currently it pays to have a very clear and defined game plan. Decks are getting more and more tuned and if your strategy is too slow to develop and does not have considerable interaction then you’re likely in trouble.
The Spicy deck of the week award goes to Nick Picard for his UW Tempo deck. There have been several attempts at this deck before but Nick really hit the mail on the head with his rendition of the deck. What’s interesting about his list is that he chose to go a bit bigger than typical other tempo decks playing quite a few 4 drops and far fewer 1 and 2 drops than the standard tempo strategy. Furthermore his deck featured several new Dragons of Tarkir cards in Myth Realized and Ojutai Exemplars. Well done Nick!
The Meta as usual is listed below:
Esper Reanimator
Bant Aggro
RUG Pod
Eggs
Bant Infect
5 Colour One Drops
Mono White
UW Tempo
Grixis Time Vault
UR Delver
Mono Blue Tempo
Esper Control
Pattern Rector
Storm
Abzan Midrange
Mono Blue Aggro
Mono Red Splash Blue
BUG Tempo
2 BUG Midrange
RG Midrange
Naya Aggro
Esper Control
BR Aggro
Jund Aggro
Mono Red
UW Midrange
UB Tempo
Comments Appreciated as always!
-Liam Coughlan