Hey Planeswalkers!
Welcome to this week’s Friday Night Meta update! The goal is to equip you faster with information in a fast evolving game, and to get you the right information to help you make the decisions you need to make! This is intended to be a comprehensive view with a lens from Magic the Gathering Arena with impacts from the MTG gaming scene.
You can check out the weekly coverage here:
Last Week’s Episode
Last Week’s Piece
March Tier Lists:
Recap
Mono Red starts to ascend again along with Rogues in BO1. Mono White Lifegain starts to fall off, and we see a broader spread in the tiers. Sultai was still the top played deck in BO3. Naya falls off, we see Mono Red in the upswing again, and a newcomer in 4C Doom.
I cover how to beat Dimir Rogues, and how the meta naturally evolved last week without too many information heavy events for us to glean data from in order to adjust our gameplay.
BO1
Mono Red Snow Aggro continues to make haste against the rest of the archetypes. Primarily due to two things, a hard falling off in Mono White Lifegain as well as upticks in other late game decks. Since its specialty its closing matches fast this makes a lot of sense. One noteworthy item that we see this week relative to past weeks is a broader spread in the tiers. The example here is mono black enchantments having a healthy win rate as well as a top archetype played when looking across all tiers. However, when we hone in on the competitive top end we now see Temur Turns joining into the fray, and commanding a healthy win rate as well.
One last item that we did mention last week to keep an eye on that is starting to come to fruition is an uptick in rogues! We will continue to keep an eye on these items as we go into next week, as these are certainly some interesting findings.
BO3
As we have seen this dichotomy come into play over the past week we see the higher end of this being more exacerbated into the late game. Sultai Ultimatum continues to increase to 17%+ of the played deck archetype. I can personally attest to playing several Sultai Ultimate decks in mythic at what feels like an every other match!
The other very interesting movement here is actually the fact of a similar thing as bo1, aggro beginning to rise above. Naya adventures have fallen off hard, along with cycle, and Temur turns. Interestingly enough Temur turns has the second best win rate right behind mono red! Which leads to Mono red re solidifying itself as a top bo3 deck and in the number two archetype spot. In BO3 we also see a newcomer, 4C Doom. I believe this is a cool impact from Mengu still seeing spill over from the KHM Pro League weekend (Unless I missed something here)!One of the decks which has seen an extraordinary rise this past week is Mono White Aggro. Which I will cover here in a bit.
How To – Beat Gruul Food
This week we talk about how to beat Gruul Food as one of the competitive decks in both BO1 & BO3. Gruul Food got a boost as a percent of the meta while its win rate is healthy as well. This will be covered a tad later on the event impacts.
The best counter to this deck interestingly enough is Mono White Aggro. You can find an example here. Honestly, I was pretty surprised to see this, but after thinking more about the deck it makes sense. Additionally, with this in mind it also makes sense why we see more Gruul food, as a portion of played decks Mono White Aggro has begun to recede quite a bit.
Event Impacts
It was an absolute bomb of a week! We crowned a new Kaldheim Champion Arne Huschenbeth with Dimir Rogues. This was a huge meta impact as I discuss in the video, additionally pretty awesome on the read of the prior week on Rogues. Arne made the right standard call on what he felt he would hit with the deck which was a lot less aggro.
One big piece of information I think which is pretty pertinent in the Standard space is the fact that we saw the percent archetypes played closely mirrored MTGA. I would advise we keep an eye on this as we continue to see more events like this, because it could be a very healthy forward indicator of how or what to be playing. Even more so, then previously thought!
I specifically don’t touch on Historic, and did what to make two comments. First, huge fan of the orzhov auras deck, and Arne’s tweaks specifically beat Jund Sacrifice. The last is how would you the community feel about a weekly spotlight or biweekly on historic? Please share your thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear.
What’s Next
Now unlike this week, I think next week we will get some windfalls of information coming out of the Kaldheim Championship. The meta represents fairly close to the current MTGA one as well, which I found interesting relative to the Pro League play. Also, somewhat not surprising as this is a different style event/tournament.
The biggest thing will be some of the one off decks. There are a few, one of these either performing well or taking the Championship crown will usher in a new meta trend for sure!
Feel free to join us in ongoing real-time discussion or to hang out on the discord server.
Sources
I leverage multiple sources like untapped.ggs companion app stats, MTGAzone, Aetherhub, twitter, personal gameplay, tournament matches (mtg melee, magic.gg), this reddit as well as others, personal stats, and consistently hitting Mythic and Mythic Qualifiers.
One last thought I would like to share:
If you have a competitive deck (different than one featured) I am always happy to do a piece on it time permitting. I have several folks that ask, and have done several player featured decks. I rather enjoy this so please don’t hesitate to reach out or ask. I always try to prioritize with the following and timing or relevance – MTGA Rank (1500s)/Top Tournaments down to Plat2Mythic Decks.
One other piece, I have recently started doing collaboration videos. If you are interested please let me know, and I would love to partner!
I wholeheartedly welcome any feedback on how to meet your needs as well as improving your experience! Additionally, for the near term my focus will be on Standard, and I hope to organically add in Historic in the future.
Thank you for your time, and hope you enjoyed this week’s piece!