MTGA | Friday Night Meta | April 2021 Week 4 | Strixhaven Initial Impacts


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.

Alrighty my friends we have our first real full week under our belts when it comes to Strixhaven with some pretty interesting first impacts to the Standard format.  The key point here as well is it was naturally occurring as we didn’t come off some gang buster tournament weekend.

You can check out the weekly coverage here:

Last Week’s Episode

Last Week’s Piece

April Tier Lists:

Standard BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Historic BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Week Highlights

I have been working extremely hard to collect the Strixhaven collection to pound out several Top decks for you.  With that you can find a piece I pulled together yesterday here on 5 key decks to help you in your standard journey!

Recap

Last week I had some fun exciting personal announcements to share with the community.  The other big thing was just the closing out of Kaldheim and moving towards Strixhaven standard.  It was fun to see how things ended with all the trends and impacts over the course of the last set.  I also provide some tips on what to play moving into the new environment.

BO1 

Finally, what I think everyone has been waiting for! Some nice data on the new set in standard and initial impacts to the format.  There definitely has been a destructive, swift, and impressive rise with a new up and comer Boros Winota. (You can let me know in the comments if you prefer Lorehold).  This deck certainly has in my opinion smashed expectations, and equally so I believe added to a largely missing piece of the previous Meta, a deck that both excels in aggro and more Midrange.

The other up and comers in the space are two Golgari decks.  They are both the pests, and sacrifice ones.  Now the winrate isn’t great in fact is sub par, however my first reaction is people are still figuring out how to pilot as well as navigate the new format.  We will keep an eye on these two to see what happens.

Lastly, as I ALWAYS ADVISE what was good prior (minus a set rotation) is likely to remain good/playable competitively in the new set drops.  This is once again true with Strixhaven.  Lots of decks are still great viable options like Mono Red Aggro, and Sultai Ultimatum.  Both of which are in the 5 deck list I shared earlier, and have delivered success for me!

BO3

This week in BO3 there really are three key items.  The first is the tight knit race between Sultai Ultimatum and Mono Red Snow aggro.  It’s a very close race across the board, and when we drill into the more competitive top end of the tiers, red is emerging again as a clear winner.

The next piece is the recession of dimir rogues.  The Arne effect is starting to wear off, as we move further away from the Kaldheim Championship.  The last part here is the flip side of the Championship effect and rather the newer impact effect from this past weekend’s events I cover below.  These events have led to a rapid rise in Naya Adventures.  This is they big upshot this week we will watch going into next week.

Spotlight Deck Boros Winota

Man this deck packs an absolute punch! It is a powerhouse right now in the current format, and I can personally attest.  I took it for a spin last night on twitch closing with a 13-3 round in BO1, and I made some changes to it and went 7-0 with my personal variant.  You can find the copy of my version in the discord server in our Spikes room.

Deck List

Deck Video

This deck feeds on the existing cross over meta, and punishes non removal decks.  It will be open to late game, and wipes, however there are certainly variants coming forward causing other issues.  You absolutely need the ability to both kill right away, and exile to defeat this deck.  It has a very nice favorability against almost all decks in the current environment.  Even with its rocketship in percent played, you may still have time to jump in on this moon ride!

Event Impacts

This past week all focus has been on the new Strixhaven set.  There were really no key reports to cover, and so we will keep an eye on the future!  If I missed something please feel free to comment & share.

One Event I do want to call out this upcoming weekend as I have a devoted place in my heart for charity is this weekend’s Extra Life Event.

Extra Life

https://www.extra-life.org/

You can check out the information here, and I highly recommend you support not only your favorite content creators, and streamers but also a great charity for a great cause!

Looking forward to what everyone has to say, and a shout out to Monster Jeff in the Discord for making me aware, and his best of luck on his deck choice.

What’s Next

Now that we are into our first full week and getting some data points into the Meta developments I look forward to watching new decks rise and current ones fall.  We will keep an eye on all things golgari, magecraft, and winona based.  Additionally, all our old competitive favorites!  Lastly, can’t wait to see what cool, competitive, and fun decks come out of the Extra Life MTG event!

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!