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
NEW Strixhaven April Tier Lists:
Standard BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece
Kaldheim April Tier Lists:
Standard BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece
Historic BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece
Week Highlights
Couple of fun things this week for sure! I pulled together the first Strixhaven Tier List which you can find above or here, that will provide you with a ton of information in closing out this month, and moving into next month’s competitive season! The other fun thing that relates to today’s piece is hitting Mythic Live last night. Also, for the record, I don’t always zoom 😛 I strongly believe in a healthy gaming balance, and I usually trade around on my time with MQs.
Recap
Last week we got our first glance at initial Strixhaven weekly Meta impacts where we saw the rise of two golgari decks, the absolute pounding of Winota into the meta, and prepping into some fun initial weekend events with s 5K SCG & Extra Life!
BO1
There are probably three key things to note this week in BO1. First and foremost as it relates to my above allusion to here is the fact the traditional Mono White Lifegain deck, still credits, as well as nods to CGB is the best BO1 deck by win percent in the Meta. The most questions I get on this are why fountains, and I will repeat fountain > snow. This deck I piloted to top 50 last month, and once again found my way on the tail end of the season into Mythic with.
The next piece is really the cooling of Winota. The meta has definitely begun to recognize the threat and make adjustments, particularly we see Sultai doing a number of things most notably is more mainboarding or inclusions of Polukranos. This also strengthens the deck against the added Rogues threats, as one thing to recognize here.
The third and final point for this week on BO1 is the deck that gained the most in comparison to the field was Rogues. The majority of the percent played stayed relatively flat, minus the golgari decks both witherbloom, and pest have notably fallen off the competitive side of things. The sleeper at the moment to keep an eye on is mono white aggro.
BO3
Like BO1 we continue to see a leveling of the meta, and a significant reduction in Winota as things evolve to compete. Personally, its easier to flip up your sideboard vs mainboard to really do work against threats. Two big things here deckwise are the increase in rogues, and a resurgence of naya adventures. This has to definitely do with last weekends events which I will cover in a bit.
One other thing to note is Mono Red Snow Aggro has been falling pretty hard, and still maintains the best overall winrate. Also, like BO1 I strongly advise keeping an eye on Mono White Aggro, in particular as a percent of the meta played, and its commanding healthy win rate.
Spotlight Deck Mono White Lifegain
I think and have for a while that Mono White Lifegain had continued to be well positioned in BO1. It’s hardest matchups are the late game decks, and as long as the Meta stays more aggro based, and winota helps this, it will continue to do well. As I mentioned above, you can see me hitting Mythic last night with it, and maintaining a healthy win rate! I also played a WOTC employee. You can find the copy also in the discord server in our Spikes room.
The deck excels well against the aggro matches as mentioned above. Another quick tip is I am starting to see adoption of my beloved shadowspear in Mono White Aggro variants, I would advise it maybe a nice addition to this deck, and enable some alternative play. Also, there maybe a blademaster in its future.
Event Impacts
Over the weekend we saw two key events, one competitive, and the other for a good cause that I would still say was competitive.
The first was the SCG 5K Strixhaven Standard tournament, where we saw some interesting results. Sultai Ultimatum once again at a 50% win record net, and still had a healthy top 16 showing. The tournament was taken down by rogues, hence the upward momentum once again, and followed by Naya Adventures running a very healthy win rate. Why we also saw an uptick there.
The other event was Extra Life! As I called out last week Monster Jeff, had a nice showing with Sultai Ultimatum placing third! He spent a lot of time with the community in our Discord preparing and bouncing ideas off everyone, and I am very proud to see his results!
Extra Life
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!
What’s Next
We got our first rendezvous with a few tournament impacts! Saw the results and direct implications in the Meta. Looking forward to what lies ahead, wrapping up this month’s season, and moving into the first full season of Strixhaven. As always my advice to you, and you zoomers, what was good now will be good out of the gates!
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!