MTGA | Friday Night Meta | July 2021 Week 5 | Behold the Cosmos | Standard 2022


Midnight oil burning hot Planeswalkers! We enter into a fast paced 24 hours before season reset for July.  Congrats to those MQed already, and those looking for a top 1200 spot best of luck!

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.

A few super awesome things this week! First and foremost I got out my Standard 2022 Tier List, and now we have actual stats for Standard 2022.  I have included a lot more in depth info this week showcasing that information as well.  Lastly, for those of you that are interested the community voted well over 100+ responses on a preference to play a Standard 2022 tournament/league.  We have pulled it together for interested parties and you can find the information here.

I slice and dice weekly data using untapped.ggs companion app for BO1 & BO3 standard, cover a key deck for the week, and we talk about some key meta impacts!

You can check out the weekly coverage here for:

Additionally feel free to come hang out in the Discord Server.

Last Week’s Episode

Last Week’s Piece

Recap

BO1: Naya Winota started to gain traction while it was still dominated by Boros Winota.  Mono White aggro was also inching towards the top!  Mono Green Stompy really started to fall off a commanding position in the Top 8.  Cycling was also seeing an uptick.


BO3: Big changes this week as Naya Winota began to skyrocket consuming 20%+ of the meta, and Magda Gruul started to see more broad meta adoption.  Dimir Control quietly faded away…

Top Deck: 

Naya Winota (Deck List)

BO1 

Naya Winota has overcome in several competitive spots to be the most played as well as highest win percent deck.  At large we do see mono white lifegain commanding well again, and some top spots.  Mono White Aggro is still hanging on competitively.  All in the Mythic Meta is dominated by a 25%+ scene of Winota.

Everything else has gone sideways, while Naya Winota continues to be a fan favorite building off its rise last week.

BO3

We do have some pretty fascinating changes this week! In Mythic Temur Adventures aka Temur Lukka has moved in to capture the highest win rate spot along with some very very strong performances.  At large the deck isn’t even on the radar of the Top 8!  Overall that spot belongs to Gruul Magda. Which has also moved to commanding 10%+ of the meta.

As you make your move on Top 1200 consider about 30% of the Meta now to be Naya Winota. The deck still has a very healthy win rate sitting in the #2 spot at the moment. 

Behold the Cosmos – Temur Lukka

This deck has been an absolute house as of late.  Ally Warfield took down an SCG qualifier with it, and had a decent showing at the 5K as well.  The deck personally propelled me into the Top 300, all the while over the course of two days playing for me losing only one match! Insane.Should I not play another match this season I will close with a 65% win rate for the new DnD set. 

Deck List

Deck Video

You definitely can change this list up the way you like, and it certainly continues to evolve.  

Standard 2022

This week we got our first glimpse of data into this new exciting format!  Interestingly across the board most things have held even from the drill down competitive scene to the aggregate.  Mono White Aggro Commands the best win rate at the moment while Mono Green Stompy is the most played, however not far behind Mono White Aggro in terms of percent played.

I think one of the more impactful things for me after seeing the data was the fact that Dimir Control isn’t that good.  The deck is sub 50% win rate even though its #3 in the Mythic played list.  Now that we have access to data like this from untapped, I certainly expect this to be corrected.

Big & Wide – Mono Green

What’s not to like about this list! I wanted to showcase another variant of Mono Green for you this week that encompasses a bit of a more go wide strategy leveraging landfall.

Deck List

Deck Video

Event Impacts

Standard: SCG 5K, where Naya Winota took it down, no new true deck archetypes, and as mentioned previously a good showing by Temur Lukka!

Standard 2022: A fun small tournament where a Jund Treasure deck took things down!

What’s Next

Two Big tournaments in the Standard space this weekend.  Another SCG 5K and Insight Esports.

Feel free to join us in ongoing real-time discussion or to hang out on the discord server.  You can also find this week’s article here.

Tier Lists

**NEW** Standard 2022 July Tier List

Video & Piece

Strixhaven June Tier Lists :

Standard BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Anthology 5 July Tier Lists:

Historic BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Week Highlights

The big focus for me this week was to get two major things accomplished! Pulling together the Standard 2022 League as well as getting out the Tier List for Standard 2022!

Community Standard 2022 League Sign-Ups!

Our Discord community is starting to pull together fun free tournaments, so stay tuned!  We also have a very active streaming group if you are looking for some community live Q&A.

A few standard decks I checked out this week were: Orzhov Humans & Temur Lukka

Standard 2022 decks for your consumption: Boros Aggro & Mardu Codie Reanimator

I was able to climb to the Top 300 spot this week on livestream.  You can check it out here on Twitch or Youtube.

Make sure to stay tuned! I will be pulling together a new Dungeons & Dragons Tier List here soon!

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, MTGData,  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, Mythic Unique decks down to Plat2Mythic Decks.  Feel free to hop in the discord server and share your successes or PM/DM me!  Lastly, a great fun way for us to interact is on Twitch where I currently stream x2 a week, and plan to do more in the future.

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!