MTGA | Friday Night Meta | June 2021 Week 2 | Inner Spirit


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.

We have a lot of action going this week with several key items! We had the June Season reset, and we are all off to the races, plus some pretty fun events that unfolded last weekend, and much anticipation looking forward to things going on this weekend.

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:

Last Week’s Episode

Last Week’s Piece

Strixhaven May Tier Lists :

Standard BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Mystical Archives May Tier Lists:

Historic BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Week Highlights

Introduced a fun new segment for Jank, if you are looking at an alternative to some competitive Magic.  Additionally, the focus this week on Twitch was Jank in Rank.  I have to say it’s certainly fun, and I definitely enjoy spotlighting other players’ decks.  Please feel free to hop in the Discord and share your Jank or Rank decks.

A few decks I checked out this week were: Azorius Auras, Rakdos Menace, Mono Black Devotion, Orzhov Clerics, Golgari Elves, & Boros Knights.

There was a lot of tribal focus this week as an under the radar theme! Also, as mentioned I started a new line of Jank with 4C Crackle Ramp!

Recap

BO1: Mono White Lifegain is king out of the June Season Gates
BO3: Mono White Aggro taking the lead, Izzet Dragons falling off a bit, and of course Sultai Ult still dominating the most played Archetype

Top Deck: Mono White Aggro

BO1 

Mono White Lifegain falls out of the most favorable win rate, while others like Boros Cycling, Winona, and Mono White Aggro begin to push it out.   Mono Red Snow Aggro has regained the most played archetype, and Boros Winota fell off pretty hard.

As we move through our second week of June we continue to see the hyper focus on Aggro decks which aligns with general past trends.  Rogues is one deck that has been on a slow steady rise, and definitely played a lot more in the lower level tiers of ranked at the moment.

BO3

There have certainly been some pretty big influential moves in our Standard BO3 gameplay this week.  Definitely influenced by event impacts which I will cover later.  The first is the inclusion of Jeskai Mutate making its way into one of the Top 8 archetypes played.  Alongside this we observed two other key parts to this week’s META story.

The first of which is the meteoric rise once again of Izzet Dragons.  Dethroning & practically replacing Sultai Ultimatum (as of this morning) as the most played deck.  The second is the absolute knock down power of Naya Tokens at the moment.  Commanding almost a 60% win rate!

Inner Spirit – Naya Jegantha Tokens

Naya Tokens has had some strong showings in the past, and now is once again rearing it’s head in a competitive manner.  It has had some nice recent showings which we will talk about and as mentioned in BO3 commands one of the best win rates at the moment for competitive Magic.

Deck List

Deck Video

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

Event Impacts

Boom! We have crowned a Strixhaven Championship Champion! Congrats Sam Pardee.  This event certainly has helped drive a lot of the trends we took in this week in BO3.  In particular Jeskai Mutate had a very very healthy showing in the Strixhaven Championship with a 60%+ win rate.

Naya Jegantha Tokens as well as Izzet Dragons performed well in the Tournament adding fuel to some of the things also covered today.

What’s Next

Looking forward to what new events lie in wait ahead this weekend!

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, 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!