MTGA | Friday Night Meta | August 2021 Week 2 | Enfeebled | Standard 2022


Howdy Planeswalkers!

Wow two weeks into the season already, and we have had some pretty interesting announcements from WoTC in terms of splitting things up! First off, grats to those of you that top 500ed out of the gate!  Super pumped about the free drafts, and personally looking forward to the new jumpstart set myself.

We also kicked off our Standard 2022 Mythras Multiverse League which has been a ton of fun and a big hit!  Stay tuned as we will cut to our Top 8 soon, and I will share the results next week.  Looking forward to this.

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.

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:

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

Last Week’s Episode

Last Week’s Piece

Recap

BO1: Mono White Lifegain has taken the helm in terms of the top deck in terms of winrate, and competitive play.  While Cycling is creeping back into the meta.


BO3: Winona continues its path of destruction, while Temur Lukka holds the top spot.  One up and comer to keep an eye on is Rakdos Sacrifice.

Top Deck: 

Mono White Lifegain (Deck List)

Standard 2022:

Meta continues to be a bit of a steady eddy in terms of what’s going on!

Top Deck:

Mono White Aggro (Deck List)

BO1 

This week Mono White Lifegain has fallen off as Boros starts to reign things in across the board.  The big thing though is the increased  amount of play in the archetype typically leads to an inverse when it comes to win rate which continues to hold true here.  Most noteworthy is the fact that Mono White was the deck to get to Mythic most likely from the story of last week, and continues to be the most played in the Mythic Tier.

BO3

A huge upside surprise here this week in BO3 with Rakdos Sacrifice sky rocketing to the top of the winrate top 8, and becoming an archetype staple.  What is crazy is how fast this changes as well.  This was at time of video, and this has changed in less than 24 hrs.  Nonetheless this is pretty significant! It is also great to see callouts like last week come to fruition.

The other thing here that was a big change was the absence now of Temur Adventures/Lukka in aggregate view.  The deck still commands a high win rate at the most competitive levels of play.  One other just absolutely huge thing this week is the incredible surge of Gruul Magda or Gruul splash black! Incredible skyrocket growth in terms of archetype play.  Winona has seen the fall back to earth and dethroned as the most played deck.  This is definitely given some of the tournament results we touch on in Event Impacts.

Enfeebled – Gruul Magda / Gruul Adventures

This deck has had an absolute powerhouse of a week!  A few changes, tweaks, and boom it has propelled to one of the most played decks!

Deck List

Deck Video 

Standard 2022

Most of the meta remains intact.  The biggest things here though are some of the changes at the higher level of competitive play with Mono Black Control entering.  Mono Red Goblins is also starting to see a bit more play.  Things still continue to be dominated by our mono colored friends green & white.

Data courtesy untapped.

Orzhov Control

I forgot to cover a nice fun Standard 2022 deck for you in the weekly episode, however never fear we have one here!

Deck List

Deck Video

Event Impacts

Standard: SCG 5K, with Rumti taking things down in Mono Green Stompy Style!  Tier 1, a plethora of interesting stuff due to mixed historic & standard.

Standard 2022: Jaffer ran his Gouda Wars with some aligned meta results.  You can check out standings of the Mythras Multiverse Standard League where we had about 30 planeswalkers, and are undergoing a bo3 style standard 2022.  You can stay on top of the next league/tournament as well.

What’s Next

We will keep an eye on what’s to come!  Black Pearl is running another Standard 2022 tournament.  Not a ton for Standard up and coming.

Feel free to join us in ongoing real-time discussion or to hang out on the discord server

Tier Lists

Standard August Tier List

Video & Piece

Standard 2022 July Tier List

Video & Piece

Anthology 5 July Tier Lists:

Historic BO1 & BO3: Video & Piece

Week Highlights

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:

Standard Decks at your service: Izzet Control, & Gruul Splash Black

Standard 2022 decks for your consumption: Orzhov Control, Temur OTK, & Bant Party

Historic showcases: Mono Green Stompy, Izzet Phoenix, Rakdos Sacrifice, & Esper Control

Knocking out my Free Draft, and checking out the Historic Brawl Queue with Community decks.  You can check it out here on Twitch or Youtube.

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!