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 for:
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
Bouncing back fast from surgery! Believe it or not I actually mowed my lawn in less then a week’s time from my Meniscus repair!
In Magic & Community News:
It feels good to be on the mend, as I was able to spend time this week giving back in one of my favorite ways by playing with folks in the community! I try to run at a minimum one monthly session on twitch where I take on members in a best of three BO1 matchmaking where I play a different deck each match.
Additionally, I hit Top 1000 again this month with Mono White Lifegain. However, the caveat here is I did it on mobile! Coming off the back of hitting Mythic I wanted to push myself to see if I could up that game, and was successful in doing so.
We have had several fun things going on in the Discord this week. We started to reorg some of our channels for the growth, and are running some fun throw-ins that community members have contributed – Special Thanks to AngryPenguin for his contributions. One last note again for coordination of a free weekend tournament if anyone is interested.
In regards to a few decks I checked out this week were Simic Ramp, Rakdos Midrange, Orzhov Humans, Mono Blue Snow, Selesnya Counters, & Golgari Poison. Also, quickly as always I love taking a look at your decks! Feel free to shoot me your lists at a chance of being spotlighted.
I am also considering starting to spotlight some Jank ones.
Recap
Boros Winota took back the #1 spot in BO1, and Mono White Lifegain fell pretty significantly in terms of win rates. In BO3 Izzet Dragons continued its upward momentum, along with a host of the other Top 8s. Sultai Ultimatum continued to be the ultimate BO3 deck.
BO1
With the reset Mono White Lifegain has seen a lot of winrate love becoming the best deck in terms of overall success. Both Mono Red Snow Aggro and Boros Winota are neck and neck for most played.
This all makes sense given the reset, and heavy shift to aggro out of the gates as always. The most notable thing overall though was the drop in archetype percent they still received, while mono white aggro had a huge leap! We will talk about this in a bit more detail here in a second.
BO3
Also in BO3 Mono White Aggro has been considerably strong out of the gate. As mentioned above we will get to the why in a bit. However, Sultai Ultimatum continues to reign supreme here in terms of the most played archetype!
A lot of the most played decks’ win rates have been trending up, and Gruul Adventures is one in action seeing more upware play momentum out of the gate. Oddly Izzet Dragons is being played considerably less, even then I had expected here at the beginning of the June season.
You Know Nothin Jon Snow – Mono White Snow Aggro
Mono White Snow Aggro is one of the key decks once again. This deck has had a huge surge that we talked about above, and it’s good to know how to play it or against it. Today’s list was a spotlight from our friend AngryPenguin who was an initial adopter to the archetype early last season.
You definitely can change this list up the way you like, and it certainly continues to evolve. There is also differences that are becoming more distinguished in BO1 & BO3.
Event Impacts
A lot has happened this past week. We saw the F2K United tournament results where Mono White Snow Aggro took it down, besting Krowz Dimir Control deck. This has been one reason the archetype has been in an upward trajectory. The second was our friend CGB’s continued BO1 success zooming to #1 quickly with his own iteration on Mono White Aggro.
Also again a shout out to check out a free tournament here if you are interested by a fellow redditor!
What’s Next
We will get some major information this week coming off the back of the Strixhaven Championship! Best of luck to those of you who are partaking, as I wish each of you the best! We will eagerly await the results, and look forward to consuming the information to come!
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.
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!