MTGA | Friday Night Meta | March 2021 Week 3 | Overcome Turns


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.

You can check out the weekly coverage here for:

Last Week’s Episode

Last Week’s Piece

*Stay tuned, March Tier List coming to you soon!

Feb Tier Lists:

BO1

BO3

Recap

The dichotomy between BO1 & BO3 occurred last week.  At a high level the meta games were not both in the aggro space, and rather much more diverse particularly in the BO3.  The meta was heavily impacted in BO1 by a swift rise of mono white life gain.  In BO3 we saw a fast reversal from aggro to a late game style of play.  We also began to see a larger influx of “newer” decks as a part of the meta.

BO1 

Here what once was dominant has started to regress.  Mono white lifegain, is no longer the leader as a percent played.  This has cascaded across the competitive tiers as well.  Mono Red Snow Aggro has retaken the lionshare of most played decks.  On the flipside Mono White Lifegain is still the highest win rate deck for the format.  Many of the other archetypes have settled out, withrising win rates.  

One in particular with a significant rise is Naya Adventures.  The other item to keep an eye on, and one many people have noticed is certainly the up tick in play of dimir rogues.  Another item would be the drop off of the cycle decks.  Also, last week I mentioned to keep an eye on Gruul Adventures and it has broken into a top archetype!  One final interesting trend was that the bottom part of the BO1 played decks have seen the largest increase in win rates overall.

BO3

As we have seen this dichotomy come into play over the past week we see the higher end of this being more exacerbated into the late game.  Sultai Ultimatum continues to increase to 17%+ of the played deck archetype.  I can personally attest to playing several Sultai Ultimate decks in mythic at what feels like an every other match!  

The other very interesting movement here is actually the fact of a similar thing as bo1, aggro beginning to rise above.  Naya adventures have fallen off hard, along with cycle, and Temur turns.  Interestingly enough Temur turns has the second best win rate right behind mono red!  Which leads to Mono red re solidifying itself as a top bo3 deck and in the number two archetype spot.  In BO3 we also see a newcomer, 4C Doom. I believe this is a cool impact from Mengu still seeing spill over from the KHM Pro League weekend (Unless I missed something here)!One of the decks which has seen an extraordinary rise this past week is Mono White Aggro.  Which I will cover here in a bit.

How To – Beat Temur Turns

This week we talk about how to beat temur turns as one of the highest win rate decks now in BO3.  Even though Temur Turns has been scaled back on the play side it still has an impressive win rate, and something to really watch out for.  In all honesty, from the data I have looked at as well, it pretty much beats all other archetypes except for one key type that it is horrendous at overcoming.

That deck is surprise surprise or no surprise! Dimir Rogues! I certainly believe this deck’s resurgence has directly impacted a swift fall in play of Temur Turns. The data clearly show this.  Additionally, it is the only hard counter to Temur Turns, and never was bad against the broad meta.

Event Impacts

This past week saw another SCG $5K Strixhaven event.  There were a number of qualifying events that led into this, and I drilled into the main events results.  A couple of key items to note here, as we have seen some impacts from the event, and some call outs.

Many of what didn’t run well in the previous week ran well in this event.  The main note here is Mono White Aggro taking the event down.  A few other items:

  1. Mono White Aggro 57%+ win rate
  2. Sultai Ultimatum once again sub 50% win rate – Continues to be a recurring theme despite the deck usually finishing out well which is interesting
  3. Mono Red Snow has a 50%+ win rate
  4. Rogues a very strong showing 55%+ win rate
  5. Fall off hard with Temur Turns & Cycle decks being a new less than 50% win rate

This event had some pretty interesting pull-throughs this week.  Another big one was lilium’s #1 Mono White Aggro Deck as well.  You can check it out here.

What’s Next

As always we will keep an eye on any major events headed into the weekend and circle back on what unfolded next week.

Just some thoughts and highlights.  This week we saw two new archetypes discussed from the previous week pop into BO1 & BO3.  Certainly things we have discussed in our discord server.

Per last week’s comments some of the shiny objects have gone a little more dull, and we saw some of the last week’s thoughts come to fruition.  I think we will continue to watch some of the late game decks like 4C Doom as it did ok in the recent 5K SCG event.  I still believe there is room for some other late game decks, and a strong midrange.  Maybe something like this Mono Green Food deck.

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.

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!


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