Hey all. Strickles here, back with Week 3 of our Standard Meta Reports. To give you all the latest info without having to dig through decklists and events, each week I will be going over the top events of the weekend and provide analysis of how the meta is evolving. As all of these tournaments are Best of-3, keep in mind that these meta changes only reflect the Bo3 meta and not Bo1.
With all that said, let’s dive into the top decks of the weekend. This weekend we have four Standard Challenges on MTGO to look at. First, I’ll quickly go over the decks that remain at the top after last week, and then show off the new decks that shined this weekend.
Gruul Prowess emerged as the deck of the weekend with six copies in Top 8s across the four events, including one event win. It seems like every week the top aggro deck of the format changes. Not much has changed in this deck since I talked about it last week, but the meta shifted in general in favor of aggro and token control decks, and as Gruul Prowess is one of the fastest aggro decks, it is possible that it was just able to outpace the other aggro decks in most of its games.
As always, we’ll have to see if the deck keeps putting up results before we can really judge it as a contender for top aggro deck in the format.
I briefly touched on this deck last week, but this week it was much more impressive, putting four copies into Top 8s, including one event win. I think the things to like about this deck are that it sizes up its creatures, like Warden of the Inner Sky, Regal Bunnicorn, and Zoetic Glyph, really well and fairly early on, making them good against other aggro decks because they can easily block in a most scenarios. The lifelink or vigilance given by Steel Seraph also helps with racing.
The other things to like are that several of these threats don’t die to Go for the Throat, against the black midrange decks, and that Mockingbird is just a really awesome and efficient card. Mockingbird can be more copies of Royal Bunnicorn if you are getting aggressive, or just another copy of Spyglass Siren early in the game. It is so flexible and so easy to cast that I love a deck that is able to make use of it.
I’m always surprised to see this deck doing well, but it seems it is time to stop being surprised and to start watching to see where it goes from here.
I talked about Mono-White Token Control last week, but this week we saw the deck diversify into several different decks, leading us to have two Jeskai Token Control, one Orzhov Token Control, one Boros Token Control, and one Mono-White Token Control deck in Top 8s. The best finish was the Jeskai build featured above, but you can see all of the decklists linked at the end of this article.
I’m comfortable grouping these decks together, because while the details all vary, their gameplans are all quite similar. Control the board early, deploy Caretaker’s Talent, continue to control the board but now drawing cards whenever you make tokens. The Jeskai deck above has a variety of ways to make tokens while executing their gameplan. Sunfall makes a token. Deduce makes a token. Chrome host Seedshark makes tokens, etc.
I like the Jeskai build because Torch the Tower and Lightning Helix give it cheap removal to keep the aggro decks at bay early, and Three Steps Ahead to help them compete against other control and midrange decks late.
Rakdos Lizards hangs on to relevance this week with three copies into Top 8s, down from six last week, but no wins. It might have just been a week where less players were on the deck, in favor of something like Gruul Prowess, or perhaps the meta has gotten used to the deck. Either way we’ll have to keep an eye on it to see if it keeps putting up results.
Dimir Midrange put up two copies into Top 8s, keeping it in the conversation as a player in the format. Not much has changed about this deck, as we discussed last week, since before rotation, and it continues to forgo playing many Bloomburrow cards in favor of the tried and true cards from last season.
Golgari Midrange also put up two copies into Top 8s, holding steady as a player in the format, but has failed to have a breakout weekend. Week 1 it put up three copies, Week 2 also three copies, and now in Week 3 only two copies. However, steady results are important, and it is undeniably a part of the format that you have to be prepared for if you are playing in a tournament.
Azorius Control put up two copies into Top 8s this weekend, keeping its streak alive of having at least one copy in Top 8s every week. With aggro taking over this week, at 18/32 of the decks across the four Top 8s, Azorius Control with maindeck Elspeth’s Smite and Temporary Lockdown seems like a good place to start to take them down.
While I would be worried about losing out against the Token Control decks discussed above, this version of Azorius Control plays four Get Lost, giving it enchantment removal for Caretaker’s Talent.
With Domain on a down turn (more on that below) there are fewer Cavern of Souls running around, making No More Lies and other counterspells more appealing.
Okay, I’ve buried the lead a little bit here, but Domain had a terrible week compared to the last two weeks. Only one copy of Domain found its way into a Top 8 this weekend, down from seven last week and six the week before. My guess as to why it has fallen off is that the aggro decks that dominated the week are either blisteringly fast like Gruul Prowess, or have access to counterspells like Azorius Artifacts and Jeskai Convoke (discussed below).
Let’s see if Domain bounces back next week or if Atraxa and friends have been figured out for now.
We really only had one new deck breakout this weekend, but wow did it breakout. While I have mentioned Jeskai Convoke once before as an evolution of Boros Convoke, it hadn’t really put results before now. It put up five decks into Top 8s, just one copy behind Gruul Prowess, but it won two of the four events.
Something I like about this deck is that in some ways being three colors actually improves the consistency of the mana over being a two color deck. In a two color deck in Standard you are likely to play Fabled Passage and whatever creature land is in your colors. This deck is only playing fastlands and painlands, giving it all untapped mana for the first few turns of the game.
It seems like Jeskai Convoke has completely replaced Boros Convoke in the meta, as Boros has failed to put up any real results so far. This standard format keeps giving us new aggro decks, so we’ll have to see if Jeskai Convoke can establish some consistency moving forward.
Other Decks
There were only two other decks that put decks into Top 8s this weekend, Orzhov Midrange and Sultai Midrange. You can find those lists, and all of the lists from this weekend, below:
Standard continues to evolve. Boros Mice disappeared again, Domain fell off, new aggro decks have risen to the top, while midrange decks like Dimir and Golgari fight to stay relevant, and Control decks have mostly adapted to be all in on the Caretaker’s Talent build. Regardless of what happens moving forward, I’ll be here next week to cover all of the action and bring you the newest developments in Standard, so you can stay up to date and feel prepared to tackle whatever the Standard format has to offer.
As always, best of luck in all of your matches, and I’ll see you next time.
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