Table of Contents
- Metagame
- JUND FOOD IS NOW THE BEST DECK, BUT WILL ONLY CONTINUE TO BE FOR A FEW WEEKS
- SULTAI ULTIMATUM (AND SIMILAR LATE GAME DECKS) WILL GAIN SIGNIFICANT TRACTION
- CONTROL DECKS ARE GOING TO TREND DOWN DUE TO FOOD’S DOMINANCE
- IT MAY BE GOBLIN’S TIME TO SHINE ONCE AGAIN
- AGGRO PLAYERS BEWARE, IT’S GOING TO BE VERY HOSTILE FOR A BIT, BUT NOT FOREVER
- AURAS MAY HIT IT BIG NEXT WEEK DESPITE ALL THE SACRIFICE PLAYERS
- JUND COMPANY WILL STILL BE GOOD DESPITE FOOD’S PRESENCE
Hello everyone! Today I’m going to review the results from this weekend’s Historic SCG $5k qualifier. Using the data and my understanding of metagame trends, I’m going to talk about what’s likely to happen on ladder in the short term and the next few Historic events. Before I get started, here’s a chart of the top 10 most popular archetypes and their win rates.
Metagame
| Archetype | # of Decks | % of Field | % Win Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jund Food | 62 | 20.598% | 53.0534% |
| Azorius Control | 22 | 7.309% | 50% |
| Jund Company | 22 | 7.309% | 58.5366% |
| Goblins | 14 | 4.6512% | 54.878% |
| Four-color Control | 13 | 4.3189% | 44.4444% |
| Sultai Ultimatum | 12 | 3.9867% | 53.6232% |
| Gruul Company | 11 | 3.6545% | 50% |
| Mono-Red Aggro | 10 | 3.3223% | 56.9231% |
| Gruul Aggro | 9 | 2.99% | 42.8571% |
| Orzhov Auras | 9 | 2.99% | 51.2821% |
Furthermore, if you want to see the top 12 decklists, you can check them out here!
JUND FOOD IS NOW THE BEST DECK, BUT WILL ONLY CONTINUE TO BE FOR A FEW WEEKS
[sd_deck deck=”6wJf4EZD0″]
Man look at those numbers! For a deck that was seeing very little play leading up to the 5k, taking up 20% of the field is a very impressive number. I’m not particularly surprised though, as I even predicted this would happen a month in advance. That being said, I would consider Jund Food to be the “best” deck right now as Sacrifice is the best archetype and Food is better in the mirror. Then why do I think it’s dominance will be short lived?
Jund Food is a great deck, but it’s not a particularly unfair deck. The deck interacts well and can win quickly once it gets a Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, but that’s one of it’s greatest strengths and weaknesses, the reliance on Korvold. Food can struggle to win quickly as it generally needs to find a Korvold to close out the game, but that can make them slower compared to the lower to the ground variant, Jund Company. Since the deck can take a little while to close games and interaction is mostly based around small creatures, decks that go larger than Food can be really problematic for them. That leads me right into my next point.
SULTAI ULTIMATUM (AND SIMILAR LATE GAME DECKS) WILL GAIN SIGNIFICANT TRACTION
[sd_deck deck=”mgqs1zHW2″]
Everyone who brought Sultai Ultimatum to the $5k would’ve made a genius move if this was a week or two later. That isn’t to say it wasn’t a decent choice for this tournament, but I think the pilots should’ve kept the spice hidden for a little while longer. I played my fair share of Sultai Ultimatum as well, but came to the conclusion that although the deck is powerful, it was hard to play it in a completely open metagame. What Sultai Ult really needed was one tournament to help homogenize the metagame, then it can build itself in such a way to exploit the holes in other decks.
With that, these results are about the best Sultai Ultimatum could ask for. The best deck for next week is pretty bad against them, there aren’t too many fast decks, and control not only had middling results, but Jund Food is a really hard matchup for it. If you like going big in Historic, this is the time to play this style of deck, but if you’re looking to do so, I’d definitely recommend trying Sultai Ult first.
CONTROL DECKS ARE GOING TO TREND DOWN DUE TO FOOD’S DOMINANCE
[sd_deck deck=”qkwsSNjPF”]
[sd_deck deck=”nM5EdJ6Jy”]
I more or less mentioned this before, but this is going to be a tough few weeks for you Control junkies. Food is a very hard matchup due to how well they can grind through their deck, so decks like UW and Arcanist are going to be hit the hardest by these shifts. If you’re a UW player, I would suggest putting the deck down for a week or two and let the meta stabilize, you really don’t want to face the parade of Jund Food players that are going to be emboldened by the SCG results; try the deck again in a week or two when decks gunning to beat Food start popping up.
Arcanist players unfortunately are going to have it twice as rough. No matter how you slice it, good matchups for Arcanist look like they’re going to trend way down making it a poor option moving forward. Whether it’s Food or go big decks that beat Food, Arcanist really doesn’t want to be facing either. It may be time to look towards a different strategy if you really like casting Thoughtseize.
IT MAY BE GOBLIN’S TIME TO SHINE ONCE AGAIN
[sd_deck deck=”r1IrEqIhl”]
Since Uro has been gone, it feels like Muxus, Goblin Grandee has been banned with it. With that, I’m quite surprised that Goblins ended up being such a represented archetype, but not terribly surprised that it did reasonably well. Goblins is a powerful archetype that doesn’t get hated out by much, so it was weird to not see any of it on ladder for the longest time. Now that Jund Food is trending up thus slowing the Sacrifice archetype down, Goblins may be able to better tussle with Cat and also beat up on decks looking to beat Food.
Furthermore, although I don’t think people should play UW in the short term, I’m sure many players still will. With that, Goblins does a great job at beating a slow deck like that, especially when there aren’t many Aether Gusts seeing play. If you want to try and attack the metagame in a way it’s not expecting, Goblins could be the answer.
AGGRO PLAYERS BEWARE, IT’S GOING TO BE VERY HOSTILE FOR A BIT, BUT NOT FOREVER
[sd_deck deck=”PfjvjJyJp”]
[sd_deck deck=”la7Ns_Aio”]
This may be a somewhat controversial stance to take when Monored had a strong win rate and Gruul took second at the SCG, but I think it’s going to be very tough for Aggro moving forward. First of all, Jund Food loves seeing aggro decks and will take that matchup every day of the week. It’s not like the matchup is unwinnable for Aggro, but it certainly isn’t great.
Second, a lot of the decks that are looking to beat Food may accidentally hit aggro with the splash damage. Sultai Ultimatum can easily be teched to beat aggro decks and ramp strategies like Monored and Monoblack naturally have a bunch of removal and wrath effects. That being said, the metagame will start shifting towards the slower end of the spectrum as these slow decks will start teching to beat other slow decks. When the slow decks start trying to cannibalize each other, then it’ll definitely be time to pick up the red decks again.
AURAS MAY HIT IT BIG NEXT WEEK DESPITE ALL THE SACRIFICE PLAYERS
[sd_deck deck=”0WAYx5Pwq”]
If you know me, I love Auras, maybe a little more than I should. I think the deck is disgustingly powerful, but definitely doesn’t love seeing Claim the Firstborn. With that, it may be weird to say that Auras can hit it big when Sacrifice is at the top of the metagame, but there’s a key change I’m noticing that may make this possible.
Although Claim the Firstborn is really tough for the deck, Priest of Forgotten Gods is just as brutal. If you look at the top Jund Food lists, instead of a playset of Priest, you see 0-2. As Food develops, I believe that Priest will likely just be cut entirely as it’s not even that good in the deck overall. With Priest getting cut, I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing Claim the Firstborn being replaced by Fatal Push. Claim is so good in Company as you have 13 sac outlets with
If Food starts trending away from Claim and the meta slows down, Auras may have the opportunity to run the tables with their “worst” matchup building in such a way that doesn’t even make them a bad matchup anymore.
JUND COMPANY WILL STILL BE GOOD DESPITE FOOD’S PRESENCE
[sd_deck deck=”bAadE6h38″]
Another warm take for the article! Jund Food is definitely a hard matchup, but I don’t think playing Company is now out of the question. The decks may look quite similar, but their playstyles are very different overall. Jund Food takes advantage of the decks looking to go under other decks as Korvold can easily trounce most small ball strategies. Jund Company on the other hand is a low to the ground deck that has the ability to interact, race, and grind given the scenario it finds itself in. This disparity can be further compounded by decks looking to beat up on Jund Food may still ironically struggle with the Company variant of Jund.
That being said, I don’t think Company is going to change significantly, but if you want to play it, definitely up the amount of Korvold you’re playing and have more ways to deal with Korvold as well.
Thank you for reading! If you like my content and want to see more of it, you can check me out on Twitch! Have a great day!
