Last week, we published the first version of our Standard Best-of-One (BO1) Metagame Tier List with some sample decklists. If you have not already, check it out first before proceeding with this article! In this week’s edition of Metagame Monday, we will be discussing what we have found out since publishing the tier list, in light of some best-of-one Standard data released by Untapped.gg not long after.
Best-of-One (BO1) Standard Tier List Update
As stated in the tier list, we have a disclaimer to say that it is subjective to our play experience, some data from MTG Arena Tool and also somewhat based on the BO3 tournament metagame as the decks tend to translate down to BO1 as well. We made a few minor adjustments to the list and after playing some more (and reaching Mythic along the way), we wanted to stress the following points:
- Aggro decks dominate: As expected, aggressive strategies are king of BO1 and is even more so in the current metagame. Rakdos Knights and Gruul Adventures were by far the most common decks we’ve seen so far, followed by Mono Red Aggro. We think it will be hard to find a deck that can consistently beat these aggro decks for the time being, and Jeskai Fires is probably your best chance.
- Variance: It’s not news that going first is a huge advantage, but it is even more important now. There are cards that end games too quickly – namely Rotting Regisaur or Embercleave, and when played on curve, there is nothing you can do or you will end up devoting all your resources to deal with them and falling behind. Especially in BO1, there are not too many answers for them without being too narrow for your maindeck.
- Jund Sacrifice: Despite being a top tournament deck, we faced hardly any Jund Sacrifice decks. It could be a combination of factors – being too slow for the meta, making games super long and/or the skill level required to pilot the deck effectively. Either way, we were happy not to face Witch’s Oven not all that often during the initial ladder climb this month.
- Simic Flash: To our surprise, we saw the new ramp hybrid version of Simic Flash in BO1 a bit, and it was still surprisingly strong. Bunch of big threats like Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Nightpack Ambusher coming down a turn earlier helped by Growth Spiral and Paradise Druid is a straightforward linear strategy.
Untapped.gg Best-of-One Data
Untapped.gg is one of few companion programs for MTG Arena that tracks your deck’s performance. Their team has a proven track record of producing quality data driven information for Hearthstone as well (HSReplay.net). Their aim is to aggregate as much data as possible from users to show win rates for deck archetypes, matchup statistics and more. It is still a work in progress however, and none of the information they have is publicly available yet.
From time to time, they post some titbits of useful information curated from their database. Not long after we posted our tier list, they also posted some useful BO1 data which to helped validate and refine our tiers as well as some sample deck lists. Here is the first set of decks for the period of December 1 to December 15:
What are these decks based off? This is what they had to say about these lists:
These lists were picked straight from our database given the parameters of the query, which are listed in the footer and below the title. There are many other similar lists with small tweaks in land count and a few cards, but these are the ones that were performing better.
It’s worth noting that we have some additional requirements in order to highlight lists in our posts, which include it being played by multiple players, throughout the course of several days, having a minimum number of games (for this post it was 200, but this may vary), among others.
Source: reddit
Click on the links below for the importable deck lists:
- BO1 Rakdos Knights – Untapped.gg Top Decks of the Month – December 2019: The deck shows an amazing 67.4% win rate, and it even won MagicFest Portland. Definitely the deck to beat in BO1.
- BO1 Gruul Aggro – Untapped.gg Top Decks of the Month – December 2019: Note that this is the more traditional list without the Adventure cards.
- BO1 Mono Green Stompy – Untapped.gg Top Decks of the Month – December 2019: A surprising inclusion here, though it makes sense since big green creatures tend to avoid Defeaning Clarion well and it is more difficult to deal with no sideboard.
- BO1 Golgari Adventures – Untapped.gg Top Decks of the Month – December 2019: This is the aggressive version made popular with Mythic Championship VII, featuring Rotting Regisaur and The Great Henge.
- BO1 Jeskai Fires – Untapped.gg Top Decks of the Month – December 2019: This is the version with Fae of Wishes – which is definitely the way to go for BO1 – but unfortunately there was no sideboard to go along with that.
These decks are from the less competitive but still heavily played Standard Event that is also BO1:
- BO1 Gruul Adventures – Untapped.gg Top Decks – Standard Event – December 2019
- BO1 Rakdos Knights – Untapped.gg Top Decks – Standard Event – December 2019
- BO1 Simic Flash – Untapped.gg Top Decks – Standard Event – December 2019
- BO1 Golgari Adventures – Untapped.gg Top Decks – Standard Event – December 2019: Same deck as above.
- BO1 Mono Red Aggro – Untapped.gg Top Decks – Standard Event – December 2019: Standard Event is a great place for new players to grind cards and Gold, and Mono Red is one of the go-to decks for that purpose for its relative ease of build.
They also posted a standalone deck for Jund Sacrifice, which showed a 54.1% win rate for BO1.
Wrapping Up
Putting all the data we have available to us together, we have reached the current version of our BO1 tier list. What do you think? Do you have a BO1 deck you want to share with us? Let us know in the comments below! Remember, you can always come join our Discord and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates!
