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MTG Arena Zone Open Tournament Series

MTG Arena Zone Historic Open #6 Decklists and Metagame Breakdown

Our sixth Historic Open tournament is now in the books for this week! Last week, we saw Goblins briefly rise to the top, contested by Field of the Dead and Kethis Combo. Over the course of the week, the Historic metagame has settled in an uncomfortable place only 10 days after the Jumpstart cards were introduced to the format. Today we will discuss this week’s metagame and decklists, ahead of the big Arena Open coming up next weekend.

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As always, we want to thank sidetraK for the production and all the organization effort put into the tournament series so far, as well as all the competitors, viewers who tuned in and this week’s fantastic coverage team to make today’s event possible:


Metagame

Archetype# of Decks% of FieldWin Rate %
Temur Reclamation1715.3153%71.875%
Mono-R Goblins1513.5135%47.2727%
Gruul Aggro76.3063%42.3077%
Kethis Combo54.5045%40%
Mono-R Aggro43.6036%47.3684%
Mono-U Tempo43.6036%45.4545%
Mono-R Burn43.6036%11.1111%
Five-color Golos32.7027%50%
Jeskai Control32.7027%22.2222%
Jeskai Planeswalkers32.7027%53.8462%
Rakdos Aristocrats32.7027%55%
Others4338.7387%

Today’s tournament saw a record of 111 players participating, giving us another decent sample size to work with. The deck to beat this week was Goblins (13.5% of the field), which is a ramp-combo deck via Skirk Prospector and Wily Goblin to power out Muxus, Goblin Grandee to end the game (usually on the spot) with a secondary aggro game plan. Decks needed to prepare against it with removal and counterspells, or just outrace them altogether. Other contenders was Golos Field (2.7% of the field) and Kethis Combo (4.5% of the field), but each have their own weaknesses which prevents them from dominating the format.

It all seemed like a nice enough equilibrium where decks below them could also look to beat them, but the Historic metagame flipped on its head when players realized that while Nexus of Fate is banned, we still have Wilderness Reclamation and Expansion // Explosion in the format. We could port the shell over from Standard, where the deck is currently dominating (see Players Tour Finals) also, with an additional ramp spell that looks all to familiar to Growth Spiral…

jmp-393-explore

The Historic version of Temur Reclamation has quickly warped the format (15.3% of the field), boasting over 70% win rate in this tournament which saw 4 copies of the deck in the top 8. What makes matters worse is the fact that it can also play Field of the Dead as a secondary win condition, which makes the deck more oppressive than its Standard version. The winning deck also had 3 copies of Magmaquake as a flexible instant speed, catch-most removal spell that also saves your Shark Typhoon tokens. At this point, it is a bit too difficult to even discuss other decks at least on a competitive level because this deck looks like it has all the answers.

Amonkhet Remastered is only a couple of weeks away but as it is, Historic has too many good ramp spells that may need further suspensions to allow other decks and strategies to thrive. Of course, it may still be too early to say because this is a small sample size and is in a more casual setting. As we can see below the top decks, the format actually can be quite diverse if it wants to be – we’ll find out soon enough at the Arena Open! For now though, we have both of MTG Arena’s flagship formats – dominated by the same deck archetype. Let us know what you think in the comments below – how do we fix the format?

Top 16 Decklists

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