Mythic Championship V Metagame Analysis

Mythic Championship V decklists has now been released. There are now just a few days left until the big tournament, and a potential shakeup of the Standard format may come not long after. In this article, we will explain and summarize the following:

View all 68 Mythic Champonship V Decklists here!

• The top cards and decks people are playing for this tournament;
• What individual card choices were made to give them an edge;
• And the implications of the potential banning of certain cards.

Watching and following a high-level event such as this one is both fun and an educational experience. For those unaware, here are some helpful links that you should check out before venturing further:

• Mythic Championship V Survival Guide: Everything you need to know about the big tournament from the official source.
• MTG Arena Standard Decks – Metagame Tier List – October 2019: Our current list and explanations on all the decks in the current metagame.
• Next Banned and Restricted Announcement to Come on October 21: The key date to watch out for next week.

Deck Archetype Breakdown

Hall of Famer Frank Karsten has already done an excellent job in explaining the different archetypes in this tournament, and you can read his article here. Two thing to note with the breakdown:

• Ramp and Food archetypes are separated solely on whether they use Wicked Wolf in their main deck or not, and Simic and Bant versions have their subtle differences (mainly using the white for Teferi, Time Raveler). The core of the deck is pretty much the same other than this. We opted to combine the Ramp and “Food” versions.
• Golos Fires and Four-Color Golos are sub-archetypes of the Bant Golos deck, and for the purposes of this heavily skewed metagame we will also combine them together.

Deck Archetype	Number of Decks	% of Decks
Bant Golos / Golos Fires	29	42.6%
Simic Food	11	16.1%
Bant Ramp / Bant Food	8	11.8%
Golgari Adventures	6	8.8%
Gruul Aggro / Jund Aggro	5	7.4%
Mardu Knights	3	4.4%
Selesnya Adventures	3	4.4%
Rakdos Aristocrats	1	1.5%
Jeskai Fires	1	1.5%
Mono Red Cavalcade	1	1.5%

Decks containing Field of the Dead and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim were by the most popular decks chosen by the players and there is no disputing that it is the strongest archetype in Standard and over 40% of the players chose to do the most logical thing. It is then followed by the decks that use the core of the green/blue ramp package revolving around the Food mechanic and Nissa, Who Shakes the World. Combined with the Bant versions, they consist of just over 25% of the metagame.

Having said that, we can see that green is a heavily represented color – with 91% of the metagame having some sort of green card in their lineup. Throne of Eldraine introduced some generic but powerful cards to each color, but especially green. This brings us to the next point of the top cards below.

Top Cards

The above infographic shows the tally of all the top 20 cards that will be used in this tournament. MTGGoldfish also has useful data on this as well, though it’s pretty obvious what kind of picture this is painting:

Rank	Card	Number	% Decks Using
1	Once Upon a Time	171	70.59%
2	Hydroid Krasis	160	70.59%
3	Growth Spiral	138	54.41%
4	Veil of Summer	120	80.88%
5	Circuitous Route	115	42.65%
6	Golos, Tireless Pilgrim	114	42.65%
7	Questing Beast	103	41.18%
8	Agent of Treachery	99	57.35%
9	Oko, Thief of Crowns	98	44.12%
10	Teferi, Time Raveler	89	48.53%

Top Creatures

Rank	Card	Number	% Decks Using
1	Hydroid Krasis	160	70.59%
2	Golos, Tireless Pilgrim	114	42.65%
3	Questing Beast	103	41.18%
4	Agent of Treachery	99	57.35%
5	Paradise Druid	86	36.76%
6	Arboreal Grazer	83	48.53%
7	Gilded Goose	76	27.94%
8	Wicked Wolf	66	27.94%
9	Deputy of Detention	58	38.24%
10	Lovestruck Beast	58	29.41%

Top Non-creature Spells

Rank	Card	Number	% Decks Using
1	Once Upon a Time	171	70.59%
2	Growth Spiral	138	54.41%
3	Veil of Summer	120	80.88%
4	Circuitous Route	115	42.65%
5	Oko, Thief of Crowns	98	44.12%
6	Teferi, Time Raveler	89	48.53%
7	Nissa, Who Shakes the World	83	33.82%
8	Disdainful Stroke	79	35.29%
9	Aether Gust	77	39.71%
10	Devout Decree	66	39.71%

Card Choices

This being a tournament with a relatively small sample of only 68 curated, high-level players (compared to something like a MagicFest/Grand Prix where there can be more than 1000s of players), we cannot blame the metagame looking not so diverse especially when 1-2 of the decks are clearly on a tier of their own (Golos and Ramp). After all, why would you play a weaker deck? Having said that, let’s have a look at individual decklists and see what players have worked on to improve their chances of winning:

• The Simic Food deck used by the team of Andrew Cuneo, William Jensen, Reid Duke, Kai Budde, Shahar Shenhar and Gabriel Nassif includes four copies of Disdainful Stroke, which is usually a sideboard card at best. Obviously its primary target is Golos, Tireless Pilgrim as a metagame call, but with the expected metagame to be slow, it has numerous targets.
• Piotr Glogowski seems to have found the best version of Golgari Adventures, being more midrange and value oriented. It includes cards such as The Great Henge, Vivien, Arkbow Ranger and Find // Finality and does not need to go all-in on the Adventure synergy.
• Golos decks are weaker to aggro decks – and Embercleave is probably the best card in Standard at the moment to combat it. It can deal tonnes of damage out of nowhere. Mardu Knights by Ken Yukuhiro is capitalizing on this, as it includes the full four copies and Rotting Regisaur. Gruul Aggro is also another decent deck, as it is deadly with Questing Beast.
• Kenrith, the Returned King has been touted as one of the best cards to break the Golos mirror match, by giving your zombies haste and your bigger creatures (such as Beanstalk Giant) trample.

Banning Announcement

Earlier this week, Wizards have announced that the next Banned and Restricted Announcement is to be on October 21, just one day after Mythic Championship V. This news came not long before the decklist submission deadline, and people are speculating that they would not have done this without any reason. It is thought that after looking at the decks for this tournament, they may have felt that an emergency banning is required for Standard. There are a number of possibilities:

1. Field of the Dead: The top candidate for the banning. Being a land makes it harder to counter, and the act of playing lands to create creature tokens can be considered too powerful.
2. Oko, Thief of Crowns: Another potential candidate as a ubiquitous three mana planeswalker that can do everything on its own. It didn’t take too long to make players groan when playing against it. We feel that the chance of this card being banned is 50/50.
3. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim: Its primary job is to search for the Field of the Dead, so we don’t think it will be banned.
4. Once Upon a Time: This card also makes it easier to find Field of the Dead, but is also good enough to be used in other decks. We don’t think this card will be banned in Standard as it still restricts deck building to be more creature focused.

It will be interesting to see what card(s) will be affected by the banning announcement, and whether it will help with the diversity of the format and promote new archetypes that do not rely heavily on green cards.

Wrapping Up

So what do you think? Discuss in the comments below, or as always, you can join us in the Discord and keep up to date on the latest news on our Twitter!