The Insight Esports Tier 1 Invitational tournament took place yesterday on Saturday May 22, with players battling it out for the $5,000 total prize pool. Four rounds each were played in Historic and Standard, with the top 8 playoffs being Historic only. Participating players included members of the Rivals League and MPL, so the competition was fierce and the decks highly refined.

Notably, this is the first significant tournament to take place since the banning of Thassa’s Oracle in Historic, which removed the payoff for the Tainted Pact combo decks that dominated the format in the most recent League Weekend. The overall metagame and results from this tournament give us a good look at what the Historic format might look like post banning.

Standard Metagame

The Standard metagame looks much the same for this tournament as it did in the League Weekend, with Sultai Ultimatum once again having the highest representation at nearly 29% of the field. However, it seems most players showed up well prepared for the matchup, as Sultai decks performed quite poorly in non-mirror matches. Jeskai Cycling and Izzet Tempo decks remain popular as well, making up about 11% of the meta each. Mono colored snow aggro decks featuring Faceless Haven still make up a large portion of the meta as well, especially Mono Red and Mono White. Additionally, stompy players will be pleased to see Mono Green showing up in the meta, and performing well overall. The only player to achieve a perfect 8-0 in the Standard Swiss rounds was Sam Beaulieu piloting Dimir Yorion control.

Standard Swiss Top 8

Historic Metagame

Historic has been shaken up considerably from the banning of Thassa's Oracle– only one Dimir Pact deck was entered in the tournament, a sharp contrast from the League Weekend metagame where 52% of the entire field was Tainted Pact combo. Izzet Phoenix, a deck whose power has been largely in question since the release of the Mystical Archive, showed up as the most popular Historic deck in the tournament and achieved a very respectable 61% winrate in the non-mirror. Jeskai Control, which was a popular deck at the League Weekend because of its ability to compete with Pact Combo, remains fairly popular in the new meta at about 13% of the field.

Another Jeskai archetype built around casting and recasting Time Warp ascended to an impressive 12% of the meta, but did not perform quite as well overall [DOUBLE CHECK] as its control counterpart. Meanwhile, the nerfing of Pact Combo has allowed a few familiar archetypes to return to the meta such as Selesnya Company (10% of field) and Jund Food (9% of field).

In the end, it was Jeskai Control piloted by Lukas Dusek that took down the tournament, finishing the top 8 playoffs with an overall record of 10-1. Jeskai Control had a strong showing even at the League Weekend where Pact Combo was the dominant archetype, and it seems likely given these results that it still stands to have a strong place in the metagame.

You can find the full decklists from the top 8 finishers in both Standard and Historic below, and the full results are available on MTGmelee.

Standard Top 8 Decklists

[sd_deck deck=”bRsQNZ-2d”]

[sd_deck deck=”q-f-nfPTU”]

[sd_deck deck=”5YjwifTlU”]

[sd_deck deck=”ub2CwCF_1″]

[sd_deck deck=”B0EMGdDWd”]

[sd_deck deck=”WdSSe5Qt0″]

[sd_deck deck=”8P__07EV0″]

[sd_deck deck=”lOz_BD8kM”]

Historic Top 8 Decklists

[sd_deck deck=”YmRAIGlmB”]

[sd_deck deck=”1V_KUyKj2″]

[sd_deck deck=”X4ZhbIpRh”]

[sd_deck deck=”x4_9mnK-F”]

[sd_deck deck=”QRGylz_tu”]

[sd_deck deck=”ztRkF51KH”]

[sd_deck deck=”HONVuBMN9″]

[sd_deck deck=”O0EofWNx4″]