Tournament Report: New Historic Decks from Hooglandia Historic Open 8/29

Last week, Wizards of the Coast released the first ever set designed specifically for MTG Arena with cards that are only available for the digital client, Jumpstart: Historic Horizons. J:HH contains many cards from the powerful paper sets Modern Horizons and Modern Horizons 2, as well as all-new Arena exclusive cards, and the impact on the format has already been profound.

Jumpstart: Historic Horizons is poised to have the largest impact on the format since Strixhaven introduced the Mystical Archive- a collection of cards which has brought about the banning or suspension of three cards since its release.

On Sunday, the Hooglandia Open series returned with a Historic tournament, the first significant event to feature the format since Jumpstart: Historic Horizons’ release. The double-elimination tournament was open to any player who wished to enter and required a modest $5 entry fee. As with past Hooglandia Open events, the prize pool consisted of store credit to the events’ sponsor, CoolStuffInc.com.

It’s probably fair to assume, however, that many of the players in this event were more interested in dipping their toes into the competitive scene of the newly shaken format than they were in prizes. Eighty-one players entered the tournament, giving us a nice look at the developing Historic meta in a post-Historic Horizons world.

Events like these are a great opportunity after the release of a new set for us to analyze what competitively-minded brewers and tournament grinders are thinking about in the new format. Below, we’re going to take a look at the overall metagame as well as the final results from the Hooglandia Historic Open and see which archetypes were able to perform.

Metagame

[Editor’s Note: A number of the decks on the tournament’s MTGmelee page were incorrectly labeled, including 1st place and 5th place, which are listed as Izzet Creativity when they are both, in fact, Jeskai. This may have caused inaccuracies in the metagame table as well, as the two decks listed as Izzet Creativity seem to fall into the same archetype as the decks labeled “Jeskai Combo.”]

Archetype	Number of Decks	Percentage of Field	Winrate
Selesnya Company	6	7.4%	65.6%
Mono-Red Aggro	4	4.9%	42.9%
Gruul Aggro	4	4.9%	50%
Jeskai Control (Kaheera)	4	4.9%	38.5%
Izzet Phoenix	3	3.7%	44.44%
Simic Merfolk	3	3.7%	40%
Bant Blink (Yorion)	3	3.7%	44.44%
Jeskai Combo	3	3.7%	53.8%

The overall meta for this tournament was largely aggressive decks- Selesnya, Mono Red, and Gruul were three of the archetypes with the highest representation- although it’s hard to say whether that’s because players think aggro is the strongest strategy in the format, or because they’re trying to take advantage of other players trying out new, relatively untested decks that might be more on the slow side.

Selesnya Collected Company based decks performed extremely well overall with a ~66% winrate overall, while Mono Red struggled with only a ~43% winrate and no representation in the Top 8. Meanwhile, Jeskai Control, which has notoriously been one of the strongest decks in the format since the Mystical Archive introduced cards like Memory Lapse and the now-suspended Brainstorm, posted the lowest winrate out of any of the highly represented archetypes with a dismal 39% winrate in non-mirror matchups.

In fact, out of all the archetypes at the event with more than three examples entered, Selesnya Company and Jeskai Combo were the only two to achieve an overall winrate of over 50%, and the Top 8 contains many decks that were less popular overall.

Top 8

Rank	Player	Decklist	Record
1	rad4life4ever	Izzet Jeskai Creativity	9-1
2	Reid McInroy	Selesnya Aggro	8-2
3	Nathan Templon	Selesnya Company	7-2
4	Matheus Akio Yanagiura	Mono Black Vampires	6-2
5	Alex Liberto	Izzet Jeskai Creativity	6-2
6	Abraham Figueroa	Jund Midrange	6-2
7	Matthew Eblen	Selesnya Company	5-2
8	Tim Bell	Gruul Aggro	5-2

In the end, player rad4life4ever was able to win the Hooglandia Historic Open with their build of Izzet Jeskai Creativity, a control deck that uses the archetype defining card Indomitable Creativity with cheap tokens to cheat the newly printed Serra’s Emissary into play for only four mana. The deck also includes other sideboard options for when Emissary isn’t game-winning in the matchup, such as Nezahal, Primal Tide and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

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The real star of the show, however, may have been Selesnya aggressive and midrange decks. On top of their 65.6% overall winrate, the Top 8 also includes three Selesnya lists, although one of them foregoes the usual Collected Company shell for a more aggressive, kill-’em-quick build featuring Hardened Scales.

The company decks play a disruptive aggro plan that’s decent on its own, but the deck is really built around finding a combo which generates infinite squirrel tokens using the new-to-Historic card Scurry Oak. The combo requires three pieces to function: the aforementioned Scurry Oak, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, and a permanent that generates lifegain when a creature enters the battlefield- usually Prosperous Innkeeper and sometimes also Daxos, Blessed by the Sun or Soul Warden.

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With all three of these pieces on the board, the Heliod places a counter on Scurry Oak with any instance of lifegain, which generates a squirrel token, triggering the lifegain effect from Prosperous Innkeeper and causing Heliod to trigger again. This creates a loop which allows its controller to create as many squirrel tokens as they need, and while the deck doesn’t typically run any kind of haste enabler, the opponent will have only one turn to cast a board wipe or find some other answer to all of the tokens.

While sticking three combo pieces might seems like a pretty big ask, Collected Company is able to find all three of the pieces which is a huge boon for the deck. Some versions of the deck also play the new Ranger-Captain of Eos with Soul Warden to make finding the combo that much easier.

In addition, the deck also plays a decent beatdown B plan with cards like Trelasarra, Moon Dancer, Luminarch Aspirant, and Elite Spellbinder. If the opponent is too busy focusing on trying to stop the combo, these aggressive creatures can sometimes get it done all on their own.

In addition to these two archetypes, there are a number of other interesting decks that managed to make the Top 8, such as Matheus Akio Yanagiura’s aggressive Mono Black Vampires deck or Abraham Figueroa’s (non-food) Jund Midrange build featuring Seasoned Pyromancer and Dragon’s Rage Channeler. See below for all eight of the top finishing decklists.

Top 8 Decklists