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Weekend Tournament Report: Results and Decklists from July 16-18

It’s time once again for the Weekend Tournament Report, where we take a look at some of the biggest Arena tournaments each week and break down the meta and results. This weekend, Insight Esports, one of the largest event organizers for MTG Arena, hosted a number of tournaments in the Historic format, including their $5,000 Open. Additionally, The Pizza Box Open 1k tournament took place on Saturday, also featuring Historic, and Latin American tournament host Five Color Hub celebrated their one-year anniversary with a large Standard tournament.

In Historic, Izzet Phoenix continues to be a force to be reckoned with, making up as much as 26% of the field in various events and achieving winrates of at least 56%. In Sunday’s Insight Historic Invitational Qualifier, the deck had a whopping 80% winrate in non-mirror matches. Whether it’s correct to play any number of Demilich in Izzet Phoenix seems to remain an open question, with some Top 8 decks running as many as 4 copies while others run none. In Standard, there are no real surprises other than perhaps Mono Green, which took down the Five Color Hub tournament after receiving some new tools from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms- namely Ranger Class and Werewolf Pack Leader, a pair of strong 2 drops that help fill out the deck’s early curve.

While last weekend was dominated by Standard 2022, this weekend had no major events featuring that format. However, we’re still tracking the format as a whole. You can find recent decklists from around the web posted nearly every day on our Twitter page and on this section of the website, as well as a tier list featuring the major archetypes here.

This Week’s Lineup:

Historic

Insight Esports is a major tournament host on MTGmelee. They run events across a range of formats every week, including Standard and Historic tournaments with prize money. All of their events this weekend featured the Historic Format, with the Tier 1 $5,000 Open being the largest. If you would like to view additional results from Insight’s other recent Historic events, check out the MTGmelee pages for their Invitational Qualifiers on both Saturday and Sunday.

Metagame

ArchetypeNumber of DecksPercentage of FieldWinrate
Izzet Phoenix1826.1%56.9%
Azorius Auras (Lurrus)913.04%48.8%
Jeskai Control (Kaheera)710.1%54.5%
Jund Food57.2%53.6%
Dimir Control57.2%60%
Selesnya Company22.9%40%
Gruul Aggro22.9%22.2%
Mono-Black Aggro22.9%44.4%
Izzet Combo22.9%54.5%
Temur Creativity22.9%57.1%
Dragonstorm22.9%57.1%
Abzan Blink (Yorion)22.9%25%

Top 8

RankPlayerDeckRecord
1Lukas HonnayJeskai Control9-1
2hogpog_98Izzet Phoenix8-2
3Matias Lionel Rodriguez ZarateDimir Control7-2
4Toni Ramis PascualIzzet Phoenix7-2
5Lukas DusekJeskai Control6-2
6Koutarou IshibashiIzzet Phoenix6-2
7Simón Arboleda EscobarAzorius Auras5-3
8Mauro SassoIzzet Phoenix5-3

Izzet continues to be a powerhouse in the Historic format, juiced up by the power of Brainstorm, Faithless Looting, and Expressive Iteration. Six out of the top eight decks in this event were either strictly Izzet or Jeskai Control decks which include the Izzet colors, and all eight of them include blue. Time Warp was the most recent ban in Historic, but the power of Brainstorm in particular seems to be keeping blue decks at the top of the format for now. Only two of the top 8 decks don’t play four copies of Brainstorm in the maindeck.

Decklists

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The Pizza Box is a series of tournaments hosted by Twitch streamer Hollywood Pizza and the Comic Book Store. It’s a smaller event series that’s typically free to enter and features modest prize pools. This weekend saw the second of two Pizza Box Open Historic events, featuring a $1,000 prize pool and a fairly wide field of 73 players.

Metagame

ArchetypeNumber of DecksPercentage of FieldWinrate
Jeskai Control (Kaheera)912.3%38.2%
Izzet Phoenix79.6%64.9%
Jund Food56.8%37.5%
Selesnya Company45.5%52.9%
Esper Control34.1%0%
Mono-Black Aggro34.1%52.9%
Azorius Auras (Lurrus)34.1%66.67%
Mono-Green Aggro ❄34.1%35.7%
Dimir Rogues (Lurrus)34.1%57.1%

Top 8

RankPlayerDeckRecord
1Kazune KosakaIzzet Phoenix9-1
2Guilherme OliveiraDimir Control9-1
3Fabrizio BortolettoIzzet Phoenix7-2
4Noriyuki MoriSimic Ramp6-3
5PureeBoros Feather5-3
6Paulo Henrique de FariasIzzet Control5-3
7Dylan ZimmerIzzet Phoenix5-3
8Pedro Urquisa BarbosaRakdos Arcanist5-3

[EDIT: This article originally erroneously listed Guilherme Oliveira as the event winner, while the real winner was Kazune Kosaka- previously listed in 2nd place. Other sites still list Oliveira as the winner based on the event’s MTGmelee page, but this updated result has been confirmed by the event host.]

Izzet Phoenix was somewhat less dominant in The Pizza Box Open, although the archetype still fared quite well overall with a 64% winrate and three decks in the top 8- including the winner. The meta was a bit more diverse at this event when compared to the Tier 1 5k Open, and we see a few less common archetypes making it to the top 8, including an Izzet Control pile, a Boros Feather deck, and a Rakdos Arcanist list. It’s particularly interesting to see Dimir Control winning the whole tournament while the three Esper Control decks that were entered couldn’t manage a single match win between them. In fact, three-color decks are barely present in competitive Historic even with check lands and shock lands in the format. The only major exception to this is Jeskai Control, which notably has a Triome in its colors. Jund, which also has a Triome, usually has some representation at Historic events, but has struggled to keep up with the blue decks in the format since Strixhaven brought the cards from the Mystical Archive into the mix.

Decklists

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Standard (Current)

Five Color Hub is a large event host based in Latin America, and this weekend they celebrated their one-year anniversary with a large Standard tournament featuring cash prizes and over 100 invite-only participants. Note that unfortunately, this tournament was not set up to support the metagame breakdown by archetype. If you would like to view all of the decklists from the tournament, please visit the event’s MTGmelee page. Top 8 results and decklists are posted below.

[EDIT: Robert Taylor, @fireshoes on Twitter, was able to track down a metagame table from the tournament, see below]

Top 8

RankPlayerDeckRecord
1Salvador WoinilowiczMono Green Aggro10-0
2Daniel Schmoller SwettSultai Ultimatum8-2
3Gabriel PerrielloGruul Adventures7-2
4Alejandro SepulvedaRakdos Sacrifice7-2
5AchuxSultai Ultimatum6-2
6Cristobal FermandoisNaya Adventures6-2
7RALCSultai Ultimatum5-3
8Felipe GuzmánIzzet Dragons5-3

Although the overall impact of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms on the current Standard format has been fairly small thus far, there are a few cards that are showing up regularly in tournaments. The first of which is Power Word Kill, a flexible two-mana removal spell which has been slotted into many Emergent Ultimatum decks as well as other black control shells, often in the place of Eliminate– a card which would not usually hit the key Dragons, Angels, and Demons anyways.

The other cards that are showing up in Standard events are Ranger Class and Werewolf Pack Leader. I mentioned these two mono green cards at the top of the article as powerful new tools for the Mono Green Aggro decks, which have been on the cusp of the competitive Standard format for a while now, but struggled to consistently perform. That may be about to change, as Ranger Class and Werewolf Pack Leader provide the archetype with two new and very powerful 2-drops, a place on the curve that has been relatively weak for mono green decks in the recent past. Mono Green continues to look like a strong contender not only in Standard 2022 where it’s one of the top decks, but even in the current Standard as well.

Decklists

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Paul
Paul

Dude from Vermont who likes to play Magic and Escape from Tarkov. Musician, writer, and gamer. Submit feedback or corrections to @Paul on the Discord.

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