The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

What’s up guys, MoxAmethyst. Today we’re going to be looking at the results from last weekends StarCityGames Team Open in Philadelphia, and what the Metas are shaping up to look like across the board.

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Now, we’re going to look at the Tournament format by format, and we’re going to start with Standard. Unfortunately, we aren’t looking at a diverse format here. The top 28 Teams from the Tournament contained a total of 15 Golos/Field of the Dead Decks. Now as it was a team tournament, the results from all 3 formats will impact each other, making this an imperfect snapshot of the meta. That taken into account, the amount of Golos decks that made it too the top cut is a little bit of absurd, and this trend has continued across MTGO events and smaller paper tournaments since the release of Throne of Eldraine. I’m sure everyone reading this is aware of the recent announcement by WOTC that they will be moving the Banned and Restricted announcement forward to the 21st of this month. Now the internet has exploded with theories that Golos and/or Field of the Dead will be taking a hit with this announcement. I don’t necessarily think this will be the case. Whilst it’s not unlikely that these hits take place, I don’t believe that it is the primary focus of moving the announcement. Rather, I believe WOTC are insulating themselves from dis-interesting coverage by having the option to make a change to the format, depending on whether or not the format corrects itself or not. Either way we will have to wait and see if Standard is able to correct itself, or if WOTC must step in with a Ban. If you want to read more about the current state of Standard, you can check out my colleague Blues’ article here.

Next up we’re going to take a look at the format I personally play and enjoy the most, Modern. The Winning Team from the tournament had Amulet Titan in it’s Modern seat, a deck which sees fluctuating success, normally in the hands of one of the big 3 Amulet players. Making up the remaining Top 4 slots was a rather unsurprising 2 Urza Outcome lists and one classic Urza-Sword deck. Whilst the Top 4 paints a picture of a non-diverse format, a look at the rest of the tournament changes that outlook drastically. Making up the rest of the top 28 we have a combination of Big Mana Strategies such as Tron and Valakut, and for the most part we have a bunch of fair decks. Azorious Control, Death’s Shadow of several flavours and good ol’ Jund are just some of the various decks putting up respectable performances over the weekend. These results excite me greatly, as it really shows that Modern is just a wide open format, where one can finally play fair grindy games, whilst still maintaining these combo and big mana strategies that Modern is known for. I’m excited to watch Modern continue to grow and flourish as it has done over the past few months.

And finally let’s dive into Legacy. This is a format that I honestly don’t have a lot of experience with, however we can extrapolate a lot of information from results like these. A quick glance shows that there is a definite affinity for Wrenn and Six in the format. Now we know from Modern how powerful this card is, and I assume that this is increased going into a format like Legacy, where the 2 Mana Walker is easier to protect, and can more easily take over a game if your opponent isn’t interacting with you. The rest of the Legacy results vary between Delver strategies, Stoneforge Mystic Decks and Storm, which are all decks that tend to crop up in Legacy Tournaments and have done for some time. Overall looking at these results I would say that Legacy is in a pretty reasonable place right now. I don’t personally feel like Wrenn and Six’s power level in the format is creating quite the stranglehold that I’ve seen mentioned online.

So to summarise a little, Standard needs work, Legacy seems to be in it’s usual state with Broken decks and fair decks in relatively even quantities, and Modern is looking the Healthiest I’ve seen in a long while. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the current state of your format, so drop a comment and let me know what you think! Remember, if you’ve seen anything you fancy or you are just looking to pick up those last couple of bis for your new deck, you can go through our affiliates TCGPlayer and help us out in the process. Even the smallest purchases make a difference and help us keep growing. Until next time, MoxAmethyst Tapping Out.