‘Ello ladles and jellyspoons! It was a week ago today that WotC announced the banning of Faithless Looting and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis as well as the unbanning of Stoneforge Mystic. With that, the meta has become an uncharted sandbox as players try to find the best home for SFM and figure out which decks from the past have gotten better as a result. Let’s take a look at some of the winners and losers as MTGGoldfish rolls out some of the preliminary week 1 data.
Winners.
Jund is up 0.54% now 4.69% from 4.15% this week. With everyone excited to play SFM decks, I’m not surprised to see a rise in other midrange decks as result. When in doubt, Jund ’em out!
Humans up 0.60% now 2.79 from 2.19% this week. Yet another fair deck that is positioned well to deal with the initial flood of SFM decks week 1.
Ad Nauseam up 0.20% now 1.47% from 1.27% this week. A combo deck that doesn’t really care about what SFM + Batterskull are doing. If you can’t win the long grindy value game against UW “Stoneblade” Control, just ignore it and win via combo.
Storm up 0.05% now 1.32% from 1.27% this week. See above.
Infect up 0.46% now 1.61% from 1.15% this week. See above.
Losers.
Mono-Red Phoenix down 3.57% now 0.00% from 3.57% this week. Hit hardest by the Faithless Looting banning there isn’t a single deck reported on MTGGoldfish’s Modern Metagame (All Decks) page. Not a single one.
Dredge down 1.35% now 0.15% from 1.50% this week. Devastated by the loss of Faithless Looting (but not dead…), Dredge is currently the third from the last played deck on the Modern Metagame (All Decks) page right now.
Discussion.
The #1 deck right now is Burn and this should come to no surprise to you if you have been playing Modern long enough as we typically see this happen after a big shake up. Burn is a simple and effective deck that is a safe pick to pilot going into an unknown meta for the first couple weeks as people feel it out. When the dust settles I expect to see Burn drop back down into the top 5-8 spots. I omitted it from the list for this reason.
Last week when I wrote down some of the decks from the Modern Metagame (All Decks) page on MTGGoldfish a few decks slipped my mind and I didn’t get numbers on them. I noticed a few of them this morning and they are still worth mentioning so here they are:
Mardu Shadow (not Pyromancer) is currently the 8th most played deck on MTGGoldfish. I find this interesting because I’ve always liked the spell slinging Young Pyromancer version of Mardu but it’s pretty much dead now after the Faithless Looting ban. However, the Death’s Shadow version of the deck is pretty cool because of how well it does against SFM decks currently is why we see it in the 8th slot this week.
Whirza is another cool deck that started gaining traction pre-Hogaak dominance. Now with the big Ho out of the picture and as the format slows down allowing for more precious time to assemble the combo, I can see this deck really establishing itself as tier 1.
Grixis DS on the other hand puzzles me as to why it’s not higher on the list. It has most of the same tools that Mardu has except for the Ranger-Captain of Eos package. I was expecting to see GDS become the new police officer of the new SFM midrange meta. Then again it’s only week one and time will tell.
AmuletTitan another combo deck I forgot about that popped up in this week’s Modern Metagame top 12.
Neobrand; same thing as AmuletTitan. Just another combo deck not looking to play the midrange game that made top 12.
Hollow One is nowhere to be found as a result of the Faithless Looting ban. It had fallen out of favor in recent times but as of now I’m pretty sure it’s a thing of the past.
And lastly, Living End. A pet deck of mine, I think we will see an uptick in play from as people gravitate towards midrange decks and go light on the graveyard hate. I could see Living End filling the void as the new graveyard deck that the loss of Hogaak and the decline of Dredge have created. It preys upon midrange beatdown strats and with it’s two worst match ups (Hogaak and Dredge) no longer a part of the meta, that gives Living End a lot of breathing room to run wild.
*Take what you read here today with a grain of salt because this is only week 1 of a new meta after a high impact B&R announcement.*
Thanks for tuning in today folks!
And as always, if you’re in the market for some snazzy new sleeves be sure to cruise on over to the shop and use my discount code MADMAGIC for 15% off on your next purchase.
Data sourced from: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/modern/full#paper
