Week of September 14 Meta Analysis

This Week’s Winners

We’ve had a bit of a shakeup with the Legacy meta in the past week. The biggest gainer in terms of metashare is Eldrazi Aggro, who not only hit nine top-8s in the past week, but also had a huge increase in number of pilots as well.

Interestingly, most of the decks that we’re seeing Eldrazi pilots play are the more low-to-the-ground version that doesn’t run Grim Monolith and City of Traitors, and instead has It The Heralds The End as a 4-of aggro package. It seems that one of the way to beat down of durdly Bilbo decks is just to kill them nice and fast the good old fashioned way.

These Eldrazi Aggro decks seem to have somewhat replaced Energy decks as the go-to aggro approach, perhaps possibly due to the large share of combo in the meta, and Eldrazi’s ability to disrupt with Thought-Knot Seer and Chalice of the Void.

It seems like the best fair blue strategy out there is still, as usual, Dimir Tempo, which after having had a bit of a dip in the past couple months, seems to be surging back to the most stable, strongest deck in the format, thanks in large part to Bilbo, Thief in the Night

On the flip side, a lot of players have been trying to play UWx control as opposed to last week, but the matchups just don’t seem to be there. With such a large set of combo decks in the meta, and fast aggro decks, Control decks seem to just be spinning their wheels before actually being able to set up and do anything.

Big Mana Getting Up There

In contrast to the aggro and fair blue decks out there, Big Mana decks are currently like largest “family” of decks in the Legacy Meta, with Tron being the second most popular deck in the format. The usage of Sol Lands, Planar Nexus, and Urza’s Lands seems to have not been slowed down much by the banning of Candelabra of Tawnos earlier this summer.

Interesting, the uptick in Blue Tron was attributed to the printing of Giant’s Boulder as a way to both card select and create blue mana. However, many pilots are opting to not even run the card. It seems like the core of Blue Tron just is pretty good on its own, and that Ugin, Eye of the Storms is a hell of a drug.

The result of the rest of the meta being combo, spread across lots of single-archetype lists like Doomsday, Mystic Forge, etc. means that a lot of lists you’ll be pairing into are trying to go fast and hard, either in the mana department, the beatdown department, or the combo-kill department.

Control Continues to Have a Tough Time

The same story could be said for the past few months, but we saw an uptick in Beanstalk Control a few weeks back. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the staying power is there, as Control as a whole had a hard time converting top-8s this past week.

While Bilbo might have seemed a savior for Blue decks out there, it seems like it really only is finding a great home in the more tempo oriented shell, as the name of the game right now is being fast or efficient, and durdling out advantage isn’t a realistic thing to do right now.