Magic: The Gathering Meta Report: February
In a very different Meta Report, I’m going to only be talking about four decks today. With the results coming out of Worlds, and simply being on the higher parts of MTGA’s ladder, I can tell you that you need to be prepared for these specific four decks—or you will lose to them.
Azorius Control:
It’s close if this is the best deck, but it’s absurdly powerful. Between Teferi and Narset it’s very hard to do much of anything but get countered turn after turn—and then if you do manage to play something, practically the rest of the deck is focused on killing those cards. Dream Trawler is also an absurd card on every level. It’s often literally impossible to get rid of it and can gain its owner enough life to survive an onslaught while dealing enough damage to outrace. There’s really no good way to beat this deck except careful plays or simple rush aggro that does most of its damage before Shatter wipes away all your progress.
Mono-Red Aggro:
This deck is almost less fun to play against than the control deck, as you simply die too fast to do anything. Anax is the real all-star here, as he makes board wipes fail to staunch the bleeding and result in the damage not even really slowing down. The other two big cards are Steam-Kin and, of course, Embercleave. Embercleave makes a single mistake lose you the game. Steam-Kin allows for quick boards that then can play cheap Embercleaves. Steam-Kin is also nuts in multiples. Have a plan for this meta deck or lose to it once or twice a tournament.
Temur Reclamation:
Given the new tools of Storm’s Wrath and Uro, Temur finally has a real way to stabilize against aggressive decks. From there, it does what it usually does: make a lot of mana and then throw a big Explosion at someone. Post-sideboard it can turn into a Nightpack Ambusher deck or become a harder control deck, or really anything it needs to be to deal with the opposing threat. Temur is powerful because of its ability to recover from quite a lot and then blast back hard.
Jeskai Fires:
This deck is still strong, and now they have Dream Trawler. Not much else has changed really, though. Fires is just strong because being able to play two big creatures with mana-sink abilities for no cost is powerful. Drop a Kenrith or Cavalier of Flames, make them have haste, and go for lethal. The rest of the deck is simply other ways to set up a turn like that or defend from aggro. I have the least to say about this deck, but it nearly won Worlds, so it’s something you always need to expect at tournaments.
And those are the big ones. I’m personally not really bothered by the top of the meta being so small, as all the decks are interesting and require thought to pilot at full capacity—at least when fighting each other.
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