Hello everyone. Interested in the Magic Online metagame? If you want to know the decks to play or the decks to beat, this is the article for you.

Every second week, I take a look at the data published by Wizards of the Coast for their competitive leagues (or daily events for Vintage) and crunch the numbers to find out what decks have been performing well. This gives to critical pieces of information - what, in general, the best decks are, and what to prepare for. Now this only uses Magic Online data - it does not include the results of SCG Opens, Grand Prix, etc. It's purely for Magic Online! It also only includes the last weeks' worth of decks, to give you a current, up to date look.

STANDARD

Well, I was wrong. Last time we had a look at the metagame was just after Pro Tour Sydney, and I predicted that we would see a surge in the decks featured at that event in the Leagues. Instead, one deck absolutely dominated the format this week:

Bant Company (42.03% of the metagame)

Mono White Humans (7.25%)

Black-white Control and Bant Humans (5.8%)

Out of the 69 published decklists this week, 29 of them were Bant Company.

Opinion: Wizards of the Coast need to fire the people on their Future Future League. Standard has become a stale, boring place over the last few years, with one deck usually dominating the format. Right now it's Bant Company; previously it was green-white tokens. We've seen Abzan with Siege Rhino dominate, and even back to Theros we had Mono Black Devotion dominate. The Future Future League is supposed to pick up on this, yet just about every Standard season we get one or two decks run roughshod over the rest.



This is not a healthy place for Standard to be. Our local FNM this week had its lowest turnout for Standard ever, and it is a trend that has been happening for a while. We actually barely managed to run the event. In contrast, the store held a Pauper event two days later and got almost double the numbers. In fact, out of all the formats the store runs, Standard is the least attended right now.

Wizards need to take a look at what they want out of Standard. Obviously, it's the main vehicle to sell more packs. Development "push cards for constructed play" in order to sell packs, which is good in the short term for Wizards, but I think it might have adverse long term effects on the game. In addition to this, Standard is all about the creatures, and if you look at some of the board states you see in Standard, they get very complex. New players are going to get a headache trying to figure it out. I don't think it would hurt to print Lightning Bolt or Doom Blade in Standard right now.

Anyway, enough ranting. Come prepared to play Bant Company if you join the Standard Leagues.

MODERN

The Modern format is still in a pretty good place. The top decks change a bit each week, which is a good thing, and there are still a lot of different decks managing to go 5-0 in the Leagues. This week there were 33 unique decks out of the 69 published (compared to Standard which was 21 out of 69), and it makes Modern still the most diverse format.

Let's look at the top decks:

Bant Eldrazi (17.39%)

Suicide Zoo and Abzan (7.25%)

Jund and Dredge (5.85)

So, another Bant deck, but at least this one isn't using Collected Company . It does use a lot of cards from recent sets, including Elder Deep-Fiend from Eldritch Moon, meaning it might be a fairly easy deck for people to get into if you are keen on playing it (though I will note there are some expensive cards in the deck from older sets).

PAUPER

I'll admit, I expected to be writing about Peregrine Drake again this week, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Drake decks were the 5th most published list this week rather than the first:

Stompy (24.49%)

Bogles (12.24%)

Delver and Elves (10.2%)

Izzet Drake and Affinity (8.16%)

There were two other Drake decks published this week, meaning that, in total, they only made up 12.24% of the metagame, equal with Bogles. This is great news for Pauper fans, as it shows that the deck can be beaten, and it seems Stompy is the way to do it. It makes sense - kill them before they even get Drake online and you don't need to worry about it!

LEGACY

Once again we did not have a huge amount of decks published for the format: 25 in total this week. It is enough to get some data though:

Grixis Delver (20%)

Eldrazi Stompy (16%)

Miracles (12%)

Storm and Blue-Red Delver (8%)

The top three decks are the same top three from last time, so what we can take away from this is to expect those three if you join a Legacy League.

VINTAGE

We actually had some Vintage events fire this week, so we have some data to analyze for the first time in a while. In fact, there were more decks published for Vintage than Legacy! Let's take a look at how the metagame shook out:

Storm, White Eldrazi and Oath (13.79%)

Jeskai Delver (10.34%)

Below these decks there were a bunch of others on 6.9%, including Blue Moon, Ravager Shops and Esper Fish. Overall it was a pretty even spread of decks, so it may be difficult to plan too much for what to expect in the format.





That is it for this week! Thanks for stopping by and good luck in your leagues!