The Meta:

decklist.googledoc

DCG-MTG - Vehicles
Wreckedem420 - Vehicles
CovertGo Blue - Vehicles
InFaMoUsGeMiNi - Vehicles
xxUNBEATABLExx2 - Vehicles
Holy Sacrebleu - Vehicles
Ninja4Hanzo - Energy
MixBrutaNoompsy - Midrange
Black Barney - Midrange
Mackey79 - Midrange
Doey - Planeswalkers
Sl33pHumper - Planeswalker Enchantments
divinevert - Control Reanimator
Flayer - Control
Mrniceguyyy248 - Spells
bassmill - Mill
smoothjulz - Fog-Mill
Arsenal - Improvise
Reshfuu - Tokens
tHaTsSoBlAzIn - Tokens
mobius chickenstrips - Tokens
The Secret of TIMH - Tokens
YankSpanker - Jank


The expected: many vehicle decks (6), tho honestly I wouldn't have been surprised to see twice as many. Thought there might be one or two vampire vehicle madness / vehicular manslaughter with wings decks, but the amount of Mardu vehicles is unsurprising. After the recent pro tourney, seeing those lists and how close Duels is to being able to recreate them, I knew it would be the spike deck of choice. I expect to see several of these in the top 8, with a lot of road kill along the way. Personally hoping these draw a bunch of mirror matches in the Swiss. I don't want to hate on anyone for picking a deck they expect to dominate with, but I'm bored to tears with Vehicle Beatdown tbh, and would be happier if there were 1/2 as many in. At least one of them is offbeat with Start your Engines and Modifications, so I'll be interested to see it played.

The unexpected: no Snake or ramp decks. A few decks with Druid of the Cowl, but no dedicated GX ramp - thought we'd see 1 or 2 with people trying to have fun with R.Expertise and/or Ajani. Even tho Duels can't recreate pro-papers Golgari Snake aggro, I thought Fight Club would have a scattering of Golgari/Jund Snakes, like Showdown has. Basically I thought both metas would look like Showdowns.

Also a tad unexpected was 2 mill decks. Thought maybe there'd be 1, but wasn't expecting to see a Temur fog-mill.

Cool to see Verts Sigil Friends deck make an appearance.

I thought maybe we'd see 1 Espertise deck, and maybe a bit more Grixis control.

4 token go-wide, all in different color pairs is cool. Unfortunately, lot of decks running sweepers - was hoping Vehicles would discourage sorcery speed sweepers more than they did, lol.

Didn't expect to see an improvise deck, so that's pretty cool too.

Idk what to make of YankSpankers deck. The trollolol is gonna be real when I lose to that R1.

All in all I'm happy to see a fairly wide array of deck choices. Should be fun

Gonna be a goddamn bloodbath. Great choices guys. I really mean that.

And, I knew it, Gem

Edit: upon further inspection I scratched my head a couple times at some of yall kinda wondering what meta you were expecting. Also surprising to see not one snek deck.

4 Mardu Vehicles in the top 4. Calling it now.

Could be; several proven players running that brutal archetype. I'm not tryna sleep on Vert playing a control deck tho.

I guess people think Snake was gonna be as popular as vehicles... picking either of the two couldn't show much creativity or earn respect as good deckbuilder anyways... so all ended up going to the more consistent vehicles...

I tried to build more powerful and fun decks but at the end, none of them could stand a decent chance against the quarter of meta. (I guessed 25% vehicles meta and it was very accurate.)

Sadly, I could only join them and hope to get play first in mirror games.

I'm expecting a Vehicle deck to win it.

The most boring meta in quite a while.

Idk about that. I recall the season everyone ran Plainswalkers, Esper Control, and WX humans. Honestly expected it to be more boring, with somewhere around 75% vehicle/Snakes/grixis control.

The night before deadline I was running my version of Sigilfriends on the ladder and ran into a mill deck that taught me a lesson. Right now I am glad I made a last minute card switch so I can hope to better handle mill, that may change after I get rolled by some mardu decks though. I just knew someone was going to try a turbofog deck and I didn't want to pray to see just 2 cards against it. I much prefer 1:20 than 1:30 chances to see a card.

I too am surprised there isn't more Grixis control or sneks running about. I'm not disappointed because I am more prepared for a vehicle meta than those decks.

Honestly, how well would Esper match up to most of these decks? It only really excels when other Control colours and PW.dec are in the majority, and Grixis just has a much better matchup against the aggro and midrange decks present.

I'm actually going to predict the Mardu deck's success will largely depend on the pilot's skill rather than being good decks. Something about the mana we have doesn't give me the impression they'll be consistent enough against decks built with them in mind.

I disagree, games will be decided by who is on the play and who gets better mana and can curve out. The big decision of deckbuilding for most players is to either go WR or splash more heavily into black for the desintegration. It is a very hard decision between power and consistency. Most players decided for power, so inconsistency in mana will decide most games.

Yeah, being on the play is huge (always is with an aggro deck) - especially if you have a good hand. T1 Apprentice/Exemplar, T2 Copter/Kiran, T3 Pia/hold up Disintegration forces your opponent to have answers, which is hard being a turn behind as you just can't react to the threats fast enough. The deck being so low to the ground means it's super easy to curve out, meaning those good hands come around a lot - assuming correct mana.

My heart goes out to anyone brave enough to play counterspells.

Considering how easy it was to predict the meta, I'm shocked noone is playing something like this:

2 x Walking Ballista
2 x Bearer of Silence
1 x Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
3 x Gifted Aetherborn
2 x Scrapheap Scrounger

3 x Fatal Push
3 x Grasp of Darkness

1 x Yahenni, undying partisan
2 x Matter Reshaper
2 x Aethersphere Harvester
2 x Murder
1 x Liliana, the Last Hope

1 x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 x Treasure Keeper
2 x Thought-Knot Seer

2 x Reality Smasher
1 x Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
1 x Ob nixilis reignited

1 x Noxious Gearhulk
2 x Distended Mindbender

15 x swamp
1 x Westvale Abbey
3 x Aether Hub
2 x Ruins of Oran-Rief
3 x Crumbling Vestige


Or something of the nature

I wonder why noone plays abzan goodstuff. This deck plays itself and steamrolls vehicles.

Almost every deck has red and/or black in it.
Also where's the steam post : Come on guys get on it !

Done

This meta is all about "What is stronger: Vehicle decks or a bunch of decks specifically designed to defeat Vehicle decks?"

We shall see.

A little disappointed I won't get to see an artifact eggs deck in the tournament.

Kudos to Divinevert and Batman for bringing something with a twist. I'll be following your games.

Snakes was my 3rd choice to bring. 2nd choice was token-crats-revolt. That would have been really fun.