Top 8:

3 Monoblue
1 Simic Nexus
1 Monored (it's called "Gruul aggro" in the official coverage, but the Gruul aspect is just some sideboard Collision/Colossus and Cindervines)
1 Esper control
1 Azorius Aggro
1 Izzet Phoenix (!)

Impressively, there is no Sultai Midrange in the top 8, in spite of it being the single most popular deck.

I'm a little regretful for having crafted Simic Nexus - yes I've yet to lose with it, but looks linear enough that every other deck can beat it if they want to. That means like Vintage Dredge it wins game 1 and then tries to steal a sideboarded game through hate, which isn't really my style.

Mono-Blue performed so well becuase it has a good MU against both Sultai MR and Simic Nexus, which were the most common decks around the field.
How bad Sultai really is positioned in the meta is possibly shown by Reid Duke, who decided to forgo his pet GB-based deck to run Mono-Blue - and made top 8.

Really surprised to see Esper in the top 8. I guess it makes sense since its mono-Blue match-up is not horrible, but IMO Esper's Sultai MU is fairly bad

If LSV gets past his first opponent I think he might win the thing. First opponent is a bad matchup for him though. Would be pretty crazy if izzet pheonix won the mc.

The only new card in LSV's list is a single blood crypt haha

LSV considered his first MU about even, but thinks he's a major underdog in the semifinal against Esper.

Also holy *** that Reid Duke vs. Autumn Burchett semifinal.

I 100% thought simic nexus would beat esper in a bo5 and that LSV would probably beat nexus. But hey, Esper vs mono blue final!

And yeah, the reid/autumn game was very good. Mono blue piloted by pros is an impressive deck.

That mono-blue deck looks brutal.

You think? I give it props for winning, but it seemed like the deck got lucky. Game 4 for example feels like a thrown game for the Esper control player to me, and in fact the sideboard games all look brutal for the monoblue deck. Autumn kept in Essence Captures, but there's no guarantee Yoshihiko would bring in creatures. I'd have been tempted to just take out Thief of Sanity & Hostage Taker, maybe even Lyra, after seeing multiple Essence Capture. Control decks can have transformational sideboarding too.

Having said that, this is easy to say in hindsight and it's hard to win in Magic without getting lucky anyway, so yeah.

Autumn won that thing on G4 Vs Reid Duke... what an amazing comeback!

Wow, and my feelings on seeing the end of that game was how unlucky Reid was. He had so many lethal insta-kills but was out-topdecked by Autumn. I dunno. Maybe I'm getting jaded

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Vm-j4 ... 98Ea07cQf_

Very interesting graphic about the state of the metagame, with matchup statistics for everything. Based on that chart, the single best deck with highest winrate is Esper midrange (!), followed by Azorius Aggro and Esper Control. For all its status as the "best deck", Sultai actually scored worse than 50%, with bad win rates against every deck except aggro. Rakdos midrange did very poorly and so did Izzet Drakes. Impressively GW tokens didn't do badly against Nexus - I guess the combination of a fast clock as well as Demystify, as well as sorcery-speed enchantment removal in the maindeck, is a big deal. It was also disfavored against Sultai, which isn't a surprise. Monoblue's kryptonite is Temur Reclamation (no surprises there) and it managed to beat monored. I imagine that's because of the sideboard because I'm pretty sure monoblue is disadvantaged preboard.

This data makes me want to play Esper midrange, which after all I was already interested when the format was young; on the other hand I've already committed a ton of wildcards into the two Wilderness Reclamation decks so I can't easily switch anymore. RIP.

Personally I wouldn't read too much into the statistics, especially seeing Esper Mid having a really small sample size (less than a double-digit number of matches for all but 2 matchups)

If it weren't for the terrible Nexus/Temur MUs, I'd actually like Sultai's position in the metagame, but alas.

The statistics bear that out though! Sultai vs. Simic Nexus: 39.3%, Sultai vs. Temur Reclamation: 23.5%.

Okay **** it, all the decks are not fun and I'm more likely to waste wildcards than to find something I find fun.

Until next season, I'll craft the lands (always a good investment I suppose) and probably iterate between monoblue, Temur reclamation (this deck sucks, but it's more fun than Nexus), and Temur Nexus, and leave it as that. No more grossly different new decks!

YOU suck!

Lol

Merfolks for the lulz

I swear after I made that post, I'm so tempted to commit more wildcards to GW tokens and Gates control ... like, I have most of both decks already, but am still missing several rares. I still have 8 rare wildcards and 4 mythic wildcards, as well as 20k gold and 5k gems, but man. Gotta have some self-control!

When does the next set drop?

May 3