Charting a Course – DMU Season Wrap and First Regional Championships

Arinceo breaks down this weekend's first regional championships to provide a glimpse into the future of the format

Welcome to the Latest Edition of Charting a Course! 

It has been a massive two weeks, finishing up the Dominaria United season before jumping into a huge weekend of paper events with our first three Regional Championship events. Let’s get into it!

DMU Season Wrap-Up

DeckSNC Post-Ban Top 32sDMU Top 32s
Rakdos Midrange115123
Green Devotion100107
Izzet Phoenix8768
Mono-White Humans4053
Bant Spirits3544
Abzan Greasefang2936
Lotus Field Combo2530
Azorius Control7829
Rakdos Sacrifice4627
Mono-Blue Spirits3913
Boros Heroic5211

When comparing the DMU season to the SNC results (post-ban), we can see the top two decks of Rakdos Midrange and Green Devotion continued their dominance in the format, followed by Izzet Phoenix. The classic tempo deck fell out of favor early in the season with the arrival of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, but experienced a resurgence in recent weeks to underline its power.

The biggest drops in standing come from Azorius Control, Mono-Blue Spirits and Boros Heroic, the latter two suffering greatly from the additions of Liliana of the Veil and Sheoldred to the format despite being strong against Green Devotion.

If you want to dive into this season data further, click here to check out the full spreadsheet.

Weekend Events

BRO season kicked off in style this past weekend with a Sunday MTGO Showcase Challenge and three massive paper events – the Pioneer Regional Championships for USA, Brazil and Europe!

Brazil Regional Championships (196 players) – MTG Melee Event Hub

DeckFull FieldTop 32T32 Conversion Rate
Green Devotion31412.5%
Rakdos Midrange25520%
Azorius Control18316.67%
Izzet Phoenix17317.65%
Abzan Greasefang1317.69%
Bant Spirits1317.69%
Keruga Fires1100%
Mono-White Humans11218.18%
Gruul Vehicles6233.33%
Other531120.75%

The Top 8 featured seven different archetypes, the only duplicate being Rakdos Midrange. However, these two pilots would meet in the finals, with Pedro Mocelin coming out on top!

Legacy European Championship – Sofia (408 players) – MTG Melee Event Hub

DeckFull FieldDay 2 (98)Day 2 Conv.Top 32D1 > T32 Conv.
Green Devotion822024.39%44.88%
Rakdos Mid591322.03%610.17%
Phoenix571729.82%712.28%
Keruga Fires2428.33%00%
Azorius Control22416.67%29.09%
Mono-White Humans2129.52%00%
Bant Spirits19526.31%00%
Gruul Vehicles17423.53%211.76%
Abzan Greasefang17317.65%15.88%
Other902831.11%1035.71%

The Legacy European Championship saw Izzet Phoenix reign supreme in the Top 8, with all three pilots winning their first match of the Top 8 before Miguel Castro defeated Theau Mery’s Azorius Control deck in the finals!

Interestingly, the Day 2 and Top 32 conversion rates for this event did suggest that you can achieve good results even without piloting a ‘top tier’ deck, though these tier decks did occupy all the Top 8 spots except one (taken by Rakdos Sacrifice). Shoutout to the players who finished 17th and 21st playing Temur Ignus Combo and Storm Herald Combo respectively – know your deck and the meta well enough and you can win a lot of matches!

DreamHack Atlanta (928 players) – MTG Melee Event Hub

DeckFull FieldDay 2 (220)Day 2 Conv.Top 32D1 > T32 Conv.
Green Devotion2074421.26%104.83%
Rakdos Mid1252923.2%21.6%
Phoenix992424.24%44.04%
Mono-White Humans642031.25%23.13%
Azorius Control511733.33%47.84%
Gruul Vehicles451328.89%00%
Abzan Greasefang37718.91%00%
Keruga Fires29517.24%13.45%
Lotus Field16743.75%212.5%
Other2556123.92%72.75%

This weekend’s largest event was the American Regional Championship at DreamHack Atlanta, with a whopping 928 players sleeving up their decks on the first day of competition. This event saw an impressive showing from the Green Devotion pilots with 10 finishes in the Top 32, representing a conversion rate only bettered by Azorius Control in the top tier decks. However, Lotus Field did have a strong showing across the weekend with great conversion rates and one Top 8 finish.

It was a completely diverse Top 8 featuring some spicy decks in Selesnya Auras and Enigmatic Fires, but in the end it was eighth seed Matthew Saypoff on Mono-White Humans who took down the event, winning all three of his Top 8 matches 2-1 after losing every game 1. Turns out having a good sideboard plan can really pay off!

MTGO Showcase Challenge (261 players) – Pioneer Subreddit Decklists Post

DeckTop 32Top 16Top 8
Rakdos Midrange753
Izzet Phoenix722
Angels441
Green Devotion320
Rakdos Sacrifice211
Azorius Control211
Mono-White Humans200
Lotus Field Combo200
Other310

Selesnya Angels seems to be the deck making the most of Brothers’ War, smoothing out its manabase with the addition of Brushland while Kayla’s Reconstruction adds another Collected Company effect to the deck. 4 pilots in the Top 16 was only bested by Rakdos Midrange, which enjoyed its best finishes of the weekend in this MTGO event.

Selesnya Angels
Pioneer
Buy on TCGplayer $289.85
4 mythic
43 rare
7 uncommon
6 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Instants (5)
Sorceries (3)
Artifacts (1)
1
Portable Hole
$1.49
60 Cards
$340.86
Sideboard
1
Brutal Cathar
$3.49
2
Silence
$15.98
1
Portable Hole
$1.49
3
Pithing Needle
$2.37
15 Cards
$35.75

Unfortunately we don’t have the full meta breakdown for MTGO events, but it’s interesting to see how each of these the three S/A Tier decks of Green Devotion, Rakdos Midrange and Izzet Phoenix took turns in putting up strong results. Green Devotion didn’t pick up any dominant Top 8 results but was ever-present across all events despite having a target on its back.

The biggest disappointment of the week was definitely Kergua Fires, which had been emerging as a contender in the meta in the weeks leading into these events but had a poor conversion rate into the Top 32s across all three paper events.

Until Next Time

We’ll be back in a fortnight to look at the development of the meta as the new cards become more available and people have more time to test their decks and try new combinations. This weekend is another round of Regional Championships – Japan/Korea, Australia/New Zealand, East Canada and Southeast Asia, before the following weekend we’ll have the RCs for Chinese Taipei, South America (excluding Brazil) and China.

If there’s anything you’d like to see me examine further in these articles, you can reach me on Twitter and Reddit, or on our PlayingPioneer Discord if you are signed up to our Patreon.

  • Arinceo

    Author/Data Coordinator

    Arinceo has been in an on/off relationship with Magic since cracking his first packs in 2004. After watching his beloved Hardened Scales deck suffer the loss of Walking Ballista he jumped back into Pioneer following the release of the 2021 challenger decks and is active in the community on the PioneerMTG subreddit and Twitter. Arinceo compiles most of the competitive data used on our meta data page and elsewhere.

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