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
| Deck | SNC Post-Ban Top 32s | DMU Top 32s |
| Rakdos Midrange | 115 | 123 |
| Green Devotion | 100 | 107 |
| Izzet Phoenix | 87 | 68 |
| Mono-White Humans | 40 | 53 |
| Bant Spirits | 35 | 44 |
| Abzan Greasefang | 29 | 36 |
| Lotus Field Combo | 25 | 30 |
| Azorius Control | 78 | 29 |
| Rakdos Sacrifice | 46 | 27 |
| Mono-Blue Spirits | 39 | 13 |
| Boros Heroic | 52 | 11 |
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
| Deck | Full Field | Top 32 | T32 Conversion Rate |
| Green Devotion | 31 | 4 | 12.5% |
| Rakdos Midrange | 25 | 5 | 20% |
| Azorius Control | 18 | 3 | 16.67% |
| Izzet Phoenix | 17 | 3 | 17.65% |
| Abzan Greasefang | 13 | 1 | 7.69% |
| Bant Spirits | 13 | 1 | 7.69% |
| Keruga Fires | 11 | 0 | 0% |
| Mono-White Humans | 11 | 2 | 18.18% |
| Gruul Vehicles | 6 | 2 | 33.33% |
| Other | 53 | 11 | 20.75% |
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
| Deck | Full Field | Day 2 (98) | Day 2 Conv. | Top 32 | D1 > T32 Conv. |
| Green Devotion | 82 | 20 | 24.39% | 4 | 4.88% |
| Rakdos Mid | 59 | 13 | 22.03% | 6 | 10.17% |
| Phoenix | 57 | 17 | 29.82% | 7 | 12.28% |
| Keruga Fires | 24 | 2 | 8.33% | 0 | 0% |
| Azorius Control | 22 | 4 | 16.67% | 2 | 9.09% |
| Mono-White Humans | 21 | 2 | 9.52% | 0 | 0% |
| Bant Spirits | 19 | 5 | 26.31% | 0 | 0% |
| Gruul Vehicles | 17 | 4 | 23.53% | 2 | 11.76% |
| Abzan Greasefang | 17 | 3 | 17.65% | 1 | 5.88% |
| Other | 90 | 28 | 31.11% | 10 | 35.71% |
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
| Deck | Full Field | Day 2 (220) | Day 2 Conv. | Top 32 | D1 > T32 Conv. |
| Green Devotion | 207 | 44 | 21.26% | 10 | 4.83% |
| Rakdos Mid | 125 | 29 | 23.2% | 2 | 1.6% |
| Phoenix | 99 | 24 | 24.24% | 4 | 4.04% |
| Mono-White Humans | 64 | 20 | 31.25% | 2 | 3.13% |
| Azorius Control | 51 | 17 | 33.33% | 4 | 7.84% |
| Gruul Vehicles | 45 | 13 | 28.89% | 0 | 0% |
| Abzan Greasefang | 37 | 7 | 18.91% | 0 | 0% |
| Keruga Fires | 29 | 5 | 17.24% | 1 | 3.45% |
| Lotus Field | 16 | 7 | 43.75% | 2 | 12.5% |
| Other | 255 | 61 | 23.92% | 7 | 2.75% |
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
| Deck | Top 32 | Top 16 | Top 8 |
| Rakdos Midrange | 7 | 5 | 3 |
| Izzet Phoenix | 7 | 2 | 2 |
| Angels | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| Green Devotion | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| Rakdos Sacrifice | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Azorius Control | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Mono-White Humans | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Lotus Field Combo | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Other | 3 | 1 | 0 |
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
4 mythic
43 rare
7 uncommon
6 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Creatures (28)
Sorceries (3)
Artifacts (1)
Lands (23)
60 Cards
$614.78
Sideboard
15 Cards
$57.85
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.
