We are back for more Standard decks! After MTG Worlds in Las Vegas and many other big tournaments, the metagame has some big moves and a new king of the hill to discuss.
Thinking that Worlds didn't have any influence is far from the truth. Yes, even if Javier Dominguez won with Dimir Demons, it hasn't become the most popular deck. But two other archetypes from the World's top 8 are now more relevant than ever before.
Tiers
- Tier 1: The most dominant decks of the moment. This implies the percentage of victories, presence in the meta, and favorable games.
- Tier 2: These will be solid decks with a relevant presence in the meta. A good pilot will probably be able to play one of these archetypes and have a good result in a competitive event. They usually have at least one difficult match against the rest of the archetypes.
- Tier 3: In this tier, we find decks with little presence, but enough to be considered when preparing for a tournament. In addition to their low popularity, they are decks that present two or more complicated matchups against the meta. This prevents them until the release of additional support or a meta shift from standing out. However, players who dedicate themselves to mastering these archetypes usually have the opportunity to obtain good results.
- Silent Performer: Lastly, at the end of the spectrum we find some decks that are little to almost non-present in the current metagame state. However, these archetypes may have won or reached the Top 8 in a relevant tournament or the Top 16 in any event with more than 100 players. The sample size may be too small to represent their actual strength.
This meta-report covers the top 16 from the last eight tournaments from 24/10 to 06/11 2024.
Meta Overview
Red Deck Wins and Temur Prowess propelled to new heights. Mono-Red is now the most popular and dominant deck of Standard's metagame, while Temur Prowess passes from non-existence to being more popular than UW Oculus.
Quinn Tonole's 4th place with 24 pts. during Standard rounds, Max Rappaport's and Kai Budde's top 8 finishes with Dimir Aggro, and Ryan Condon's 6-3 with Temur Prowess shook the metagame much harder than Thalai's win. There's no more RDWx during the last 13 big tournaments, just Mono-Red in all its glory.
With just one deck playing green splash, in general terms there's no more Callous Sell-Sword, Duress, Blackcleave Cliffs, and Sulfurous Springs, or Copperline Gorge, Karplusan Forest, and Pawpatch Formation. Just Mountain, and Rockface Village.
Temur Prowess Combo is not all over the place, but it puts numbers good enough for being over great decks like UW Oculus, and Mono White Control, and almost at the same ratio as Domain or Convoke. This may be promising for the archetype, especially now when the archetype is in the hands of many good pilots who will surely find the refined list soon.
Let's dig into those numbers:
Top 16 Archetypes
- Red Deck Wins: 40 🔽
- Dimir Aggro: 37 🔼
- Gruul Aggro: 30 🔽
- Golgari Midrange: 26 🔽
- Convoke: 9 🔽
- Domain: 9 🔽
- Temur Prowess: 8 🆕
- UW Oculus: 6 🔽
- Boros Mice: 4 🔼
- Dimir Control: 4 🔼
- Azorius Artifacts: 3 🔼
- Mono White Control: 3 🔽
- Orzhov Control: 2 🔼
- Rakdos Aggro: 2 🔼
- UW Enchantments: 2 🔼
- Boros Control: 1 🔼
- Gruul Delirium: 1 🆕
- Mono Black Control: 1 🔽
- Orzhov Aggro: 1 🔽
- Rakdos Cruelclaw: 1 🔽
🔼 - The deck has a higher top 16 appearance % from our last meta report.
🔽 - The deck has fewer top 16 appearance % from our last meta report.
🆕 - First top 16 appearance in the current Standard metagame.
Tier List
| Tier | Archetype |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | - Red Deck Wins 🔼 - Dimir Aggro 🔼 - Gruul Aggro 🔽 - Golgari Midrange 🔽 |
| Tier 2 | - Temur Prowess 🆕 - Convoke 🔽 - Domain 🔽 - UW Oculus 🔽 - Dimir Control 🔼 - Azorius Artifacts 🔼 - Mono White Control 🔽 - Boros Mice 🔼 - UW Auras 🔼 |
| Tier 3 | - Rakdos Aggro 🔼 - Orzhov Aggro 🔽 - Rakdos Cruelclaw 🔼 - UW Tokens 🔽 - Sultai Emergence 🔽 - UW Control - Rakdos Lizards - Boros Auras - Rakdos Midrange - Selesnya Tokens - Temur Luck - Simic Terror - Mardu Aggro - 4/5C Legends - Rakdos Sacrifice - Gruul Terror |
| Silent Performer | - Boros Control - Gruul Delirium 🆕 - Mono Black Control - Orzhov Control |
🔼 – The deck has improved its position on the chart. This includes movements within the same tier.
🔽 – The deck has lost positions on the table. This includes movements within the same tier.
🆕 – First appearance in the tier list since Duskmourn's release.
Tier 1
Red Deck Wins 🔼
After Quinn Tonole's fourth place during World Championship 30 in Las Vegas, Red Deck Wins became the most popular deck in the format.
Before, some iterations with Black and Green splashes were here and there, but now, 99% of the RDW decklist from the last nineteen relevant tournaments are just playing Mountain, and Rockface Village
Reinventing the wheel is not needed. Just look at Jarvis' 1st place deck list in the biggest tournaments of the last weeks. Four copies of each card and that's it.
Remember that the simplest solution tends to be right, which is also true for Magic.
Dimir Aggro 🔼
Five wins out of nineteen tournaments is impressive. That does not include two 2nd place, five 3rd place, and one 4th place finishes.
These past days Dimir Aggro proved that this archetype is far from forgotten or in a bad spot in the current meta state.
Being so close to RDW's rise shows how relevant Max Rappaport and Kai Budde's top finishes during the World Championship were. We don't talk enough about Dimir above in Meta Overview, however, Max was one of the three players that got 9-X during Standard rounds.
This achievement was only shared with Seth Manfield's Golgari Control and Quinn Tonole's Red Deck Wins.
Kaito, Bane of Nightmares was the missing piece of the puzzle. With two or three copies in almost every list, Dimir is in its prime.
Gruul Aggro 🔽
RDW and Dimir Aggro momentum doesn't mean Gruul is not there anymore. Is still performing incredibly well and with 30 top finishes, this beast is far from being tamed.
The important thing to notice is how the most successful decklist is playing Inkeeper's Talent and Questing Druid again. This was also a factor during our last meta-report.
If you are playing Gruul or going to do so, I highly recommend having Inkeeper's Talent in your decklist. Statistically, you have more chances of getting a good result with 2-3 copies of it.
Golgari Midrange
Seth's decklist went perfectly during the World Championship. This result popularized a Golgari iteration without Mosswood Dreadknight. Since then, there have been people playing this new form of Golgari, and many more sticking with the old builds.
I decided to group them all because even if the rhythm of Overlord of the Hauntwoods and Mosswood Dreadknight [is different, the backbone of both iterations is the same.
Golgari is proving again that it doesn't have bad matches. Just games where you always have a chance.
Tier 2
Temur Prowess 🆕
Besides Ryan Condon 6-X during World Championship Standard rounds, cftsoc3 won two 70+ players tournaments back to back with this archetype.
Both times with the exact 75. It seems we have the new best list and with those great performances, there isn't doubt that the archetype has what it takes to compete against the top dogs.
Expecting this archetype to be higher on this tier list next week is logical. Let's just wait until more players realize how strong it is.
Convoke 🔽
The old boogieman is doing its best not to fall more. Nine top finishes are not bad per se. However, in the current state of the meta, being below double digits means not enough presence to be considered tier 1 in a 19 tournaments report.
This doesn't mean the deck is bad, but Convoke is falling behind with any player that wants to play Aggro playing Mono-Red. Don't get me wrong, in a world without many decks playing Temporary Lockdown Convoke may be better than Mono-Red because it can play wider, but the consistency of a mono-colored deck with four copies of each card is hard to beat.
Domain 🔽
Domain is another deck fighting hard for doesn't fall into oblivion. This archetype has found many fun and interesting ways of staying alive. If we look closer, Zur, Eternal Schemer iterations have performed better than any other Domain variations since a few weeks ago.
You may play the old Atraxa, Grand Unifier builds, Naya, or even Selesnya Overlord variations. However, I firmly believe that if more players stick to Zur iteration and come up with the perfected build, Domain may be back to tier 1 soon.
UW Oculus 🔽
Ghost Vacuum is not going to stop Abhorrent Oculus from being a strong choice for your next event. Or at least it should not do it.
Two players, Mingyang Chen, and Mauro Sasso, got this archetype on 18 points during World Championship Standard rounds. This is an incredible feat on such competitive ground.
UW Mentor is a deck I have been claiming as one of the strongest decks of the format since its first iterations. This is an improved version of that archetype, and Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void are still not part of the meta.
Until then, choosing UW Oculus is a good idea.
Dimir Control 🔼
I can't put Dimir Control aka Dimir Demons in Tier 1 even if Thalai won World Championship 30. There aren't many players on this archetype post-Worlds, and it hasn't taken its final form.
The four decklists that reach a good position these weeks have enough variations to make the results of the archetype fluctuate more than they should.
Don't get me wrong. Winning Worlds is the biggest achievement an archetype can get. However, Javier went 6-X during the Standard rounds, not bad, but far from the 9-X from Seth, Quinn, and Max.
Azorius Artifacts 🔼
Matias Leveratto switched to Azorius Artifacts a few days ago and it quickly paid off. Getting 1st place at a 58-player MTGO Challenge 32 shows Azorius Artifacts is still relevant and ready to compete.
I think Matias' list is close to perfect. With four of every creature you go aggressive fast enough to compete against other aggro decks, and four Zoetic Glyph is what I think is required for this kind of deck since Simic Cookies was a thing.
Playing one more copy of Unidentified Hovership may be good, but I take anything out is complicated. Any suggestions?
Mono White Control 🔽
This archetype passed from being the king of the hill three weeks ago to falling to just three top finishes in the last 19 tournaments.
Does it become less popular? It got crushed by Mono-Red, Dimir Aggro, Golgari, and Gruul? It was both. Mono White passed over Golgari and Gruul three weeks ago, but RDW and Dimir weren't that high on the radar, and many players pivot to other archetypes after Worlds.
I don't think this deck is bad or dead in Standard current state, with 4 decks being so popular, choosing an archetype below Tier 1 will lead you to Temur Prowess or any other top 4 Tier 2 decks most of the time.
Boros Mice 🔼
I said that reinventing the wheel isn't something you always have to aim for. When Bloomborrow was released, Rakdos Lizards showed that keeping it simple may give you great results.
Boros Mice shows that in the long run, it can be stronger than Lizards, or at least more popular and recommended for the actual Standard environment.
With great early games and fantastic Red creatures, Boros Mice can compete with almost anyone. In the end, it has almost the same creatures as Mono-Red, but splashing White mice + Mabel, Heir to Craflame, and Valley Questcaller give you many anthem effects that can make you win creature matchups many times.
UW Auras 🔼
UW Auras is gladly still performing well enough for those who decide to give it a try. Like we said above, playing a creatures deck that can go taller than RDW can overperform in the next weeks.
One well-timed Ethereal Armor and any of your creatures could be out of Mono-Red removals. Enduring Innocence gives you more gas than any RDW could wish for, and Sheltered by Ghosts can pinpoint the removal of any nuisance while making your creatures harder to remove slowing RDW tempo easily.
Give it a try, next week we may have your decklist here.
Tier 3
Rakdos Aggro 🔼
Orzhov Aggro 🔽
Rakdos Cruelclaw 🔼
UW Tokens 🔽
Sultai Emergence 🔽
UW Control
Rakdos Lizards
Boros Auras
Rakdos Midrange
Selesnya Tokens
Temur Luck
Simic Terror
Mardu Aggro
4/5C Legends
Rakdos Sacrifice
Gruul Terror
Silent Performer
Boros Control
Gruul Delirium 🆕
Mono Black Control
Orzhov Control
End Step
What a way of resurging from the ashes. A few weeks ago RDW was struggling to find its way, and Dimir even as one of the strongest decks of the format, was losing momentum.
Now, both are fighting hard for the top spot, while many other exciting new archetypes like Temur Prowess doing their best to find their place in the metagame.
World Championship shakes the meta more than many would think, and with Foundations release at the corner, Standard is at an amazing moment, with many viable archetypes, and many different iterations of each one to try for your next events.
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