Just Another Meta Monday
Welcome back to Meta Monday! With the new season underway, we have some brand new challengers in the meta game to contend with, as well as the old standby decks that have been running around for weeks now. We have had very few balance changes due to the Holiday season for many of the people who work for Second Dinner.
For today's Meta Monday, I'm going back to the pillars which mainly note the popularity of the decks and not necessarily the win rate. While there typically is a correlation with the most popular deck being the best that is not always the case. However, all decks in the article will be completely viable and do well when trying to climb to infinite or gain ranks post infinite.
Pillar One: Iron Patriot/Victoria Hand
While it may be surprising to some, if we look back at the Meta Monday articles from each of the first weeks of each season, the season pass card is prominently included in the Pillar One deck. While this is probably due to being the newest addition to the game the popularity is up for this card they also have some of the best performances as well because most of the time the season pass card is strong. Iron Patriot is no different.
Both the new cards this week are prominently featured in the most popular archetype in the game at the moment. It would be hard for anyone trying to climb not to see these cards every other if not every single game. This can cause some mirror match exhaustion but luckily these decks are not the entire meta game.
Iron Hand 1
Iron Hand 2
Iron Hand 3
Pillar Two: Doom
While this deck used to be the most popular, it has lost much of its popularity in favor of other strategies. However, it is still the second most popular archetype in the meta at the moment and one of the simplest to pilot, making it a great choice for some relaxed climbing and fun.
Doom 1
Doom 2
Pillar Three: Discard/Wiccan
There are too many combinations of Wiccan that could probably be an article all by itself so I am just going to put some of the best-performing decks here for you to enjoy. There are 2 schools of thought in regards to Wiccan and that is are you running Quiksilver or are you not? Otherwise, the play patterns are relatively similar with the main idea that you are going to overwhelm your opponent in the last few turns with your extra energy generation.
Wiccan 1
Wiccan 2
Wiccan 3
Wiccan 4
Coming in the same Pillar as Wiccan is Discard which has been a solid choice for months now. While Discard can easily fold to a well-timed Red Guardian it doesn’t have much to fear outside of that. Surprisingly Red Guardian has an almost 30% play yet Discard is still almost 7% of the format and putting up consistent stats. Either way, here are two versions that you are likely to see.
Discard
Pillar Four: Everything Else
After the above-mentioned pillars, there is a myriad of different options for players to choose from for viable decks running around in the format. All of these have become staples of the game at this point and have little variance in their builds over the many different weeks.
Negative
Surfer
Ajax
Move Bounce
Clog
Arishem
Scream
JFsnap choice for the week
While I typically main Clog decks most of the time my choices for this week are Negative and Move Bounce. Negative is a good deck that has little counterplay when it hits. However, when it doesn’t hit it can be annoying. But if you are still trying to climb I would give Negative a shot. It has massive cube equity because most people stay on a turn 3 or even a turn 4 negative with Jane way more often than they should. Furthermore, the meta is heavy with random card generators making it difficult to always play around your opponent. So to sidestep that I like a deck that isn’t worried about what the opponent is doing and when it does off it hits hard. Also, for those who do hit bots on the ladder when climbing negative is a great deck to play to get those 8 cube wins.
Negative
My next choice is move bounce because it is fun and consistent against everything in the meta. There is little that completely shuts this deck down besides a good game bug or two (looking at you Madame Web…)
Move Bounce
While many people state that this deck is difficult to play, they are not necessarily wrong. The deck should not scare you away. It has simple ideas that come down to sequencing and practice. But the more you play a deck, the easier it is to notice those sequences and patterns.
Meta Health
With one week into the new season, the stats suggest the meta game is more open than anecdotal evidence would suggest. However, we do lean heavily towards the Iron Hand decks taking up almost 20% of the meta game. This can make the game feel frustrating at times due to the random generation of cards or the amount of mirror matches. However, there are a lot more viable options than most people realize. Also, the Iron Hand decks are not restricting decks out of the format nor are they warping the format to adjust for them so I would say the Meta is overall pretty healthy.
However, the meta is decently stale. This could be due to several factors but over the last 4 weeks, we haven't had any big meta shifts or a new meta at all. Decks have maybe a 1 card difference when the meta shifts slightly but if you've been playing Ajax or Discard you've been viable for almost a month and a half and probably didn’t need to change your deck all that much if at all. Hopefully, we can get a bigger shake-up with the upcoming balance changes but we will see. What do you think of the current meta?