Just Another Meta Monday
Welcome back to Meta Monday! As we close the last week of the season, the meta has remained relatively unchanged from the previous week.
Pillar One: Discard
While not the “best” deck in the current format, this has become the most popular deck as the last week progressed. Its familiarity and straightforward path to victory help, as does its relatively budget-friendly nature if you don’t have all the latest cards.
Discard 1
Discard 2
While this deck is face-up and doesn’t have a lot of tricks, it produces enough points to contend with anything in the metagame. While it doesn’t run any tech cards, most builds are running gambit more often than not, which can unexpectedly lead to some big swings. Discard has slightly less of a cube rate than the other main pillars in the meta game, but I think that is mainly because its power output is well-known to those who have been playing long enough.
Pillar Two: Agent Venom
While dipping slightly in popularity, Agent Venom decks are still alive and well.
Agent Venom 1
Sera 1
Sera 2
In an effort to avoid repeating myself, I am not going to say much since this has been pretty much the same for the last few weeks with little to no change.
Pillar Three: Bounce and Arishem
With little change in the other pillars and the new card release not changing the meta game, this is again relatively similar.
Bounce 1
Bounce 2
Bounce is a good deck, fun to play, and has a major power output. If you haven’t played any, I would give it a shot because it's in one of the best spots it's been in.
This pillar also shares roughly the same popularity as Arishem, which tends to ebb and flow around 5% of the meta game at any given point.
Arishem
Arishem can win because it is hard to play and snap around any possible card. Are you playing junk? Are you going to play around with a randomly generated Annihilus? Probably not, but Arishem can have it at any moment.
Pillar Four: Scream and Darkhawk
The Scream and Darkhawk decks take the last spot in the meta game. While not as popular as the other decks, these have been consistent ever since the release of Scream for the Scream decks and Misery for the Darkhawk decks. They also have some of the better cube rates among the meta decks.
Darkhawk
Scream
Both are viable options that put up good stats and can disrupt the other decks reasonably well in the format. They also have a lot more unpredictable pay patterns because Scream mainly tries to move the opponent's cards to locations they did not want, and the Darkhawk deck is good at keeping your draw either nonexistent or in a rocky place. Both can be frustrating to play against and make snapping easy because when playing, you always feel like you have more information than your opponent.
Honorable Mentions: Anti-Venom
While not performing as well as other decks in the other pillars by a good bit, Anit-Venom decks are popular because he is the new card of the week, and people want to complete both weekend missions. Lots of players like new things, especially when the meta has been a little stagnant.
Anti-Venom
This is currently the most meta version of an Anti-venom deck that tries to attack the metagame with cards like Lady Deathstrike, Alioth, and Mobius M. Mobius. If you need something to complete weekend missions, I would give this a try. If you haven't played a lot of Anti-Venom, this is also a good starting point.
Looking Forward
We have a new season starting on Tuesday, which means many people will be trying to climb back to Infinite as fast as possible, as well as the release of two new cards. While these two new cards don’t seem like new archetype cards, most of the decks above, I think, will still be completely viable for the first few days of the season. However, the new season pass card, Surtur, is begging players to play Skaar, which means that Mobius M. Mobius might be a really good card to slot into your deck. This is easy for the Agent Venom decks to do, so I have a feeling they will increase in popularity even more with just a slightly different tech package.
Meta Health
I stated this in last week's Meta Monday, “While the format has a lot of decks in it with very small percentages, it is mainly ruled by a couple of decks and then the various tech cards that are running around. These strategies can be stifling to most decks that are not mirror matches or running their selection of tech cards, leading to some very monotonous gameplay.” For the most part, I think that statement still stands today, with the meta game remaining mainly the same as before.
The meta really needs some new life put into it. While there are a lot of players brewing at different ranks within the game as a whole most players are just resorting to the main pillars and if there aren’t any balance changes or the new cards don’t have a big shake-up to the meta I don’t think that will change.
What do you think of the meta? Are you excited for the new season and, hopefully, some change? Let me know in the comments.