Just Another Meta Monday
Welcome back to Meta Monday! With no massive game changes or balance updates, this last week's meta game has felt the same. The pillars are the same and the only change was that Deadpool Diner shifted a lot of focus from Ladder play to Diner play. Sadly, even that mode has the same meta game so there is nothing new to report. But, meta is what we talk about, so let's quickly review the four pillars and then talk about some lists and cards that help combat the meta game in useful ways.
Pillar One: Arishem
Thanos and Arishem
Thanos and Arishem
Pillar Two: Discard and Malekith
Discard Malekith
Stock Discard
Wiccan Malekith
Malekith Midrange
Pillar Three: Surtur
Surtur
Pillar Four: Toxic and Move
Toxic
Move
Move Bounce
These represent the main decks in the format and are not everything that is being played. However, because there was very little to no change from last week I am just listing them.
New and viable
With Fenris Wolf as the only new addition to the game, there was a small surge in the discard Darkhawk deck, which is one of the easiest ways to get value out of Fenris.
Darkhawk Fenris
Especially with Arishem being almost %15 of the meta game this is a very decent option because it has both of Arishems natural counters in Darkhawk and Cassandra Nova. However, it still is very face up and besides the disruption it offers, it has low base stats overall making it slightly less powerful towards the general field of decks in the meta game.
While this deck concept is not new per se it has been gone from the game for a bit. Thanos with its change last week has started to rise in popularity in various forms and one of them has started to make a small splash in the meta game in combination with Zoo.
Thanos Zoo
While this deck is not drastically popular it is decently easy to make if you have normal zoo and it surprisingly offers a lot of power output especially if you get an early Marvel Boy and draw Mocking Bird.
Last on the new and viable is a Moon Girl list that has been doing well in some tournament play as well as performing nicely on the ladder because of its ability to burst out power that is hard for the opponent to calculate on the last turns leading to some bigger cube games.
Moon Girl
While there is nothing crazy in this deck and follows some of the same patterns as many Moon Girl decks before this, Black Swan has elevated the dump type of idea to make turn six power drops a lot easier. Typically Alioth is the bane of these decks' existence but because the majority of the cards producing power besides Hit Monkey don’t care about losing their ability this is a decent response to a lot of decks counting on Alioth as a last-turn finisher.
Meta Cards
While this is definitely the card that is taking over the meta game more and more, Arishem itself actually isn't a problem. Instead, the randomly generated card pool is the main issue. For example, if you are running a Clog deck and face a deck that is likely to run Annihuls it's easy to retreat off of snaps because the information is simple to deduce. However, there is no way to know because you have to consider the entire pool of Snap cards. It's a lot harder to deduce if your opponent has the winning play when all the cards are available to them.
While these are some natural counters to Arishem they are not a one-size-fits-all approach because by themselves they are not useful and take a deck to have some build around and while they have their own deck it isn't the best matchup-wise with the entire field.
Wiccan has started to show up in more builds which can help fight against Arishem so the energy level is even towards the later turns. Most Wiccan builds are opting for a turn 1 Quicksilver so most of the time if Quicksilver comes down on turn one it is easy to deduce that you are playing against one of a handful of Wiccan decks.
These are the two premier tech cards in the format seen in about 30% of all the decks in the format which is almost 10% then the next few cards. Both are useful and most decks have one or the other and sometimes both.
Meta Health
Last week I mentioned that the meta felt decently healthy because there was not one deck that was taking over the format. We now have experienced the meta for longer than a week without any change and that has caused a slight warping of the format. Both Arishem and Discard take up the majority of the meta game and the next decks are not even close to the popularity making the format feel a lot like a 2 deck or even a 1 deck type of format for a lot of players. That is not the healthiest thing. Also, while Arishem is cool and fun the higher the popularity that his deck has the more “feel bad” moments start to occur which care wear about a player base than people want.
While I don’t expect there to be a lot of changes going into this last week it would be nice if Gorr shakes things up a little bit. Either way, it is the last week of the season and usually, there are big changes when a new season drops so we just need to hold out for then if you don’t like this meta at all. What do you think of the current meta? Are you tired or do you enjoy the meta?