This is an interesting tournament metagame-wise because the flagship tournaments lately have been standard. We do have the RC in the states a few weeks back, but otherwise the action in the format is largely defined by the challenges while players begin to pivot their attention to Standard for the foreseeable future. What this means for us is that we will recognize many of the decks, and I am hoping that players are familiar with the play patterns and matchups in a way that will speed up the tournament. Perhaps we’ll see fewer GRVs related to physical mechanics or knowledge of the cards.

At the same time, MTG Foundations will be legal for this event and there may be cards in there that will shake things up. From what I can see, there isn’t hype around Foundations creating any new archetypes, but certain key cards might provide some juice to existing ones. 

Personally I am the most excited by Boltwave and Spinner of Souls. A good proper burn deck would be great for the format. I like it in a Wizards Lightning-based Boros Wizards shell (Clevel Lumimancer anyone?) I also like Spinner of Souls because it plays well against this Fatal Push-Heavy metagame! I’m eager to see what shows up 🙂

Let’s dig in to what we can exepect:

Top Tier Decks

Prowess Decks (Rakdos & Gruul)

The first deck I ever played in a tournament as a 13-year old in 1995 was a goblins deck with Fireblast and Goblin Grenade. Now, in 2024, it turns out the song is the same but the cards are way better:

You play creatures. You attack. You play combat tricks. In the Rakdos deck you have interaction and a one-mana Fling. In the Gruul version your cards are a touch more expensive but give you slightly more staying power. Choose your flavor.

JUDGE!

• My opponent attacked with their Swiftspear. I anticipated this attack and put my Arclight Phoenix in front of it to block right away. They said they weren’t done choosing attackers and then untapped their Swiftspear and attacked with their flipped Kumano Faces Kakazan instead. This all happened quickly and neither of us said anything when he attacked before I blocked, but it feels unfair now that he knows how I would block.

• I haven’t played in years. My opponent countered this new one mana “fling” I cast and I put my creature in the graveyard. That’s always how fling used to work right? We just noticed when I passed to my opponent’s turn and I was reading my card while my opponent was thinking about their attacks.

Rakdos Midrange

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it eh? This is the marquee midrange deck in the format with some very powerful card advantage in order to out-attrition every deck. This deck is especially powerful when the most popular archetype is aggressive decks featuring Monastery Swiftspear:

As we have seen in Standard, Unholy Annex is the best Phyrexian Arena probably ever printed. That is why you are playing Archfiend of the Dross. 

JUDGE!

• My opponent drew for their turn, did nothing for awhile, then played a land but didn’t tick up their Fable of the Mirror Breaker. Did they miss their trigger?

• Both my opponent and I control Sheoldred and I am at 2 life. What happens when I draw a card during my draw step?

• What happens if I kill my opponent’s demon while the Unholy Annex trigger is on the stack?

Izzet Phoenix

Frankly I’m not convinced that this deck is Tier 1 anymore because it is such a known quantity and many other decks (especially Rakdos and Jund Sacrifice Decks) have adapted to beat it. The deck struggles with flyers that have more than 5 toughness (see the demons in Rakdos midrange, Yagra in Jund Sacrifice, and so on). You can also die quite quickly when you play an Artist’s Talent early to tap low and then get steamrolled by a Slickshot Showoff deck.

At the same time, this deck is consistently a top performer in Pioneer metagames, Treasure Cruise is a helluva deck, and some players are simply drawn to the machine gun flurry of game actions you get to take! Happy fingers!

Phoenix has picked up a few tools – particularly non-creature enchantments that try to dodge the prevalence of Fatal Push decks: Proft’s Eidetic Memory and Artist’s Talent are a hell of a combo that turns almost any creature into a threat.

JUDGE!

• I have Proft’s Eidetic Memory and Artist’s Talent in play. We’re at my beginning of combat step and I don’t remember how many cards I’ve drawn … help?

• I cast Sleight of Hand, but resolved it like Opt. I bottomed and drew a card. We were playing quickly and I wasn’t paying very close attention because my Opts and Sleigh of Hands are both old-bordered. How do we fix this? Does your answer change depending on how many cards are in my hand after I draw?

Selesnya Company

Various hatebears decks have existed for awhile but struggled to keep pace with the attrition-based Rakdos and control decks. They had game against unfair decks – especially around Fall 2022 when Lotus combo and Izzet Creativity were all the rage. 

The problem against control has now been solved – enter Enduring Innocence. You can find it off of a Collected Company, it is resistant to removal itself, and it gives the deck game against control decks through card advantage. I’m unsure of this deck’s gameplan against Rakdos Prowess, but otherwise there is much to like in this archetype.

JUDGE!

• I cast Collected Company and my two options are Giada, Font of Hope and Resplendent Angel. I have no creatures in play. How many counters does the Resplendent Angel get?

• I control an Anointed Peacekeeper naming Reckoner Bankbuster. My opponent activated it and drew a card. He then played a land but then we both realized that he should have paid 4 mana instead of 2 to activate his Bankbuster because the activated ability tax doesn’t come up that much. What do we do? 

Second-Tier Roleplayers

Azorius Control

When midrange dominates, you will always see players (especially competitive players) try to turn to blue-based control to dominate. The formula this time around has not changed: counterspells, single-target removal, a non-creature finisher, and some method of card advantage.

The deck hasn’t been putting up the finishes in recent Challenges that push it to tier 1, but spikes love to play control. I would expect this deck to make an appearance, but I am not certain how well it will perform.

In the Canadian scene you also see an uptick in Lotus Field control because Patrick Wu from Montreal continues to dominate with it. This may be a home for Day of Judgement from MTG Foundations, but the deck already is spoiled for choice in the sweepers area (especially Supreme Verdict) so this is only beneficial is players are concerned about their mana and are playing a high number of land-based in conditions that don’t tap for coloured mana. (Fountain, Mirrex, and so on).

JUDGE!

• My opponent cast Sheoldred and I wanted to counter it with Make Disappear. I put the card on the table and was thinking about how to tap my lands when my opponent just paid two mana and put Sheoldred in play. I wanted to sacrifice a token creature to cast Make Disappear with casualty but my opponent said it was too late.

5C Overlord Incarnation

The Overlords from Duskmourne are pretty nuts on their own, but they work beautifully with Enigmatic Incarnation because paying their Impending cost still puts them in play. They are available to sacrifice to Enigmatic Incarnation right away and, since they are both enchantments and creatures, you can chain them up to Atraxa.

Additionally, the Overlords synergize perfectly with Up the Beanstalk so you are never out of gas. As a result the deck plays a great suite of low-cost interaction to control the game before the Incarnation engine takes over. If the engine isn’t online you can simply beat them up with Zur, enchantments, and whatever other powerful objects you happen to have lying around.

Now you know (one of the reasons) why Phoenix is playing “Annul” in it’s sideboard!

JUDGE!

• My opponent has an Enigmatic Incarnation, Up the Beanstalk and a Nowhere to Run in play. They said “I’ll sacrifice my Nowhere to Run to my Incarnation trigger”. In response I cast Pawpatch Formation to disenchant it. They then said “I guess I’ll sacrifice my Up the Beanstalk instead” … can they do that?

Rakdos Sub-Variants (Sacrifice & Transmogrify)

These decks utilize the same Fatal Push/Thoughtseize/Fable of the Mirror-Breaker midrange shell but with different synergy engines to push them over the normal midrange gameplan.

For the record I expect the Transmogrify and Creativity variant of Rakdos to be the breakout surprise deck. It won the RC in Australia recently, has a powerful interactive game and a powerful proactive and unfair gameplan. You’ll probably see me playing this on Friday 😉

Transmogrify/Creativity plays a Sneak and Show style game we are accustomed to. Atraxa is typically the choice, but Duskmourne also provides a Valgavoth for us.

Jund Sacrifice is a known strategy but the addition of Scavenger’s talent powers up the deck. I would also add that Ygra, Eater of All gives the deck an infinite combo if you have two Cauldron Familiars. Since it turns your creatures into food, you sacrifice the familiars to each other to reanimate each other ad infinitum. The end state is a dead opponent and an infinitely large Ygra.

Wrap-Up

These are the decks I expect to make up the majority of our metagame. At the same time there are many I haven’t covered and I am always interested to see how accurate a read I’ve got on things! This tournament will have some complicated combat steps, so pay close attention to life totals, priority passes, and “how big is that Swiftspear anyway?”