Metagame Shift March 2014

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Today we want to yatter about the ever changing and evolving standard constructed metagame for Magic: the Gathering.  In the most general terms we will be noting the peculiarities and ever changing fortunes of our challenges at the casual Friday Night Magic event locally at OMG! Games in Barrie, Ontario.  When we will speak on to the 'metagame', we really are attempting to address the popularity of certain decklists, or archetypes, which at some times can be distilled down to just how well less than a handful of cards perform in their stack of sixty cards.  The MTG Realm group essentially avoid the 'popular' decklists or strategies and attempt to game against these with our funky / fresh and sometimes downright odd card choices.

Anywhoos - to set the stage, the following cards were or still are depending upon where you are the top dogs -

Yep - Mono-Black devotion.  Card draw with Underworld Connections, disruption via Thoughtseize (and/or Duress), spot removal with Hero's Downfall, early threats with Pack Rat, mid-game threats via Nightveil Specter / Desecration Demon and a bomb of a punchline with Gray Merchant of Asphodel (aka 'Gary').  Impressive.

What we finally after quite some time decided to play against this was a relatively fast aggro strategy in the form of Rakdos Aggro -

This build had some nice things to offer with hasty threats to get early beats in before the hammer came down.  Within a few weeks however we found that we had to play Slaughter Games more and more as control decks such as Blue / White Control started to find its pace in the metagame.  If our Rakdos Aggro was unable to deliver a win by turn five at the latest, it was essentially game over as counterspells, bounce, Supreme Verdict cleared the deck or kept it clear and any loss of life was restored with Sphinx's Revelation.

To this end we turned our thoughts to a hexproof strategy and got a few card singles from MTG Mint Card to pull together a 'Naya Auras' thingy.  Here's the juice to it -

The Critters

The Auras

Some Control / Removal

Mana Base

We're hoping that this new tact will get us to Top 8 and from our derping around at the kitchen table, things do looking promising.  Tomorrow at Friday Night Magic will of course be the real test and we'll let you know how things went.

Happy brewing!
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