Announcing: MTG Meta Card Challenge! (Also, update on the MTG Brewing Challenge)

Last month, I announced a contest that aimed to show just how easy it is to “brew” competitive decks without the benefit of the meta. The rules were simple. Brew a list that is fresh, something that is not similar to decks that were already Tier 1-1.5 at that time, and the contestant who’s brew is the best based on the top 3 new decks that emerge from the meta wins a modest $20 and bragging rights as someone who was able to brew something before it became meta. There were 13 entries in the event, the full lists of which can be found in the comments of the announcement article. I was supposed to announce the winner after Magic Fest Detroit but since that was cancelled, I figured I might as well do that today. Unfortunately, the short of it is that nobody was able to brew one of the top 3 (to even top 5) new decks that emerged from Theros Beyond Death. Fortunately, this means that I can add on the prize money of this event to the next event, which I will announce in this article as well. Before that though, allow me to go through the details of the process for attempting to identify a winner for this event.

Summary of MTG Brewing Challenge Outcome

Based on the rules of the contest, in order for a deck to be considered a winner, it must be among the top 3 in the MTG Goldfish list not including a list of top decks from the previous meta. This list of top decks that were excluded was as follows:

Jeskai Fires
Jund/Golgari Food
Rakdos/Mardu Knights
Rakdos Aristocrats
White Weenie
Simic Ramp
Simic Flash
UW Control
RG/BG/Temur Adventure

Based on the top standard decks from MTG Goldfish at present, the list in order of meta share is:

Mono-red Aggro 18.57%

Temur Adventure 14.29%

Bant Midramp 11.90%

Jeskai Fires 8.57%

Rakdos Aristocrats 8.57%

Jund food 6.67%

Azorious Control 5.71%

Sultai Midrange 5.71%

Temur Reclamation 3.33%

Based on this list, the deck lists that could win are those that are colored in red or in blue. I included Azorious control even if UW control was in the preceding list because this Azorious control is considerably different from UW control (they also do not share the same name as far as the actual MTG Goldfish lists are concerned so rules were technically, not violated). Temur Reclamation is also a top-performing deck that was not in the previous MTG Goldfish list, but it is not included among the possible winning lists because it comes in at 5^th place (Azorious Control and Sultai Midrange sharing the 3^rd place). It does not matter though as among all of the 13 entries, only one entry was similar to one of the top lists, and this was a list from an unknown contributor (he/she did not specify his/her reddit/forum handle) who entered a list that is similar to Azorious control.

Let us examine the list side-by-side with the typical Azorious control deck.

Azorious Control Stock List		Contestant's list
2 Dream Trawler (THB) 214		4x stinging lionfish
3 Narset, Parter of Veils (WAR) 61		3x brazen borrower
4 Teferi, Time Raveler (WAR) 221		3x fae of wishes
7 Island (ELD) 254		3x gadwick, the wizened
4 Plains (ELD) 250		2x dream eater
3 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238		4x opt
2 Castle Vantress (ELD) 242		3x omen of the sea
1 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244		3x ashiok's erasure
4 Hallowed Fountain (RNA) 251		3x thassa's Intervention
4 Temple of Enlightenment (THB) 246		3x teferi, time raveler
1 Banishing Light (THB) 4		3x nyx lotus
3 Elspeth Conquers Death (THB) 13		1x finale of glory
4 Omen of the Sea (THB) 58		1x mass manipulation
3 The Birth of Meletis (THB) 5
3 Absorb (RNA) 151		4x hallowed fountain
3 Dovin's Veto (WAR) 193		3x temple of enlightenment
3 Mystical Dispute (ELD) 58		3x castle vantress
3 Thirst for Meaning (THB) 74		1x castle ardenvale
3 Shatter the Sky (THB) 37		2x fabled passage
		1x blast zone
		1x labyrinth of skophos
		7x islands
		2x plains

Out of the 49 cards in the stock Azorious control list, the contestant’s list only had 19 in common. This translates to about 39% similarity which is far less than the 80% needed to win.

Brewing is easy, brewing something that is actually good on the other hand….

When THB first came out, my first thought was similar to those of many: “Mono Black Devotion, of course!” I actually spent a few days brewing and testing Mono B Devo for the Metagame Challenge. After being fairly confident that my B-splash-U Devo was going to crush the meta, I went ahead and played the challenge, only to be crushed repeatedly in my first two runs. I switched to stock lists of Rakdos Sacrifice and Rakdos knights and did some crushing back, essentially winning 77 packs net of costs. I then tucked my Mono Black decks, all 6-ish versions that I came up with, away.

The lesson is simple: brewing is not easy. Despite what some people claim, attempting to construct a pile of 60 cards that is not Tier Bad before actually seeing what decks everyone else is running is not easy, and more often than not, taking heed of the information from the meta leads good players to the same conclusion, that decks at the top of the meta are… well, the decks that are indeed quite good. Of course, I am not claiming that brewing in a vacuum cannot be done. Certainly, there are some people who are brilliant enough to come up with what eventually become the top decks of the meta; someone has to do that. However, it is certainly not a common trait to be able to do so. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it takes two parts experience, two parts creativity, two parts hard work (testing) and one part luck to be able to come up with a Tier 1 deck before other people do.

So, what is the next event?

Well, based on the outcome of this one, I think it would be prudent and take a step back. Rather than asking people to build new Tier 1 decks, the next contest will simply ask people to pick a good card.

Announcing: MTG Meta Card Challenge!

The objective of this contest is to identify the non-land card from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths that will make the biggest impact on the Standard Meta. By biggest impact, I simply mean the card from the next set that will grab the highest spot in the MTG Goldfish list of most played cards in standard. This list can be found here.

So, if we follow this list for THB, the winner would be Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, who is 10^th on the list but is the first THB card there.

How to join?

Each person will only be allowed one entry. Once an entry is entered, it cannot be changed. In order to join, kindly follow my blog by clicking on the follow button on the homepage here. Then, once you are ready, post your entry as a comment on this article. That’s it. You may post your entry at any time between the start of spoiler season to the day that Ikoria is released on MTG: Arena. As with the brewing challenge, this time period is selected so that you have to make a choice before any real information about the meta can be published.

How to win?

The winning card will be identified on June 6, one week after May’s Mythic Qualifier. The list on MTG Goldfish will be used as the basis. The winning card can be of any rarity. It should be a non-land card and it should be from Ikoria. It can be a reprint.

The top winner of the contest is the person who voted for the card first. I will refer to the time stamps to identify this person. The prize, as before, is a modest $20. However, a second prize of $10 will be awarded randomly to another person who also voted for the card (the winner of the $20 is not included in this random selection).
In case of a tie in the card list, it will be broken by the card that is in the top list of decks that appear in MTG Goldfish by meta share. If it is still a tie then, the prize will just be split $15 for each card and there will be no randomly selected winner. As before, the prizes must be claimed through PayPal.

Keep safe everyone and as always, may the shuffler be with you.

Update:

It is now June 6 and based a snapshot of the standard staples from MTG Goldfish is shown below:

As shown in the photo, the winning IKO card with a 41% meta share is Shark Typhoon. Yorion, Sky Nomad comes in second place with 35% and then Lukka and Lurrus are in distant 3rd and 4th place respectively at 22% and 21%. Unfortunately, this means that none of the people who participated were able to guess the winning card correctly. As such, the prize money for this event will roll over to our next event. Thank you everyone for participating!