A while back, blisterguy - another writer on this site - began something which spawned a whole new insight into metagaming: he logged the decks that finished in the Top 8 of MTGO events. In these articles, blisterguy described the Mono Blue Tron deck which went on to make a very large impact upon US Nationals, months later.

Fast forward, and the same situation began to pop up — the Japanese, and some other playtest groups on MTGO, began to run the deck we now know as G/W Glare. The commentary on the Worlds coverage was that a lot of people were surprised by the popularity of this deck, but if you paid any attention to the MTGO results, it would not have been a surprise to anyone.

By paying attention to other metagames, you sometimes find nuggets of information that are valuable in staying ahead of your own personal metagame. That's where I come in — I love to look at the metagame and keep myself ahead, and would like to share that information with everyone else. I don't own many MTGO cards (I believe my best rare is Mahamoti Djinn), and don't play online. However, I study the results because the trends for real-life tend to be not far behind the results on MTGO.

I have begun to log the events on this site starting on 1/8/06, and hope to continue it beyond that point.

Here's the first event:

1/8/06, Event #668560, Standard, 37 players

1 — clearly — G/U/B Aggro
2 — MoArm — Critical Mass Update
4 — nosoupforyou — R/W Aggro
4 — EternalDark00 — Mono Black Aggro (Green splash)
8 — anti_tech — U/B Reanimator
8 — AiktheOne — U/R Land Destruction
8 — noobs_lord — Battle of Wits
8 — Wuppy — Zoo

Unfortunately, decklists are not available online, so basic descriptions are all I can give unless I find a comparative deck somewhere else. That said, most of the decklists can be found using StarCityGames's Deck Database, if you're searching for something similar.

Anti-tech's deck is, uh, tech — the deck included Eerie Procession, Ideas Unbound, Goryo's Vengeance, Reach through Mists, The Unspeakable, Kagemaro, First to Suffer, Iname, Death Aspect, and Kuro, Pitlord. He was defeated by nosoupforyou, who merely overran with him burn and aggro so we only got to see the deck for one round.

AiktheOne's deck is a deck that has begun to show up frequently in Top 8 results. Here's an example of a version which appeared at Vermont States, piloted by Richard O'Neill, who took 7th place:

U/R Wildfire A Standard deck, by Richard ONeill 7th place at a States/Champs tournament in Vermont, United States on 2005-10-23 As reported at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/champs05/vt Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 3 Magnivore Enchantments 3 Genju of the Spires Sorceries 4 Compulsive Research 4 Counsel of the Soratami 4 Demolish 4 Eye of Nowhere 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Stone Rain 4 Volcanic Hammer 3 Wildfire	Basic Lands 7 Island 12 Mountain Lands 4 Shivan Reef	Sideboard: 4 Defense Grid 2 Drift of Phantasms 3 Muddle the Mixture 2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror 4 Pyroclasm
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

The deck has sorcery-speed card-drawing, enough mana disruption to keep an opponent off enough land to be really effective, and Magnivore (which should only need one or two swings to completely finish the job).

Battle of Wits is definitely a rarity on MTGO (although it is close to my heart, as I love the deck), so it was nice to see that deck doing well.

Wuppy's deck is similar to the old Zoo decks (a basic five-color Aggro deck, known for using the most efficient creatures — River Boa, Savanah Lions, Kird Ape, etc). It currently runs Seleyna Guildmage, Kird Ape, Savanah Lions, Lightning Helix, Jitte, Birds of Paradise, Kodoma of the North Tree, and Devouring Light.

Next up was the following event:

1/8/06, Event #668582, Standard 2x Prizes (51 players)

1 — Justin Stiles — Greater Good Combo
2 — PENICK — Greater Good Combo
4 — akw1022 — URza
4 — MCPlayer — G/W Glare
8 — alecnezin — U/R Land Destruction
8 — CdC_Negator — B/G Hand Destruction
8 — BigNTasty — G/B Aggro
8 — joshbaig2 —

Another tournament result with the Land Destruction deck — the deck is becoming more common online. MTGO has many tournaments, and is definitely affected by the “flavor of the week” deck. Land Destruction is currently that flavor. Eventually, it will die down and become a deck you will see, but not nearly at the frequency it currently appears.

URza is the deck that went defeated in the Standard portion of Worlds. Since then, it's been a semi-frequent sight in the online metagame.

Unfortunately, joshbaig2 did not take a single action in the Top 8, and lost his match due to inaction.

CdC_Negator's deck included Nezumi Shortfang, Blackmail, Ravenous Rats, Jitte, Hypnotic Specter and mana acceleration. BigNTasty's deck was of a similar style, the main differences between the two being BigNTasty running Dark Confidant and Ink-Eyes, without focusing on hand-destruction. That said, the hand-destruction strategy is gaining a lot of popularity on MTGO of late.

1/9/05, #671844, Standard 2x Prizes (43 players)

1 — nosoupforyou — R/W Aggro
2 — kairan — URza
4 — Pain Train — G/W Aggro
4 — mekkas — URza
8 — Kengur — Critical Mass Update
8 — Octopus Disco — G/B Hand Destruction
8 — mBracht — Heartbeat Combo
8 — Landora — U/B Aggro

The one thing about the MTGO metagame is that is constantly changing — and this actually causes some critics to dismiss it. Because of the frequency of tournaments (which occur at least once per day), you find that the format is in a constant flux of rock / paper / scissors. When something becomes the “flavor of the month”, the metagame reacts, and in turn something else becomes popular.

Next up, a double-header:

1/11/05, #671845, Standard 2x prizes (38 players)

1 — ihatepants — URza
2 — Angelsnow_cn — URza
4 — equatis989 — Eminent Domain
4 — archchris — R/W Aggro
8 — FryChikN — U/R Land Destruction
8 — SpideySenses — Mono-Black Aggro (Green splash)
8 — Nichmafish — U/B Hand Destruction
8 — bburksgg — Fungus Fire

1/11/05, #671846, Standard 2x Prizes (62 players)

1 — DweamHeBe.winz — URza
2 — LCY — URza
4 — notcoolzeus — U/B Control
4 — mekkas — URza
8 — ShadowMaster78 — U/R Land Destruction
8 — kairan — Mulligan to zero, conceded
8 — wwmaster — U/R Aggro
8 — haoshiminmtg — B/G Aggro — never got off the ground, so I didn't see much

Two events in the same day, both with a decent amount of players — and overwhelming in the favor of URza. The deck accounted for five of the sixteen players across the Top 8s, and both first-place finishes. The second tournament featured a Top 8 where the Quarterfinals were absolutely in the favor of the winners — in all but ShadowMaster78's case, the decks never really got off the ground, if at all.

The number of games I have watched that look hopeless for the URza deck, until they topdeck a Blaze or the missing Urzatron piece, is staggering.

So, that's so far this week in MTGO. The metagame is one of constant change, but it has its valuable information. As of 1/12/05, there are no events planned due to a scheduled downtime — after that point, I will pick up where I left off.

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Higgins