After a long line of awful Pro Tour metagames, it’s a huge relief to finally see a balanced one. Modern has been the healthiest competitive MTG format since Underworld Breach was banned, and a relatively balanced metagame proves that even the pros couldn’t decide on a de facto best deck.
Despite this, there are some surprising numbers among the most represented decks at the Pro Tour. Boros Energy has been the king of Modern since Breach was ejected from the premises. That said, the metagame breakdown for Pro Tour Edge of Eternities reveals that a new deck will quickly become the talk of the town. Esper Goryo’s is officially a tier one deck.
Atraxa Enters the Fray
Boros Energy is, surprisingly, the third most popular deck at Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, with Tameshi Belcher and Esper Goryo’s being the most common decks in the format. The percentages between all these decks, however, are rather close.
Esper Goryo’s has been around Modern for some time, and while mildly popular coming into this event, it was never truly considered one of the best decks until now. Named after the infamous reanimation spell Goryo’s Vengeance, this deck plays like a sort of midrange deck with a bunch of different combos nestled in. While the main goal is to win the game by reanimating Atraxa, Grand Unifier into play, the recent Edge of Eternities addition of Quantum Riddler has unlocked a whole new level for this archetype.
Now, the core component of this entire deck is actually Psychic Frog. The card does everything, acting as a threat, card draw engine, and as an enabler for all the different mini-combos in the deck. You can discard Atraxa, Grand Unifier to reanimate it, and draw tons of cards with Quantum Riddler by keeping your hand size small. The Frog can grow so large that it wins the game outright.
Ephemerate, in particular, also acts as a sort of glue that binds together a lot of different things going on with this deck. Similar to Esper Blink, Ephemerate can blink a Warped Quantum Riddler to both draw more cards and drop an undercosted body on the board. You can also blink a reanimated Atraxa, Grand Unifier to double up on enters triggers, as well as shrugging off Goryo’s exile trigger at the end step. Add Solitude into the mix, and this deck can use all kinds of combinations to accrue massive value.
Players may not be prepared with an appropriate amount of graveyard hate to combat this menace, either. While there are some graveyard decks in the format, like Amulet Titan and, to a lesser extent, Tameshi Belcher, it’s not a very popular strategy in Modern.
The Rest
Despite the emergence of Goryo’s Vengeance being the big story of this event, the metagame itself is also extremely healthy. There are a lot of different players appearing in this metagame, and some choices seem to be better than the rest.
Depending on the exact configurations of each decklist, the best-positioned archetype this weekend might actually be Tameshi Belcher. According to this metagame win-rate chart, Tameshi Belcher’s bad matchups are largely nonexistent in this metagame. To top that off, the deck has very positive matchups into the likes of Boros Energy, Eldrazi Tron, and the glass cannon Neoform and Amulet Titan decks. Add on an even-looking Goryo’s matchup, and Tameshi Belcher appears to be in a great position at a surface glance. That said, Tameshi Belcher is the type of deck that anyone can metagame to beat, so the deck’s results may largely depend on how opponents prepped for it.
While Boros Energy doesn’t appear to be the worst deck in the room to register, it doesn’t have much going for it. There isn’t a single positive matchup available for the deck outside of the Other category, and while most of its matchups are even, it appears to have a slightly losing matchup against Esper Goryo’s, and an absolutely abysmal matchup against both Tameshi Belcher and Neoform Combo.
With two heavily interactive blue decks at the top of the metagame charts, glass cannon decks are likely going to have a bad time this weekend. Amulet Titan and Neoform Combo are some of the flashiest decks in the larger metagame representations, and they have a particularly tough time with Thoughtseize and countermagic. With the right matchups, these decks could have an amazing weekend, but having to face down multiple free counterspells and hand destruction might prove difficult.
None of the other decks seems to be particularly good or bad choices. The only extremely popular deck with a bad win rate, Izzet Prowess, has surprisingly appeared in the ‘Other’ category. Only eight players are on the Cori-Steel Cutter deck this weekend.
If you have a favorite Modern deck, there’s a good chance it’s making an appearance at this event. One of the hallmarks of a healthy metagame is when the Other category has a larger percentage than the most popular deck in the room. A more detailed analysis reveals that all kinds of strategies, from Jeskai Orim’s Chant Control to cult classics like Dimir Mill, will be appearing at this event. Even some fallen metagame titans, like Golgari Yawgmoth Combo and Basking Broodscale Combo, will be making appearances at Pro Tour Edge of Eternities. We could have a massively rogue deck win the whole tournament.
What About Spider-Man?
Despite Spider Man releasing officially on the same day that this Pro Tour kicks off, it is confirmed that some Spider Man cards will make an appearance at this event. Interestingly, it’s the same cards that have made strong first impressions throughout the week. You can read all about that here.
This is the best-looking Pro Tour we’ve seen in months, perhaps a year or more. I’ll personally be watching along over the weekend, excited to see how this event impacts the best metagame that Magic has seen in years.
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