Standard is currently a great format – or so it seems. Lots of different decks with different strategies are perfectly viable in the format. No objectively broken deck has caused the format to become stale (looking at you, Modern), and the format encourages deep, interactive games that can be won by a small margin.
Even though this is the general opinion of the Standard format, the MTG Arena Championship metagame suggests that we may have a tyrant in our midst. Dimir Midrange, widely considered the best deck in Standard, has a 41.7% representation.
Dimir Midrange is King?
Earlier today, the MTG Arena Championship metagame breakdown was revealed. It’s no surprise to see Dimir Midrange as the most popular deck in the tournament, but having it be this dominant was very surprising.
Dimir Midrange offers a tempo gameplan that can play both an aggressive and a controlling role. With this Swiss-army knife approach, the deck has a strong plan against all kinds of different strategies.
Of 48 competitors, 20 are running Dimir Midrange. That’s a 41.7% representation, which is absurd. For reference, Nadu, Winged Wisdom decks in Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 only had a 20.2% representation, meaning that Dimir Midrange is twice as popular in this field.
That said, more players in Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 were on Nadu, Winged Wisdom then there are total competitors in this event. Because the Arena Championship is a small event, there will be some sample size biases.
Even with this in mind, almost half the participating players are on one deck. This certainly could set alarm bells for the overall balance of the Standard format going forward, especially if Dimir Midrange dominates the event. Whether it will or not is something that only time will tell.
A Two-Deck Format?
Twenty players are on Dimir Midrange, but another ten are on another deck – Gruul Prowess. This aggressive deck uses the same aggressive mouse package from Bloomburrow that is dominating both Standard and Pioneer. These two decks combined represent more than half of the field for the Arena Championships.
Aggressive players were hoping to dodge the Golgari Midrange matchup, which is considered the second-most played Standard deck in the current metagame. Because Golgari Midrange has an infamously poor Dimir Midrange matchup, aggressive players seem to have got their wish, with only three in the field.
With such a lopsided field, there is also opportunity. As mentioned by Frank Karsten, renowned MTG mastermind who showcased the Arena Championship metagame, some of the decks with a much smaller representation may actually have the best chance of winning. The Simic Terror deck and the Mono-White Token control strategy have some very strong matchups against some of the top decks. The token control deck theoretically has a good matchup against the top three decks in the Arena Championship (#3 is mono-red aggro). In contrast, Simic Terror has a good matchup against Dimir Midrange.
Is This a Warning?
We doubt it. The Arena Championship is an incredibly small field, which can cause rather lopsided fields like this to appear. Standard, on a larger spectrum, seems relatively healthy at the moment, with lots of room to innovate. If Dimir Midrange dominates this event and begins to dominate subsequent tournaments, then we can talk.
