Alchemy has been one of the most polarizing topics in the Magic community in quite some time. It’s been about a month since the release of Alchemy, and the format is honestly in an amazing spot. How can I say this? This past weekend, I played in an Alchemy Tournament, Stream League 7, with some very high caliber Magic players. I ended up in 6th place, playing what generally is believed to be a top contending deck, Boros Dragons. My experience playing in the tournament was the best I’ve ever experienced, and Alchemy was the reason why.
My Deck
The deck that I chose to play was Boros Dragons, which is an evolution of the Mono Red Dragons deck that we covered a few weeks back.
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The deck is reasonably similar, but we get some great white removal options in Fateful Absence and Valorous Stance. We do splash a bit of blue for some counter magic, but primarily our goal is to beat down with some big dragons.
I mentioned that this was a top contending deck, but I was the only one on Boros. There was a Rakdos Dragons player, a few Mono Red Dragons players as well. But the diversity was WAY more than this.
As we can see here by this breakdown, there’s 16 different deck archetypes here! Now how does the top 8 looks?
- 1st: Rakdos Control
- 2nd: Rakdos Dragons
- 3rd: Orzhov Midrange
- 4th: Esper Control
- 5th: Abzan Clerics
- 6th: Boros Dragons
- 7th: Mardu Midrange
- 8th: Azorius Midrange
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That’s 8 different decks in the top 8. Each of these decks have their own playstyle and card selection. That’s a very healthy looking meta. We will be looking into the Rakdos Control deck in a future article this week, so stay tuned for that.
Alchemy Compared to Standard
Looking at the Standard Meta breakdown, there’s really only a couple of highly competitive options. Mono Green, Mono White, and Izzet Dragons hold a LARGE metagame share in Standard. Sure there’s other options, you probably have to play very well with some of the lower share decks to do well. What’s more, the meta is fresh, and we may see Alchemy slip into a “stale meta”, but the fact the developers are willing to make more regular changes to Alchemy, I don’t think that’s going to be the case.
READ MORE: Pinfinity: Innistrad Crimson Vow Set Review
All that I would say is to give Alchemy a try, especially if you’re a Standard player. There’s a lot of fun to be had in the format.
