MagicCon: Chicago is this weekend, which means Pro Tour Aetherdrift is just a few days away! Showcasing MTG Aetherdrift Standard, there have been plenty of opportunities for players to brew up exciting new archetypes. In the end, it appears that little brewing was done.
Aggressive Mice decks and self-bounce strategies dominated Standard prior to the Pro Tour, and the metagame breakdown is dominated by them, as well. For players who were hoping to see some new archetypes, this is not good news.
Perhaps a bit more interesting is that Aetherdrift’s most popular card in the Standard format is a common. Commons and uncommon cards dominate the MTG Aetherdrift representation in this event, which is an interesting deviation from the norm.
Same Old Thing
Gruul Mice, Esper Pixie, and Domain Overlords are, by far, the most represented decks at the Pro Tour. 50% of the metagame is taken up by just these three archetypes. After that, representation for each individual archetype drops off significantly.
According to MTGgoldfish’s Standard metagame stats, this isn’t too surprising. Gruul Mice and Esper Pixie were the most popular archetypes coming into the Pro Tour. Domain Overlords was also very popular, but Golgari Midrange had a higher metagame share coming into the event.
Perhaps that is the biggest insight in this Pro Tour metagame. Golgari Midrange has been dropping off for quite some time but remains one of the most popular decks coming into this event. Golgari Midrange only has 2.3% representation, or 8 decks, in the event. This massively pales in comparison to the 66, 58, and 53 copies of the top three decks in the event. Other large events, like the Foundations Spotlight, have suggested that Golgari was on its way out despite its high metagame share in online tournaments.
There are lots of spicy brews at smaller numbers, but there are evidently three meta-leading picks. Expect to see these three decks dominating Standard play with the odd brew thrown in here and there.
Ride’s End
Interestingly, the most popular new MTG Aetherdrift card in the format is Ride’s End. Appearing primarily in Domain Overlord decks, Ride’s End is a two-mana removal spell that can trigger Up the Beanstalk, a ridiculous card advantage spell from Wilds of Eldraine. The card also sees play in Azorius Control decks.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the second most popular new card from MTG Aetherdrift is a reprint. Spell Pierce is appearing absolutely everywhere, but Esper Pixie particularly enjoys the new reprint. Pixie is also responsible for the extremely high levels of play for Momentum Breaker and Grim Bauble.
Many expected Pixie and self-bounce strategies to be the most popular deck of the weekend by a wide margin, even calling for bans in the archetype. While the initial metagame representation doesn’t necessarily indicate that this needs to be done, the win rate of the deck is not yet known.
Wastewood Verge rounds out the five most popular MTG Aetherdrift cards in the Pro Tour. This land primarily appears in decks with lower play percentages as none of the top decks have Golgari in their color identities. The rest of the MTG Aetherdrift card representation is significantly smaller than the top five.
A Chaotic Finish
While the top end of the metagame representation isn’t very interesting, there are a ridiculous amount of archetypes in Pro Tour Aetherdrift. There are a total of 47 different archetypes between 349 competitors present. While players should expect to see a lot of the top three decks, anything could take home the trophy.
In a similar vein, while the five cards mentioned above have a lot more representation than others, 55 different cards from the set are appearing in the Pro Tour. All in all, despite the metagame being somewhat stale, MTG Aetherdrift has made a big impact on Standard. It’ll be interesting to see what archetype ultimately takes down the event.