Standard Metagame Review: Aggro's Dominance in MTG

Reviewing the Standard Metagame and the Domination of Aggro

Explore the evolving Standard metagame in Magic: The Gathering, focusing on aggro's dominance. Discover key strategies in Best of 3 competitive play.

We are a couple of weeks into Foundations, and it feels like the meta is starting to respond. There were some good staple creatures added to the format, and we even got back some nostalgic burn spells. Midrange is still pretty good, but the decks are forced more and more into a sideboard plan that is almost entirely geared toward dealing with aggro. If you hadn't noticed how prevalent aggro has become recently, it now accounts for 74% of the decks that are listed in major tournaments in Standard. The most recent MTGO Challenge actually featured an entire top 8 consisting of assorted aggro decks. One could make the argument that some of the decks were more tempo than aggro, but the decks have aggressive creatures nonetheless, and they also all tend to have a low curve. We could also conclude that the addition of Llanowar Elves makes the Golgari decks that much faster, and then in some instances they could have been considered an aggro deck. Mono red is also taking up more and more of the competitive metashare, and is positioning itself as a deck to be reckoned with ever since its strong showing at the World Championships. We will look over some of the archetypes in Standard right now that are consistently performing well in challenges and other tournaments.

Red Deck Wins

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This has remained a relevant deck for over a year now, and has endured many changes. It seems that the deck can always find a worthy replacement once a card either rotates or becomes subpar. There are a few new burn spells in Foundations, so it has become evident that burn could be here to stay for the next few years. It's going to be strong most likely for as long as Bloomburrow is in Standard. I think this is good for the game, and lines up with what Wizards wants. You want people to get into your game and garner new players with Foundations, so why not make sure mono red is good? It is one of the preconstructed decks on Arena, and it is one of the easier archetypes for a new player to learn. It lines up with everything that they want, and also allows for newer players to have a positive experience with a good deck that can win games early on in their journey. It is also pretty helpful that a lot of the cards are on the cheaper end. Just make sure you save up for your sideboard - Screaming Nemesis is steadily climbing and could get to fifty bucks soon!

Dimir Aggro

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This is one of the lists that I view more as a tempo deck, but it becomes very aggressive when it is time to go for the kill. It draws a ton of cards, and gets ridiculous value out of the plethora of two mana creatures that the deck plays. Kaito, Bane of Nightmares is also still proving his worth. This card was a hit at Worlds, and continues to be a menace, and arguably the best ninjutsu creature that Standard has seen in years. When he is not terrorizing the combat phase, he is also a pretty effective planeswalker. The versatility that the Dimir deck has allows it to have a fair shot against a diverse group of decks. It has a bunch of flash creatures that make it a little better against control and allow it to be insulated against board wipes, it has counter magic to deal with threats and protect their permanents, it also has plenty of removal and card draw. It is often difficult for a player to navigate exactly how they want to attack the Dimir deck, because they have so many different ways of winning. It can be easy to fall into a trap. It appears that being able to peek into their hand a couple of times is really helpful, because we can give ourselves more of a fair shot if we know how their gameplan is shaping. And yes, I do call us knowing their hand a fair shot, because this deck is so good that playing against it almost feels unfair.

Why is Aggro so Good Right Now?

Aggro is staying consistently good for a few reasons. It is definitely an archetype that I could see Wizards wanting to support for the newer players that are expected. Aggro decks have a very linear gameplan that allows newer players to easily pick up, while also giving them fun experiences with the game. It is also healthy within a meta to have aggro decks be "good" as someone has to deal with all of those pesky control players! Another reason for it being good from what I've seen is that we are still pretty far from having a solved meta. This means that people are still trying out new stuff, and that often involves playing decks that may not be fully optimized, or simply are too slow while the player tries to figure out the best way to pull off their combo with the new deck, or simply finding where the power level itself is. These aggro decks have had the same goal the entire time - kill you fast. It helps their situation when people are trying new stuff because their gameplan stays the same, and they just have to get the kill before the combo, or before things get out of hand for them. One final reason that we are seeing so much aggro is cost. Aggro decks are inherently less expensive on Arena, in paper, and on MTGO. In paper, the rares generally aren't too crazy expensive, and on Arena, you can get a lot of value from good uncommons. In MTGO, it somewhat follows what paper does. The prices tend to stay pretty low for aggro decks with a few cards here and there getting expensive. It also helps that one of the aggro decks is a mono color deck, because that saves tons of money on lands as well. There are a ton of reasons to play aggro right now in Standard, and it will be interesting to see how the meta adapts to dealing with it. Someone will have to do something, because people won't allow aggro to continue filling out every top 8.

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I am a Magic The Gathering competitive player, and streamer. I specialize in homebrew decks. My favorite formats are: Standard, Pioneer (Explorer on Arena), and EDH. I first started playing MTG in 2001, and have played on and off since then.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Recapping MTG in 2024

2024 was a huge year for MTG. It was a lot of things. Controversial, exciting, frustrating, promising, and refreshed. We saw some formats get ruined, then fixed, then ruined again. We saw some great changes to Standard that not everyone was fans of at first, but they seemed to quickly warm up to them. We saw Wizards effectively abandon a format in favor of propelling Standard into a more prominent position. We saw some great cards printed for Standard, and some promising things to come in the next year that were announced. Along with that, a fair amount of people were still bothered by the new trajectory of the format. Some are calling into question the longevity of MTG now with the heavy lean into Universes Beyond. A little bit of everything happened this year in the MTG world, and it was interesting if nothing else. On a personal level, it was also a hell of a year for me, as I took down two different events and grew a lot as a player. We are going to look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from this year! The Good I have to admit, I'm pretty excited that we have an infinite gain and drain combo in Standard right now. With Enduring Tenacity and Bloodthirsty Conqueror having made a lot of my dreams come true in my favorite format. Although the deck isn't the most viable in the format, it is incredibly fun to play, and I'm just happy that we had such exciting cards printed in the format. It leads to good card design going forward, and gives us promise for what's to come in the next year.

Want to WIN Games in Standard? Play These Cards!

People often discuss win rates when cards are included in a deck, or maybe win rates if a card is drawn during a game. There is even something to take from the percentage of decks a card appears in. Sure, we can say x and y are good cards to put in your deck, but what cards are truly the best? Which ones give you the best chance of winning a game after you cast them? We are going to look at those cards today. We are effectively examining the biggest bombs in the format. There is still a concept of not relying on one card to win the game, and using synergies to win. I get it. I would invite you to consider, however, even if you do not plan to play any of these cards, you should definitely be aware of what is a bomb that needs your attention in the format. Without further ado, let's check out the bombs in Standard, and see how insane their win rates are. Standard Cards with Highest Win Rate (When Cast) Note that this statistic is simply if the card was cast from someone's hand. It does not look at whether or not the spell was resolved. I think this has bearing on the outcome of the game as well. If it gets countered or removed, we know it is also that much more important. This is why I believe looking at win rate when cast is the best metric for the biggest threats.

This Deck is Giving Everyone PROBLEMS in Pioneer

This is starting to feel like déjà vu. Remember the last time a Rakdos Deck was extremely powerful and the most popular deck in Pioneer? Interestingly enough, it is another midrange shell with a powerful combo. What's different this time, however, is that the cards are a lot more fair. This list is a little bit more well-balanced in my opinion. There is no broken turn three "deal with a Veinripper or lose" in this deck. It simply uses all of the best midrange value cards so well and with such synergy that most decks in the format cannot keep up. Nothing in the deck really feels broken to the point where you could pick out what card to ban. A lot of the cards that are good in the deck are played in other decks, so bans could have adverse effects that aren't good for the format. Nonetheless, the meta will either have to adapt to it, or we will need to see some new cards printed that make another deck good, or there will possibly end up being a ban. Rakdos Demons currently takes up 46% of the metashare, and it has plenty of top finishes in every tournament that it's in. To put things in perspective, the next closest deck in the format when it comes to metashare popularity is a few decks that have 6%. Rakdos Demons has consumed the format, and it would be hard to find someone who would tell you that it isn't the best deck. What's nice about it is that it is also playable on Arena, and because of Pioneer Masters, we aren't even missing any cards. You can jam this on MTGO, or Arena, or in paper. Either way you spin it, this deck kills! What I find interesting about how this deck has developed is that the list only plays two actual demon spells now. We have moved past the other demons that were in the list that could make things a bit clunky. Now, the deck is much faster. It has a lot of plays on turns two and three, and plays threats on those turns that demand answers, as opposed to dropping bombs on turn four. This deck oddly enough, only has 2 four mana spells. It's astonishing how much the list has evolved, and also how aggressive it has become with the tweaks. You've likely seen a few of these lists floating around, as it has been a deck for a few months now, so I will go over a couple of cards that have been added to it recently that contribute to the aggressive nature of the deck. New Additions

It's Official, We've Lived Long Enough to See Ourselves Become the Villain. Time for Mono Black Discard

There comes a time in every Magic player's tenure where they are simply fed up with everything that they are seeing in the meta. Some move to playing decks that remove everything, or decks that counter everything - sometimes both. Some of us simply don't let our opponents have any cards in hand, and that's what I've opted to do today. There's something that just feels right about making the opponent have zero cards in their hand while we continue to draw and play threats onto the board. Discard went well in the meta a few months ago before Duskmourn came out, and I think it is possible for it to be good again. The win rate so far with our deck is solid, but it is different from the one we played before. This time we are looking to add some card superiority into the list, and the same card that accomplishes that allows us to play fewer creatures to focus on more discard spells, and efficient removal. Let's take a look at the new discard deck in the Foundations Meta. This deck got a little bit more consistency and some extra win conditions from Duskmourn, and it is refreshing to know that we have more threats to draw, and we now have a higher likelihood of drawing them. We want to try and draw as many cards as we can with this deck, because some of the better lists that are out there will also draw a ton of cards. We look to punish our opponent for drawing cards, and for not having cards in their hand. We also look to benefit from drawing cards while punishing our opponent simultaneously. The list has a ton of removal, because frankly there are some cards that are just too difficult to deal with in Standard and I got sick of waiting to sideboard and hoping that I drew the answers. We will go over the key changes from previous versions, and then we will go over the sideboard guide! New Additions to Mono Black Discard

Checking in on MTG Modern After the Recent Bans (and Unbans)

We are almost two weeks out from the recent bans in Modern, and there is now enough data to see if anything has really changed. Banning cards like The One Ring and Amped Raptor was an attempt to level the playing field in a format where it seemed as if it was difficult to win if you didn't play those cards. Both cards were two of the most popularly played nonland cards, and it was getting to the point where player sentiment about the format was increasingly poor. Wizards knew that they had to do something, and they also needed to do something that kept things interesting after banning two powerful cards. To keep things fresh, Wizards also unbanned Splinter Twin, Green Sun's Zenith, Mox Opal, and Faithless Looting. This seems to be somewhat reasonable so far. All of the cards light up different archetypes, and this was a clear effort to breathe life into the format. Now that Wizards has made their intentions clear on what they wanted to see out of the format, it begs the question: Has anything actually changed? Most Popular Cards in the Format Post-Bans Although it is refreshing to not see The One Ring as the most commonly played card in the format, there are still some of the usual suspects that round out the top ten most played nonland cards. Long story short, the energy decks are still the most popular, and the cards that are staples within the lists unsurprisingly are the most commonly played nonland cards in the format. Oddly enough, it appears that Mardu Energy has now become more popular than Boros Energy, which is an interesting shift.

A Product Change is Coming to Play Booster Boxes, and People are NOT Happy

Although we are still getting used to the new cards brought to us by Foundations, we have begun to get announcements about the next Standard-legal set, Aetherdrift. Aetherdrift will be the first set to come out in 2025, and it will also be the first Universes Beyond Standard-legal set. For those who aren't familiar, Universes Beyond sets are the ones that do not exclusively involve the traditional MTG characters and planes, although they can still be incorporated. What they do for the characters in the Universes Beyond sets is to have somewhat of a crossover between MTG and another universe in popular culture. We have seen them do Lord of the Rings, Assassin's Creed, etc. What is unique about the Universes Beyond sets going forward is that they will now be Standard-legal - something that has not been the case up until now. In fact, almost all of the Universes Beyond sets were strictly Commander, Legacy, and Vintage-legal up until now, with the exception of Lord of the Rings also being legal in Modern. That is a change that we did know about , however, but the latest updates follow up on the new changes that we will see starting next year. Changes to Play Booster Boxes So what is this big change? How will it affect MTG?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Recapping MTG in 2024