Metagame Breakdown

U/R Phoenix took the top spot once again, taking 10% of meta once again. W/U/x Control managed to achieve parity with it, however, also taking 10% of our Modern field. About half of our W/U/x players played straight Azorius, with the other half playing mostly Esper. Death's Shadow is the real story though, for the Cardmarket Series at least, coming third with 8% of the field. Most Shadow players went with the always-popular Grixis variant. Tron fell slightly short of its previous meta share, with 7% choosing Karn Liberated. B/G/x Midrange also managed 7%, consisting mostly of straight B/G players along with a handful of Jund and Abzan players.

Affinity, both Hardened and not, took 4% of the meta along with Burn – both Rakdos and Boros – but mostly Boros. Infect made a surprisingly strong showing, with 3% of the meta choosing to sleeve up their Blighted Agents in an attempt to count to 10 instead of 20. Along with Infect was a slough of other 3% decks, including Dredge, Humans, Valakut, Spirits, and Ad Nauseam. Ad Nauseam made out quite well this time, as it was the most popular combo deck at our event, depending on how one defines “combo.” Vizier Combo and Amulet Titan round out our list of named decks, with 2% of the metagame each.

Which brings us, once again, to the Others section. Once again, Modern’s variety shows its strength here, making up a whopping 28% of the meta. Notable performances among them was a handful of Faerie decks, Eldrazi Decks, and Hatebears deck. We even got some janky Tooth & Nail builds, along with some Wilderness Reclamation decks. Hollow One also appeared in this category, showing how far it has fallen since Dredge and Phoenix established themselves as the Faithless Looting decks to beat. The moral, as it always is, is one of diversity. People like playing lots of different decks in Modern and we don’t expect that to change anytime soon.