Metagame Breakdown

192 Masters of Modern gathered in the conference hall on Saturday at the beautiful Roma Aurelia Antica Hotel for the first time since Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf were set free. Make no mistake though, releasing these legends hasn’t stymied Modern’s famed variety, at least not here in Rome. The most-played archetype was Tron, with just over 11% of the field choosing to sleeve up the Urza lands. Of the 22 Tron decks, 12 elected to play the standard G/x Tron and 10 elected to play Eldrazi Tron, so there was no clear favorite among the archetype’s variants.

G/B/x Midrange archetype were the second most prevalent with 20 players choosing to pin their hopes on Liliana of the Veil and Thoughtseize. Jund, as one might expect, was the most represented in this particular category, with 13 pilots choosing to sleeve up the elf and one player choosing an elf-less variant of Jund. Burn was the third-most played deck, with 18 players choosing to go under Jace for the win. White and Blue were the preferred colors for Jace decks, with the majority of the 14 pilots choosing to play the powerful planeswalker in a Jeskai shell. The combo archetype of choice, with nine pilots, was Valakut, with a wide spectrum of variants ranging from the classic Titanshift to breach Titan and even Titanless RUG builds using Jace and a plethora of low-cost ramp to make their Valakut lethal.

Justin Hajo correctly predicted another trend here in Rome – the rise of Graveyard strategies. Dredge appeared substantially more here than in Frankfurt, with nine players, or close to 5% of the field sleeving up Bloodghasts and Stinkweed Imps over Bloodbraids and Jaces. Goryo’s Vengeance also made a solid showing, with four players choosing to sleeve up the powerful sorcery. Lastly, a few decks were surprisingly rare here: Humans only found three pilots and there were no Blue Moon decks to speak of. Overall, this was one of the most diverse Modern pools we’ve seen at the MKM Series and hopefully it heralds good things for the future of the format in uncertain times.