Rakano Pants – Finally unseating the aggro king, Rakano plate tops our meta list. Rakano sticks early threats like Stonescar does, but wants to get the late game reach with Weapons like Deepforged Plate or by generating a lot of Warcry triggers from their early creatures instead of through burn cards or going wide with Bandit Queen.
Stonescar Aggro – Stonescar Aggro has finally seen a bit of a dip after the latest nerf to Rapid Shot, although it’s percentage of the meta has actually gone up, it’s ranking has gone down. This deck seeks to land early pressure with Oni Ronin and Argenport Instigator, but has great reach even late into the game with burn spells like Obliterate or big creatures like Impending Doom
TJP Chalice – Newcomer TJP Chalice is our first midrange deck, taking up a sizeable portion of the meta on the back of a good game against the top two decks. Designed to gain ridiculous amounts of life early with cards like Combrei Healer and then put the nails in the coffin late with Chalice to grind through a win it is an aggro destroyer and many aggro lists have adjusted to take it down, with cards like Furnace Mage making appearances in Rakano and Stonescar
Armory – The first pure control deck on the list is Armory, a deck that looks to control the board with Relic Weapons and Harsh Rule, stacking up Warcry and Rakano Artisan triggers until it can land a big threat like Icaria the Liberator or Sword of the Sky King
Feln Control – Relying on good blockers and removal like Feln Bloodcaster and Annihilate early, this deck tries to set up a big Withering Witch into Lightning Storm or Black Sky Harbinger to clear the board and finish off the opponent.
Big Combrei – A pure midrange deck, trying to win with big, quality creatures instead of quantity. Marshal Ironthorn, Knight-Chancellor Siraf, and Sandstorm Titan are some of the big threats.
Elysian Midrange – Elysian tries to go wide with early game ramp like Initiate of the Sands to get mid-to-late game gems like Yeti Scouting Party and Xenan Obelisk. Once at eight power, this deck has the threat of Shimmerpack or Obelisk bonus to blow open boardstalls
Icaria Blue – Tangentially related to Armory is Icaria Blue, another control deck that shuns the Shadow of Armory in favor of Primal to gain access to Celestial Omen, Lightning Storm, and Wisdom of the Elders. It has a similar game plan of early board control into late game Icaria the Liberator.
Praxnan/Vault – Combining several sub-archetypes are the Vault of the Praxis decks. The most common version was simply Praxis, but several were running Shadow for cards like Quarry and Scraptank. The common thread with these decks is to try and land a Vault of the Praxis to gain card advantage while playing cards that give multiple units and finishing with the new Arcanum Monitor or Xenan Obelisk.
TJS/JPS Control – These control decks are fairly straight-forward, operating similarly to Feln Control, but with splashes like (Harsh Rule) or alternate win conditions like Recurring Nightmare.
Other – There’s wide variety of other decks occasionally making up the format, but none of these lists showed up more than a few times games so individually they won’t affect the meta significantly.
