Welcome back to Meta Monday! Without any balance changes this week and the release of Speed, which isn’t archetype-defining but just a generally good 3-cost card, there was little movement in the meta as a whole. So
Let’s look at some outlying lists, which make up small portions of the meta but do an excellent job of gaining cubes.
Outlier One: BlackBolt Stature
Black Bolt Stature decks have always been a part of the meta game, although the deck's effectiveness has not always been as high as it is currently. With Arishem still being the most popular archetype, naturally, running Darkhawk can help since you have one of the best counters already in your deck. Adding cheap threats and disruption in the form of Moon Knight Blackbolt helps increase your power output and match-ups with the non-Arishem decks.
Black Bolt Stature
This deck includes everything mixed together. It has the small clog package with The Hood and Viper, cheap high-power threats, and both deck and hand disruption. It only lacks specific tech cards, which can hurt its combo matchup, but typically, the hand-and-deck disruption will help in those instances.
Outlier Two: Surfer
I mentioned last week that Surfer has one of the best cube rates and win rates in the current meta, which hasn’t changed at all. However, Surfer is still a very small percentage of the metagame. There are two main lists that people have been using, and it all depends on whether you are a Hope Summer believer or a Sera believer.
Surfer Sera
Surfer Hope
These decks do the same thing, and I tend to lean toward the Hope Summers list rather than the Sera one. The best thing about Surfer is that there are a lot of good 3-cost cards, so if you don’t have a specific card, it’s simple to slot in another 3-cost card and still be good as a deck with little to no loss.
Outlier Three: Mister Negative
While there certainly are a good number of tech cards running around, like Shang-Chi and Shadow King, there is a lot less Red Guardian, Mobius M. Mobius, and Cosmo, which means that Mister Negative, specifically an On reveal-heavy version, has gained popularity. While not the highest win rate deck, it has a really good cube rate because its output is not the easiest to calculate.
Negative
Also, with the slight nerf to Nocturne, being able to Magik is slightly more manageable than before. While negative has been around for a while and relies pretty heavily on getting a turn 3 or 4 negative, this build, because it has Ravonna and lots of zero power on, reveals it has multiple play lines that don’t revolve around getting an early negative.
Meta Cards
Loki
After the recent change to everyone’s favorite God of Mischief, he has seen a lot of play in various decks because instead of having his own Archetype, he is just a generally good 3-cost card. If you are not prepared to see Loki a good portion of the time, you’re in for a bad time.
Kate Bishop
While the season pass is not always a meta-breaking card, they usually are decent cards, and Kate Bishop is no exception. She helps fill out the curve for many different decks and provides good general utility to any deck that can spare energy occasionally. If you haven’t gotten the season pass, she is worth watching for your future tokens when she enters the rotation.
Shang-Chi
Shang is still heavily played in the meta game, so as you go into the last turn, be mindful of your lanes that include threats with more than 10 power. More often than not, your opponent will be running Shang, and the odds are they will have drawn Shang within the game.
Meta Health
Overall, the meta hasn’t changed much since last week's Meta Monday, which points to its overall health being pretty good. However, we are reaching a point where there is a lot of frustration with the likes of Arishem and Loki appearing a lot more often. While this may be some sort of experience bias, the data does show that Arishem and Loki are becoming increasingly popular. What do you think of the meta? Do you want a big change?