Welcome back to Meta Monday! With the recent OTA, we’ve had a decent change to the overall meta game, which has been a nice change of pace to end the season. Because we have a brand new season starting tomorrow, this issue will be short and sweet, covering the four main pillars in the format. However, I feel this will change with the start of the new season, so while these decks are good, be prepared for some quick shifts come Tuesday.
Pillar One: Destroy
Meanwhile, Destroy has been in the meta game for the longest time in one form or another. With the recent change to Attuma there is now a lot of it floating around. It’s hitting almost 10% play rate of the overall meta game, which is much higher than previous weeks. I expect this to stay relatively the same because Destroy is a pretty consistent deck, although being around for as long as it has means its play patterns are easily predictable. However, with some new tools, there are ways you can mix up those play patterns, which is probably why it’s grown in popularity.
Attuma Destroy
There are countless other versions, but regardless of the version, you will see some Destroy on the ladder going forward.
Pillar Two: Wiccan
With Loki taking a back seat after the most recent nerf, Wiccan decks of all kinds have started to thrive even more in the game. Many options exist, but most Wiccan decks follow the same basic formula.
- Three 1-cost cards
- Three 2-cost cards
- Two 3-cost cards
- Wiccan
- One 5-cost card
- Two 6-cost cards
Usually, one of the 1-cost cards is Maria Hill, which guarantees a successful Wiccan if you have a 3-cost in hand, as well as Kate Bishop, which helps smooth out the curve to maximize the Wiccan's potential.
Here are a couple of options:
Wiccan Clog
Wiccan Pixie
These are by no means the best and only viable options. Again, following the formula above, you can make a pretty competitive and interesting deck that is completely viable in the format.
Pillar Three: Big Numbers Just Win
With a lot of Destroy and Wiccan running around that includes a lot of Alioth. Just running pure stats has been very effective. Especially with the recent change to Attuma, Skaar gained another reliable body to lower his cost. Also, with Shang-chi being the only card that can stop big base stats, the idea of flooding the board with cheap big stats has become increasingly appealing since Shang really can only cover one lane.
There are multiple options. Here are two:
Deathbird
Counter Big
These both have the same idea, although they go about it in opposite ways. The first option is going for a small destroy packing and self-clogging to make your Death and Mockingbird cheap and able to deploy early, enabling Skaar. The other uses the counter approach and basically says, "I’m just going to go big, and I’ll also stop you from doing things with Cosmo, Red Guardian, and Armor."
Pillar Four: Darkhawk, Zoo, Discard
This last pillar includes three decks that have been in the format for a while and don’t seem to be going anywhere. All are viable options and still boast some really good stats.
Darkhawk Discard
Discard
Zoo
These are just tried and true decks showing they can get the job done and do it well enough to stick around. I wouldn’t oppose running any of these at any time to gain some cubes.
Meta Cards
Kate Bishop
The current season pass card for at least another day is among the cards that are played the most. She is just really efficient at what she does, and the arrows are all pretty useful. However, other than just expecting her to be played at some point during most matches, there is not much you need to account for. At the end of the day, just being aware of what the arrows do and running through those permutations when planning your turns is your best response. Never assume they don’t have a specific arrow because they might.
Carnage, Venom, Attuma
Here are your main three destroy cards that are running around in the format. Carnage and Venom have been around for a while, but he is showing up much more with the recent change to Attuma. This has kept clog strategies at bay because of their heavy usage. If you are playing a clog strategy you need to be strategic about where and how you clog because of the popularity of these cards since they pretty much negate what you are trying to do. Also, Shadow King is a great counter to Venom and Carnage but hasn't been run as often as he probably should be. Especially with some of the new cards coming out, consider Shadow King as a potential option in the meta game going forward to tech against what other players might be doing.
Meta Health
Currently, the meta game is pretty wide open. There isn’t one basic strategy that is taking over completely and many viable options exist. Arishem still technically is 10% of the meta game, but I think that more people like to play Arishem and not really because his deck is really good anymore. It isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near as dominant. As I said at the start, I expect the meta to change fairly rapidly as we start the next season, but all the decks here will probably still be viable in one form or another for your climb. Let me know what you think of the new meta and what you plan to climb with as the new season starts in the comments below!