Don’t miss our recap of Day 2.
As predicted, the dynamic duo of Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Field of the Dead dominated Day 1 of Mythic Championship V.
The Day 2 Metagame
Day 2 of Mythic Championship V will see a similar distribution of archetypes as Day 1. 40% of the field will be Golos variants, with 30% playing Bant Golos. This is an impressive feat given that Bant Golos was the consensus deck to beat heading into the tournament, meaning that it had a huge target on its back and still managed to make up nearly half of the decks that made Day 2.
The full Day 2 metagame at Mythic Championship V will be:
- 9 x Bant Golos
- 6 x Simic Food
- 3 x Bant Ramp
- 2 x Golos Fires
- 2 x Bant Food
- 2 x Mardu Knights
- 1 x Four-Color Golos
- 1 x Selesnya Adventure
- 1 x Gruul Aggro
- 1 x Mono-Red Cavalcade
But the dominance of Golos is masking deeper issues with the Mythic Championship V metagame. Over 80% of the Day 2 metagame will be made up of ramp decks, Oko, Thief of Crowns might be just as oppressive as Golos, and only three players made Day 2 with decks that didn’t contain Green. On top of all that, zero copies of Gologari Adventure, most popular non-ramp deck, advanced to Day 2.
Kvartek’s Tempo Take on Simic Food
One of the main reasons that ramp strategies are so popular in Standard is that Hydroid Krasis is an extremely powerful payoff when you have access to tons of mana. Hydroid Krasis is the second most-played card at Mythic Championship V with 162 total copies being registered in decks ranging from Golos, Food, and Ramp.
But one player chose not to put Hydroid Krasis in their Simic Food deck: Chris Kvartek.
Standard Simic Food by Chris Kvartek
| Creatures (25) 4 Gilded Goose 4 Questing Beast 4 Brazen Borrower 4 Maraleaf Pixie 4 Paradise Druid 4 Wicked Wolf 1 Voracious Hydra Planeswalkers (11) 4 Oko, Thief of Crowns 4 Nissa, Who Shakes the World 3 Vivien, Arkbow Ranger | Lands (24) 11 Forest 4 Temple of Mystery 4 Breeding Pool 5 Island Sideboard (15) 3 Voracious Hydra 3 Aether Gust 3 Ashiok, Dream Render 4 Disdainful Stroke 1 Hydroid Krasis 1 Frilled Mystic |
Kvartek sensed that he could improve his position in a metagame full of other ramp decks by adjusting Simic Food to focus more on a tempo style of play. He removed all four copies of Hydroid Krasis from his maindeck (though he put one in the sideboard), instead choosing to play four copies each of Maraleaf Pixies and Brazen Borrowers as evasive threats that either ramp or disrupt his opponents.
He piloted his tempo take on Simic Food to a 5-0 performance on Day 1 of Mythic Championship V, becoming one of the first players to advance to Day 2.
MTG Arena Performance Issues Affect Mythic Championship Competitors
Concerns about MTG Arena’s degraded performance and crashes have come to a head over the last few months. Just today, Wizards of the Coast announced that it is delaying promised features in order to assign more engineers to work on improving the game’s performance.
Unfortunately, the competitors at Mythic Championship V weren’t immune to these issues. Two members of the Magic Pro League, Lucas Esper Berthoud and Jessica Estephan, reported that they experienced crashes on the tournament machines both before and during the event. Berthoud even had MTG Arena crash multiple times during Game 3 of his Round 3 match against Dave Williams.
Mythic Championship V continues Saturday at 12 PM Eastern on twitch.tv/magic.