It was the week of combo in sunny Victoria this week as Josh Layne took down the tournament playing Academy combo. He was not the only combo deck at the top tables however; There were several other combo decks of both the mono green and Academy variety sitting near the top tables by the end of the night. A common elements of these combo decks that have made them the most successful and powerful combo decks is that they are very density based and have a lot of redundant interchangeable pieces that all do similar things. The Academy decks play a large amount of mana rocks and land tutors in order to generate large amounts of mana which they then convert into a reasonable number of business spells that all have the capability of winning the game. The mono green deck is looking to do much of the same thing, generate a ton of mana from its creatures and high impact cards like Gaea’s Cradle and then use that mana to cast large threats that can in some instances instantly win the game. Since all the pieces in these decks are so interchangeable it is very difficult for some decks to disrupt them as some tempo and aggressive decks rely on using one or two pieces of disruption in order to slow their combo opponent down. Since these combo decks possess no real key combo pieces these disruptive elements are far less impactful than they might typically be. The story of combo doing so well this week is not only related to the power of big mana combo but also to the rise of mid range decks in the meta. Even the blue based mid range decks like the RUG mid range deck that Chris used to win last week are fairly soft to combo decks which potentially explains the results from this week. Though these midrange decks are weak against combo they have all but pushed aggro completely out of the format. This has led to a fairly interesting conundrum in the meta. The control decks in the format are forced to play more counter spells and cards specifically designed to combat the combos like stony silence (potentially unadvisable). In turn playing those cards they hurt their chances against aggro decks and also give up some cards for the midrange match ups. So what does one play right now? The combo decks out race many of the mid range and control decks, the mid range decks crush the aggressive decks, and the aggressive decks pressure the control and combo decks. This next week will be very interesting in terms of how the meta reacts. Lastly this weeks spicy deck of the week goes to Chris Sutherland for his RUG midrange deck! He has been working with this RUG shell for quite a while and took the tournament down last week! We’ll have two deck techs coming out this week as I no longer need to prepare for a legacy tournament! Here’s the exact metagame break down as usual. UG Sorenson 3 Mono Green Combo RUG Midrange GB midrange 2 Academy Combo Esper Control 2 UWR Control 2 UWR Tempo Goblins Mono Black Aggro RG Ramp BUG Tempo Bant Midrange Grixis Time Vault Esper Stax BUG Midrange Grixis Control Junk Pod Mono Blue Thanks again for reading a please don’t hesitate to leave a comment! -Liam Coughlan