What's Your Meta?

[pernicious dude]

In Hadley, we've got serious versions of
Keeper, Hulk, GAT, Stax, Fish, EBA,
Sligh, Goblins, Madness, Sui Black, B/g Nether Void,
Bazaar Reanimator, and Full English Breakfast.
I don't think anybody's been playing Mask, Dragon, Long, or Trix.

What are y'all seeing at the top tables where you play?

[Solaran_X]

My meta is sad.

I'm one of two Powered players, although I'm the only one who brings true Type I decks. The other Powered player, Gerry, usually brings some oddball decks that preform rather well.

Another guy owns a single Ancestral Recall, but doesn't use it. He usually runs some weird Oath build, an Oath/Enchantress mix, or a red/white deck with Scrolls and Bridges.

Everyone else is scrub aggro, with a few Type II decks ( Clerics, Madness, Elves, and Goblins ) that are bastardized into Type I with Sol Ring and Lotus Petal. And maybe a Demonic Tutor.

[Ultima]

I play in a decent meta with a few Hulk decks, 1 Madness, 1 good Red/Green Aggro, 1 Welder Mud, 1-2 Voids, 1 Enchantress(you know who   ), 1-2 rector decks, and some random aggro's like elves.

[CrazyCarl]

There are about 6 fully powered players who can play all manner of decks, then one semi-powered player and one who borrows stuff to build decks.  There are usually 6-8 real decks, then everyone else.  I can't usually predict who's playing what which is cool.

[Terevaune]

At the store I play at, there is me, with my lone ancestral, I usually play something like enchantress or GAT, though I've been playing eternal wind for 3 months now and loving it.  We have another mostly powered player (he needs a lotus), who plays keeper or madness.  Another player who sometimes shows up is fully powered has played everything from tendrils to oath.  Then we have another player who has full power and just plays a fun keeper style deck (though first turn lotus, force field really sucks when your playing Gat and don't have a force).  We also have had a few players show up with things like TNT and Urphid.  Other than that we have some old extended players who basically run old extended and type 2 decks (pandeburst, replenish, recsur, etc.) and update them with duals, sol ring, will, force, etc.  The other 2/3 of the tournament is basically kids, scrub decks, and people playing type 2 decks.

At the other store I play at that occaisionally runs tournaments, we get a lot of decent mostly unpowered decks (read: usually everything above the last sentence of the first paragraph) as well as a few other people including:
shop owner's son - plays whenver they have power for sale in store - plays what he claims is the dominant deck in type 1 and makes the format unplayable.  Never tests or reads up on this deck.  Usually gets crushed pretty badly, though he recently had a semi-decent version of burning desire.
a friend of mine from out of town - has full power, usually playing something like burning desire or academy, or some other solitaire combo.  Gets bored of it, trades off those cards and builds something requiring interaction with opponent like keeper or Gat, plays it for a while, loses horribly, then goes back to solitaire combo.  Does this once or twice a month.

[MoreFling]

My meta is Duelmen and Eindhoven, and Castricum, so a lot of high power stuff in the first 2. I doubt I need to elaborate.

[Necropotenza]

I play in Barcelona, where the metagame is highly powered.
The powered people play good decks such as: Rectal Agony, Long.dec, Hulk, Stacks, Keeper, Vengeur masque, Trix...
The rest of the field is Grow, Suicide, Goblin sligh, Sligh, Random aggro.

I can be play fully powered quite often thanks to some good friends \n\n

[Tristal]

At my old store in Michigan, the metagame is mostly unpowered - maybe 5 of the typically 20 or so participants will be powered; the metagame is really nice though - even the unpowered people play very solid tier 2/3 decks: Sligh, WW, Oath, Goblins, Black Bridge, U/G Madness.  Very few matches are ever 'byes' due to difference in card quality - Duresses cost 25 cents   Those of us regulars with power rarely play anything "too" broken - no Academies here.  We wanna keep the other 15 guys involved.   Typical deck choices for us are Hulk, Keeper, Oath, Dragon, Enchantress, and Zoo.

[Montana_Gamer]

About 1/4 of the field is powered here, we have 2 stax, 1 void, 1 rector trix, 1 keeper, 1 tog, myself who plays different decks, right now burning desire, and 1 person who just got the power and is debating what he wants to play, i think he has keeper built.

And then we have the unpowered people who play sligh, type 2 blue-green, sui, and stompy.

[Maxx Matt]

hi,

In Italy, we have a National League with weekly sanctioned tourney in some different cities and with a mean of 35-40 players, 25-30 of which are fully powered.

The typology played by each player are different by tourney, due to the fast shift of the meta, from aggro ( Madness, all the TnT hybrids, Ahkh, Goblin, Suicide ), to combo ( nowadays all combo players have swapped their Illusion-Donate deck to the far more solid Storm based one... so imagine a tourney with 10-12 fully powered Long.dec or RectalAgony or Shining... ) and sometimes to control ( i'll play Keeper and some other players did very well with Hulk, MonoGushAtog or Workshop.dec ).

The possibility that we have of seing all these powered players in a tourney is due the fact that every player has the NEED to play and travel a lot all around the different cities to improve the amount of good and high ranked players in a single tourney.

Normally we ( me and Siral ) play in Bologna were we can find usually up to 10 powered and skilled players to test with....

I'm the more boring player to test against due to my choice to sell allmy cards and rely only on the restricted card pool that composed  my full powered keeper  


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Maxx Matt
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[Skeeter974]

I play lots of casual magic with my neighbor but the local place where I am (Washington, PA) is the Gaming Dungeon. Once i get my decks together and get some power I will start being a regular there. The people there have no idea what this site is and have decks that you guys wouldnt believe.. There is a good bit of power but most of the decks are very rogue but play really well. Some decks that are played that you may be familiar with:

Sligh, this is in every meta
Mono-U control, powered with drains, does very well.
So much freaking aggro of every color, make for a good time. Playing against combo and control gets old.
Burning Desire deck, semi powered, havnt seen it played.
Odd combo decks

I took sui black once and got laughed at because they never heard of it.
I would have taking fish to break some face but I was afraid of the massive humiliation i would recieve if i didnt do well with it.. i think i regret doing that.

So overall its a fun meta that doesnt do too much netdecking (phew, the top 8 wont have like 6 gro-a-togs in it)

[PhOeNiX]

My meta is mostly dominated by aggressive decks.

The majority of the players are kids, and don't have the resources to sport decks other than Sligh, Suicide Black, and White Weenie. There is also a few that bring their own lil rogue creations.

We have some powered players. Peter (DicemanX) and Richard (Shock Wave) bring either Dragon or Landstill. Peter has quite an extensive (and impressive ) collection and sometimes brings Hulk or wMUD.

Depending on the turnout, we usually draw some Keeper builds, more Hulk, Stax and wMUD, and others. A good friend of mine, Mike Kirshbaum, will always bring some sort of fully powered combo, from Long.dec to Enchantress

And myself, well, I don't play too often. I just hang around to watch some T1 every now and then.

[kl0wn]

Quote (CrazyCarl @ Oct. 03 2003,20:05)There are about 6 fully powered players who can play all manner of decks, then one semi-powered player and one who borrows stuff to build decks.  There are usually 6-8 real decks, then everyone else.  I can't usually predict who's playing what which is cool.

What Carl meant to say is that our environment is infested with storm combo at the moment.

We had our first hour and forty-five minute tournament today. The freaking combo players are ruining the environment. Not that combo is dominating per se, but the dominant players have been playing lots of Long.dec and scaring off the other players.

The top 4 today was 1 Hulk and 3 Burning Wish + Storm combo decks. It was horrible.

[Smmenen]

Horrible?  That sounds great.

Steve

[MarkPharaoh]

Quote (Smmenen @ Oct. 05 2003,16:36)Horrible?  That sounds great.

Steve

lol, how is it great scaring off little kids?

[Eastman]

Sounds horrible to me.


Don't worry... change is coming.

[Maxx Matt]

Quote (kl0wn @ Oct. 05 2003,01:29)The top 4 today was 1 Hulk and 3 Burning Wish + Storm combo decks. It was horrible.

Seems the same composition of Top8 of our last weekly tourney here in Italy: 4 combo, 1 Hulk, 1 L&Sa and 1PyrostaticSligh. ( Results are Up on Net, if someone want them to compare feel free to msg me. )

Final result: First Hulk, Second L&S, 3-8 are ComboDecks and the lone HateSligh ( 3 tendrils based ones and 1 rector based ones )  

Seems that Control has some real hope to win even just now in this New Combo Era.

Keeper finished 10 and 12 if I don't rememeber wrong .


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Maxx Matt
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[Zhalfirin]

I play at C&J's, in Newark, California.  We have weekly sanctioned tournaments and thus the decks that people bring are constantly changing, though players do seem to have some preferences.  Due to the changing meta, I think it's better to give a breakdown of the (semi) powered players (in alphabetical order):

Brent (UnstableCornBread):  Fully powered.  Prefers control.  Has played Tog recently.
Brian Morgan (Fishhead):  Fully powered.  My gut says he likes aggro (loved TnT and Masque), but will play control/combo, too.  Hasn't played much recently due to marriage and temporary occupation relocation.
Brian Woo: Fully powered.  Definitely prefers control.  I don't think I've ever seen this guy not run blue.  Has been playing Tog for a while.
David (Webster):  Semi powered.  Prefers disruptive decks.  Used to play Void but has since moved on to Fish.
Justin (Saucemaster):  Fully powered.  Prefers aggro-control.  Recently, however, he has played Long.dec.
Ken (KiLO):  Fully Powered.  I think he prefers disruptive decks.  Recently, he has played Mask and wMUD.
Max (spevack):  Fully Powered.  Prefers control.  Last seen in Battle with a Plated Sliver in the sideboard.
Me (Zhalfirin): Fully powered.  Prefers disruptive decks.  Played wMUD & Long.dec recently.
Phuong: Fully powered (via loans).  Prefers control (I think).  Has played Tog recently.
Tom (Raziel): Fully powered.  Loves to play everything.  Last saw him with Dragon.

Note: I mean no disrespect to the other, non-powered players, but this site seems more interested in the powered decks.

The rest of our field is mostly aggro (sligh, sui, or R/G) with a splash of blue control. In the summertime, our numbers were as high as 45+, but lately the attendance has been around 20+.

[Raziel]

Zhalfirin,
      Just to add a few fully powered players at C&J to the list:

Dan (Znarx) hulk, mud, trix
Andrej (Hieroglyphics) gro, re-animator
Dustin (Shortguy) keeper, mask, trix
Shawn - no account on tmd? - bazaar madness last week.

Most guys on both list can put together any deck to play or test against. So the meta is always current.

[Zhalfirin]

Raziel,

Thanks for completing the list of C&J's powered players.  I knew I would forget some players ( on me). Actually there is another I remember now:

Jon Flores (lurking_evil): semi-powered.  seems to like aggro. last seen playring r/g zoo.