SoCal Modern MetaGame Breakdown Week 3: Banlist?!

Hello everyone and welcome to the best week in Magic: the Gathering history!

First and foremost, let's do a quick overview of the past couple of RCQs. Unfortunately, we do not have full data for the recent Fire and Dice RCQs, but we will be including them in the top 8 data, as we do have those decklists.

As usual, high presence for a lot of the standard pillars of the format. While that did not change, this did: the top 2 presence decks have been hit a serious way, and the highest conversion winrate deck (titan) has been as well. Expect to see a serious shakeup, and to see people brewing heavily with Violent Outburst and to a lesser extent, Umezawa's Jitte.

A few new additions this week in Dimir finally finding its first top 8 despite being one of the most played decks in every room, as well has Neobrand coming back alongside our first time seeing Hammertime in what feels like half a decade. All this and a resurgence in Boros just ahead of a serious banlist which should, again, seriously shake up the meta.

Card of the Week:

Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury!

Thank God, thank GOD that WotC is finally recognizing how utterly broken Titan is. Like, the deck apparently has a 58% winrate in paper, and 42% of online challenge players on the deck were converting to top 8, like what else could you possibly need to do something, ANYTHING about this stupid flipping deck.
But more importantly, RIP to the midrange killer, Phlage, the GOAT, the third best titan of all time, long may she stay dead as doorknobs and maybe we'll be able to play midrange/value decks again.

Or not.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to this weeks RCQ winners, Troy Brown and Chad Derk from Fire and Dice, as well as whoever won TopDeck Keep's two slotter this weekend on top of Konan Ahmed! We'll likely update this article when we hear back on that, but due to me being in Cincinnati, I'm late enough as is.

Also, huge congrats to Zach Aymie for winning the entirety of Regional Championship Cincinnati, and Jake Bailey for placing in fourth!

-Kazi Baker