It would have been hard for me to give any more disclaimers about the limits of this sample, which are everywhere in the article. There’s literally a paragraph about it, on top of numerous other smaller mentions. Based on what data we do have, we can draw some limited conclusions on format themes (that get more limited as we move down from Tier 1 to Tier 2), and that’s exactly what happened here. Plenty of players and authors have drawn conclusions on a single event in SCG Baltimore, and we are going to do the same thing here with an additional 23 tournaments and over 100 new decks.

I wouldn’t say they want aggro at first. The huge uptick in Grixis Midrange (from Tier 3 obscurity to Tier 1) and Jund’s early head start are great indicators of a healthy format. That said, I expect to get at least one more fair deck in Tier 1, whether another blue-based deck or a Company deck. Aggro should stick around, but the format should feel much slower than it has in the past. Win-win for Modern!

He’s older than an Eldrazi hedron, but not quite as ceaselessly hungry as another candidate.

Fixed! Thanks for that catch; would probably have missed it for a while. Glad you enjoyed the metagame update! Stay tuned for more next week.

Jund’s presence at the top is surprising to many, but I’m not sure why. Although AV is an uphill battle for the Jund mage, it’s a much better answer-deck for the aggressive strategies which struggle against Bolt. Moreover, with RG Tron out of the picture in any serious way, the deck looks much better than it was even before Eldrazi. I expect it to stay around Tier 1 for a while.

That said, the Company decks in Tier 3 (and Tier 3 generally) should move around a lot as the format keeps growing. I expect plenty of those decks to make it into Tier 2 within a month.

As for Eldrazi, it’s only been GW and BW so far, although I’m sure that will change as we get more events added.

Hard to kill the “best 3 colors of modern goodstuff” deck.
That’s pretty much it’s greatest strength.

Now we just need a few good counterspells and make BUG/Sultai midrange a T1 deck and I’ll be happy man 🙂

Company decks will likely bounce back. Since the article itself pointed out the sample is quite small (not to mention the time since the banlist shift), I’m inclined to say It was just a meta call for these first few events.

On the other hand, I am surprised to see a deck like Abzan Company languishing in Tier 3 (when it was widely predicted to be Tier 1 in the coming meta), while Kiki Chord is living it up in Tier 2. I get that the meta is currently geared pretty strongly toward aggro, but Kiki’s slower combo kill arguably makes it softer toward that sort of deck than Abzan Company, doubly so if the attackers are evasive. I know, I know, small sample size, but it’s still odd.

Lastly… do we have any data on what the Eldrazi decks that did show up look like? I’m guessing they will be Colorless Stompy decks in line with what Jordan presented on Friday, but I’d like to be sure.