Mythic Championship III is in the books as the first Mythic Championship played on Arena. 64 players composed of 28 MPL members and 36 challengers competed on Day 1 of the tournament, hoping to make the top 12 and qualify for Day 2 by playing 8 rounds of Swiss. These 12 players would join MPL players Brad Nelson, Brian Braun-Duin, Ken Yukuhiro, and Rei Sato, who pre-qualified for the top 16 of the tournament by winning their respective divisions in the MPL Spark Split series leading up to the tournament.
First, we can simply look at metagame breakdown of the entire tournament and all of the top 16 decks:
Even though this data represents a very small sample size either way, we can get a clearer view of which decks performed the best on day 1 of the tournament by removing the 4 players who pre-qualified for Day 2.
Esper Control by Shota Yasooka
Esper Control had the highest metagame share at the beginning of the tournament, especially in the hands of MPL players, and it maintained a very good conversion rate to the top 16. Shota Yasooka was the top finisher with the deck in 7th place. He also had the most interesting card choice of the four Esper Control decks in the top 16, with 2 copies of Bolas’s Citadel in the maindeck. Marcio Carvalho notched a 9th place finish with a more traditional version of the deck that included the full 12 of the Planeswalkers that represent this archetype.
Esper Control by Marcio Carvalho
The six White Aggro players in this tournament were comprised of four Boros versions, one Azorius version, and one Mono-White version. The maindecks among these variants are generally the same, but each has access to different sideboard cards. Lee Shi Tian and Kentaro Yamamoto were able to crack the top 16 with Azorius and Boros, respectively, while Rei Sato brought another Boros list directly to Day 2.
Boros Aggro by Kentaro Yamamoto
Azorius Aggro by Lee Shi Tian
Esper Hero was the second-most played deck among MPL players, bringing the share of Esper colors among MPL players extremely high. However, it had some lackluster results on day 1 of the tournament, with only Kai Budde earning his way into Day 2 with the deck. Brad Nelson and Brian Braun-Duin brought the deck directly to day 2, which obscures the deck’s poor performance when only looking at the Top 16 metagame percentage. However, both Brad and Kai went on to make the top 4, which could suggest that the deck is powerful in the winner’s metagame but requires a high skill level to pilot. This makes some sense, as it is a midrange deck that has the option to configure itself many different ways in each matchup.
Esper Hero by Brad Nelson
Brad, BBD, and Kai all worked together for this event, so the only difference between their decklists was that Kai was running 1 copy of Ugin, the Ineffable over Mortify.
Mono Red Aggro had a strong performance, with two of its five pilots making the top 12 and Shahar Shenhar taking it all the way to the top 4.
Mono Red Aggro by Shahar Shenhar
Raphael Levy and Shahar Shenhar had very similar maindecks, with Shahar trimming one copy of Fanatical Firebrand for the second copy of Chandra, Fire Artisan. He also included a third copy in the sideboard, giving him a whopping 7 copies of the game-defining 4-drops that let the red deck compete for value in longer games.
Bant Midrange was piloted by a sizable 9 players on day 1, but failed to bring any of these pilots to day 2 of the tournament. Hopefuls for this archetype can have their spirits slightly lifted by Ken Yukuhiro, who managed to finish 5th after taking the deck directly into the top 16, and Simon Goertzen, who made the top 16 as the lone pilot of a Simic variant of this archetype.
Bant Midrange by Ken Yukuhiro
Simic Ramp by Simon Goertzen
Sadly for fans of Arclight Phoenix, the Izzet Phoenix deck that attracted the highest number of Challenger pilots also performed the worst. The deck had one solid 8th-place finish in the hands of MPL member Jean-Emmanuel Depraz.
Izzet Phoenix by Jean-Emmanuel Depraz
The final archetype that made it to the top 16 of Mythic Championship III is none other than Simic Nexus in the hands of eventual champion Matias Leveratto.
Simic Nexus by Matias Leveratto
Only three players brought this deck to the tournament, and it managed to take down the entire event. Matias demonstrated a high level of skill while piloting this deck in feature matches throughout the tournament, frequently using sideboard plans and taking lines of play that surprised the commentators. This could indicate that the deck is quite powerful in this metagame if one is able to master the deck.
After three exciting days of high-level gameplay on Arena, Mythic Championship III cannot be considered anything other than a massive success. Even though the initial metagame looked extremely skewed towards Esper, the winner’s metagame featured a very healthy variety of decks from several archetypes. It was certainly more fun to watch traditional Best-of-3 standard played at the highest level on MTG Arena rather than the failed duo-standard format that was featured at the first large Arena tournament, the Mythic Invitational. The players who came with the strongest decklists including comprehensive sideboard plans for the expected metagame were the ones who reached the top standings in the tournament.
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