MTG Arena July 2021 season in review

Hello and welcome to another season in review for MTG Arena! I didn't write one for June or May because I wasn't playing very much Arena outside of my daily quests. This month however, I was really jamming with a sweet homebrew of mine and ended off the season pretty decently. The deck being B/W Yorion Doom Foretold. I'm a big fan of cards that have weird or unusual conditions to get payout from them. Doom Foretold (and several other cards in the deck) fit that bill perfectly, and I like that it forces you to build around it. In the right shell with the right curve it puts in a ton of work.

Season review

This season was an interesting one on the ladder. It felt like there were clear periods of time where certain decks or archetypes were mostly what was on ladder. I'm guessing people were either influenced by streamers or certain decks that did well in tournaments, it usually doesn't feel as rigid as it did this month. Another thing, Brainstorm was banned 2/3rds of the way through the season. When that happened the ladder definitely became far more overrun with aggro decks, which for me wasn't that big of a problem. The way I've built the deck favours playing against aggro decks as it is very much an anti-creature deck first and foremost.

That being said, my season went fairly well I think. I had a pretty decent win percentage leading into the top of Diamond 1. When I hit my Mythic win and in match, I lost to a B/G Monsters deck, that had lines such as Llanowar Elves into Rotting Regisaur/Lovestruck Beast into The Great Henge. That deck was quite the beating. After that, my rank plummeted. I just kept losing and fell back down to Diamond 3. However, the rest of the season went very well after my fall from grace. I lost no matches ranking up into Mythic, and then lost very few matches in Mythic itself. I barely missed out on getting into top 1200 this season. I might have been able to get in if I had played a little more. It's nice to know that at least what I've built is a viable ladder deck. Based on the results I've seen from some tournaments it would probably do pretty poorly as a tournament deck. The current top performing tourney decks are among my worst matchups.

Yorion, Doom Foretold deck breakdown

Here's the decklist I ended the season with:

I've been playing and messing around with different Doom Foretold decks for a while now, both in Historic and Standard. I had never fully invested into playing one on the ladder before. It is very fun, and very satisfying. I've tried a bunch of different color combos, without Yorion as a companion, and using cards like Dance of the Manse as a win condition. I'm not gonna say that this is the best way to build a Doom Foretold deck, but it certainly has gone through a lot of iteration and trials. This version is very competitive and I find it rarely stumbles. Prior to the release of Amonkhet Remastered I would say that having another color (usually blue) to fill some gaps was almost necessary, but that is no longer the case.

Card choices

I would say everything that is a 4-of is the core of the deck, it's what you're really trying to do and curve out with. I would be pretty hard pressed to change any of those cards or trim them in numbers. Oath of Kaya and Treacherous Blessing are really the glue that hold this deck together. Having an enchantment version of Lightning Helix that can be sacrificed to Doom Foretold or abused with Yorion is so important. If it wasn't able to shoot your opponents face, the deck would be so much worse. It functions both as an efficient removal spell and a way to help close out games against aggro decks. The amount of times I play it and get a Yorion blink (or double blink) to suddenly put pressure on their life total is reasonably high. It's obviously a much worse card against control decks, but it is still very valuable to be able to kill an opposing Narset. Treacherous Blessing is the only source of raw card advantage. The downside is relevant, but it usually isn't that bad and I feel that I rarely lose games because of the life loss. I would say its greatest strength is that it can really help you out of a bad mulligan. It's just so mana efficient for the amount of immediate card advantage you get. It's a good sac target for Doom Foretold, but it's an even better blink target for Yorion. Target is a bad word choice, since Yorion doesn't actually target but says choose which is how it actually works. There's no better feeling than mulliganing and curving Blessing into Yorion.

Birth, Trial, and Blight are the star 2-drops of the deck. They all function extremely well with Yorion and each serve a purpose that no other card on Arena really can. You almost always want a opening hand with one of these cards.

Trial of Ambition should be obvious, it's to kill creatures. It's currently the most efficient permanent at doing that. The Birth of Meletis ensures I'm hitting all my land drops (the deck is very mana intensive) as well as giving me a big ol' blocker for those silly creature decks. Wall of Blossoms does exist on Arena (although not in my colours) which gives me hope that Wall of Omens may make it on one day. If it does I would probably go with 3/3 split. Lithoform Blight is my cheap cantrip. I've experimented with Golden Egg, Ichor Wellspring, and of course in the blue version Omen of the Sea. There are many 2-drop permanents that draw a card on ETB, however, Lithoform Blight actually covers a major weakness the deck has. And that is problematic lands. Manlands like Faceless Haven and the new DnD set manlands are a huge problem, since all of my removal is sorcery speed. This solves that problem rather elegantly, by both shutting them off as well as functioning as a turn two permanent-based cantrip. A nice feature of it is that you don't have to worry about playing it on turn two and losing to a manland played after that since you can always move where it is attached with Yorion's trigger. The rest of the 2-drops kind of just fill out the curve. The discard creatures are so you have something pro-active to do against slower decks. I have a 3/1 split between them since Elderfang Disciple is a cleric for Acquisitions Expert's trigger. It isn't super relevant but it does occasionally matter.

The true star of the deck and the one 4-of that could probably not be a 4-of but is too sweet to not play 4, is Demonic Pact. I love this card so much. It's slow, flexible, accrues card advantage, and can straight up make you lose the game. What's not to love? Ok but really, this card is the premier 4-drop to curve into. The loss condition is surprisingly easy to manage. Between resetting it with Yorion, sacrificing it to Doom Foretold, or in a pinch exiling it with Vanishing Verse, I very rarely lose to being forced to choose the "Lose the game" option. I do think that I could maybe play 3, there are some matchups where I cut 1, but personally I like the idea of playing 4. It is a very "me" style of card and I enjoy the build around challenge of it.

The rest of the cards are all part of my interaction suite. For a very long time I played 4 Skyclave Apparition but often times it was either an inferior removal spell to something else, or didn't have a target. The 4th one is in the board for decks that employ a similar strategy to mine where it is non-creature permanent based gameplay. The 3 Thoughtseize are in a similar vein. Against some decks I need the ability to interact with the opponents hand (generally control decks) but often times I draw too many and it's just awkward. The two wraths are essentially flex slots. There's no real reason they both aren't Kaya's Wrath, I just don't own 2 and didn't wanna spend a wildcard on another. The lifegain on it is relevant, as you often have a wall from birth or the discard creatures.

The mana base is pretty straightforward. You need a pretty decent chunk of basics for your births and Fabled Passages. I'm fairly confident that Castle Ardenvale is the best utility land the deck can play. Between all the cantrips and modal land spells, I pretty rarely find myself colour or mana screwed. More often I may have awkward hands where I need to play a come into play tapped land on turn two or three, but that is also pretty infrequent.

Notable exclusions

I had a playset of Elite Spellbinder in the deck for a little while. They were good when Jeskai and Azorius Control were more popular on the ladder. It was a way to interact and slow them down while applying a little bit of pressure. The real issue with them was that I had way too many 3-drops and I often found myself struggling to play all of my cards in other matchups.

I also have a notable lack of planeswalkers in the 75. They don't really have the best synergy with Doom Foretold and Yorion's. I have had Kaya, Orzhov Usurper in the sideboard in the past, but I always found she never quite did enough. I do keep considering testing out some number of Gideons, but I haven't really gotten around to it. My maindeck feels like it's in a very solid place and I'm not certain what I would want to side it in against.

Sideboard

The sideboard is kind of mess. It changes fairly regularly, like a good sideboard should, but it's changing because I'm not sure what the best choices for it are. I'm reasonably happy with where it's at right now. The Doomskars are specifically that over a conventional wrath because mono-black aggro has been popping up a lot and the ability to protect my board wipe from a Thoughtseize has actually been very valuable. I can recall only 1 instance where drawing it and having it cost 5 mana was actually game losing. The Mazemind Tomes are for control decks, so I can do things with my mana when I want to play around counter spells. As well as keep up with their card advantage.

The number of graveyard hate cards fluctuates pretty regularly. I was playing Go Blank earlier in the season as it is quite good against Jeskai variants. It does double duty of keeping the number of cards in their hand low and sniping any early Magma Opuses they discard. I'm not certain if I should be playing Rest in Peace over Soul-Guide Lantern as there isn't really an all in graveyard deck in the format right now. I haven't seen Izzet Phoenix since Brainstorm was suspended, and lantern is pretty good against Rakdos Arcanist since it doesn't get hit by Feed the Swarm and can come down before a turn one discard spell. I'm not really certain which would be better against the Mizzix's Mastery decks.

Matchups

The good matchups for the deck are all varieties of creature decks, obviously. But, it can struggle with creature decks that tend to swarm and go wide very quickly. For example if elves has a fast start with Llanowar Elves it can be extremely difficult to keep up. Sometimes the way those games play out is it's wrath or bust. The upside is often 1 wrath is almost enough to win the game by itself. Gruul can be tough, but only if they have a start with Burning-Tree Emissary. In the matchup I believe that card is the most important for them to have in their opening hand, Llanowar Elves being second most important.

One of the decks strengths is that it can easily deal with decks that run a lot of non-creature permanents. Between Doom Foretold, Skyclave Apparition, and Vanishing Verse, you get to deal with often problem permanents in game 1 very easily.

The deck's worst matchups are Jeskai Control and Jund Food. Jeskai is especially tough as a control deck since my strategy of bringing in Mazemind Tome against the slower decks gets hard countered by them naturally playing Prismari Command. Jund food often generates too much card advantage through Trail of Crumbs and Korvold. The real issue is they have so many other must deal with permanents in addition to those that it is often overwhelming for the deck. The deck can also struggle with some midrange decks like the colorless ramp deck that plays Forsaken Monument. There was a week where it was really popular for whatever reason, and I ended with a 7-7 record against it. I think it's also worth mentioning that I did struggle a bit against B/W Auras, but I only played against it 3 times.

Season conclusion

Overall I'm happy with how the season went and how I played. My top rank hit was 1245ish (not sure why untapped didn't track that) and I ended the season at rank 1281, just shy of top 1200 for the Mythic Invitational. Speaking of, my final match of the season potentially could have gotten me into top 1200. I did win it, the issue was that I won the match after 3pm, the time the season was set to end at. And it was especially frustrating because it was a very long match not only because of the matchup, but because my opponent was playing extremely slowly. After the game ended my rank didn't go up and I was sent to the season rewards screen. Unfortunately I'll never know if I would have gotten it, but oh well. Next season I'll probably experiment more with a B/W/G version.

Thanks for reading!