Modern is all the rage right now with all the Regional Championships taking place played in that format. We have witnessed RCs in Europe, Brazil, and Canada with the US RC still ahead of us.

Can we use some take-aways from the ones that have already happened to inform our decisions and predict what's going to occur in the upcoming weekend? I think so!

Let's analyse what we'd predicted before the previous RC weekend, examine the outcomes, and reframe how we think about the upcoming Regional Championship.

Initial Predictions

Regional Championships were supposed to be the first really big tournaments that would feature the format after the (un)bans. We did have a slew of online results to go off of, so there was good basis for the predictions. Since players would be fighting for PT invites but also Worlds qualifications, the competition would be absolutely cutthroat.

The big three were Energy, Station Breach combo, and Dimir Frog Oculus; midrange-aggro, combo, blue tempo respectively. 

Players divided into two camps - you play one of the top three or try to find a strategy that neatly attacks those from a different angle. While a deck that's good against all of them would be a no-brainer, one could try to devise a strategy that is solid against 2 out of 3 - or at least they might think so.

The RC Weekend

Later, the RC weekend happened where Brazilians, Canadians, and Europeans battled to win their respective regionals - including myself.

As the weekend approached, we started seeing a slight uptick in BW Blink and much larger emergence of Eldrazi Ramp. Some people switched last minute to new hotness strats, others stuck to their guns.

What actually happened? 

Let's look at the data compiled by Frank Karsten.

As far as the representation of decks is concerned, 25% was Energy (Boros+Mardu) - a quarter of the entire metagame. While the top1 spot was predictable, such a gigantic share was much less so.

Oculus in second comes with no surprise as players love the feeling of agency and blue decks. Crucially, the drop-off between the first and the second deck is as big as that second deck's total share!

While we didn't find Breach in third, it was a close fourth right behind Eldrazi Ramp that had picked up a lot of steam. 

This closes the top4, as every subsequent deck has a meaningfully lower representation. Still, we see fan favourite strategies like Belcher, Titan, Yawgmoth, or the new BW Blink. I think it's fair to say it was a tournament of four decks...or was it?

We know the representation but let us now juxtapose it with how well they actually did.

Let me start with an un-honourable mention in UB Oculus. The deck did awful that weekend. The matrix indicates it had 46.9% win rate which is truly disappointing. 

The top decks are somewhat predictable but with a couple of spicy additions.

First, I will examine the most represented decks, so we get a view of how they actually performed.

Energy - 51.8%

Oculus - 46.9%

Ramp - 52.7%

Breach - 54%

Excellent performances except for that one (blue)black horse. Considering that Breach and Energy were super popular and had a target on them, one might say that they won considerably more than anticipated.

Two surprises of the weekend among relatively popular decks are BW Blink and Domain Zoo. They performed very well - and they are fundamentally fair creature strategies!

What to Expect in Portland?

The big question now is what is going to happen in Portland then? Here are my predictions.

Players will realise that Frog is a genuinely bad deck (with numerous still clamouring it's a skill issue thing) BUT it won't be enough to push a sufficient number of players away from it to really skew its representation. Therefore, Frog will still be present in the top5 most popular decks and player still need to respect it. While some may say that there's no reason to respect it if it's truly bad, that is not actually how it works. It's bad across the board but individual decks might still struggle. For instance, Titan wouldn't want to play against Frog, despite its overall low win rate.

I also reckon that Eldrazi will be the second most popular deck in the tournament. It has shown its strength against the top decks, eventually becoming one. It's also relatively easy and safe to pick up if you don't have a ton of time to test which is pure upside. Builds with Karn give Breach players a headache - and that's the version I expect the most.

Energy and Breach are not going anywhere. They are in the firm top3 and as results proved - they cannot be hated out. Players already sided in double digits of cards against Breach and it persisted at the top of the standings. There might be developments in the builds themselves now anticipating a wall of hate.

Last but not least, I genuinely believe that BW Blink is here to stay for longer. Despite being a completely fair creature strategy, it's shown that it's to be reckoned with. While often compared to Energy as another fair creature deck, each has its strengths. Energy is super lean and efficient while BW can interact on different axes and is more disruptive overall, in addition to being much less prone to mass removal.

My Recommendation

As far as I'm concerned, the two best choices are Breach and Eldrazis.

If you know me, you're going to be left unsurprised, as I have been championing Breach for a couple of years now, before Opal unban or before the very printing of The One Ring. However, now the deck is truly at its absolute peak. It can kill on turn two, it can interact with faster decks, it can outgrind fair strategies, it can brute force hate or circumvent it. There are also so many ways to build it that I trust it can be built to exploit the expected metagame, be it by playing four colours and Portable Hole or maybe Boseijus with Life from the Loam.

Eldrazi is also an inherently strong deck that's tough to hate out except for Consign to Memory. As we've established, Frog is going to be on a decline which is a boon for the deck. It has some nigh-unbeatable draws like turn two Karn or truly over-the-top plays like turn four-five hardcast Emrakul. Interwoven are key interaction spells like Kozilek's Command or Kozilek's Return.

Conclusion

All in all, the metagame is still evolving although not a break-neck pace. I think it's going to be more of a reshuffle of existing decks rather than something brand new.

I'm excitedly waiting to see what players do and how it shapes the meta for weeks to come!