The release of full decklists for the upcoming Mythic Championship V shows that 41% of the field will be leveraging the powerful combination of Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Field of the Dead.
It appears that the preponderance of Golos decks in Week 1 of Throne of Eldraine Standard wasn’t a mirage. 23 of the 68 players at Mythic Championship V, or 33.8% of the field, will be playing Bant Golos, while five players (7.4% of the field) chose the Fires of Invention variant.
The most popular Standard decks at Mythic Championship V. (Golos Fires is incorrectly listed at 8.4% instead of 7.4%.
Green Ramp Dominates the Field
The detailed breakdown of the 68 decks at Mythic Championship V is even more revealing:
- 24 x Bant Golos
- 11 x Simic Ramp
- 8 x Bant Ramp
- 6 x Golgari Adventure
- 5 x Golos Fires
- 4 x Gruul Aggro
- 3 x Mardu Knights
- 3 x Selesnya Adventure
- 1 x Jund Midrange
- 1 x Mono-Red Cavalcade
- 1 x Rakdos Sacrifice
- 1 x Jeskai Fires
48 of the 68 decks—that’s right, 70% of decks—are of the ramp archetype, including both Golos variants as well as Simic or Bant Ramp/Food. Only six decks, or 9% of the field, chose not to play Green.
The dominance of Green ramp at Mythic Championship V is also shown in the most-played cards. There are 169 total copies of Once Upon a Time in the 68 decklists, making it the most-played card by 13. Hydroid Krasis is the second most-played card with 156 copies, followed by Growth Spiral with 138 copies, then Fabled Passage with 128 copies, Questing Beast at 98 copies, and Oko, Thief of Crowns at 94 copies.
Another Clear “Best Deck”
The prevalence of Golos decks, making up over 40% of the field, is the most extreme example of the existence of a clear best deck in Standard resulting in a less-than-diverse Mythic Championship metagame.
But it isn’t the only Mythic Championship to have a homogenized field of decks. In fact, the last two Mythic Championships also had obvious best decks that took up a significant portions of the metagame. In July, 21% of players played Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis at Mythic Championship IV while a month earlier in June at Mythic Championship III, 25% of the field played Esper Control.
Ideally, a metagame with a known best deck would result in players gravitating towards strategies that counter the best deck. However, the fact that over 40% of players at Mythic Championship V decided to play Bant Golos, despite the fact that the deck is the obvious number one deck, speaks volumes about the lack of answers post-rotation. And after moving the next Banned and Restricted update up a full month to October 21, it’s clear Wizards is aware that Field of the Dead (and maybe Golos, Tireless Pilgrim) are actively harming the health of the Standard format.
Mythic Championship V kicks off this Friday at 12 PM Eastern from Long Beach, CA on twitch.tv/magic. And we’re running plenty of Mythic Championship fantasy leagues over on Thousand Leagues! You can enter one of our public leagues for the chance to win an uncut War of the Spark foil rare sheet or some sweet Hipsters gear—or you can start your own league and invite your friends!