Store Championship season is about to kick off. With no new cards out, we might expect the Worlds meta to define the top of the store champ meta. If so, we’d expect to see the following:
Corp
CI - Multiple variants but all strong and hard to spot right away.
PU - Comrades list in particular made a strong showing and can grind you down quite effectively.
AgInfusion - The Hydra list requires a lot of skill and practice to pull off well, but it has lots of good publicity.
CtM - Strong but no longer oppressive. HHN is still a great tempo card.
I would guess some of the following will also be popular/present.
Skorpios - Because people like to rig-shoot.
Some flavor of prison - Because every meta has that guy.
Some version of asset spam/Moons - Because Shapers are not good vs spam
Runner
Haley - Because Worlds
Val - See above
I would expect to see some or all of these as well.
Smoke - Because some people think Haley is not really the best Shaper.
Geist/Leela - Because some people want to play blue cards.
Sunny - Because people say she is pretty good right now, forgetting about the times she is not.
I’m sure there will be many other things because people do not bring only “the best” decks when playing Store Champs.
What do you think the state of the meta is right now? If you were preparing for a Store Champ and did not know everyone who was likely to show up, what meta would you prepare to face?
Also worth noting event sold out and 17 people attended a GNK in the same part of the country. Suggesting intrest in the game is highest been for some time.
I’d probably organize it by archetype rather than ID, and here’s what I’d guess:
T1 (uniformly good choices)
Regass Anarch (Val first, with MaxX sneaking up behind her, and Ed/Omar distant third)
Hayley Shaper w/ Tapwrm
Brain Rewiring CI
Jinteki Glacier (obviously AgInf, but Palana is waiting in the wings)
CTM (shockingly dogged in an age of shallow multi-access; may secretly be the DTB, especially if Boggs slaps CI back down)
T2 (good choices if you’re good at them)
Smoke (second place equals first loser)
Geist (still feels like he’s one payoff card away from returning to power)
CI Glacier (speaks for itself. Probably harder to play well but the highs are very high)
CI Moons (stronger than expected but I suspect Val beats it and generally suffers splash damage from a lot of the T1 archetypes)
Comrades PU (controversial placement; this deck’s strength is relative to how much hate gets packed out against it and people are on the lookout. Wait for people to leave their Critics and Filters at home)
Gagarin (Zealous Judge and HHN sleep, dreaming of ruining ANR all over again)
T3 (niche meta calls)
Sunny (perhaps stretching the definition of “niche” here)
Leela Gang Sign (send all your hate-tweets to me @realdonaldtrump)
Titan Rush (great vs Anarchs, bad vs Shapers; don’t sleep on it)
Skorps (see above, with added problems vs Film Critic)
Any deck playing Punitive Counterstrike