Magic: The Gathering

Mythic Championship IV Barcelona Top 8

07/27/2019

Magic: The Gathering‘s Mythic Championship IV in Barcelona has been in full swing the past couple of days! The entire event has been rocked by Hogaak, a deck that is still very much a threat even after the Bridge From Below ban. That said, Tron, Jund, and Phoenix decks have also had a good showing. Today we got a riveting day of close competition sprinkled with effective turn 2 Hogaak wins.

Here are the Top 8 standings:

Mythic Championship IV Top 8

Urza Thopter Sword – Manuel Lenz
Hardened Scales – Alvaro Fernandez Torres
Eldrazi Tron – Sean Gifford
Mono-Red Phoenix – Juan Jose Rodriguez Lopes
G Tron – Thoralf Severin
Jund – David Mines
Jund – Zhiyang Zhang
Hogaak – Martin Muller

What do these Mythic Championship standings mean?

Mostly, these standings are a further affirmation that Jund is back after a long hiatus in Tier 2/1.5 purgatory. The deck has received a ton of new tools from MH1 and the recent standard sets, and it was well-positioned in the Mythic Championship meta. Assassin’s Trophy does a lot in keeping it in against its old nemesis Tron.

We also see that Hogaak, while an incredibly busted deck, does rely on its graveyard to be truly oppressive. Almost everyone in this top 8 is running Leyline of the Void or Ravenous Trap, both essentially providing free graveyard-exiling effects. We saw yesterday that Leyline of the Void was actually the number one most played card this weekend in this event, specifically to hinder the Hogaak decks that made up 21.4% of the metagame.

As such, we see Hogaak only getting one copy into the Top 8 after navigating the field of graveyard hate at this event. While this may point to the deck not being as good as many thought it would be, there is a certain amount of uncertainty around that thought process. This event had open decklists, so players were able to shape their sideboards for the field. This is most likely what led to Leyline of the Void being such a prominent card.

Conclusion

Tomorrow will be a day full of exciting, high-level Magic at the Mythic Championship IV Barcelona Finals! Be sure to catch all the action on the Magic Official Twitch Channel.