I know most Magic: the Gathering players weren’t expecting the latest Star Trek Universes Beyond set to make that much of a difference in competitive play. However, with the Magic World Championship 32 coming this weekend from Atlanta, Georgia, it seems like Wizards of the Coast might have made a difference with the new set. According to Frank Karsten’s metagame breakdown for the event, the most played deck is a Red and White aggro deck featuring The Naked Time. The new card from Star Trek is a saga, check it out below.
The deck, named Boros Pixie, is the most played deck at the event with 18.8% of the field. It’s an aggro deck that utilizes Nurturing Pixie (pictured above) to return cards that give you value when they enter back to your hand. That includes the uncommon The Naked Time. With those cards, and the cards Momo, Friendly Flier and Sage of the Skies, you can attack for 13 damage on turn 3. As most players know, in a 1 on 1 game, getting attacked for that much damage that quickly is lights out.
This isn’t the first time that a Nurturing Pixie deck has been at the top of the Standard format, but this is a new-ish shell for the deck. They’ve usually been Blue and White-based, but adding Red cards to the deck makes for a more aggressive tilt. There are also copies of the new card from Star Trek, Captain James T. Kirk. That is a flagship (pun intended) card for the new set with the most iconic Trek character front and center.
Additionally, there are two normal Boros Dragons players who registered The Naked Time, so that bumps the percentage of the field up to 20%. For a new card from a new set that isn’t a mythic rare to do numbers like that? That’s kind of insane. Outside of that, there are other decks in the field, but none that come out of nowhere to utilize a brand-new Star Trek card as the centerpiece. If you’re playing on MTG Arena, the decklists for the event go up when it starts, so you’ll be able to load up any of the field on your account and play.
There are 29 different deck archetypes represented across 128 players at the event this weekend. Players are battling for cash prizes and invites to the Magic Pro Tour on the weekend. Even with The Naked Time taking up the highest metagame percentage, that doesn’t mean that it’ll automatically bring its pilot to a World Championship trophy. There are plenty of other archetypes that are equally as powerful as this in Standard currently. But for Wizards of the Coast, it’s a huge win to have multiple new cards from the Star Trek set changing up the metagame.
The Magic World Championship coverage begins Friday, November 13th at 11 AM ET on twitch.tv/magic and the Play MTG YouTube channel!
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