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Oko Continues To Dominate in Magic: The Gathering Mythic Championship 7 Qualifier


Magic: The Gathering Arena players from around the world are competing in Mythic Championship VII qualifiers this weekend for a spot in the Mythic Championship VII this December, and Wizards of the Coast has released the decklists of players who made it Day 2 of the event.


Unsurprisingly, "Oko, Thief of Crowns" continues to dominate the Standard meta with 68 out of 102 decks playing the overpowered Planeswalker from Throne of Eldraine. There are Bant Food, Bant Ramp, Sultai Food, and Simic builds that play Oko, and even MTG hall-of-famer Luis-Scott Vargas (LSV) played an Oko deck. He even main-decked four "Noxious Grasp", a black Instant card that could destroy green or white creatures - a perfect removal against Oko or "Questing Beast", "Wicked Wolf".

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What's more surprising is that among all the decks that made it Day 2, 130 copies of "Noxious Grasp" in the main deck.

This is another data point highlighting how unbalanced and unfun Standard is right now despite the recent banning of "Field of the Dead". Oko was already showed its dominance at the Mythic Championship V last weekend, and many players on social media are calling to ban the brutally oppressive card. You can even watch Andrea Mengucci survive a Nissa ultimate at the Top 8 of the MCV here. Oko's current power level explains its huge price spike.

Despite Oko's dominance at the MCQ this weekend, there are still viable non-Oko decks that made it Day 2 such as Izzet Control with "Gadwick, the Wizened", a Blue/White Control deck with a bunch of mass removal cards, and one Esper Stax deck (You can watch me play a version of it below).

It's clear that these Control decks were built to beat Oko decks, and cards like "Brazen Borrower" and "Kaya's Wrath" are seeing more play.

It looks like MTG Standard players will either have to join the Oko bandwagon or find ways to deal against it until WotC decides to ban it. Wizards hinted that possibility in their last ban announcement, when Ian Duke said, "Finally, we're aware of a few other community concerns regarding the Standard environment, including that early acceleration into planeswalkers can be frustrating and that the color green is strong across a variety of Standard archetypes. We'll continue to monitor the health of the environment, but feel it's important to allow the metagame to adjust to the absence of 'Field of the Dead' before further evaluation."

Do you think Oko should be banned in Standard? Share your opinions in the comments area below.

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