Hey everyone, Reygon here again with a new meta analysis article. This is coming at the very end of set 7 with only a few weeks until set 8 comes out. I wanted to compare my original predictions of the meta at the release of set 7 versus where we are today.
Looking back at article from June 4th, 2026 these were my old my rankings
Honestly, the list was pretty good and I nailed adding clarity ready for trials to S tier even before she was officially able to play. Here is where i would now rank the contenders as of today.
S: Absence, Clarity, Ready for Trials
A: Haven, War V1, Gearwin, Death, Torque, Genesis, Cadavros, Kilimanjaro
B: Valen, Warcry, Khagan, Sinai, Flip Clarity, Anzudak
C: Krung, Alpha Aster, Machina, Mangate V2, Meanstreak Boosted, Pestilence V1
D: Shadowblade, Shadowlight, Clarity V1, Thragor, Magnate v1, Conquest
F: everything else not listed
To be frank, there isn't a ton of movement on the tier list other than reorganizing the S tier rank. In my opinion there are 2 contenders that stand above the rest with those contenders being Clarity and Absence.
Lets talk about Clarity first. She is so good, a common theme with absence, because of her card advantage and filtering ability. Her trigger attack lets you look at the top 2 cards and lets you decide if you want to draw them or put them to the bottom and draw a new card. This is essentially getting a preordain, a banned card from mtg, for free every single turn. There are 2 main builds that tend to be dominating for clarity.
Zhao li: https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/0162d182-517c-4bdf-97a2-69c8e3520301
War Minions: https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/d6c61784-9846-49a1-9f5f-94dc323b6883
The first one is the zhao li build which is just a hyper aggro deck that is hard to stop and uses clarity to keep cards in hand to end the game as quickly as possible. I believe this deck took the top 3 spots on the season 3 online league. Its fast, its consistent, and punishes anyone who stumbles or doesn't have a way to be competitive in the first few turns.
The second build is the red black war minions build. This is similar to the article i originally posted but has been improved upon by the community. It essentially uses the big and little aresons combined with i am demise as the main win strategy. You produce as many minion tokens as you can, you get a big areson into the oblivion by attacking with contender and putting it into oblivion, then using I am Demise to send one of your minions and one of your opponents clash cards to oblivion to reanimate the big areson. Now every single minion you create, which is a lot, is a 2/2 and every minion also buffs the attack of big areson. So now you can attack for 20 plus damage as soon as turn 4. A very synergistic aggro/combo deck.
the next top dog is Absence, which i would consider to be the top contender above clarity, but it is close. Like clarity, absence benefits from his card advantage ability. But he also combos well with is portal ability that increases attack with portal activations. Just read some past articles about absence to understand why he is so good. Despite the recent eratta changes that prevents cataclysmic surge from being searched up from hidden path and morac getting change to only search from discarded cards, he continues to be powerful. For absence there are 2 typical builds; Black/green and black/green/blue (BUG) discard with nanite assassin.
Black Green Discarded:
Black Green: https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/29c6e83a-f3c4-45ac-9587-08b4c8f93b1b
Black Green Blue (BUG): https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/b9b1a031-415e-4523-991f-b00f7845fee2
Absence black/green finished 1st and 2nd at the most recent PH tournament Clash Makati. It uses the discard package along with death cards, there are a few variants, to abuse portal control and end the game quickly while drawing more cards than you. If you have ever played against this deck and see them resolve a turn 2 cataclysmic surge, you know how demoralizing it can be. You will see many variations of this deck mostly trying out out "meta" the mirror match up games.
The second option, although probably less popular, is the Black/Blue/Green (BUG) version that also utilizes the discarded package but chooses to splash blue to use linn nanite assassin. Linn is great when paired up with bombardment and pestilence the infectious which the black green deck doesn't use as commonly. It just plays a ton of efficient low cost cards to control the board and swing with a wide board to win. This deck is the one I've played more than anything and prefer to the most.
The common denominator between all the clarity and absence decks mentioned above is the strategy of "going wide" with lots of low costed and efficient threats. Having powerful one cost card such as Zhao LI, absence shadow incarnate, and Linn Nanite assassin really allows these cards to succeed. They support the ability to do this by drawing so many cards to keep your hand full and play multiple cards per turn. The previous meta of decks that use here comes the boom and shocking rev have been less popular due to the presence of marucs. The 1 cost safeguard that allows you to negate any big action card to remove your board. The strength of these decks and the presence of marcus encourages a meta of going wide as the control players trying to remove it get blown out by marcus preventing those board wipe turns. This is also why Michael Hamilton was able to take down the Des Moines tournament with Cadavros, his main counter of board wipes was negated by marcus starting in play every game and Hamilton just being an amazing player in general. Built up a huge board of discarded cards, then OTK his opponent once he hit a critical mass of discarded and then deploying the krungs to buff them all.
Some other contenders that got bumped down where both Genesis and Torque for the exact reason I mentioned above. They rely on boom and shock rev to control the board, but marcus has made that plan much less consistent and reliable. If you can pull it off they are still very good decks, but can be blown out by a single card in those decks were aggro is an issue.
I bumped up valen as she has put some some decent results in recent leagues. Cadavros has benefited from the reduced board wipe meta and the power of discarded. Then I also started playing Kilimanjaro more to understand his strength. He is similar to the BUG absence build just takes a bit more setup, but man if you get him going, he is an extremely powerful contender so i bumped him up to A rating.
In summary, the current meta is being lead by Absence and Clarity and their "go wide" approaches with marcus knocking down the board control cards consistency. With set 8 coming out soon, we will see how the meta changes. Its likely that absence and clarity will continue to be S tier options but every set comes with huge changes and adjustements.
thanks for reading! :)
Reygon
