Road to Nationals 2026 Week 3 brings the season is at its peak. We've seen heroes leave the format, and the face of the metagame change drastically week to week.
We were unable to give a deep dive about the week 2 results, but we're going to cross compare them here.
Road to Nationals 2026 Week 3
This chart of results are so utterly different to those from week 1. That first look with Gravy Bones, Shipwrecked Looter and Kassai of the Golden Sand at the top of the metagame are things of the past.
This is the Rosetta Meta now. Or rather it was.
Comparison to Week 2
The snapshot comparison between this week and the week 1 results shows the clear trend towards Earth Midrange.
With the growing popularity of Arakni, Marionette, it was expected that Earth decks would arise to counter that strategy (along with a new, emerging archetype which I'll get to later).
The rise of Earth from here to counter Marionette, and other Mario counters, are all expected to be on the rise from here.
Florian, Rotwood Harbinger
Of the two Earth decks, Florian is somewhat more resilient and the stronger hard counter to Marionette. The ability to play on remarkably small hands thanks to Reaping Blade and Grasp of the Arknight allows it to convert almost entirely to defence against the reaction heavy Assassin, and most other decks in the format.
With the new increase in popularity of the aggressive Florian lists, we see the versatility of the more proactive versions with Go Again attacks and Channel Mount Heroic. It harkens back to the guessing game that players had back when Scepter of Pain was legal; which game plan is this Florian on?
It was thanks to these wins, and his back to back wins at Akihabara and Columbus, that Florian has hit Living Legend as of January 25th 2026. With the lack of a clear aggro deck like Cindra, Dracai of Retribution, the metagame is bound to get slower and more value oriented. The default aggressive deck will likely be Mario, with certain defensive or even Fatigue style strategies as the only things to oppose the Assassin.
Oscilio, Constella Intelligence
It's taken the world a very long time to realise that this deck, when it doesn't brick, is absurdly powerful.
The aggressive Wizard offers a great deal of physical damage across a wide combat chain, with the same Lightning attacks that the late Aurora, Shooting Star attacked with, while all of those cards compound on Volzar, the Lightning Rod to deal very tall Arcane Damage.
Oscilio, Constella Intelligence is a far better user and abuser of the card Gone In a Flash than Aurora was. Pairing it with multiple instants and Lightning Greaves the deck can offer absurd damage for both physical and arcane effects.
This combination of damage on two axes makes Oscilio very potent against Earth, but it can struggle into Marionette, as this Lightning deck blocks poorly, and is very fragile to disruption.
If the metagame veers towards value and slower gameplay, Oscilio could perform very well in that environment.
Verdance, Thorn of the Rose
In previous metagames, Verdance, Thorn of the Rose performed very well into Florian, getting all the time in the world to block efficiently, find Healing Potion and Rampant Growth||Life, and go for an enormous, inevitable combo kill.
Nowadays, with how aggressive Florian was, Verdance is somewhat unfavoured, and has to take on an even more defensive stance as all those attacks with Go Again are pushed up to much higher attack numbers, and then relying on Decomposing when able, and getting a kill with Storm Striders and either Burn Bare or Light Up the Leaves.
With Florian's departure from the format, I expect that there will be a steady increase of Verdance's play rate to deal with Mario and the other Fatigue decks, which are characteristically weak to a deck with a kill as deterministic as Verdance's.
Other Decks
I bring up Fatigue a lot, is it a factor in the meta? Yes, but not as you were expecting. We saw Betsy, Skin in the Game be up for top 8 contention, but now we can expect to see another deck of a similar game plan in Pleiades, Superstar.
This Fatigue Pleiades deck, which put two copies into the top 8 at Columbus, is centred around Rampart of the Rams Head and all nine copies of Tough Smashup to block as efficiently as possible, adding additional breakpoints to key blocks throughout the game.
By fat-decking and using Remembrance, the deck stays relatively healthy throughout the course of the game, while also playing Miller's Grindstone as another source of deck damage. This deck's efficient blocks and resilience to disruption makes it very potent into Marionette, and the nature of the archetype makes it very potent into decks that would be aggressors, such as Dash I/O.
Wrap Up
Road to Nationals 2026 Week 3 offers a startling new look at the metagame. It's been in rapid flux week to week, and I only expect it to change even more dramatically going into the final weeks of the season before the Compendium of Rathe release.
For the latest news on this evolving, competitive card game, keep your eyes close to fabtcg.gg.
