High Level Metagame discussion (US)

Hey all -

I almost sold all my cards earlier this year, but decided not to.
About a week ago a guy I play D&D with sent me a pic of his Jyhad cards (maybe he has some DS/AH/Sabbat too). I said "let's play!". I think I can get together a table of 4, esp if I lend out some decks/cards.

These guys are smart; but out of the game for a long time. So I'll have to bring them along and get them up to speed.

Question for you all especially US Methuselahs - what is the current metagame? What has the impact of new cards since Heirs of the Blood been? What's the current hotness? Unnamed all the way all the days?

I'd say no need to sweat about that.
Unless you're about to attend a higher profile larger tournament.

Besides the tournament front has been even quieter than normally due to the pandemic.

I'd say that the meta game should be, even more than usually, three things:
fun, Fun, FUN!

Last two games I had some weeks back, they blindly first chose my "Dom malks was a mistake to bring back" Malk '94 deck for me. I built it to show the new players of our group in advance what the G6 unrevealed malks would be capable of. It performed just as well as you expect after secure Haven Landed on Gilbert and I had five obf-dom vamps out. There were stealth bleeds for six, seven, some trust based spying missions and so forth. Oh and torpored malks ofc, even with the "new" OBF combat end that did not exist in '94 now in the deck.

Second game they blindly chose my trap-post eurobrujah with Leatherface support, that in turn led to situation where my prey Lutz found out that Trap combat with Beast who has Torn signpost tends not to end well. It seems even if your deck is just trash T+T+T every dog has it's day. Provided they go after soft targets. We had fun, I lost in the end, as was guaranteed when I saw the picked deck.

Overall I guess the meta can be dissected from TWDA and event reports, but at the same time, there's no real reason for it. One of the beautiful aspects of deck building card games is how the local meta shifts depending on what people bring out. If you're just starting out, you're in unique position to set the starting point from where the shift starts, so why not let everyone bring what they want? Why let others choose the starting position for you? If you wish that starting point to be Lutz, Unnamed, Tupdog, Legionnaires, Stanislava, Girls etc etc then go for it I quess? But it could also be city Gangrel crusade vote deck and others in that "caliber" that then start to shape your local "meta". You're the ones who decide what fun is to you.