I use a few different metrics when looking at the Top 32 metagame. The first is just Raw Volume. The second is Win+, which takes the sum of all wins at X-2 or better in the Swiss and assigns a score; Win+ is helpful in measuring a deck’s Swiss round performance. K-Wins takes all of a deck’s wins and subtracts its losses, Top 8 inclusive; this helps to give a measure of overall performance. The final pair is call Meta Score and Meta Score Above Replacement, which takes the average of Win+ and K-Win to try and position an archetype against its field. This number helps to provide the most robust image of a deck’s performance.
Apologies for the slightly abbreviated post this week – my family just moved and we are still getting settled. On top of that, this upcoming weekend is my spouse’s 40th birthday so I’m knee deep in planning that (and yes if you read this I am planning something; no I won’t tell you what it is). But back to the Magic.
This past weekend the best decks, on balance, were CawGate and Jeskai Ephemerate. CawGate had an adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 1.1 while Jeskai finished with a solid 0.8. This continues a trend for CawGate – it had the best score last weekend as well with 2.09 but Jeskai drastically improved upon its -0.05. Going into the next portion of the season I’d feel confident in putting Dimir Terror and CawGate as the decks to beat. Given the season to date they have (a)MSAR scores of 1.32 and 0.78 respectively.
But what about red? Kuldotha Red and Reckless Burn took down five Top 8s this weekend and each archetype won a challenge. Kuldotha Red had the better meta score at 0.69 (Reckless Burn clocked in at 0.34). These results come after a few weeks of the strategies under-performing and this rebound was to be expected – red is really good – but the performance of CawGate and Jeskai Ephemerate, both of which can lean into white’s defensive measures, goes a long way to applying a balm to the burn.
Dimir Terror had a down weekend with a score of -0.14. This may be due to the metagame adjusting to the former top dog or it could be a blip on the radar. Next week’s results will help to paint a better picture of Terror’s position in the overall metagame.
So where does this leave the format going into the latter half of July? Things are somewhat unsettled. There are a hand full of decks that can stake their claim to being the best options; both red variants, CawGate, Dimir Terror, Grixis Affinity, and Jeskai Ephemerate all have a reasonable case. For next weekend I would hedge my bets against Sacred Cat and Tolarian Terror, but finding the right removal spread could be tough.
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