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.
It’s over. After ten weeks the Wilds of Eldraine cycle has officially come to a close. What began with worries about red has ended with players seemingly happy about the state of the Pauper metagame. As we ready ourselves for the journey to the Lost Caverns of Ixalan it might benefit discussion to take a step back and look at why things seem “better” now.
I am putting that word in quotation marks because while both red and Affinity decks have taken a step back, what has filled the gap isn’t necessarily healthier but rather more familiar. The return of Dimir Faeries a few weeks ago has seen Pauper revert to a something resembling a prior state where decks leveraging powerful blue spells sat atop the metagame. In it of itself this shift is neither good nor bad, but rather represents a change. For a good stretch of time the format was largely defined by its most assertive decks and now something at the other end of the temporal spectrum is setting the tone.
The difference, to me, is that the decks at the top feel like they should be there because for many years in Pauper those are the decks that have been there. Part of the discomfort with red’s success was in part due to the fact that it was doing things with which the color previously struggled. When Affinity was at the top of the metagame it felt unbeatable due to the resilience of its core shell. Dimir Faeries is not as impervious as Affinity or aberrant as red and so its recent climb has felt familiar.
To be clear I think the metagame shifting is a good thing. Old decks coming back with new strategies and tools to fight the current battles demonstrates that the cards available in Pauper can handle a wide swath of what is out there. At the same time I have to take pause when I see folks effusively praising the way things are currently. It is not that the current state of the format is bad but rather one set of issues have been traded for another.
The issues before are well known – the assertive decks made it very difficult to for slower strategies to get their feet under them and mount a defense. Those decks are still out there but other builds have adapted and have started to skew their maindeck in addition to dedicating several sideboard slots to the beatdown. Because of this decks, like Dimir Faeries, which can take advantage of the skew have come to prominence. This is something that, in other formats, might take place over weeks. In Pauper this process has taken more than a quarter of a year.
Where does this leave things going into Lost Caverns of Ixalan? The top decks at the end of Wilds of Eldraine season, taking into account all ten weeks, are (in order) Blue Terror, CawGate, Kuldotha Red, Glitter Affinity and then Dimir Faeries. If you isolate the last two weeks of the season the top tier is Dimir Faeries, Blue Terror, Dimir Terror, CawGate, and Grixis Affinity. Counterspell looks to be a major factor in the early part of the next cycle and with Map tokens running around being able to take down a 6/6 creature is going to be vital to success. As a result you do not want to fold to a single removal spell and you want to have a low enough curve to be able to deploy multiple threats in the face of countermagic.
What are you looking to run in Lost Caverns of Ixalan season? What cards have caught your eye and which ones are you eager to test out once the format hits the digital shelves?
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