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.
Lost Caverns of Ixalan season is over. My breakdown of the post-ban metagame will be coming later this week but for now we’ll have to take a look at the three (yes, three) Challenges that took place last weekend. You see, Daybreak has decided to offer a “second chance” event every weekend in case some tournaments fail to fire. However these tournaments will be offered no matter what. For Pauper this is a second even on Sunday which this past weekend fired with over 40 participants. And, well, let’s look at the metagame chart.
Now to be clear Kuldotha Red’s share of the overall metagame is the largest all season – the deck had traditionally hovered closer to 10% of the overall Challenge meta which is more in line with a top tier archetype. Looking at this charge we can also see a skew towards more assertive strategies, including Kuldotha Red, Jeskai Glitters, and Squirrel Dredge. So maybe it’s time to talk about something unrelated to a deck’s power level: temporal considerations.
If my brain were firing on all cylinders as I wrote this I would likely be making a joke about the nebulous concept of tempo in Magic but not today. Rather I want to talk about how sometimes people will pick a deck because of how quickly it can finish games. Red decks have traditionally been over-represented on Magic Online in part because they can finish games quickly, win or lose (they also tend to have a low acquisition barrier) and can open up time for other activities – whether that be personal privilege, grabbing a beverage, or queuing up another event. Do I think the spike in Kuldotha Red and Squirrel Dredge over the past weekend is due in part to people trying to speed run these events?
In part.
At the same time they would not be selecting these decks if the strategies did not, in some way, work. No one is going to register a pile of cards that simply fails function. The question then becomes how should this be handled at a format level?
That’s right, it’s time for everyone’s favorite linguistic exercise! What comes next is simply a discussion of higher level points and should not be taken as anything related to my work on the Pauper Format Panel or the thoughts of other members. The words that follow are simply observations.
In my opinion accessibility of a deck and the speed at which it finishes games should not factor into decisions around format health unless it finishes games so quickly as to block out other strategies. Now we saw this with previous iterations of both Affinity and Kuldotha Red before those decks had cards removed from their builds. Currently the aggressive builds of Red and Affinity can apply pressure but in my estimation they do not do so at a problematic clip at this time. People are allowed to value their time differently and make decisions as to what they want to play based on any number of factors. If folks decide that going aggro and taking hours of their life back is worth it, even if the strategy is technically worse than other options that is their choice to make. Interventions should take place when decks are both over the line in power, speed, and other factors.
So what about next week? Given how Lost Caverns of Ixalan season ended I would be prepared to bear the brunt of assaults. Red and Affinity remain top contenders and assertive gameplans tend to do better early in format cycles. I know it’s a meme at this point but if you want to gain an early edge it might be time to hedge on early blockers, since now the format has access to eight copies of one of the best to ever do it.
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