Want to learn more about the metrics I use in tracking the metagame? You can find an explainer here.
In the three weeks since my last post, nine Challenges and two other major tournaments took place on Magic Online. As of this writing we are staring down the barrel towards Edge of Eternities. As Magic travels to the one place still free from capitalism we can use the information gleaned from the realm of…realms of FINAL FANTASY to understand where things might be going.
Pauper remains balanced. The results from the last three weeks show that while there are certainly decks that perform better than others. these archetypes are not such outliers as to cause major problems. The two decks at the top of the format – Blue Terror and Jund Wildfire – are there in part because they are able to deal with a wide variety of decks. These two decks have found themselves at the top of the heap for the duration of Final Fantasy season.
These decks have solid results on the season. Blue Terror accumulated four wins and 29 Top 8 finishes in 90 Top 32 appearances. It closed out the season with an Adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 1.33. Put another way, Blue Terror decks finished events with a record more than a win better than the average Top 32 deck when adjusted for metagame presence – this is the difference between a Top 32 and Top 16 finish, or a Top 16 and a Top 8 finish. A Win+ score of 0.82 tells us that Blue Terror’s average finish was approaching the Top 16 and a K-Win of 2.27 – over two – tells us that when the deck made Top 8 it tended to do well. Speaking of those 29 Top 8s, given Blue Terror’s Swiss performance it was on pace for around 23 such finishes and through the luck of matchups and tie-breaker math it appears to have over performed in that regard. All told the deck closed out the season with a healthy 13.77% of the Winner’s Metagame.
Jund Wildfire is the other deck at the top of the heap. Three wins and 22 Top 8 finishes in 74 Top 32 appearances is more than respectable. Jund ended the season with an aMSAR score of 1.1, only slightly behind Blue Terror. The midrange deck did better than Blue in the Win+ category, notching 0.86, putting it slightly ahead of the monochrome in Swiss standings; a K-Win of 2.3 seems to back that up. Jund was on pace for 20 Top 8 finishes and cleared that marker. Rounding things out the Cleansing Wildfire strategy held 11.58% of the Winner’s Metagame.
If the best two decks in the format play fair Magic, that is far from a bad thing. The spread between them in Winner’s Metagame share is not all that large, and the gap between Jund and the next deck on the list – Rakdos Madness – is just over 3%. There are four more decks with Winner’s Metagame shares within 3% of Rakdos (Madness Burn, Elves, High Tide, Red Deck Wins) and another a fraction of a percent behind that group (Grixis Affinity). It is hard to look at the format and everything that is viable and come away things are bad.
So how can one get an edge in something so balanced? There are still ways. First and foremost is trying to pack a way to handle large creatures. Tolarian Terror and Writhing Chrysalis remain the biggest threats in the format and both feature prominently at the top of the metagame (to say nothing of people trying Gruul Ramp builds as well as Dimir Terror and Izzet Control). Three of the other top decks are Lightning Bolt strategies – makes sense why decks would want access to either Weather the Storm or up to eight copies of an Elemental Blast – rounded out by Elves (and other hypermana decks) and High Tide. High Tide operates on an unique axis and requires specialized cards to combat. Elves can fall to the right mix of removal and much of the counterplay can also be applied to Overgrown Battlement decks.
Except Spy Walls. A relatively new wrinkle the format, Balustrade Spy combo has been refined over the past few releases to be a legitimate contender. This new deck adds the Walls package to provide additional resilience in the form of being able to cast some large creatures. This additional angle is neat, but a well timed piece of graveyard removal could work wonders. Considering that some folks are eager to start looping Ghostly Flicker through Cryogen Relic, having access to reliable graveyard hate seems to be mandatory heading into the next season.
Power Rankings
10. Faeries (-2)
9. Mono White Aggro (-4)
8. Grixis Affinity (-2)
7. RDW (+3)
6. High Tide (+3)
5. Elves (+2)
4. Rakdos Madness (-1)
3. Madness Burn (+1)
2. Jund Wildfire
1. Blue Terror
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