NerdtotheCore

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.

Any conversation about the last weekend in Pauper needs to start with Beicodegeia’s absurd run as of late. They have taken first (either through an outright victory or an agreed upon split) in seven of the last ten Challenges with four different strategies. During that stretch folks have calculated Beicodegeia’s win rate at around 70%, which borders on obscene. Not only are they a fantastic player, but they also have a stellar read on the metagame.

This weekend Beicodegeia took down both Challenges with 74 of the same cards in their deck. The biggest difference was on Saturday they used two copies of Arms of Hadar in their sideboard and on Sunday they cut a copy for Okiba-Gang Shinobi. And this shift is emblematic of the bigger change in the Pauper metagame over the past few weeks.

The driving forces in the metgame for the first portion of Wilds of Eldraine season have been aggressive strategies. Glitter Affinity and Kuldotha Red clearly fall on the aggressive side of the spectrum. Blue Terror is not an aggro deck per se but it is hardly a control deck. Instead it wants to churn to large threats and protect them once they hit the board instead of dragging the game out forever. Three weeks ago CawGate began to emerge as the best deck of the moment and as a result aggressive strategies began to struggle. And now what comes back to roost?

Faeries.

Dimir Faeries is one of the premier “fair” decks in the format and it is well positioned to prey on other control strategies that are trying to beat the beatdown decks. After Counterspell other control decks have started to lean on Dispel and Spell Pierce to round out their interactive suite. And you know what dodges them both? Spellstutter Sprite. Combine that with the ability to see a ton of cards and you have deck primed to prey on the other prevalent “control” decks of the day while packing enough removal to hold its own against aggro. And if the switch from Arms to Shinobi is any indication, control is on the rise while aggro has taken a step back.

The next question that presents itself goes something like this: can this last? Has Pauper again reached a state where aggressive strategies are not at the tip-top of the metagame and are instead merely another good option? Have solutions been found to slow things down enough for other decks and ideas to take hold?

Does it matter?

What I mean is, if the meta is changing at the top but it is familiar faces taking over, is that a good change? This goes to the core of non-rotating formats. In some sense, having Faeries be a viable strategy again is a Good Thing in that having stable staples can provide a sense of security. In another very real way, it can be disheartening to see new gods toppled only for old titans to take their place.

In the micro, next week I would focus on building something resilient that does not fold to Snuff Out (nor need it as a key piece of the deck’s structure). Orzhov Ephemerate could be well positioned as it can match Dimir’s value while playing to the board, but Mono White Aggro could sneak in and find the middle road between lingering aggressive tendencies and the rising tide of control.

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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.

Today I want to make the case that at the current moment CawGate is the best deck in Pauper. To do this I am going to lean on the metrics I use in metagame discussion, specifically adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement. But given that I want to take a few moments to explain exactly what this score represents.

The statistic I have been tracking for the longest (beyond raw volume) is something called Win+. Win+ measures a deck’s Swiss record with a point for each win at X-2 or better. In a six round tournament a 4-2 record is worth 1 Win+ point; in a seven round tournament a 5-2 record is worth 1 Win+ point. The goal of this score is to see how a deck performs in relation to the lowest placing Top 32 deck (with a positive record). This metric only covers Swiss record; K-Wins however is inclusive of Top 8 wins and losses. K-Wins measures a deck’s total wins and subtracts the total losses. Together Win+ and K-Wins gives a broad picture of how well an archetype performs in the abstract.

The next measure is Meta Score, which is contingent on Win+ and K-Win. In fact, it is an average of the two scores; the Meta Score Above Replacement takes the average of all Meta Scores to set a baseline for a weekend and then measures the Meta Score against that average. For example, CawGate had a Meta Score of 1.50 for the most recent weekend while the average of all Meta Scores was 1.53, meaning CawGate’s MSAR was -0.03.

Okay, we’re in the home stretch where we talk about Adjusted Meta Score. Adjusted Meta Score takes the most popular deck by volume and sets it as the baseline. It then takes the a weighted measure of both Win+ and K-Wins (based upon volume) to assign an adjusted Meta Score, and then from there we find the adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement. This provides the best image of how well a deck performed in a given data set against its field

Again, let’s use CawGate from this past weekend as a test case. CawGate had a total Win+ score of 10 with 26 K-Wins. It’s adjusted Win+ for Volume was 0.83; its adjusted K-Win was 2.17. As mentioned it had a Meta Score of 1.50 which is the same as its adjusted Meta Score (CawGate was the most popular deck on the weekend). The average of all adjusted Meta Scores was 0.37 which means CawGate’s adjusted Meta Score Above replacement on the weekend of October 14 and October 15 was 1.13, which was the best score on the weekend.

That’s a lot of words as background as to why today CawGate is my pick as the best deck in the format. Why? It’s aMSAR has been steadily climbing week over week. Here is the progression of CawGate’s aMSAR over the first six weeks of Wilds of Eldraine Season: -0.04, 0.12, 0.22, 1.26, 2.13, 1.13. While the most recent weekend looks like a step backwards it was the best score of an archetype on the weekend.

So what is going on? The earlier weeks of the season were defined by assertive decks like Blue Terror, Kuldotha Red, and Glitter Affinity. CawGate is not the beatdown in any capacity and instead assumes a midrange control role in the metagame. The steady climb seems to indicate that it found the correct configuration to once again assert its position in the Pauper Challenge metagame.

And on some level it makes sense. The strategy is built, in many ways, around leveraging Prismatic Strands to its full potential (if only someone wrote an article on this subject) and leaning on the correct suite of counter magic. Without knowledge of the expected field you cannot select the proper suite of reactive spells. With a more known metagame this task becomes easier.

How should you approach next weekend? I think Gingerbrute is a good place to start as it can completely get around Prismatic Strands’ damage prevention. If you’re looking to go in a more rogue direction there’s Shepherd of Rot. Zombies is a fringe strategy to be sure but as more red decks adopt Lava Dart I want to be on the deck that can run Festering Mummy to shrink opposing 1/1s.

I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.

Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.

Looking for another way to support my work? Click here for my TCGPlayer affiliate link. Any purchases through the link let the folks there know you like my content!

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.

Coming out last weekend much of the discourse around Pauper was centered around the dominance of Blue Terror and Kuldotha Red. After the first four weeks of Wilds of Eldraine season these two archetypes were putting up impressive numbers, with 27 Top 8 finishes and 5 wins between them over the eight events. The conversation turned to whether or not these strategies were too dominant, whether they were healthy for the metagame, and if any sort of action needed to take place. These discussions are going to continue to occur as these archetypes are not likely to lose a step anytime soon.

Note: Yes I am a member of the Pauper Format Panel. No you shouldn’t read anything into the last sentence. I write these updates from the perspective of an observer. In fact these sentence itself would want to come at the end of the next paragraph but I wanted to put it here just to avoid any undue confusion.

Both blue and red are going to continue to get cheap and efficient spells that work with the game plans illuminated by these two decks. While the exact card lists might change the overall result is not likely to shift all that much.

This, of course, can result in a known metagame. Note I am using the term known as opposed to solved. While Pauper by and large might be a well charted continent, right now much of the game play is about mapping out every tree in the forest, not the borders of the woods itself. I think it is more than fair to say that both Blue Terror and Kuldotha Red operate at the center of the format, with Glitter Affinity not too far behind.

Glitter Affinity takes the Artifact Land engine and converts it into persistent damage through All That Glitters. Unlike Grixis Affinity this deck wants to hit the ground early and start applying pressure. As a result it pours all of that reach into the aura as opposed to a long game approach involving Blood Fountain or Makeshift Munitions. Glitter Affinity had a glowing weekend with four Top 8 finishes and two wins. It ended up with an adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 3.27 – the best single weekend score of any archetype thus far this season.

Which makes this next part almost funny. The next best deck on the weekend was CawGate, also with four Top 8 finishes. It’s aMSAR of 2.16 is the second best score of any archetype over the past ten events. So what does this actually tell us?

Both CawGate and Glitter Affinity can easily pack copies of the blue Blasts which in turn can hold red in check. Red was still the most popular archetype in the Top 32 with a dozen appearances but largely found itself outside the Top 16. These strategies also have ways to get around Blue Terror, with Affinity going under it and meeting key counters with Metallic Rebuke and CawGate going long before turning any old creature into a game ending threat. If there is a bright center to the Pauper universe these decks are both far closer to that than some far flung planet in the Outer Rim.

Going into next week I think it is reasonable to prepare for Glitter Affinity. This strategy has proved itself to be a real contender and as such I expect to see Disenchant effects out in force. I would err on the side of instant speed over a card like Dust to Dust for a few reasons. First, Glitter Affinity can one shot thanks to All That Glitters and being stuck with a sorcery in your hand is not helpful. Second, Glitter Affinity does no try to recur its threats so exiling them comes with minimal upside. Finally, being so low to the ground and with running Springleaf Drum the chances of cutting the mana out from under Glitter Affinity is low. Personally I would take a look at one of the two Ephemerate decks that made Top 8 and see if I could tweak them for the meta. Being able to absorb damage early and overpower an opponent with card flow late is a tried and true method worth exploring.

I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons – both old and new. I am going to do my level best to keep providing you with the kind of content that brought you here in the first place. If you are interested in supporting my work, rewards for my Patreon start at just $1 and every little bit helps.

Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I now have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one time contribution.

Looking for another way to support my work? Click here for my TCGPlayer affiliate link. Any purchases through the link let the folks there know you like my content!