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.

It’s hard to write about a format no one cares about anymore. The Commander Masters downshifts have been revealed and even though those cards are not legal yet, the Pauper playing populace has largely progressed past our present predicament. And to be honest, I get it. So much of the discourse around Pauper over the past years has been around the ascension of Affinity and then Red. It is only in the relatively recent past that the format has been able to adjust and adapt to having these two titans at the gravitational center of things. And yet, as Pauper approaches what is sure to be a sea change moment, the current format has continued to evolve.

The last few weekends have seen Dimir Terror start to loosen its grip on the top of the meta, with decks like Jeskai Ephemerate and CawGate making a push for the top spot. Even though Dimir Terror was overall the best performing Top 32 deck this weekend, the spotlight should be focusing on another stalwart.

Skred, as Michael J. Flores would say, is a hell of a Magic card. For a single mana it has the capability of taking out threats that far exceed its cost. As the game goes long, Skred simply increases in power which is not often the case for spells with a mana value of one. Jeskai Ephemerate, despite its rather ambitious suite of lands, has managed to make good use of Skred as has Gruul Ramp. Izzet Faeries is starting to put itself back on the map (five total appearances Top 32 in the first four weeks of Tales of Middle-earth season; 4 such appearances last weekend) and that deck leans heavily on the Snow Plow to clear the way.

Skred is good at the moment because it allows for additional play after you cast it while not costing you much life. Unlike Snuff Out, Skred has no alternate cost but it also does not tax an additional resource. While the various renditions of red might not be at the top they are still relevant and having a cheap way to clear the path that does not get you closer to dead is pretty darn good. Skred also has the advantage of being able to take out Gurmag Angler and Tolarian Terror (albeit for three mana) but when those creatures both appear in the most popular deck, a spell that can take out either half of the duo demands notice.

Izzet Terror split the finals of the Saturday Challenge but it is a deck that made me sit up and take note. The addition of Lórien Revealed has made it easier to fix your mana while also fueling Tolarian Terror. The rest of the deck is a Izzet control shell that leans on the Monarch as a way to stay ahead on cards. This deck is poised to take off in a few days when both Cryptic Serpent and Sulfurous Blast can be slotted into the deck. Izzet Terror can easily play a “protect the crown” strategy to accumulate cards and win on the back of Terror, but could also pivot to Murmuring Mystic or Goblin Wizardry in the sideboard.

For next week I would look for a way to ignore Skred. CawGate with Guardian of the Guildpact fits the bill but do not sleep on Naya Gates as an option. Of course, there’s always Bogles as well.

A quick note about next week: I will be on vacation with my family and may not be able to post my usual weekly recap so do not be alarmed if it does not show up.

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.

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.

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.

We are now firmly into The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth season. The impact of Lórien Revealed, Generous Ent, and Lembas continues to reverberate throughout the format. There is a clear top of the metagame, at least in the Challenges, and it looks a little different from last season.

Leading the way is Dimir Terror with a cumulative adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement (aMSAR) of 1.49, roughly one and a half wins better than the average Top 32 deck. It has the most Top 8s in the season thus far with 13 (out of 56 available Top 8 spots) alongside a win. Despite having a somewhat down weekend with an aMSAR of 0.75 (a full win less than the week prior), it still was the most popular deck in the Top 32 with 13 total appearances. The deck’s threats line up well with both Snuff Out and Skred and the builds can pack enough counter magic to play a solid “defend the crown” strategy. The deck can struggle when a board gets gummed up or when there are opponents who are well suited to win combat steps – remember, math is not just for blockers.

Grixis Affinity continues to put up numbers with a cumulative aMSAR of 0.78 but had the second best weekend with a 1.12 score. The deck continues to perform at a high level, adjusting to the new metagame and card pool by running some of the best cards available in the format. It is the fourth most popular Top 32 deck overall (20 appearances) and accounts for seven Top 8 finishes, but three overall wins. The advent of Cast into the Fire might hinder its plans somewhat, but for now Affinity continues to be a metagame force.

CawGate had a relatively rough go of it during March of the Machine season but appears to be back with a vengeance. The strategy does not crack the Top 5 in popularity but has a solid 0.59 aMSAR overall (with a gaudy score of 2.09 for the weekend of July 8 and 9). CawGate is leveraging the flexible mana base to, like Affinity, run some incredibly powerful and high impact cards. CawGate also benefits from the other two big decks running large creatures which in turn means fewer sweepers overall. Until such a time that Arms of Hadar, Suffocating Fumes, and Breath Weapon see a serious uptick in maindeck and sideboard slots CawGate should continue to perform.

There are two other decks that deserve a mention. First up is Red, combining both Reckless Burn and Kuldotha Red. Combined these two have an aMSAR of 0.1 (Kuldotha Red holds a 0.2 while Reckless Burn sits at -0.1, a little worse than an average Top 32 deck). None of this is to say these strategies are bad, just that given the length of Challenge level events they tend to fall off compared to other strategies. They still hold five total Top 8 slots and 30 total appearances, but it still clocks in in the back half of the Top Ten Power Rankings at the moment.

The other deck worth mentioning is Gruul Ramp (or Ponza). The strategy wants to destroy your lands and commit a haymaker like Avenging Hunter to the board. It has 23 total Top 32 appearances with 4 Top 8s and a decent aMSAR of 0.34 (behind the big three and Jeskai Ephemerate). This number is a bit misleading has it had two weekends where it performed worse than an average Top 32 deck (June 24-25 with a score of -0.17 and July 8-9 with a score of -0.1). Again this does not mean the strategy is deficient, but rather it is just not as good as some of the other options available.

These two strategies, however, can generate some of the biggest feels bad moments from heavily played decks. Losing to a Monastery Swiftspear high end draw can feel hopeless, as can having your second and third land destroyed by Mwonvuli Acid-Moss. The question for a competitive format is whether or not these moments should exist at the current level – are they a bug or a feature? I’m interested to hear constructive discussion on where people stand.

That being said next week I would come with a plan for 5/5s. Swirling Sandstorm and Breath Weapon both seem good if you can defend them from Hydroblast, so it is possible a “Monster” Tron deck could work if it could easily splash for Pyroblast.

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.

After two weeks the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth season is starting to round into shape. The top decks from last weekend – Dimir Terror and Gruul Ramp – take full advantage of the single mana landcyclers from the latest release. These landcyclers, to paraphrase Luis Scott-Vargas from a recent episode of Limited Resources, combine the best part of running too many and too few lands. Early on these cards go and fix your mana while being a relevant spell in the latter stages of the game. In Dimir Terror the ability to go and get an Ice Tunnel or Contaminated Aquifer to turn on Snuff Out is massive as it allows the deck to apply pressure while also protecting itself from potential threats. In Gruul Ramp there are sequences with Arbor Elf that make it possible for a single Forest hand to not only hit the second land drop with Generous Ent, but also to hit Thermokarst or Mwonvuli Acid-Moss on curve, and this says nothing about potentially cascading into the Ent off of Annoyed Altisaur.

As of today, Dimir Terror is the deck to beat. It paced the field with an adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 1.47 over the first weekend and improved to 1.75 last weekend. This score is representative of how much better a strategy is than an average deck in the Top 32 and with these scores, Dimir Terror has shown itself to be about one and a half wins better than an “average” Top 32 deck and this bears out with an average 1.70 (a)MSAR over the first four challenges and one Showcase of the season thus far.

What does it mean to have Dimir Terror as the best deck? Like Faeries, Terror is a Counterspell strategy that wants to use its countermagic to help dictate the pace of play while also protecting key threats. Unlike Faeries, Terror is a more reactive deck, trying to set up situations where it can resolve a 5/5 at a discount in the middle stages of a game while Faeries wants to stick a small threat early to convert it into a Ninja, and as a result some new cards. Terror is less susceptible to Snuff Out and more vulnerable to Chainer’s Edict style removal while Faeries has more trouble with the sweepers in the format, as well as point removal.

Pauper Format Panel member Mirco Ciavatta (probably better known as Heisen01) won the July 2 Challenge with this build of Jeskai Ephemerate. Jeskai Ephemerate is a solid midrange option that can adjust to most metagames and this week Mirco came prepared. With Dimir Terror and Grixis Affinity at the forefront last week, Skred was less ideal as a point removal spell. Leaning into Lórien Revealed with Idyllic Beachfront and Molten Tributary, this build has given up on the Skred package. Rather, there are maindeck copies of Cast into the Fire as a flexible answer to small threats and artifacts and Journy to Nowhere as a catch all, even if it does require additional mana to remove Tolarian Terror. Kenku Artificer can also create a never ending speed bump to hold the fort until the Ephemerate engine can take over.

After Dimir Terror and Jeskai Ephemerate, the rest of the top of the metagame is full of familiar faces. Grixis Affinity continues to be a contender, as are Gruul Ramp and Boros Synthesizer. Faeries, Kuldotha Red, and Reckless Burn are all popular strategies that are finding it a bit harder to get a foothold in the current metagame. Out of these I think Kuldotha Red is the best positioned moving forward due to how it lines up with removal. We’ve already seen Dimir Terror adjust to increased kill spells with the return of Crawl from the Cellar. Because of this, I also think that Sacred Cat strategies, whether they are Boros Bully, CawGate, or something else, are poised to have a solid showing next weekend. Sacred Cat, and the creatures that tend to surround it, line up exceptionally well with point removal, Chainer’s Edict, and cards like Cast into the Fire. The downside is that these decks also tend to lean on Basilisk Gate, making it harder (but not impossible) for them to incorporate Lórien Revealed and its ilk.

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.

Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth has hit Magic Online and a new season of Pauper Challeges has begun. The set has already made its presence felt with Cast into the Fire, Lembas, and Lorien Revealed (no I’m not going to try and get the exact characters) seeing heavy play. While it is hard to make any wide sweeping statements from the first week of a season there are definitely some elements of note.

First is the prevalence of Dimir Terror. A consistently good deck it is one of the better homes for Lorien Revealed as it can fix the deck’s mana early or be converted into raw cards once the game has reached a state of parity. Dimir Terror tends to have an abundance of resources in the middle and latter stages of the and the new addition provides a place to sink them. Dimir Terror averaged an adjusted MSAR of 0.55 last season and clocked in with a neat 1.47 over the weekend.

So what does this mean? The adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement – (a)MSAR – is a measure of how well an archetype did against the average Top 32 deck when taking a deck’s presence in the Top 32 into consideration. Decks with fewer entrants into the Top 32 tend to have higher unadjusted scores and this serves as a way to attempt and unskew the results. The average of all these scores over the weekend was 0.36 so Dimir Terror performed better than the average deck. Shocking, I know.

This statistic is not meant to be examined in isolation. The strategy averaged around a Top 16 finish over the weekend when looking exclusively at Swiss results, and when taking the Top 8s into account it performed at about a Top 4 clip (one win, one finals, one Top 4, two Top 8s). When taken together these metrics provide a snap shot of how Dimir Terror did in one isolated weekend.

But this is not about a singular weekend. Using these metrics we can measure a deck’s performance against itself week after week. As mentioned Dimir Terror averaged an (a)MSAR of 0.55 all of last season; in the final week it had a score of 0.02. In other words, Dimir Terror improved by nearly 1.5 Top 32 wins on average from last weekend to this weekend. When the spread from a Top 8 to a finish outside the Top 16 is often a win, that is a fairly significant jump. The top deck from the final week of March of the Machine was Grixis Affinity (1.21) which pulled in a respectable 0.58 this weekend.

Looking ahead I would not expect Dimir Terror to keep the top spot. Grixis Affinity has been a consistent force and Faeries has not gone anywhere. The various red decks have also added to their arsenal with Improvised Club. Notably absent from the Top 32 are Basilisk Gate decks, with only two all weekend. Given the number of token synergies present in the latest set I would not be shocked to see some number of Heap Gates showing up in the not too distant future.

I’m going to switch gears for a bit. Last week Daybreak, the company that manages Magic Online, announced a change to the price and prize structure of Pauper Leagues. While I am not the biggest fan of these changes (specifically at the 4 and 5 win levels) I am willing to see how things shake out. Daybreak has proved very responsive thus far and if things do not work out well I have faith the folks behind the scenes will adjust the leagues to ensure participation.

There was a common thread that showed up in many of the posts critiquing the decision that I wanted to discuss: that Pauper is somehow perceived as a lesser format. I want to pose the question as to why – why is there the perception of this perception? Why do some members of the community believe that the format is seen as lacking?

Personally I do not see this. Over the past few years Pauper has been embraced by the wider Magic community. It is on the regulars to be welcoming to those who want to test the waters and show why Pauper is enjoyable, beyond the expected value against time equation.

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!

Once again we come to the time between seasons. March of the Machine was the headlining set for eleven weeks with eighteen Challenges and two Showcase events. Going into this stretch there were fears around the strength of red and the potential for Azorius Familiars, now with Meeting of Minds, to assert itself as a true metagame force. So what happened? Let’s dig in.

Above Average

So much of the work I do in examining the publicly available Challenge data is done to try and get a better idea of what is happening in the Pauper metagame. Challenges provide a consistent source of information about what sort of strategies are rising to the top of the format. Top 8s and Wins are important but they fail to tell the entire story. Over the years I’ve worked on other measures to try and better understand what else is going on in the actual games and recently developed a statistic that measures an archetype against the average Top 32 deck. Borrowing from baseball I call this the Meta Score Above Replacement and I am able to track an archetype’s mean and cumulative performance. Here are the average and cumulative scores for every archetype with at least 5% of the total top 32 volume.

1. Faeries: 1.26 average aMSAR; 6.29 cumulative aMSAR
2. Grixis Affinity: 0.97 average aMSAR; 4.71 cumulative aMSAR
3. Black Gardens: 0.94 average aMSAR; 4.46 cumulative aMSAR
4. Bogles: 0.74 average aMSAR; 3.29 cumulative aMSAR
5. Dimir Terror: 0.55 average aMSAR; 3.19 cumulative aMSAR
6. Reckless Burn: 0.65 average aMSAR; 2.4 cumulative aMSAR
7. Gruul Cascade: 0.56 average aMSAR; 1.3 cumulative aMSAR

This list provides a good snapshot of what has happened during the past nine weeks. Faeries was a consistently good performer, roughly six “wins” or so better than the average deck in the Top 32 over the course of the season. But it’s a testament to the deck to see exactly how much better, on average, it has been than the other contenders. The other thing that stands out in this list is where red has ended up, but more on that later.

This score is useful for comparing decks over the course of a season but it also can contrast decks from different seasons. How good was Faeries this season compared to the best decks from other seasons? I hope to find out and plan on launching Patreon goals to go back an explore Pauper’s past.

Seeing Red

Going into March of the Machine, there was some concern about the strength of red. Monastery Swiftspear was already tearing up Magic Online on the back of Reckless Impulse and Wrenn’s Resolve was another iteration of the effect. These decks were already incredibly consistent and the concern was that more draw would push them even further up the power rankings.

That isn’t exactly what happened. Make no mistake – red is still very good. But the addition of Wrenn’s Resolve has provided enough fuel for the strategy to bifurcate into the more token based Kuldotha Red and the Thermo-Alchemist/Kessig Flamebreather based Reckless Burn. Combined these strategies were just over 15% of the Top 32 metagame. Kuldotha Red fell one appearance short of making the 5% cutoff but ended the season with a cumulative aMSAR of 0.68, so even if these two archetypes were stacked on top of each other they still wouldn’t jump ahead of Dimir Terror.

Red has largely been contained. The metagame has adjusted to its persistent presence with strong defensive measures and a healthy dose of incidental lifegain. Blocking has gone up in value and decks that can absorb damage before feeding the speed bump to a Deadly Dispute or Reckoner’s Bargain have done rather well all things considered. Monastery Swiftspear can still apply a ton of pressure and lead to games that end before they really begin, but by and large red decks have not been the threat they were perceived to be back in April.

Something Familiar

The other big story going into the season was the potential for Azorius Familiars to have its moment. The deck has long been held back by the limitations of the Magic Online interface as it requires quite a few clicks to go through each iteration of an Archaeomancer loop. Meeting of Minds was supposed to make it easier for the deck to succeed as it reduced the manual dexterity needed to pilot Familiars to victory. Early on in March of the Machine season this seemed to be true. And then people started leaning on Thermokarst.

Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl into Mwonvuli Acid-Moss is a powerful start and can slam the door on several game plans. That these decks can also top out on the Initiative gives them a good place to put that mana in case there’s no reason to destroy lands. Gruul Cascade was a fairly popular deck in the back half of the season but suffers at the whims of variance. When its draws line up well it can feel like an unstoppable force but it can also fall flat, which helps to explain its middling Meta Score. Still, Gruul’s presence, on top of other decks that apply pressure early, has limited Familiar’s opportunities.

Meet You in the Middle

I think the biggest story of this season is the return of black midrange. Black Gardens – a midrange Golgari deck that pairs removal with Deadly Dispute for efficient card draw and the potential for Avenging Hunter at the top of the curve. But when you break it down and peel back the layers Black Gardens is just a descendant of Mono Black Control. The fact that creatures are good thanks to Monastery Swiftspear and Affinity means that a deck based around keeping them off the battlefield can go far. Initiative again is the glue holding it together as it provides a persistent advantage once the board is clear.

Black Garden is not the only midrange deck to find success in March of the Machine season but it is the best of the bunch, at least so far. Basilisk Gate strategies largely fell by the wayside in May as people iterated on Golgari Rot Farm. At the same time Jeskai Ephemerate has returned to the fold perhaps due in part to its reliance on Bridges giving inherent resilience to Gruul Cascade.

Odds and Ends

• Affinity had a fantastic season with six wins in 20 Top 8 appearances. This may change once Cast into the Fire hits the digital client but I doubt Affinity is going anywhere.
• Bogles remains a viable option even if it is consistently underappreciated. The high variance strategy can sometimes just steamroll people and if Black Gardens takes a step back the slippery ones could improve their standing in the metagame.
• Boros Synthesizer had a pretty weak season overall with five total Top 32 appearances (and a single Top 8) but it had a breakout at Paupergeddon in Pisa. I would expect to see more of this deck in the first few weeks of the next season.

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 is one I call Meta Score, 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.

Magic Online is just over a week away from Tales of Middle-Earth hitting the digital shelves. March of the Machine season has one more weekend left in the hopper. Today, instead of recapping the previous weekend, I want to dive into a way I’ll be discussing the Pauper metagame moving forward.

If you follow me on various platforms you probably know I am a huge New York Mets fan. I love baseball and even though my team of choice might not be doing so great at the time of this writing, I can still turn to the sport for inspiration. Baseball is a game of numbers, and the amount of stats available help to compare different players against each other not only in the current season but across several eras. One of these metrics is Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. WAR takes a player’s overall contributions and compares it to an average Major League Baseball Player; the higher the WAR the better the player. WAR can also be used to measure historical greatness – Babe Ruth holds a lifetime WAR of 182.6 (according to Baseball Reference) while Shohei Ohtani has a current lifetime MLB WAR of 28.2.

I have been searching for wars to bring WAR to Pauper. Pauper is a format where there is a lot of data from the Magic Online events but it can be hard to fully make heads or tails of it. Over the years I’ve worked on tracking Swiss performance (Win+) and total performance (KWins) and just last week I started tracking an overall Meta Score. This last step was exactly what we needed to take a step towards WAR. If a strategy had a Meta Score in a given weekend then there had to be an average Meta Score. This average Meta Score could then be taken for a field and a deck’s individual Meta Score could be measured against it. The result would be a measure of a strategy’s performance against a closed field of an “average” finish.

Here’s how it works. Every archetype gets an average Win+ Score, which measures an average Swiss performance , and an average K Win score, which measures average overall performance. These two values are then averaged to provide a Meta Score. The total Meta Score for a given subset (a weekend, a season ,etc) is then divided by the number of total archetypes present in that field to provide the Average Meta Score. This becomes the baseline and is then subtracted from each archetype’s metascore to get a Meta Score Above Replacement.

Now there are some issues with this measure. first, I only gather data of the Top 32 publicly available decklists. The result is that this statistic, while useful, is not as robust as it could be if complete tournament data as easily on hand. Similarly, this does not take into account every Pauper event played, but simply the Magic Online Challenges. These formulas could be applied to tabletop events for a more comprehensive look at the metagame.

The other major issue is that as of this writing I have only run the calculations for March of the Machine season to this point. To that end I am going to ask that if this kind of analysis interests you and you want to see some comparisons between the different eras of Pauper to please consider signing up for my Patreon or contributing to my Ko-Fi. If there is enough interest I will carve out the time, but I want to make sure there’s an audience.

So with that out of the way, let’s look at the 16 Challenges and 2 Showcases in March of the Machine season (thus far). For this I will be examining the Top 8 decks by volume in the meta thus far – only one of these strategies falls beneath the 5% volume threshold (and it clocks in at 4.77%). For this exercise I am looking at average Meta Score Above Replacement (MAR) as well as Cumulative for the season.

Now this clearly does not tell the whole story but it does help provide context to what takes place in Pauper events. MSAR is a tool like so many others and it helps contribute to a deeper understanding of the Pauper metagame.

So what is it telling us today? Black Gardens has had an absurd season, as has Dimir Terror. Boggles numbers may be buoyed by a few particularly strong weekends and red, overall, is above average but potentially behind other major players. Gruul Cascade has some incredibly good weekends and some where it can barely put one foot in front of the other, indicating that build is more at the whim of variance.

Does this sort of analysis interest you? What would you like to see as we dive deeper into the realm of Pauper stats?

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