NerdtotheCore

Want to learn more about the metrics I use in tracking the metagame? You can find an explainer here.

The first step to solving a problem is identifying if one exists in the first place. If you’ve been following this blog for Duskmourn season you will no doubt know that until this point I did not believe that Kuldotha Red presented a real problem in the Pauper metagame. The truth of the matter is that I still do not feel this way, but my conviction in the matter is not nearly as strong. As always when presented with new information I tend to reevaluate my positions and this past weekend provided a slate of new data to examine and explore.

There are a few things to note about the weekend of October 11-October 13. First is that in addition to the three Challenges there was a Pauper Qualifier – a feeder tournament for the Pro Tour system. The second thing to note is that the Saturday Challenge – which had 42 total players – ran concurrently with the Qualifier. Five of Kuldotha Red’s Top 8 finishes on the weekend and one of its wins all came in this smaller Challenge. I point this out because Kuldotha Red is a fairly easy deck for Double Queuing – that is play in two tournaments simultaneously. Two of the players who made Top 8 in the Challenge on Saturday with Red also played the deck in the Qualifier (with one making Top 8 there as well).

This context is important. In aggregate red demolished the field. A Win+ Average better than 1 puts the deck’s average finish firmly in the Top 16. Kuldotha Red’s eleven Top 8 finishes over the weekend are nearly two better than could be expected given its overall results. The strategy held 21.88% of the Top 32 metagame and improved on that nearly five percent to 26.84% of the Winner’s Meta. Rounding this all out, Kuldotha Red finished the weekend with an Adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 1.4, nearly a win and a half better than the average Top 32 deck and over a full win better than the next tier of strategies.

But there’s more. The Pauper Challenge Project, as communicated by Kirblinxy collected information that showed Kuldotha Red had a better than 60% non-mirror win rate in the three Challenges over the weekend. This, combined with the rather alarming numbers overall, should be cause for alarm. If you have gotten to this point and have read my articles before, I am sure you can expect a twist.

The same Pauper Challenge Project collected data on the Qualifier where Kuldotha Red had a sub-45% non-mirror win rate. That is a marked difference from the dominant performance alluded to in the other data. The deck accounted for 23.74% of the entire field in the Qualifier as opposed to 20.13% of the entire Challenge meta on the weekend, with more Red players participating in the Challenge than in all three Challenges combined. The larger data set provides a different picture of Kuldotha Red – one that is just as popular but possibly less dangerous overall.

All of this being said I am more concerned about Red’s role in the metagame today than I was a week ago. The popularity of the strategy, combined with its sustained success is cause for additional attention. A 60% non-mirror win rate over a weekend is an eye popping stat, but if its lightning in a bottle that’s very different than sustained success. As it stands today, Kuldotha Red is leading the way in Duskmourn season with a cumulative Adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 1.1 where no other deck has a score above 0.3. If Red is able to sustain this clip then it might be time for a different course of action. For now I am still of the mindset that the format can adjust for the red shift.

There are two decks that cropped up I wanted to discuss. The first is this Boros Heroic build that made the Top 32 in the Friday Challenge.

I like what this deck is trying to do. Tenth District Legionnaire is the kind of card worth stretching your mana base for and the additional card flow provided by Ancestral Anger – as well as its ability to punch through for extra damage – could be well worth the decrease in consistency. While I understand Sticky Fingers it feels a bit optimistic here as the Aura does not really do much for helping in combat. I wonder if this deck could make use of a few copies of Turn Inside Out as it would have little problem turning Manifested creatures face up. If that were the case it would probably need to up the threat count or find a way to include more graveyard synergy.

The other deck I wanted to point out is this Orzhov Blade list that made Top 8 on Sunday. This is the kind of deck that can really find its lane once the metagame has started to settle. Orzhov Blade has the ability to go toe-to-toe with assertive strategies by chucking blockers into play. The Kor Skyfisher – Omen of the Dead loop provides a decent long game plan. I would be somewhat concerned about the mana cost of Cast Down in such an aggressive metagame but I am not sure any deck can easily afford to max out on Snuff Out in the moment. If there is one card I am eyeing for this build it is Carrot Cake for its ability to put blockers on the board while also providing a small life bump in dire straits.

If I were to play in next weekend’s events I would likely be on some form of Orzhov Blade. While I would not be sure on Carrot Cake I would almost certainly be looking to include some number of Extract a Confession. Blue Terror and Dimir Terror both had solid showings last weekend and given the continued presence of Kuldotha Red in the metagame it would not surprise me of Bogles made a run at some Top 8s. In both instances having access to a more curated Edict effect could work wonders, especially if your game plan is built around incremental advantages.

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Want to learn more about the metrics I use in tracking the metagame? You can find an explainer here.

I am not going to bury to lede this week: Kuldotha Red had the best weekend. The assertive strategy had a dozen Top 32 appearances and converted that to five Top 8s and a pair of wins. It had an average finish firmly in the Top 16 and held 14.51% of the winner’s meta share (an increase of 2% over general Top 32 volume). Its Adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 1.02 put it about a win clear of the mean Top 32 finish for the weekend.

Why put this above the fold? Because, as discussed elsewhere, Kuldotha Red occupies an outsized portion of the discourse around Pauper. There are datasets where the deck looks fantastic on the surface but under performs (like the weekend of September 27) and then there are tournament sets like last weekend where the deck is just as good as it looks by the numbers. Red is a good deck to be sure but it is hardly a dominant force.

What, then, is the difference between something being dominant and a deck being a part of a healthy metagame? What role does Kuldotha Red serve? Formats need a Clock – that is a deck that puts a limitation on the amount of nonsense in which one can engage. This is neither good nor bad but rather a feature of competitive metagames. Without decks that can establish parameters it can become difficult to craft a strategy that can navigate a tournament. Here we find the crux of the difference between competitive formats and social ones. It is entirely possible to play social Pauper where you concoct a contraption out of commons, yet if that deck cannot operate within the very real parameters of the competitive metagame it exists on a parallel track.

A dominant deck, on the other hand, is one that takes up an outsized portion not only of the metagame as it exists in results but the metagame as it exists as a thought experiment around the format. If the first, last, and only consideration one would have when building a deck and sideboard is a specific meta deck then there may be a problem. Similarly if an interaction or suite of cards starts to create a similar monopoly of thought then perhaps additional investigation might be warranted. Currently I do not believe that Kuldotha Red rises to this level.

Now you might be asking yourself about the Bridges. These cards have earned a level of notoriety. These lands have changed the way other decks have had to approach Affinity while also serving as the backbone for one of the best card draw engines in the format. The Bridges have become part of the landscape of Pauper in a way that they support multiple strategies, often enabling decks that might otherwise struggle. At the same time it is hard to ignore the impact they have had. The question that exists today is whether or not the rest of the format has risen to the power band or remains too far behind to reasonably keep up.

Today I want to look at one list I believe supports the former statement. Golgari Fog is an emergent strategy that blends elements of Golgari Gardens with Turbo Fog to present a deck that can wring out a victory in the long game.

Golgari Fog is a midrange control deck that leans on the Deadly Dispute package to keep cards flowing. It leans into Gates as well to provide a win condition in Basilisk Gate and a steady stream of material through Heap Gate. Campfire (and in this build Stream of Thought) provide additional insurance on the library count and this version continues the innovation of including the Broodscale Combo in the sideboard for a juke. In my opinion the relatively strong positioning of this deck indicates a healthy metagame.

Golgari Fog is constructed with two different poles in mind. It wants to survive the early game onslaught of small creatures and does so with various Fog effects. It also is prepared for decks that want to drag the game out with copies of Campfire to recycle its resources – and exhaust those of the opponent – in something that feels extremely Golgari. The deck is evocative of the control decks of yore with scant few actual win conditions – we’re talking a single Basilisk Gate here – and simply wants to grind your opponent’s will to keep playing into dust.

Looking ahead to next week I would come prepared to Kuldotha Red first but Jund Broodscale is not that far behind. Dimir Terror also had a solid showing so having a reliable way to wipe the board early feels paramount, but you need to survive against those 5/5s in the midgame. If I were looking to go off script I’d be trying to find a way to make Swirling Sandstorm work but I would also keep my eye on Battlefield Scrounger, especially if I was set on playing something Golgari.

I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons. 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, you can sign up for my Patreon starting at just $1.

Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I 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!

Want to learn more about the metrics I use in tracking the metagame? You can find an explainer here.

Just in time for October (also known as Spooky Season for some reason), Pauper has entered its Duskmourn era. The first weekend of Magic Online Challenges proved to be scary for a number of reasons, not the least of which were the paltry number of participants in the Friday and Saturday tournaments. Barely breaking the threshold to launch, the first two Challenges in the latest cycle have confounded the data set just a bit. All told, 22 of the 96 Top 32 competitors (let me tell you how painful it is to write a sentence with so many sequential numbers) had losing records.

What does this mean? Largely that we cannot infer too much from the first dataset presented. Including the losing records does provide some insight, especially for popular decks that falter in that we can have a better idea of what happens outside a traditional winner’s metagame. If, for example, Grixis Affinity has a ton of decks in the Top 8 but also plenty of people piloting the strategy to 2-4 records we can’t draw any conclusions but it could mean that perhaps the deck is not the behemoth those Top 8s make it out to be.

We’re not going to be talking about Grixis today, however. Instead we are going to be talking about Kuldotha Red. The latest iteration of the red deck took down twenty Top 32 slots last weekend, good enough for 20.83% of the field. Eight Top 8 finishes and a win made it so Kuldotha finished with the second best overall performance at the end of Sunday. It did this with an average finish well outside the Top 16 and with an Adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement of 0.35.

We also aren’t going to be talking about the best deck on the weekend. Bogles had three Top 8 appearances, and a win, in seven total trips to the Top 32. It had an average finish in the Top 8 and vastly improved on its raw Top 32 volume (7.29%) in winner’s meta share (26.78%) with a healthy adjusted meta score above replacement of 1.43.

So why are we talking about Kuldotha Red? Because this deck often becomes the center of attention early in a set’s cycle when it puts up some unhealthy looking rates of play. In a way we will be talking about Red, but also Bogles and Grixis. What we are we talking about, however, is interpreting small sets of information.

Bear in mind I am not a statistician. My background in analyzing data comes from the world of social sciences. In my day job I help to run the assessment initiatives for my department where we try to identify different areas of growth, learning, and participation in a college aged population. A tad different than Magic all told.

Kuldotha Red is an assertive strategy. It wants to play to the board early and press its advantage with small creatures. It can end the game with a massive attack or a furry of burn spells. Relatively recently (historically speaking), the deck has also gained access to solid card flow options, giving it the opportunity to keep pace in the middle stages of a game. The strategy has been hit by one ban – Monastery Swiftspear – and while not as potent as prior iterations, Kuldotha Red remains a top choice in Pauper.

It is also, in a way, metagame agnostic. While the specific inclusions at the fringes may change, the core of the deck is largely static. More than that, it does not have to adapt as much to the an otherwise changing field. Put another way, you do not always need to tech out Kuldotha Red in order for it to succeed as it is inherently powerful, albeit susceptible to the whims of the metagame. The ability to simply overrun your opponent before they can establish themselves is powerful and Kuldotha Red is quite good at that.

Whenever a new set enters Pauper (or any format really) had to adjust. Often times this means testing out new pieces for more intricate builds and trying to gauge what is going to happen in the wider metagame. Put another way people are trying out the latest cards. While things are still being defined, Kuldotha Red is a great choice in that it can, as mentioned, just win. For players who are grinding Leagues day after day Kuldotha Red also affords them the opportunity to learn the most in the shortest amount of time. The number of games you can play with Red likely outpaces nearly every other deck, all while giving a good rate of return on the investment of Play Points and time.

Early on, therefore, it follows that Red is going to be overrepresented. It is largely insulated from micro shifts in the metagame, wins quickly, and has an established pedigree. As time marches on the deck may get less popular (it is difficult to ascertain this with any confidence as we do not have the lists for every deck in the League) or the metagame adapts. It can still put up numbers but other decks are able to keep pace or surpass it in the results column.

How, then, can it be determined if Kuldotha Red is problematic? This decision cannot be made in the short term, regardless of how much the deck surges in the early part of a season. The early leagues for Bloomburrow had a strong showing of Kuldotha Red, with the deck hovering around 20% of the early League 5-0 lists. The same strategy had two weekends where it was the most popular Top 32 deck in the Challenges and another pair of weekends where it was second most popular (this includes a weekend where it was tied for second most popular). Over the eight weeks of Bloomburrow the deck did not hold true to that early surge and settled into a healthy spot – outside the very best decks in the metagame but still a solid contender. For those wondering, it held a seasonal adjusted meta score above replacement of 0.51 (about half a win better than the mean Top 32 deck) and had the eighth best average Swiss performance of all decks with at least 2% of the Top 32 metagame (16 appearances).

A decision cannot be made based entirely on early results nor can it wait for absolute certainty. Red has a short leash due to its pedigree but for now it simply seems to be a smart choice in a developing metagame. Sideboard accordingly.

I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons. 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, you can sign up for my Patreon starting at just $1.

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Want to learn more about the metrics I use in tracking the metagame? You can find an explainer here.

Eight weeks, two dozen Challenges, and a whole lot of advanced stats. Check out my Bloomburrow season recap here.

I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons. 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, you can sign up for my Patreon starting at just $1.

Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I 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!

Want to learn more about the metrics I use in tracking the metagame? You can find an explainer here.

Now that the school year has started (or rather, that New Student Orientation has ended), I hope to be able to return to a more regular posting cycle. My gastroenterologist tells me that being regular is a good thing. He also tells me I’m full of…

Anyway.

As I discussed last week, Bloomburrow season feels much more like an extension of Modern Horizons 3 than its own entity. A look at my latest Power Rankings highlights that despite a new set of cards the current state of things is largely defined by what has come before. Today I want to dive a little deeper into the stats and try to suss out a bit more information that did not quite make it into my other articles.

Gruul Ramp has been the most popular deck this season with 11.98% of the Top 32 metagame and 12.5% of the calculated Winner’s Metagame. These numbers are far from gaudy as in past seasons one could reasonably expect the top decks to take down north of 15% of the Winner’s Meta. It’s Adjusted Meta Score Above Replacement is a healthy 0.98, placing its performance firmly above average. But the story of this strategy is one of mild decline.

It led the pack in the first two weeks of the season with aMSAR scores of 1.17 and 1.29 before underperforming in week three with a score of -0.23 before bouncing back last week with a 0.16. All told this appears to be the story of a deck that was able to attack an underprepared metagame. Once people got wise the deck came back to earth. Already we have seen some players move back towards Mwonvuli Acid-Moss (but not Thermokarst) as another way to leverage the mana bump from Writhing Chrysalis.

It has become impossible to talk about Pauper without discussing Grixis Affinity. After the Monastery Swiftspear ban, Grixis Affinity emerged as the de facto best deck in the format. While it alone does not define the metagame, its position as the premier control deck puts some limits on what can be done in the format. The Modern Horizons 2 Bridges tie all of Grixis’ synergies together, providing amble fodder for the format’s darling board wipe Krark-Clan Shaman. As someone who has been playing Pauper for nearly two decades (that sound you hear are my knees grinding into dust) it is both wild and awesome. The current tech is to pair it with Toxin Analysis to take out everything on the ground and gain a bunch of life.

Neat.

Grixis started off slow, going from an aMSAR of 0.14 before jumping to 0.81 and 0.91 in Weeks 2 and 3. Last weekend it took a leap to 2.09 (which was somehow only good for the second best showing), ending the last month with a 1.26, a full 0.28 better than Gruul Ramp. With 11.72% of the Top 32 metagame and 13.77% of the Winner’s Meta, Grixis Affinity is once again setting the pace for Pauper.

All of this is before we get to the Eldrazi in the room: Broodscale combo. It’s only recently that the builds are starting to settle with two main camps emerging: a relatively creature light dedicated combo Golgari build and a more midrange Jund execution of the strategy. Regardless, the decks win the same way – generating an unbound number of tokens and colorless mana thanks to Basking Broodscale and Sadistic Glee. The spout might be different, but the machinations bear more than a passing resemblance.

Given that these are two distinct archetypes, their aMSAR scores are split. Needless to say they have both consistently performed at the average or above, with Golgari Boodscale netting a four week score of 0.66 while Jund is just behind at 0.6. Comparing this macro strategy to the rest of the field, at least at a glance, means utilizing a combined Winner’s Meta share. Broodscale Combo start at a combined 16.8% of the Winner’s Meta, moving to 20% in Week 2, down to 16.44% in Week 3, and finishing at 20.28% in Week 4. Looking at the entire month, Broodscale Combo accounted for 18.23% of the total Top 32 metagame and 18.18% of the Winner’s Meta.

So far we’ve discussed ramp, control, and combo. The aggressive deck I want to highlight should not be a shock to anyone in that it is Kuldotha Red. With an aMSAR this season of 0.52 thus far and 8.31% of the Winner’s Metagame (which is largely in line with the 8.33% of the Top 32 metagame), Kuldotha Red has fallen back in the metagame just a bit. Overall the format has gotten more powerful and as such the stagger strength of the deck does not appear to be as daunting. There has been some evolution in the archetype with a few pilots opting to move into a move Goblin heavy build- Goblin Grenade has become a baseline inclusion but some players have decided to further empty the warrens for cards like Goblin Sledder.

Finally I want to take a moment to talk about Blue Terror. The strategy is currently third in aMSAR score at 0.73 and has 10.4% of the Winner’s Meta. Counterspell remains a fantastic card and Blue Terror is one of the better shells to leverage the card. Tolarian Terror can end games in short order which makes it a well suited threat to capitalize on the tempo gained by countering a key spell. Like other strategies these builds adjust from week to week, moving from Boomerang to Deem Inferior to other bounce spells in an effort to find the best path to victory.

Overall, Pauper appears to be in a good place. While there are decks that are clearly in a class of their own, no one of them are so good as to make picking a divergent strategy a clear mistake. In practice these six* archetypes represent almost 61% of the Top 32 metagame and just over 63% of the Winner’s Metagame. Compare this to season’s past where specific archetypes would easily chew up north of 20% of both shares. Pauper is experiencing a power surge at the moment – a shock tot he system – and it might take a while for the other strategies to catch up. I for one am excited to see what Duskmourn has to offer the format, provided it doesn’t take the shape of a jump scare.

I want to take a moment to thank all my Patrons 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.

Can’t make a commitment to Patreon? I 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!