March 10 Winner's Metagame Breakdown

The story of the March 11 Pauper Challenge was that there was a Banned and Restricted List announcement the next day. And nothing changed.

After a week with a relatively diverse Top 8, both online and in paper, there was hope that trend would continue.

Sigh.

The Top 8 was all known and established archetypes, with four Gush Delver variants (plus one more that has the same shell and no Delver of Secrets), a Gush combo deck, and two Monarch decks. Exacerbating the distinction between the haves and the have-nots the Top 16 had another five Gush decks, two Monarch decks, and a lone Tron deck. While it can be said that the Top 8 Tribe list and Top 16 Gush deck did innovate - High Priest of Tethmos in Tribe and actual factual removal and Counterspell in Dinrova Tron - these are not format defining changes. Rather they are iterations on known strategies and archetypes in an attempt to get an edge in a well established metagame.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's just what it is - people taking advantage of stagnation. And there's nothing bad about that either. But this hardly represents the dynamic and robust metagame that the MCQ Top 8 seemed to herald.

The chart that follows takes every deck that made Top 8. Those shaded have fewer than 5 appearances (where 2% of the volume equates to just over 5 appearances).

There have been 64 decks to make the Top 8 in Ravnica Allegiance season. Almost 36% of those have been aggro-control Gush decks. Add in combo Gush and you that number bumps up over 39%. Just under 30% of the Top 8 decks were Monarch builds. Burn, in two quick weeks, amassed around 11% of the Top 8 share but dropped off after that. Tron decks have under 5% of all Top 8s. 

But let's go back to those first numbers. Nearly 70% of the Top 8s have been earned by two defining strategies. It's awesome when you see Ruin Processor in 18th place, but when you look at the fact the deck went 4-3 in its lone appearance some of that sheen comes off. How many times this season has a new deck emerged only to be gone the next week?

How many times over the past year?

Innovation is absolutely possible. Sustained innovation that heralds change is harder to achieve. Such moments have to come from new, high power cards entering the format or significant ones leaving. Considering the lack of action on the ban list as of late I am hoping that Modern Horizons has commons that will have an impact.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

March 3 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

The March 3 Pauper Challenge was the second major Pauper tournament to take place last weekend. Out at MagicFest Los Angeles, the first ever Pauper Mythic Qualifier was held and - spoiler alert - Hexproof won. The build had a near immediate impact as the Forest- Crumbling Vestige build went on to make the Top 8 of the Challenge as well. I'll have more about this historic event in the coming weeks but something of note: both events had eight distinct archetypes in their respective Top 8s. Across the 16 decks, there were only two repeat strategies - Dimir Delver and Hexproof. 

More on this later.

The six round challenge saw a repudiation of Burn. Despite putting up strong results for a few weeks the strategy crashed and, well, burned on Sunday. Looking at the composition of the different decks this week it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. The winning Tribe list had maindeck Seeker of the Way while the Orzhov decks were packing Lone Missionary, Arashin Cleric, and Aven Riftwatcher. Lifegain was abundant enough to keep Lightning Bolt.dek out of the Top 16 and give us a moderate reprieve from getting our faces charred.

Hexproof had a breakout week. One appearance in the Top 8 and two more in the Top 16, these decks are moving away from Blossoming Sands in favor of adding Unbridled Growth and Crumbling Vestige to facilitate their non-green cards. While this does leave the deck somewhat vulnerable to Leave no Trace, it is an interesting innovation and could help bolster Bogles for the next few events.

This is the winning Tribe Combo list from Theflotist. They went undefeated in the Swiss and only dropped a game in the Top 8. The first appearance for Tribe in Ravnica Allegiance season was a good one and this deck brought some tech. First, Seeker of the Way gives the deck another threat while also padding the life total against Burn. To do this the deck cuts Augur of Bolas which is an interesting choice. I am not as high on Augur as many other Pauper players are but cutting it from Tribe, which leans hard on Gush and Inside Out, is a bold choice. Still, with 19 one mana cantrips it is possible the deck sees enough cards that it just doesn't need Augur to help. 

Dive Down is back as a way to protect Tireless Tribe while also providing another bit of damage. Dive Down is one of those cards that isn't game breaking but does just enough that it should see more play.

The eighth place list from Kazuya3 is an interesting take on midrange. A blue-white value deck, it wants to use Momentary Blink and Angelic Renewal to get as much value as possible out of Mulldrfiter. Custodi Squire is a nice top end here. That being said, I'd like to see another land somewhere to support  the 7 five drops. I would also be interested in seeing another threat of some sort to help close out the game.

Summary Judgment sees its first serious play in this build. The spell has the advantage of being able to hit both Delver of Secrets and Gurmag Angler. Unlike Sunlance, it doesn't get blanked by Kor Skyfisher and Palace Sentinels. All in all, it's an interesting option that should be seeing more play than it does at the moment.

The shaded area are decks that have a Top 8 appearance but fall beneath the 2% volume threshold. 

Dimir Delver and Boros Monarch are still having a fantastic seasons. Orzhov Monarch is also creeping up the standings despite not being nearly as popular as the other decks.

So back to the lingering point. Two Top 8s and 14 archetypes. Does this mean the format is healthy? I don't know. There's a chance it's healthier than I've been saying but I still think there's something to be desired. Decks like Dimir Delver and Boros Monarch - cards like Gush and Palace Sentinels - are fine when they aren't omnipresent and oppressive. If (and this is a big if) the results from a modified Swiss tournament (cut to Top 8 after 5 rounds, not the 9 it would have been in full Swiss) and the Challenges hold up, combined with Modern Horizons coming, it could be that Pauper is going to be alright.

We'll have to check back next week.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

February 24 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

I wish I had something new to say. Burn had another good week at the February 24 Pauper Challenge. LightningBolt.dek took three slots in the Top 8 and another 4 in the Top 16. Here's the part of our story where people mockingly ask for a Lightning Bolt ban.

Got that out of your system?

Good.

Burn did have a great week. The size of the challenge also meant that four players made the Top 32 with a losing record, indicated with a '~' in the chart. 

This brings me to an interesting fork in the road. Up until now I've been counting these decks as they have appeared in the Top 32, and rarely more than once per challenge. How important is it to count them if they appear more frequently? If we are concerning ourselves with the winner's metagame is it accurate to consider decks that did not end up with a winning record?

I do not have an answer to this and until I am convinced otherwise I will keep counting them since I have done so to this point.

So why is Burn having such a breakout?  Burn is one of the few decks in the format that really does not care what its opponent is doing. While many of the top decks try their best to limit interaction in some ways, Burn just attacks from a completely different angle. Moment's Peace is useless against it and you can only trade three cards for three damage so many times before you're out of cards (while Burn still has more Bolts). Unlike other combo decks - Elves, Tribe, Hexproof - removal is basically dead against the deck. 

Skewer the Critics has also been a huge addition. People have been leaning on Dispel as a piece of cheap interaction and Skewer conveniently avoids the counter. Spell Pierce should see more play but decks can be slow to adjust.

I am not going top spend a ton of time on the season stats this week. The cutoff to be considered was 4 appearances (with some Top 8s appearing at the bottom just to be visible).

Dimir Delver is performing five Top 8s better than expectation. 

Okay but what does that mean? 

Given how often a Win+ 1 deck makes the Top 8, Dimir Delver should have close to 8 appearances in the elimination round this season. 

It has 13.

There may be a correlation between how often the deck is played and how often it makes the Top 8 but just because a deck is heavily played doesn't mean it is going to make Top 8 more often. Boros Monarch has made the Top 32 the same number of times as Dimir Delver and yet has performed worse. It is averaging two fewer X-2 finishes - that is two more Dimir Delver decks have appeared in the Top 16 compared to Boros Monarch. 

There could be numerous reasons for this discrepancy. Early in the season Boros Bully far outnumbered Boros Monarch in appearances. Yet given its popularity, Bully has dropped significantly in its ability to finish strong - it has a similar number of X-2 finishes as it does X-3 finishes. 

Let's look at the top three decks of the moment: Dimir, Monarch, and Burn. Burn is arguably performing better than Dimir Delver when comparing Win+ to Volume. Yet it still is performing closer to expectation than the Delver deck. That is, Burn is just as good as it should be when it comes to making Top 8.

What can we infer from this?

Burn is a far easier deck to hate out than Dimir Delver. Life gain is easy to come by and a shift to Lone Missionary and Seeker of the Way could make it far harder for Burn to gain a foothold. Dimir Delver, however, can be seen as a more powerful deck that has fewer weaknesses. Despite being the top dog for the better part of three months it is still out performing most other decks in the winner's bracket.

This weekend the Pauper Mythic Qualifier is taking place at MagicFest LA. As of this writing there are over 70 people registered and my guess is that number is only going to go up in the next few days. The information gleaned from this event will be of huge importance - for the first time there's an incentive with massive implications for winning - going to London to play in the second Mythic Championship. People are going to bring their best.

And cream rises to the top.

What happens in LA is going to do a lot to inform us all about the true state of format health. I hope it's healthier than the challenge metagame.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

February 17 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

Hmm?

What's that?

A title change?

After the brewhaha surrounding last week's discussion, I've decided to take another look at how I present these data. To call what I do a complete metagame breakdown is disingenuous. Instead I break down the winner's metagame in an effort to help people approach Pauper. 

Why do I do this? Because if someone is just looking to get into Pauper they aren't going to worry about facing the incredibly sweet Call to the Netherworld deck that finished at 3-4 in 32nd place. Rather they want to know what's doing well so they can either brew something to beat the top decks or join in the fun.

Let's talk about how this approach works using the February 17 Challenge Results for context.

Usually I set up Win+ to be based on the record of the 32nd place list. This time around both 31 and 31 had more losses than wins (Hexproof and Rakdos Madness), so instead it was set against 30th place - the lowest record with three losses. Every deck that had two losses got a Win+ score of 1, 1 loss had a Win+ of 2.

Win+ is supposed to measure the relative strength of a finish in a given event. Over time more popular decks are going to have a higher Win+ score simply by virtue of being heavily represented. This isn't a flaw since the entire goal of the measure is to look at a finish in the context of an event and eventually, a season.

Using Sunday as an example, Dimir Delver did very well. It had five total Top 32 appearances and averaged better than a 5-2 finish. Looking at the actual results, it had three 6-1 records and two 4-3 records in the Top 32. For this one tournament, Dimir Delver averaged a Top 16 finish. The same can be said for Boros Monarch and Flicker Tron.

So then why do I look at seasonal statistics? There is a tendency to look at a singular tournament as evidence that there's been a course correction in the Pauper metagame. One only needs to look to February 3 where Burn had three Top 8s and took the win to see a discussion about how healthy everything looked. Since then Burn has continued to do well but has not had the same success. This follows a trend that has been repeated often in the history of the Pauper metagame.

Seasonal stats help to take a discrete card pool - that is one defined by the most current Pauper legal release - and try to understand what decks consistently performed better than others over the course of a season.

The cutoff for this week's postings is three appearances (but I did make an exception for the two decks that have a Top 8 without the volume minimum). There have been five events thus far this season for 40 total Top 8 slots. Dimir Delver has 27.5% of all Top 8s while Boros Monarch variants have 25%. 

Looking at Dimir Delver in isolation, it has 26 total Top 32 appearances and averages a 0.85 Win+ across those finishes. The closer the average is to 1 the more likely the deck will be to Top 16. Only Burn (0.87) and Flicker Tron (0.86) are in the same realm as Dimir Delver and Boros Monarch [Metalcraft] (0.79).

All of this is to say that Dimir Delver is a good deck and one of the best decks for the given season. But how much better is it than everything else? This is where the expected Top 8 comes in. Dimir Delver has 11 Top 8s but given how often a Win+ 1 deck makes Top 8 (approximately 2.5 times per tournament), it should have close to 7 Top 8s. What does this delta then tell us?

It let's us know that Dimir Delver has a high number of Win+ 2 finishes or better. The higher the delta, the more X-1 finishes (or better) a deck has in a season. Now the chart above is still a snapshot in time - Week 5 to be exact - and I don't expect Orzhov Monarch to continue to occupy such a high slot with so few Top 32 appearances. 

In part, that's why I present a full chart in each of these summaries. It would be easy for me to say that as of this week Orzhov Monarch is the second best deck on the metric of T8 Delta, but that means nothing without also considering it has five total finishes. So with that in mind I want to know - what do these charts tell you?

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

February 10 Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The other week I described the Pauper metagame as a game of ping-pong between Dimir Delver and Boros Monarch variants while the rest of the decks play musical chairs for third place. The February 10 Challenge did not do much to dispel that notion.

Just looking at these results, things look fine. The most popular Top 32 deck - Boros Monarch - didn't crack the Top 16 while Burn, Delver, and Dimir Delver all had the same Win+ score.

Win+ is a metric I use to help measure relative strength. It measures a deck's performance against the 32nd place list (or the final .500 or winning list in the case of a small challenge). Thus far, every Pauper Challenge has set the Win+ baseline, that is 0, at a X-3 record. One win above this is usually good enough for a Top 16 finish. 

In this particular challenge, five of the decks in the Top 8 went 6-1, meaning they had a Win+ of 2. In a discrete event this is important. However when looking at the format in aggregate those sorts of stats matter less. Instead we can look at how a deck is performing over a longer span of time. Burn has been very strong the past two weeks while Boros Monarch was also on the rise (until Sunday). Again, these are short term trends and help to inform ideas of metagame health.

In the micro, this Top 8 looks fairly diverse. Six distinct archetypes including two - Affinity and Orzhov Monarch - that cracked the elimination rounds for the first time this season. We see no Boros and no Tron, and last week's hot deck (Burn) continue to perform. How do things look when we talk about the four weeks of Ravnica Allegiance season?

Before diving too deep, there are a few things to know. The threshold for being included in this chart was a volume of 3 (2% of the total metagame comes out to roughly 2.56 appearances and for his purpose I round up). Both Izzet Control and Stompy made the Top 8 once but neither appeared enough times to make the cut. 

This chart is sorted by the last column - Delta Top 8. How the heck is this calculated? Remember what I said before about a Win+ of 1 being roughly equivalent to a Top 16? Some number of times a Win+ 1 deck will make the Top 8. Over the past two years it comes out to somewhere between twice a tournament and three times a tournament. Using this rough estimate (0.3125), you can estimate how many times a deck is expected to make Top 8 given it's cumulative Win+ score. On this metric, over four weeks Dimir Delver has three more Top 8s than it should all things being equal.

So what does this chart tell us? Only so much. I don't think anyone would dispute that Dimir Delver is one of the best decks this season and the same can be said for both Boros Monarch and Boros Bully. Yet Monarch, which just had a fairly down week, is outperforming its newer cousin. What gives?

Small sample size. That's the crux of the issue. These charts are great for identifying trends but less so for predictive. If they were stronger on the prognostication front, then we should have seen the rise of Tron weeks ago. Rather these charts all look back and try to make sense of what has happened. 

Well then, what happened at the end of last season? Dimir Delver and Boros Bully finished with 1.5 Top 8s over expectation. And the one before that? Dimir Delver had 4.13 Top 8s over expectation while Boros Bully had 1.63 (Tribe Combo finished between the two with 2.06). That takes us back to the start of October. That's a sustained success of two of the same macro archetypes for four months.

The Mythic Qualifier is three weeks away. Prepare for a format dominated by Dimir Delver and Boros decks. Have a plan for Elves, Tron, and Burn. Beyond that, pick something you know well. And maybe, just maybe, a week after someone makes it to the Mythic Championship on the back of Pauper, we will see something change. 

February 3 Pauper Challenge Breakdown

The headline of the February 3 Pauper Challenge is that Burn took three of the Top 8 spots and had seven Top 32 appearances, with six of those being 4-2 or better. In a world dominated by Boros Monarch and Dimir Delver that's a pretty good headline.

That's what we call burying the lede. This was a small challenge - that Top 32 represented more than half of the field. Considering that it was also the day of the Big Game for the National Football League and you have a recipe for an outlier if I ever saw one. But we can get to that later.

Burn did have a great day and there's something nice about seeing variety in the builds. Every deck in the Top 8 opted for Thermo-Alchemist and Ghitu Lavarunner; one ignored Skewer the Critics entirely; one shaved Needle Drop while another cut copies of Lava Spike. Burn is a great Level One deck right now as it attacks the format quickly in a way that gets around Dispel. More than that, it also has a low enough curve to play around Daze and with Seeker of the Way Boros decks on the decline, it can win before Prismatic Strands can do its business. Burn is also very easy to hate out. Much like Affinity in Pauper and Dredge in other formats, if enough people pack appropriate answers then the deck loses its punch.

There are some other interesting notes from Sunday. Pilgrim Prison - an enchantment based control deck finished in the Top 16. Hexproof had its best finish this season. Izzet Delver came back from the dead to make Top 8. And Boros Monarch continues to keep the crown away from Bully.

Boros Monarch and Boros Bully both use a similar shell but operate along slightly different axes. Bully wants to eke out advantage in the form of tokens, using the force multiplier of Rally the Peasants to shrink the window of opportunity for a comeback. Monarch on the other hand is built for the long game. In the past few weeks Monarch has proven to be the superior build, potentially due to its more robust creatures.

Let's look at the seasonal stats. The cutoff for 2% of total volume this week is around 2 appearances.

That's a stark difference between Monarch and Bully. In a similar number of appearances this season Monarch has five more Top 8s. Monarch also has 11 X-2 or better finishes to Bully's 6. Of course there's still Dimir Delver - six Top 8s and a whopping 2.25 Top 8s over expectation - sitting at the top of the heap.

Moving forward I'd prepare for Burn. Whether that means extra copies of Lone Missionary or Martyr of Sands you have to have a plan to protect your life total. Beyond that, more of the same: know how to handle Monarch and Dimir.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!

January 27 Pauper Challenge Breakdown

Conventional wisdom holds that Pauper has a triangular metagame. Gush decks beat Tron decks which beat Monarch decks which beat Gush decks. Considering the early surge of Dimir Delver in the wake of Foil, the recent rise of Boros flavored Monarch decks made sense. In light of the lack of bans many believed that Tron was due for a resurgence. On January 27th, we did not see that.

Instead what we saw was the same two decks rise to the top: Boros Monarch and Dimir Delver. These two decks out performed everything else in the challenge. Boros Monarch had the lone 7-0 and Dimir Delver won the whole thing (and place four players in the Top 8). 

What is most surprising though is the utter lack of Tron results. There was one deck that finished 5-2 or better and it made the Top 8. Yet this was supposed to be Tron's coming out party. What happened?

It could be that there was a lot of Tron in the event but that they were beat by Gush variants. It could be that Tron just isn't very good at the moment. 

My recent experience in the leagues has led me to believe that the recent Tron decks are not suited for the current metagame.

Tron is a powerful mana engine. Over the years it has been used to power out various top end threats like Fangren Marauder or Ulamog's Crusher. The biggest shift in Tron in the past few years was the addition of Pulse of Murasa. This let the deck shift from simply going over the top to being able to operate as a Mulldrifter fueled control deck. This build, in turn, served as the foundation for Tron decks post-Modern Masters 2017 and Dinrova Horror. Looping Ghostly Flicker through Horror became a legitimate win condition. However this required a lot of time to set up and with so few open slots - Tron requires far more than thye 12 spots for the lands themselves -the deck became almost all draw and delay tactics. That doesn't work well in a field full of interactive elements and Foil. If Tron wants to rise again it needs to figure out a way to not only win the game but also how to fight wars on the stack. That's hard to do.

Which is part of why we look to have a two pronged metagame for the foreseeable future - Gush and Monarch locked in a battle while Tron, Elves, and whatever else people feel like running vie for third place.

I could be wrong. Tron could come back with a vengeance in a week. The next month could be a golden age for Pauper with untold innovation. I would love nothing more than this. But I just don't see it happening.

2019 is going to be a banner year for Pauper. I want to continue to be at the forefront of the metagame. If you like the work I do, please consider becoming a Patron. Thank you!