April 21 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame

After 13 weeks Ravnica Allegiance is coming to a close. Technically this season took 14 weeks, but since one week was a Playoff (with a closed invite list) it had some special circumstances. The last challenge before War of the Spark did not provide many surprises.

Instead, this challenge was more of the same. More Dimir Delver at the top of the metagame. More of the Gush-Augur of Bolas - Preordain -whatever other blue card engine dominating. Out of the 25 Win+ points awarded in the April 21st Challenge, 16 of them - 80% - went to a deck running this engine. By comparison three - or 9% - went to the Monarch.

Let's ignore Win+ for a moment. Instead, let's look at Top 8s. Given everything about this season it would make sense that Dimir Delver to have more Top 8s than any other deck. It was a top performer wire-to-wire and runs some of the most powerful cards available in the format. But what if I told you that it had a conversion rate of better than 33% from Top 32 to Top 8? And it did this with 76 Top 32 finishes. The only deck to do better in conversion fielded 8 Top 32 lists. 

Threshold for appearing in the power rankings is 8 appearances.

For a moment, let's just look at Top 8s. Dimir Delver has 26 out of 104 -fully one quarter of all Top 8s awarded. It has 5 wins out of 13 events. Boros Monarch - both variants - combine for just over 22% of all Top 8s awarded. If you want to look at the Gush engine, it accumulated 44% of all Top 8s; Monarch had nearly 29%.

When two engines take up a huge share of the meta game it doesn't leave much space for others to thrive. Tron didn't reach 5% of the Top 8 share - same with Hexproof. Burn didn't reach 10%. Affinity and Stompy had under 2% of the Top 8 metagame - same with Elves.

Here's where things stand. Gush and Monarch are just better than everything else. War of the Spark season starts this week and I'm going to make a bold prediction: unless some cards get banned on May 20th that season is also going to be dominated by Gush and Monarch.

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!

April 14 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame Breakdown

April 14th featured the first Pauper Challenge to use the new London Mulligan. Let's see how that turned out.

Oh.

To be fair this was a relatively small challenge with 69 players. The last two slots of the Top 32 had 3-4 records (we see you down there Burn). Looking at solely positive Win+, 21 points were awarded. Gush accounted for 11 points; Monarch 7. At this point it is hard to call Tron a pillar of the format due to the sheer dominance of the other two. Sure, it will put up results, but Tron itself does not draw you cards.

In many ways Pauper has been reduced to a format of who can have the most cards in hand. Without Planeswalkers there are precious few ways to generate any form of persistent card (or board) advantage. Seeing more cards is obviously good as it givens you more chances to find those with a greater impact. However when formats simple become about who can draw more cards, then drawing cards is really the only thing you want to be doing. 

Let's look at the three most successful archetypes that do not lean on one of the pillars. Burn doesn't care about seeing more cards because it only needs to see seven spells to win the game. Still it gets extra looks with Needle Drop and Gitaxian Probe. Hexproof is also redundant and while it doesn't need to amass a large hand, it does need to see plenty of cards and uses Abundant Growth and Unbridled Growth to that end. And Elves, well, Distant Melody and Lead the Stampede are very strong cards.

8 appearances needed to meet the 12 event threshold

Gavin Verhey has described Pauper as a format ruled by 2-for-1s. It makes sense. In a world without a ton of ways to gain a massive advantage, accruing multiple small edges starts to add up over a few turns. It's a reason so many people feel helpless in the face of Ninja of the Deep Hours - two hits and you're behind. Augur of Bolas gets a ton of press as a 2-for-1 that blocks well. But these pale when compared to the persistent power of Monarch. If you can protect it you get an extra card for free every turn. Gush might be a one time burst of cards but when paired with powerful cantrips you can ride that advantage until you find the next Gush. Even though Tron is not a card advantage engine in it of itself, it enables the ability to "draw" fresh copies of your key spell every turn thanks to Ghostly Flicker and Mnemonic Wall.

None of these things are bad in isolation. To me it represents a sign that the format needs some attention. In my opinion games of Magic should not come down to who has drawn more cards. Yes, there are games where both players draw a ton and sometimes the one with 12 cards left in their library beats the one with 10, but when someone has seen 20 cards to your 15 the gap feels that much larger.

That is not to say that there shouldn't be a way to draw cards in Pauper. The format needs a persistent source of card advantage to give midrange and control decks a real shot. Still if Pauper stays this course I don't think the format grows and improves.

So what can be done? Short of printing multiple cheap engines in every color, I am not sure. At some point the best way to add to the card pool will be to subtract from it.

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!

A Deeper Dive on Gush and Monarch

Yesterday's Challenge Breakdown sparked some discussion. To be fair whenever I write about the dominance of Gush and Monarch the words start to fly. Still, I decided to go back and look at how these macro-archetypes have performed over a longer time span. I decided to start at the release of Ravnica Allegiance. I selected this point because it would give data from before the release of Ultimate Masters and the downshifting of Foil - a card that helped  pushed Gush decks up another notch. This would give a decent before and after snapshot.

Unlike yesterday I will not be looking at Top 8s. Instead I will be going back to the Win+ metric. Win+ assigns a point value for each win above the last list with a winning or neutral record. Over the time period covered, this means that an X-2 record yielded a Win+ of score of 1. For each individual event I summed the Win+ score and then recorded the Win+ totals of Gush and Monarch, thus obtaining the win share of these macro-archetypes. These chart goes back to September 30th and includes every open Challenge between that date and April 7th. The only event not included is the March 31st Pauper Playoff. There were 27 different challenges tracked.

Gush only dipped below 20% of all Win+ points once in the time span recorded. It has just as many days around 60% as it does around 20%. On March 10th Gush had its best day over the past half a year and topped 71% of Win+. Over this span, Gush decks averaged 39.55% of all Win+ awarded (which follows the trend line).

Where Gush lives between 20% and 60%, Monarch lives between 5% and 40%. Monarch has a stronger growth trend than Gush but still closing the chart at under 40% - where Gush started. Monarch has three days above 40%. Over the time span measured, Monarch decks averaged 24.85% of all Win+ awarded.

And here is where we end up. Gush and Monarch, combined, rarely dip below 50% of all Win+ awarded. Small sample size is something to consider but this is over half a year's worth of data. Combined these two macro-archetypes averaged 64.39% of all Win+ awarded over these 27 Challenges. The trend line starts at 35% and ends at over 75% - that's a fairly consistent level of growth over six months. More than that, every time there is a downward turn the trend lasts for a week or two at most before they bounce back in force. 

A Win+ of 1 equates to a Top 16 finish on average. Over the course of 6 months, Gush and Monarch can be said to have claimed almost 65% of all Top 16 slots, leaving 35% for every other archetype in the format.

And here is the rub. Pauper is an eternal format. For some that means playing with powerful cards and having a top tier that is relatively stable. For others that means being able to play with a wide variety of archetypes and having a chance to succeed. I tend to fall in the latter camp. I want Pauper to be a format of powerful things. At the same time I want it to be a place where, at the highest level of competition, people do not feel compelled to run either Gush or Monarch. 

The data set used here is not perfect - it draws exclusively from Magic Online because that is where I can pull full Top 32 data. Still, over a fairly long span of time these two mechanics have proven themselves to be a good deal better than everything else in Pauper.

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! 

April 7 Pauper Challenge Winner's Metagame Breakdown

Back at it! Last week was the first Pauper Playoff on Magic Online, which I wrote about here. Because the Playoff was not an open event - that is it was invite only - I am not counting it in the Ravnica Allegiance season standings. There was no such limit on the April 7th Challenge so let's dive right in.

Dimir Delver won and also had three copies in the Top 8. It earned a third of all Win+ points on Sunday and also made up over 25% of the Top 32 field. I have not been talking about overall format health as much as I would like because it always sparks controversy. While Gush decks are a dominant force it is not only Gush that contributes to their power ranking. The combination of Gush, Augur of Bolas, and powerful cantrips help to push blue decks over the top. 

At the same time Gush is the single most broken card out of the bunch. It is effectively free on mana and can actually net a resource. Combined with Foil it can create a turn where the blue player has complete control over what takes place, often at no mana investment. 

The argument against blue cards often comes down to Gush, Augur of Bolas, and Foil. I think Foil is safe as it is hardly a backbreaker without Gush to fuel it. Augur, on the other hand, gets a lot of credit for "holding aggro down". I think that's a crock.

The cut off for counting in the power rankings this week is 7 appearances. The shaded area are decks that have made the Top 8 but do not meet the minimum threshold.

Augur of Bolas is very good. As a 1/3 body it can block a wide array of creatures. It can also dig you towards the very best cards in your deck (Gush, et al). By itself it's an annoying road block for beatdown. But it is hardly the only thing holding Stompy and its ilk back. Prismatic Strands and Moment's Peace do much more to thwart beatdown strategies than Augur of Bolas. These cards take the place of removal spells in some decks in order to buy time to establish control of the game. When combined with persistent forms of card advantage - whether that is the Monarch or a Ghostly Flicker loop - the window for aggro to succeed becomes incredibly small. So small in fact, that the archetype has all but vanished from the most competitive sphere.

On that note, yes, these results only track Magic Online. They do not take into account the various local metagames. That being said the data, over a decent stretch of time, seems to indicate the metagame is become stratified.

This chart tracks every Top 8 - counting the Playoff - going back to the release of Ravnica Allegiance. At no point over the past three months have one of these macro-strategies not appeared in the Top 8 of a Challenge. On one occasion they accounted for every member of the Top 8. Despite the prevalence of Gush decks for the entirety of the season to this point, the blue decks are on an upward trajectory while their predator - Monarch decks, are on a downward slope.

Here's another chart. It tracks the same data as above except it takes the two macro-archetypes and stacks their results. Only twice over the past 12 weeks were these decks merely 50% of the Top 8. Three times they took 6 slots - on March 10th you were either Monarch or Gush or you weren't in the Top 8.

Gush and Monarch are just the two best things you can be doing in the format right now and it is not very close. Look back at the seasonal chart. What's the third best archetype right now? It isn't Tron - it's Burn. Burn has 8 Top 8 appearances and two wins. Out of 88 possible Top 8s, Gush has 36 and Monarch has 27. That leaves 25 Top 8s to be divvied up amongst every other archetype.

War of the Spark represents a new philosophy of pushing the power level of certain commons. This is not a repudiation of New World Order, which tries to limit board complexity at common (a la Samite Healer or Sparksmith) but rather a way to give commons some staying power. Take Vivien's Grizzly for example. This card is powerful in that it can refill your hand, but it does not add another layer to surveying the board when it comes to combat or position. And even with these cards - and Modern Horizions - on their way, I am not sure enough can be printed to inject some diversity into Pauper.

There are many who think that this is fine. That as a non-rotating format Pauper should have a clearly defined suite of best decks. I don't disagree that at any given moment something should be the best deck. At the same time, I wish that over a three month span there was a littler more variety as to what the best deck could be on a given day.

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!

Common Design: The One with Two Urza's Saga Cards

Time for another entry in my series on potentially powerful Pauper cards. Today I want to start with a card that has gotten a lot of press, in no small part because of one Gavin Verhey.

Over the past several years I have stumped for a three mana sweeper in Pauper on several occasions. When the format was dominated by Stompy and Delver the idea of a single card that could handle a large army of small creatures was incredibly attractive. This was before Palace Sentinels took its play as a pillar of the format. But let's try and return to early 2017.

The baseline size for an aggressive creature in Pauper is 2/2. Beatdown decks build their CVs on their ability to flood the board with these creatures and overwhelm the opponent. The release of Burning-Tree Emissary made it incredibly easy to end the second turn with between six and eight power. At the time the best sweepers were Electrickery and Evincar's Justice which put the aggressive decks at a significant advantage. 

The result of the offensive onslaught was that decks turned to cards like Moment's Peace and other damage prevention effects to survive the early game. Slower decks had a hard time packing the correct removal to take out larger threats while containing an early army. As a consequence, traditional aggressive decks almost completely vanished since they could not come out ahead of the Fog parade. The hope was that a card like Steam Blast would provide control decks with a way to stall Stompy and the like while not leaving them vulnerable to larger threats since they could run supplemental removal.

Now the pendulum is at the other end of its arc. Beatdown is barely a factor for multiple reasons. Prismatic Strands and Moment's Peace make it very difficult for attacking to work while Stonehorn Dignitary shuts down the combat phase entirely. Augur of Bolas, Kor Skyfisher, and Palace Sentinels are all fantastic blockers and eat 2/2s for breakfast. The thing is I still think a card like Steam Blast would be good for Pauper in the long run as a check on these strategies in the future.

That presents another problem. The format has moved past 2/2 creatures and now needs efficient three power creatures for beatdown decks to make a comeback. So if Modern Horizons brings Steam Blast, what else could it bring? My hope is for Albino Troll.

Albino Troll has a series constructed pedigree. As a 3/3 for 1G it is a solid threat that comes with an Echo cost. Is a turn two 3/3 good enough to eat up your third turn? Maybe. If you run Burning-Tree Emissary into Albino Troll? That's a lot more palatable. 

Both of these cards - Albino Troll and Steam Blast - are fairly simple and elegant. They could serve a vital role in Modern Horizons limited while also bolstering Modern. And both are perfectly reasonable to be printed at common in a Masters style set.

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