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!
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