About this article: This is a weekly report on the online pauper meta. The data it uses are from last Wednesday to this Wednesday. It looks at the data that /u/TomScud collects from a selection of dailies. He watches the replays on MTGO to figure out how each person did, not just the 3-1s and 4-0s that Wizards publishes. This allows us to see the whole iceberg and figure out how well each deck did in total. Now, this data is just for this week and just from the data Tom collects, so it does ignore the other 3-1/4-0 results which means it is not perfect. Additionally, the conclusions in this article are just based on this week, and as the meta is fluid, the top decks shift. This is intended to see what decks are performing well this week and is not necessarily a reflection of the deck’s overall strength.

This article uses data from the 6-18, 6-21 evening, and 6-23 dailies.

This week it is back to the recent normal in the metagame – MBC and Burn lead the rest of the decks in popularity. Burn continued to have dismal results, and more and more decks are going in with Burn in mind. On the other hand, MBC broke its streak of bad weeks and actually did quite decent. Other than that, Esper Fae Combo dropped a bit in popularity, which is to be expected. Last week was so much higher than normal that variance was expected to be a key factor. At that same point, Esper Fae has grown and is a force in the meta with multiple new players playing the deck. But first, lets look at the meta as a whole.

The biggest take away from this graph is the dominance that Delver and Esper Fae have over the rest of the decks. MBC also did fantastic which is certainly a break from what I’ve come to expect from the deck. In addition, the other category shrunk for the first time in a while, meaning that the top decks did, on average, better than rogues.

This graph shows a lot more variation between the decks than usual. Delver is the best with Esper Fae right on its tail. After that MBC and UR Fiend are close, both a decent bit above average. Affinity did ok and UB Angler and Burn both did terrible. The main mover this week was MBC. It did significantly better than normal. Everything else looks about the same as in weeks past.

With Esper Fae being such a hot topic in the community, I thought it would be interesting to look at how Esper Fae did in each of its games so I took its results from the 2 dailies I recorded and graphed them on the chart below (the 10 is for games with ending turn 10 or more).

Now the turn where the games includes when people concede so some games may have actually taken a bit longer, but they were decided at this point. From the graph, it is clear that Esper Fae is a turn 6 combo deck, or at least that is where there is a strong chance that they are able to go off. If you want to beat the deck, your best chance is to get off to a start strong enough that they either die quickly, or put enough pressure that they have to focus on you and not going off. Affinity seems like a very strong to do this. Not only are they able to often put lethal on the board turn 4 or so, they have a decent bit of disruption and have the Atog/Fling combo that the deck must play around. Lastly, a major thing to note is that the deck only lost 2 matches to time. While that is something, it certainly is not a gameplan versus the deck. The deck timing itself out just did not seem to happen in most matches. Don’t rely on the clock to help you win, it rarely will. I’ll continue doing these for a little while to gain some more data in addition to finding matchup data which will hopefully gain more insight into how to properly attack Esper Fae.

Thanks for reading! -Najay1

Winners

1. Delver – Stats: 9.33% Prominence; 52.38% Cash Rate; 63.51% Win Rate. Again Delver is an amazing deck that put up great results. Interestingly, Delver was able to put up strong results in Wizard’s results as well. It probably helps that Stompy has not been as popular as Stompy is the best Gut Shot deck by far. I would expect Delver to continue to be a strong deck and expect this deck to only continue to be popular.

2. Stompy – Stats: 4.44% Prom; 50.00% Cash; 61.11% Win. Stompy did not have a huge amount of pilots, but those pilots did very well. Only 10 people played the list in the 3 dailies that were recorded (and 0 in one daily). I’ve looked into this a bit and I really do not believe that the list should be as underplayed as it is. It has the name recognition, it has the past success to back it up, it just got a new shiny sideboard card, etc. The deck has game, I would play it, but not plan to see much of it.

3. Esper Fae Combo – Stats: 7.56% Prom; 47.06 Cash; 56.14% Win. This is one of the better decks in the format over the past few weeks although it did not have the prominence that it was able to reach last week. As seen in the data earlier up, this is a turn 6 deck and in a format that is bound with control decks, a consistent combo deck is hard to beat. I do think that these results may not be at their ceiling and can grow as more people get more and more experience with the deck. This is the deck to fight and I think the best way to do that is just to be faster than them. Hate can be effective, but just 4 cards in the sideboard is not enough to stop this deck. You need to prepare throughout the deck. This is why decks that are loaded with disruption, or are just faster, are able to have success. Great deck, be ready to face it.

4. MBC – Stats: 11.11% Prom; 40.00% Cash; 54.76% Win. Lastly is one of the bigger surprises of the week in MBC. MBC has not had a great week in a long while and it needs a few more of these to really prove that it is a strong deck. This is one of the first weeks that has shown that the deck has the chance to be successful. Still, the results were not mind blowing this week with just an above average win rate. Personally, I need at least a few more weeks of strong finishes to believe that MBC deserves to be one of the most prominent decks.

Losers

1. Burn – Stats: 11.11% Prom; 12.00% Cash; 39.47% Win. Again the classic red lava wins deck has a pretty bad week. Considering Lone Missionary is the 9th most played creature in the format (in 11.16% of decks as a 4-of) and people are bringing out the hate. I’m not sure how much longer this deck can remain on top as people continue to run into hate and hate and hate. I think this next week will be the week Burn will start to subside. I think it has to at some point and I think this is the week. The deck is just not in the right place for a meta deck. If you want to attack the meta, I suggest doing so in other ways.

2. UB Angler – Stats: 8.44% Prom; 21.05% Cash; 50.75% Win. Again this deck has not performed up to expectations. Actually, the other Angler list – UB Teachings – had a breakout week really out of nowhere. With such a low cash and win rate, I would expect to see this list to start to subside as well. Really just not a huge fan of having less threats than MBC and Delver have answers. In addition, the deck really isn’t that fast which means it loses to most aggro decks. Just not right for the current meta.

Brew of the Week

[d title=”Abzan Torture by Bjornarprytz – June 18, 2015″]

Creatures

4 Arrogant Wurm

4 Grave Scrabbler

4 Satyr Wayfinder

4 Wild Mongrel

3 Golgari Brownscale

1 Auramancer

1 Carrion Feeder

1 Crypt Rats

1 Mesmeric Fiend

1 Plagued Rusalka

1 Qasali Pridemage

1 Stinkweed Imp

1 Tilling Treefolk

1 Vampire Hounds

Spells

4 Commune with the Gods

4 Tortured Existence

Lands

8 Swamp

4 Blossoming Sands

4 Jungle Hollow

2 Forest

2 Golgari Guildgate

2 Scoured Barrens

2 Tranquil Thicket

Sideboard

3 Mesmeric Fiend

3 Spore Frog

2 Crypt Rats

2 Qasali Pridemage

2 Faerie Macabre

1 Golgari Brownscale

1 Gnaw to the Bone

1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi [/d]

This is one of the few Tortured Existence lists to have success really in the past few years. Muuchan’s Jund list is really the only TE list to find continual success. The main problem I have with this list is that it seems to be very weak to aggro decks that just get in tons of damage quick (like Burn) if it isn’t able to find its Golgari Brownscales (which is only 2 life). In addition the mana is not great (like any 3 color deck in pauper) and it leaves a lot to be desired. At that same point it seems to have lots of potential lines of play with many different cards and has a decent toolbox to play into different situations. I would look to this deck to be streamlined and maybe have a chance in the future.

Data

Thanks to Tom Scud! Check out his Facebook and his Spreadsheet.

PCT Results

The PCT is a weekly tournament hosted on Gatherling.com by LongTimeGone. It occurs Tuesday at 8 pm est.