The post-ban MODERN metagame until January - Magic: the Gathering article

Written by CMA-Flippi on January 27, 2012

Players always want to figure out how to win. A competitive mind tries to optimize the conditions for a tournament and apply high-skilled game itself. The latter trait can be gained best by experience. Good conditions for a tournament include an optimal deckchoice, which depends on the metagame. To reiterate: it's a bad idea to choose rock when everyone else picks paper.

The PTQ season has just started, making MODERN continue to be the most exciting format of the moment. Recent bans of Wild Nacatl and Punishing Fire add to the experience now necessary to find ones' optimal deckchoice. Since the format has existed in its current form, magic-league has hosted more than 200 MODERN tournaments which produces a sample size of 1971 decks. With data of all matches played by these decks, I am able to analyze the past modern metagame.

My aim is to draw conclusions which help determining the optimal deckchoice mentioned above.

1. The pre-ban MODERN metagame
2. The post-ban MODERN metagame
a) Average metagame
b) Comparison with the old metagame
c) Metagame trends
3. A look at the most played decks
a) Average winning percentages
b) Metagame trends
4. The moral of the story

1. The pre-ban MODERN metagame

The defining decks in the "far" past were Affinity, Teachings Control, Deathcloud, Jund and Tribal Zoo. These decks covered 1/4 of the field.

Noteworthy other decks were, in descending order MartyrProclamation, Big Zoo, RDW, UW Control, Eldrazi Tron, Loam Control, URG Junk, Gifts Control, Moon Zoo, DeceiverTwin, Project Melira, Past in Flames, Next Level BLue and Merfolk, who each range between 2% (Merfolk) and 3,5% (Martyr) metagame presence. Of course, without Wild Nacatl an Punishing Fire, the metagame must have changed significantly.

2. The post-ban MODERN metagame
a) Average metagame

Whether Affinity is the dominant power of the metagame or not is difficult to say. Had I separated Erayo, Atog and Tezzeret Affinity, its numbers would be much lower. Therefore, a more broad categorization of similar archetypes is useful.

Delver is something new to the scene. Here's two example lists:

Grixis Delver by styx
Main Deck		Sideboard
1 Forked Bolt 4 Serum Visions 3 Blightning 4 Remand 4 Terminate 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 4 Delver of Secrets 2 Vendilion Clique 3 Snapcaster Mage 3 Sedraxis Specter	4 Dark Confidant 2 Drowned Catacomb 1 Dragonskull Summit 4 Creeping Tar Pit 2 Island 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Blood Crypt 1 Sulfur Falls 2 Swamp 2 Watery Grave 2 Steam Vents	2 Negate 3 Sulfur Elemental 1 Forked Bolt 3 Deathmark 3 Hurkyl's Recall 1 Vendilion Clique 2 Echoing Truth

UB Delver by crappeur
Main Deck		Sideboard
4 Island 1 Swamp 4 Mutavault 4 Darkslick Shores 2 Misty Rainforest 4 Creeping Tar Pit 2 Scalding Tarn 2 Watery Grave 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Dark Confidant	4 Snapcaster Mage 3 Vendilion Clique 2 Sword of Feast and Famine 1 Disfigure 4 Smother 4 Mana Leak 2 Cryptic Command 4 Inquisition of Kozilek 4 Serum Visions 1 Thoughtseize	1 Thoughtseize 2 Engineered Explosives 2 Nihil Spellbomb 2 Threads of Disloyalty 2 Spell Pierce 2 Spellskite 2 Darkblast 2 Hurkyl's Recall

b) Comparison with the old metagame

Obviously, decks dependant on Punishing Fire as a control engine ceased to exist. Nakamura Gifts and Loam Control died out. While all Zoo decks made 12% before the cutting of Wild Nacatl, they still make 5% of the current metagame.
The Delverdecks, now making 12% of the metagame barely existed before. Punishing Fire certainly kept UB Junk, UR Delver and Grixis Junk at bay. Now, the blue Insect rose to swarm the tournaments like not many decks have done in such a short time.

c) Metagame trends

Of course, the average data is useful. Further information can be extracted out of the data when checking for trends. A deck might represent the metagame on average less often than a second deck, but in recent time more than double the number of times. Displaying trends can provide a more detailed picture of the metagame. Is a deck more present now than the average data tells?

The most visible downfall in popularity is evident in Jund and Past in Flames. Both deck types lost 50% of their previous player base. Zoo, surprisingly, did not die out without Wild Nacatl. Instead, it rose again; for a time it was played as second most popular archetype, behind only Affinity in early 2012. Zoo was then pushed away by the Delverdecks. With the rise of DeceiverTwin and UB Junk in mid January, Zoo dropped from a major player to just another deck around. I made the rise and fall of most decks more easily visible than in the pure data table above with a diagram displaying the popularity of the decks over time.

UB Junk and DeceiverTwin have most likely reached their peak. Typically for healthy metagames such as the current one, decks never reach a popularity level of more than 15%. Especially in MODERN, WotC did not hesitate to ban cards before risking a metagame of one deck against the rest.

Similarly, I expect Bant to become less popular and Past in Flames to rise slightly. Having a suitable technique to at least make approximate assumptions about the future metagame is certainly an exciting topic, but not the main topic of my article. I do note that the flow of many decks' popularity remind me of a sinusoid curve. Perhaps taking note of a decks' performance in matches helps explain the changes within the metagame over time.

3. A look at the most played decks
a) Average winning percentages

DeceiverTwin was the best deck in the timeframe December 20th - January 20th overall. It won 64% of its matches. The only two more popular decks, Affinity (54%) and Jund (49%) don't even come close. Due to the little fine tuning and thought put into quick homebrew decks, all decks categorized as "other decks" in my table have, on average, a winning percentage of less than 50%. Of course, there are decks with positive records (GB Smallpox, Architect Pili-Pala, Township Token), but the low sample size of matches of them make it still risky for me to draw conclusions on these. Here's example decks of the mathematically best decks since the bannings.

UR DeceiverTwin by Dali
Main Deck		Sideboard
1 Breeding Pool 2 Cascade Bluffs 5 Island 3 Misty Rainforest 2 Mountain 4 Scalding Tarn 4 Steam Vents 3 Sulfur Falls 4 Deceiver Exarch	3 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 3 Pestermite 3 Spellskite 4 Dispel 4 Remand 4 Serum Visions 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Splinter Twin 3 Flame Slash	4 Ancient Grudge 3 Blood Moon 2 Echoing Truth 3 Firespout 1 Flame Slash 2 Negate

Pod Exarch by MitchMachine
Main Deck		Sideboard
3 Breeding Pool 3 Stomping Ground 1 Fire-Lit Thicket 2 Island 2 Forest 4 Misty Rainforest 1 Mountain 4 Scalding Tarn 2 Steam Vents 2 Verdant Catacombs 1 Kitchen Finks 1 Venser, Shaper Savant 3 Wall of Roots	1 Spellskite 1 Obstinate Baloth 1 Pestermite 4 Birds of Paradise 3 Deceiver Exarch 1 Eternal Witness 2 Glen Elendra Archmage 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 4 Lotus Cobra 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror 4 Birthing Pod 4 Chord of Calling 3 Serum Visions	3 Kitchen Finks 1 Acidic Slime 1 Daybreak Ranger 1 Ethersworn Canonist 1 Loaming Shaman 2 Negate 1 Obstinate Baloth 1 Oracle of Mul Daya 1 Sower of Temptation 1 Spell Pierce 1 Vithian Renegades 1 Wurmcoil Engine

Moon Zoo by mishimakaz
Main Deck		Sideboard
4 Arid Mesa 1 Plains 2 Forest 1 Mountain 1 Treetop Village 2 Marsh Flats 3 Misty Rainforest 2 Verdant Catacombs 2 Sacred Foundry 2 Stomping Ground 2 Temple Garden 2 Qasali Pridemage	4 Tarmogoyf 4 Knight of the Reliquary 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Kird Ape 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Blood Moon 1 Temporal Isolation 3 Lightning Helix 2 Journey to Nowhere 2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant	1 Qasali Pridemage 1 Lightning Helix 3 Path to Exile 2 Ancient Grudge 3 Gaddock Teeg 2 Grim Lavamancer 3 Sulfur Elemental

b) Metagame trends
Similar to the portion about the deck types within the metagame, I created a diagram out of each winning percentages over the timeframe I analyzed.

There's a few obvious sights. DeceiverTwin dominates almost all other decks consistently. Connecting the maximum turning point of DeceiverTwin with the respective highest point in the metagame indicates that DeceiverTwin's most important matchup is Zoo. The more players using Zoo, the better DeceiverTwin perform. The Delverdecks performed inversely to Zoo however. It seems the most important changes within the future metagame will happen around Delver, DeceiverTwin and Zoo. Bant, Affinity, UW Control and Jund proved resilient enough to the changes in the metagame. The decks were not affected much by the rise of Delver. Their winning chances did not vary. Judging by their winning percentages, (54%, 54%, 54%, 49%), only Jund will continue to lose players. It showed a negative tendency already and barely reaches 50%. GB Deathcloud and RG Eldrazi, once deserved decks continue their downfall in metagame appearance and strength. Of all decks, the performance of the Delver decks vary the most. Teachings is basically dead and I foresee the same for Past in Flames and Ad Nauseam in the near future.

4. The moral of the story
I hope I could make the pure data collation more accessible by pointing out the interesting parts. Analyzing the trends of the metagame is not an exact science, so I expect to be wrong with one of my core suggestions:
In general, Delverdecks are hyped.
Deathcloud will soon die out.
Zoo, Delver and DeceiverTwin stay the top 3 decks in future
Each of these three decks will stay the top 3 decks, but within the top 3, they switch places over and over.
Bant, Affinity and UW Control are solid decks, but do not have much potential for improvement
Jund will lose its status as Tier1 deck

..Until next time, there will be a next time, become a better player by playing on magic-league.com, the home of tomorrow's mtg-stars.

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