Hello, and welcome to the weekly meta analysis; this will be a short weekly post looking over the results from the week’s tournaments, and how they have impacted the tournament meta.
Before I start with the numbers, I’d like to make an important disclaimer: the majority of these results will not be statistically significant, and so attempting to use this data as the basis of a discussion on bans/format health would not be useful. Instead, this data is meant to help understand the tournament meta, and if there was a truly dominant deck, it would most likely show after a few weeks of a stable meta. This is also only an analysis of the tournament meta, and Gladiator is significantly more than just the matches that occur in the weekly tournaments.
As such I will be sharing three data sets each week:
- The weekly tournament analysis – This will be short and simple, simply aiming to understand how the events in a given week have unfolded
- The current meta analysis – For example as I write this, we have just had the second week of events since the release of the Historic Anthology 5; so this analysis will cover all events from that release until a change in the card pool. This is the most important data set, as it will allow for discussions on the current health of the format over a larger set of results.
- An overall historic (not the format) meta analysis – This is more of a curiosity to track, and to see over time the most popular decks, and how they have performed
All Match Win Percentage (MW%) data is being presented with the mirror matches removed, so as to give a truer representation of each deck’s abilities.
S3 W7 Analysis
| Deck Name | Wins | Losses | Total Matches | MW% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gruul Aggro | 11 | 8 | 19 | 57.89 |
| Sultai Control | 12 | 6 | 18 | 66.67 |
| Boros Aggro | 7 | 8 | 15 | 46.67 |
| Mono-Green Stompy | 10 | 5 | 15 | 66.67 |
| Mono-White Aggro | 7 | 3 | 10 | 70 |
| Mono-White Death & Taxes | 7 | 3 | 10 | 70 |
| Abzan Lands | 5 | 5 | 10 | 50 |
| Mono-Red Aggro | 7 | 3 | 10 | 70 |
| Orzhov Death & Taxes | 3 | 7 | 10 | 30 |
| Grixis Control | 4 | 5 | 9 | 44.44 |
| Sultai Combo | 2 | 3 | 5 | 40 |
| Boros Death & Taxes | 3 | 2 | 5 | 60 |
| Rakdos Aggro | 2 | 3 | 5 | 40 |
| Golgari Midrange | 1 | 4 | 5 | 20 |
| Selesnya Midrange | 1 | 4 | 5 | 20 |
| Simic Tempo | 2 | 3 | 5 | 40 |
| Grixis Tempo | 2 | 3 | 5 | 40 |
| Four-color Ramp | 2 | 3 | 5 | 40 |
| Abzan Midrange | 5 | 0 | 5 | 100 |
| Sultai Some Brand of Cereal | 3 | 2 | 5 | 60 |
| Selesnya Death & Taxes | 3 | 2 | 5 | 60 |
| Jeskai Control | 3 | 2 | 5 | 60 |
| Jund Combo | 1 | 3 | 4 | 25 |
| Izzet Gift | 1 | 3 | 4 | 25 |
| Bant Control | 1 | 3 | 4 | 25 |
| Izzet Blitz | 0 | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Sultai Madness | 1 | 3 | 4 | 25 |
| Five-color Planeswalkers | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Naya Midrange | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
Week 7 had an interesting set of results, with the usually popular Jeskai Control only having one entry and Boros Aggro having its worst week of results in a while. The variants of Mono-White looked strong, with both Aggro and Death & Taxes putting in a very strong showing, with a combined 14-6 record. Sultai Control was the surprise of the week, putting in several strong results, and showing that control doesn’t always need white to put in a good showing.
The interactive data set and the matchup matrix for Week 7 is available here.
Historic Anthology 5 Meta
Each week I will share the 15 most played decks in the meta, as well as any decks that share the number of matches played with the 15th deck. This will hopefully allow for a picture of the HA5 meta to develop, while cutting the singleton appearance decks from clogging this article.
| Deck Name | Wins | Losses | Total Matches | MW% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gruul Aggro | 18 | 11 | 29 | 62.07 |
| Jeskai Control | 14 | 14 | 28 | 50 |
| Boros Aggro | 13 | 13 | 26 | 50 |
| Mono-Green Stompy | 17 | 8 | 25 | 68 |
| Grixis Control | 14 | 10 | 24 | 58.33 |
| Sultai Control | 16 | 7 | 23 | 69.57 |
| Mono-White Death & Taxes | 14 | 6 | 20 | 70 |
| Mono-Red Aggro | 10 | 5 | 15 | 66.67 |
| Abzan Midrange | 9 | 6 | 15 | 60 |
| Abzan Lands | 7 | 8 | 15 | 46.67 |
| Rakdos Aggro | 6 | 9 | 15 | 40 |
| Mono-White Aggro | 10 | 5 | 15 | 66.67 |
| Orzhov Death & Taxes | 5 | 10 | 15 | 33.33 |
| Jund Combo | 5 | 9 | 14 | 35.71 |
| Sultai Combo | 6 | 8 | 14 | 42.86 |
| Bant Control | 3 | 11 | 14 | 21.43 |
After two weeks of HA5 being released, its hard to make too many snap calls, but several forms of aggro continue to put in good results, and the control decks appear to be adapting to this, with less Blue-White control appearing, and more black removal based control starting to both show-up and put in reasonable results. The combo decks appear to be falling in both favor and results, possibly due to the variety of aggro decks that are now appearing on a consistent basis, while midrange appears to have such a diverse range of decks, that few make it into the top 15 in terms of decks played.
The interactive data set and the matchup matrix for HA5 is available here.
Overall Meta
| Deck Name | Wins | Losses | Total Matches | MW% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mono-Red Aggro | 86 | 53 | 139 | 61.87 |
| Jeskai Control | 67 | 58 | 125 | 53.6 |
| Sultai Combo | 61 | 43 | 104 | 58.65 |
| Boros Aggro | 62 | 37 | 99 | 62.63 |
| Mono-Green Stompy | 54 | 35 | 89 | 60.67 |
| Gruul Aggro | 57 | 31 | 88 | 64.77 |
| Azorius Control | 32 | 44 | 76 | 42.11 |
| Grixis Control | 42 | 27 | 69 | 60.87 |
| Sultai Control | 38 | 27 | 65 | 58.46 |
| Esper Control | 16 | 33 | 49 | 32.65 |
The top 10 decks in the Overall Meta show an interesting mix of aggro, control, and combo, with Azorius Control being popular despite its apparent poor MW%. Red-based aggro also appears to be very popular, with 3 different archetypes all putting in very respectable results.
The full data set of 107 decks, and 698 matchups can be found here.
Signing Off
That concludes this week’s meta analysis, if you have any data you’d like to see feel free to contact me on the Gladiator Discord (Tyreworm#15017), or even just leaving thoughts in the #meta-discussion channel.
A lover of all decks GB, Tyreworm is rarely found without some form of hand attack in a Magic deck. Since starting in 2015, Tyreworm has delved into almost all formats, but always seems to converge on black based midrange. Outside of Magic, Tyreworm is very interested in stats and analysis, leading to him starting the weekly meta analysis
Tyreworm is the writer of the weekly meta analysis, and will occasionally write a deck tech on his latest midrange project.
