Metagame Madness 7/24

It's been a few weeks since I last did Metagame Madness, and I've collected a lot of results and since we're now so close to Nationals, I'm just going to give the specific hero breakdowns. First I'm going to do total since the release of Dark Portal and then totals since the last Metagame Madness.

Phadalus-81
Pagatha-30
Dizdemona-24
Grennan-24
Telrander-23
Sen'Zir-22
Gorebelly-19
Azarak-19
Bulkas-16
Nimaasus-16
Elendril-15
Aleyah-10
Zenith-9
Omedus-9
Kayleitha-6

So we've got 15 heroes that have secured at least 5 top 8's over the course of the "season." We also have a lot of versatility after the top dog. Phadalus has run out to an amazing 81 top 8's. Pagatha, who has the second most has only managed 30. I know there are a lot of people who claim the game is balanced. But it's pretty hard to make that argument when the winningest deck has more top 8's than the next three decks combined.

I think the main reason people refuse to accept Phadalus's unbalance is the fact that so many people have a preconception about what an unbalanced deck should look like. When people think of an unbalanced deck, they think of a deck that is incredibly powerful and wins in four or five turns (or less). For those of you familiar with other games, think Ravager Affinity and Light Show. People expect to see some all powerful monstrosity that devours everything in its path.

Phadalus is not that deck. But it is unbalanced. The numbers don't lie.

Now let's take a look at what might be far more relevent to those of you hoping to use this information to get an idea of what to expect at Nationals. These are the numbers from just the last three weeks.

Phadalus-29
Pagatha-12
Grennan-8
Nimaasus-8
Sen'Zir-6
Bulkas-5
Dizdemona-5
Aleyah-5
Omedus-4
Gorebelly-3
Azarak-3
Elendril-3
Zenith-3
Telrander-2

No other hero has more than one. As you can see, in Metagame Madness' hiatus, not much has changed. I would say that Telrander is officially dead. Bulkas is making a nice little recovery. Aleyah has started to make a little name for herself, but WAYYYYY out front is still Phadalus.

I find this information hard to believe based on some of the "facts" that have been presented around the Internet in the last few weeks. Pagatha destroys Phadalus. The early game protectors plus the great removal is too much for Phadalus. Grennan loves Alliance rush decks, eats 'em for lunch. Nimaasus is just basically a better version of Phadalus. You get the Draenei cards plus Consecration, Hammer of Justice, and Blessing of Freedom. Bulkas was designed to beat rush decks so it crushes Phadalus, obv.

Now I'm sure at this point most of you are wondering why I seem to have such a giant crush on Phadalus. The truth is, I don't. I don't like Phadalus. In fact, I dislike him very much. But there are a lot of people trying to downplay how good the deck is. The fact of the matter is Phadalus is the best deck. It's not close, and I'm not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend like it's just another good deck.

For a quick comparison I want to show just raw stats from Magic's regionals to give a relative idea of what balance looks like. I won't list the decks themselves or even their names, just show how many top 8's were the most, second most, etc. These are out of ~160 total top 8's.

25
21
15
13
13
10
9
9
7

The top deck of the format only managed about 16% of total top 8's, but more importantly look how close the next decks were. So what you're looking at is not one definitive best deck with a bunch of others slugging it out for best deck that's not Phadalus, but a group of decks that would be the top decks, followed by a second group of decks that would be your Tier 2 or playable decks with anything else probably being considered rogue.

Another good example is the pre-Dark Portal metagame where the top three decks were Grennan, Dizdemona, and Elendril. While Grennan held on to the top spot the entire season, it wasn't by a ton over the other 2 decks. You had a group of the top decks (Grennan, Dizzy, Elendril) followed by contenders (Sen'Zir, Gorebelly) and everything else would probably be rogue.

But in the current metagame, Phadalus is taking a little over 30% which by itself isn't a terrible number especially considering we are only 2 sets into the game. What is bad is that the next best deck, Pagatha, is only bringing in about 12%, so there's not really that group of decks you look for at the top of the metagame, but one deck that stands out above the rest. All the others are basically just playing for the title of best deck that isn't Phadalus. If you still don't believe me go look at the numbers one more time.

I want to clarify that I'm not saying this to turn people off of the game or slam on the design team or say Magic is better. Things are what they are. What I am trying to say is that, for better or worse, the metagame is unbalanced right now. You can either accept that or you can continue to pretend that everything is perfectly balanced. Choose wisely.

If you chose to accept the reign of Phadalus, continue reading. If you chose balance, skip ahead to the next paragraph. As a deckbuilder, things can be easier in an unbalanced, defined metagame. What you're really looking for is a deck that has a very good matchup vs. Phadalus with the other matchups being far less important. If you go on just the fact that Phadalus is likely to represent anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 the field, the numbers alone say you would probably play it around 3 times in a nine-round tournament. Given the fact that Phadalus also seems to have a high tendency to win, and you can factor in more at the top tables late in the day so you may see even more than that. Due to the unbalance, you can expect to see Phadalus more than once, while probably only facing each of the other Tier 2 decks once each. This means that a weak matchup vs. Sen'Zir for instance, isn't that bad since you probably won't have to play against it more than once. You can't take a lot of bad matchups to beat Phadalus because you probably won't play enough Phadalus decks to warrant bad matchups in all the others, but you don't have to be good against everything. Compare this to the HoA metagame where you couldn't just build a deck to beat Grennan because you were just as likely to face Dizzy and Elendril all day so your deck really had to be more balanced vs. the field.

Okay, now that we've got the Phadalus fest out of the way let's take a look at some of the other decks there. Pagatha remains in the second spot, most likely due to her being Phadalus's toughest matchup. While it's hard to argue with Chris McMurry's success with the deck, I like the version that Matt Spreadbury played in Austin better. I think a lot of Chris's success has stemmed from him being an excellent player, but that deck while having a very potent endgame is also very vulnerable to a lot of hate for its big game enders. I like Matt's version because he still has the excellent early game but can turn on the beats much quicker in the middle. This allows him to beat down Phadalus before they can wait out to Magni or Yeti+Heroic Presence. The apparent death of solo decks other than Bulkas is also a positive sign for Pagatha heading into Nationals.

Grennan has gone the way of the Horde mid-range to sneak back up into third. I really like Horde mid-range right now and Stone Guard Rashun is a beating. An efficient body, he also shuts of ferocity and makes protectors all but worthless late in the game. Throw in the Shaman abilities and you've got the makings of a winner.

Bulkas has started to make a comeback which is a little surprising to me since Chipper, Moira, and Purge are still running around everywhere. Here's the nice thing about Bulkas though. Assuming it can bring its cards (specifically Cruelty and Wraith Scythe) online and keep them around, it destroys Phadalus. The problem of course is that Phadalus has very good answers both main and sideboard to the biggest threats. However, the potential to beat Phadalus combined with the very good matchups vs. the other decks (the Horde decks which don't have Chipper/Moira specifically) means that Bulkas is becoming a better choice once again.

I plan on talking about Gorebelly this week over at TCGplayer so I'll hold my comments until then for that deck.

Azarak to me, really feels like the deck to play if you want to play Bulkas, but don't want to shell out the cash for Stronghold Gauntlets. It does a lot of the same stuff, just not as well. It does have the potential to cripple rush decks though with multiple early game Lightning Reflexes.

Well, that's gonna wrap up this refresher course with the real numbers in the metagame.