The Modern landscape after the Pro Tour

Intro

Pro Tour Edge of Eternities has just taken place. It was Edge of Eternities Limited + Modern, with Spider-Man being legal in the Modern portion. From that event, we have the metagame breakdown and win rates of every archetype, all gathered by Frank Karsten.

In today's piece, I will delve into those two key stats, assess the shape of the Modern metagame, and try to predict the aftermath of what we've seen at the PT.

Let's dive in!

The Metagame Coming In

Let us take a look first at what the metagame looked like on the first day of competition.

Source

I will now analyse this in the context of the following: deck domination, diversity of decks, and diversity of macro archetypes.

First, the top 3 decks don't exceed 20% and are in mid tens. This is a nice sign that there is no single deck that would dominate the metagame. We have seen formats that are either completely strangled by one strategy (Vivi in Standard) or the format could be summarised as a Duel Deck between two decks, being clearly the best with a huge dropoff of power level between them and the next best thing. Here, neither is the case. Just by looking at the numbers, one could be tempted to say it's a Triple deck, but in practice, that's not true. The top-tier decks span all the way to, dare I say, 7th place. As people love about Modern - any deck can take down the event, and it's indeed still true.

As an extension of the previous point, we do see a wide variety among the top decks. A player with any preference can find something to their liking and master it. The Other category is also pretty robust with a lot of hidden gems there. And indeed, when we look at the decks that performed well in the constructed portion, you'll find strategies like Broodscale Yawgmoth, Samwise Gamgee Combo, or Azorius Blink.

What if we group them by their macro characteristics? On the meta graphic, we have 10 decks. I'd label them as follows:

1. Combo control
2. Combo control
3. Aggro Midrange
4. Ramp
5. Aggro
6. Aggro Midrange
7. Combo ramp
8. Combo
9. Aggro Midrange
10. Ramp

If we look at it from this perspective, the meta is a bit more homogeneous, with 4 out of 10 decks being combogenic and 4 somewhere in the aggro/midrange realm. What we seem to lack is a pure control deck, and a pure fair midrange deck. Moreover, it seems to me that the proportion of fair decks overall is relatively small, considering that those non-combo decks still have an element to them that produces borderline unfair games - Boros Energy and its combo-esque draws with Bombardment, Affinity trying to deploy t1-t2 Kappa Canoneer, or turn two Leyline Scion. This might be a testament to the overall ever-increasing power level of the entire format, but it seems to me that every deck is a combo deck, has a combo finish, or has some combo-adjacent parts to make it viable.

Modern Win Rates

Source

Now that we know the overall landscape, let's see how it worked out in practice.

I would like to focus on decks with a reasonably big sample, so I'll look at 100+ matches played.

Under this assumption, the winningest deck is Amulet Titan at 57.5%. It has an insanely polarised matchup against Eldrazi, posing a perfect 100% win rate in 13 matches! It does seem to have perfectly playable matchups beyond that against both unfair and fair strategies.

Despite not meeting my arbitrary threshold, both Prowess and Azorius Control boast a nice win rate in a sample of 70ish matches. They do seem like solid contenders to be in high tier 2 or 1.5. I also expect them to pick up in popularity after this performance.

Eldrazi variants performed decent at 53% pecent, losing a ton of percentage points against the previously mentioned Amulet Titan but performing decent otherwise. Even more so, Eldrazi Tron specifically has a positive win rate against every deck in the matrix with the exclusion of that Titan matchup.

Esper Goryo's and Affinity, both very well represented, pose a winning win rate of 52% and 51% respectively. They seem to be very well balanced but might not be a great choice going forward, considering that there are decks with considerably higher win rates.

There were numerous flops among the top decks. 

• Zoo 48%
• Esper Blink 47%
• Tameshi Belcher 46%
• Neoform 46%
• Boros Energy 43%

The case is particularly strong for Belcher and Energy with their match samples being almost 200 matches each. Belcher is in a particularly curious spot, showing such a low win rate in such a big sample and yet taking down the entire event. 

The Aftermath

What conclusions can we draw?

I'd say that going forward, we will see considerably less Boros Energy and Esper Blink with Affinity and Prowess taking up the 'fair creature' deck slots in the meta.

Titan was and still is one of the top dogs and that doesn't seem likely to change.

When it comes to Eldrazi decks, Eldrazi Tron will overtake Eldrazi Ramp.

Belcher, despite its very low win rate, I reckon will persist at the very top, taking advantage of the momentum gained with the Pro Tour win.

With the Modern Regional Championships coming up, I am curious to see whether my predictions come to fruition! In the meantime, I'll be casting my Jeskai Ascendancies and Cori-Steel Cutters.

Cheers!