With data from across 5 tournaments in GCD, what decks are rising to the top, and finding success in the metagame? I've done two pieces of data analysis so far with the first Decks By The Data breaking down two tournaments pre-GCD, and the August Metagame Snapshot covering the Metagame Matrix breakdown for the first 3 tournaments of GCD. In this article, we'll add the most recent two tournaments to the dataset, and see how the Warlord and Archetype appearances and the winrate/popularity matrix have adjusted as a result of our latest set.
The overall archetype breakdown for the Guardian's Creed Metagame has been incredibly healthy, with good representation across all archetypes. There has been some interesting variation between tournaments, with one of the most interesting being the Escape From Reality Siege Series in Timmins, where the Control tournament share skyrocketed to about twice it's tournament average.
There isn't too much to note here, with an overall healthy spread across the metagame. As can be seen in the metagame matchup, there aren't any decks which fall into a dangerous level in playrate and winrate, and the meta overall is highly diverse and healthy. As can be seen from the Top Cut Conversion, there are some archetypes which have struggled to convert tournament appearances into top placements, such as Prometheus Primordials Tempo, Sharn Boars Aggro, and Mortis Grimm Midrange. These decks fill out more of the category of relatively popular lists with lower current winrates.
Overall there is a large variety of decks represented in tournament play, and a large number of decks which can make and have made top cuts in tournament play.
The Metagame Matrix here should look familiar, with a few decks being added to the data, and some archetypes being folded into one another for better clarity. Additionally, with more tournaments and more data, the data here is a touch more accurate, with more games being added into the equation.
This list is still missing plenty of data however, but shows some general trends for what decks have been performing well across the GCD meta.
With the win-rates from the matrix compared to the prevalence of certain decks, how should players be preparing to approach the GCD metagame, and what decks are popular and/or powerful enough to demand your attention in deck selection, deckbuilding, and sideboarding?
It's nice to have a finished dataset with more piece available, and there is some distinct results that can be seen, For one, the metagame can be sectioned to a degree into a few categories. The cluster past the 55% win rate mark and above the 30 games line represents in my mind one of the most crucial areas of the metagame to prepare for, those being the decks with strong win rates, and relevant representation in the metagame.
Beneath this category are two decks, Castiel and Rogues. Castiel is just pushed over the 50% win rate mark, and sits just below the average number of games recorded. Rogue Tempo takes this to the extreme, as the deck with the third highest win rate, and the third lowest number of games recorded. Rogues, Dragons, and Frost all sit in the more rogue category, with less explicit recent tournament results. It just happens in the case of Rogues that the deck found a much more successful placement in it's small flash of attention.
In the case of Rogues, the deck is largely untested, and the win rate here is to be heavily scrutinised. As For Castiel, it's much closer to a reasonable number of matches, but hasn't shown up with more than one pilot at any tournament in GCD so far.
Fandorian Midrange, Seraphim Control, and Primordial Tempo make up another interesting chunk. All 3 decks have a reasonable number of games recorded, with Fandorians and Seraphim being two of the top 3 most played archetypes. All 3 are well within the range to where their winrate likely sits much closer to the 50% line, especially with skilled pilots. Also to consider here is that all 3 decks have had some level of consistent placement in top 8.
The final chunk below the 35% win rate line show a few decks which are to a degree victims of sample size. Although I do think several of thse would fall towards the bottom half of the meta, the number of results exaggerates to what degree they rank. There are some interesting cases here with the meta tyrant of Sharn and her fall from grace. The important thing to take from this graph is the sample size. Notably, there aren't any decks with a poor win rate and a large number of games recorded, meaning there aren't currently any decks which necessarily fall into an unplayable category. Any of the lower ranked current decks absolutely have tools to compete with the metagame, and a good pilot taking one under their wing has the potential to push a list towards the top of the meta.
Overall, we can see a largely healthy metagame, even with a relatively smaller data size. As we get more tournament results, I'll continue to build up a main pile of results, while also working to isolate and focus in on smaller metagames of data. If you're looking to try out some of the top performing decks or looking to take down said top performing decks, check out this month's Metagame Snapshot where Sylas and Lukas dive into Gaia Unstoppable Control, and Quartzheart Blastforge Aggro!