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Happy New Year, Insiders! It's time to put the final nail in 2022's coffin with my metagame analysis article. December is always a strange month for data collection. It's the holiday season in much of the world, and this means a general downtick in Magic events. However, many years, there are a lot of large tournaments as players have time off to actually attend events and organizers thrown end of the year celebrations. This can cause some oddities outside of metagame trends, which I'll discuss. That doesn't mean that the metagame doesn't also have intrinsic oddities, and Modern appears to be warping in a less than ideal direction.
The Impact of Big Events
As previously mentioned, I didn't get all the Magic Online (MTGO) data for December. The updater broke, Daybreak went on Christmas Break, it was a whole thing. However, thanks to the efforts of Magic social media, I was able to include the Modern Super Qualifier, which was a 5-point event. While this normally isn't much of a problem as there's plenty of data to balance out the big event, the fact that it was the last event I added to the incomplete paper data meant that it radically changed certain stats that in turn changed the conclusions the data suggests.
UR Murktide was the big beneficiary because it was the big winner of said Super Qualifier. Half the Top 8 was Murktide, which translates into 20 points. That's not even considering the points from the rest of the Top 32. This dramatically pushed Murktide up the points standings.
Murktide had seven more appearances in December than Hammer Time, a gap of ~1.5%. Prior to the Super Qualifier the point gap was similar. Thanks to the Super Qualifier, the point gap jumped to ~4.5%. Simultaneously, Murktide's average was at or slightly below Baseline for most of December. Its final position was determined by that Super Qualifier spike.
Had all of the data from December been available before the update went to print, the effect would have been muted and moderated. As a result, Murktide looks like it performed above expectations, but it really didn't in the wider monthly context. Keep that fact in mind while making deck decisions in January.
Meanwhile, In Paper
Paper's data is also distorted, but in a completely different way. I get data from all over the world, but for the last week of December, eight of nine events came from Japanese megastore Hareruya. Again, normally this isn't a problem; over a month, even if one source puts out a lot of data, there's enough from other sources to correct any oddities and it all balances out overall. However, if that single source is concentrated at a given time, it pulls the data away from the previous trend line towards its proclivities.
Which is a long-winded way of explaining that Hareruya is the reason that paper has two outliers, but could have had four. Up until Christmas, Murktide and Hammer Time were very clearly statistical outliers, with Rakdos Scam being on the line for consideration. I was prepared to go either way with Scam, and the data was pointing towards making it an outlier.
However, Hareruya's players love janky combo decks generally, and have a particular love of Indomitable Creativity. 4-Color Creativity was so overrepresented in the year-end events that it nearly caught Scam. This pulled down the outlier indications on Scam itself, but it also made the overall gaps in the data worse. Thus, I could have made an argument for Creativity and everything above it being statistical outliers. I didn't do that because this isn't academia, but it goes to show how tenuous and complicated the stats actually are.
Creative Differences
Speaking of Creativity, there's a huge divide between Creativity players in paper vs MTGO. 4-Color Creativity was Tier 1 across the board in November but it completely collapsed online in December. It didn't make the population list and just sneaked onto the power rankings.
That deviation would be news enough, but what makes it stranger is that MTGO players have not simply abandoned Creativity, but instead moved onto a different variant: Jund Creativity. That's a fairly extreme change to happen in a month, and requires further investigation.
So Many Colors
The first reason for this divergence may be the nature of 4-Color Creativity itself. It is a deck with an identity crisis. As long as it has four colors with actual support, it gets classified as 4-Color, but that encompasses a huge range of decks. Archon of Cruelty doesn't count towards the color identity because the intention isn't to cast it, but there are plenty of decks that are solidly black, blue, and red with green for Wrenn and Six and Veil of Summer. There are other decks with white instead of black. There are many that play the fifth color as a splash. In short, if a combination could exist, it does.
This may be the problem, and the explanation for the deviation. There is so much dissent over the optimal list (it's increasingly rare to see two decks in different events with the same 75 cards, or even starting 60), players have given up trying to balance their multicolor decks and have opted to simplify. Balancing the mana and spells in a three-color deck is significantly easier than in four-color decks. Online players tend to be more flexible with their decks than paper, so they could easily have switched to something easier to build.
Blood Moon Rising
A benefit, or another completely unrelated reason for the switch, is that Jund Creativity is far less vulnerable to Blood Moon. All Creativity variants are hurt losing Dwarven Mine, but fewer colors necessary means that more cards work while under Moon. Some Jund variants are even built like they were considering running Moon themselves. I haven't seen it happen yet, but it also wouldn't surprise me.
This isn't an incidental benefit, either. More decks are playing Blood Moon these days, particularly online.
2 Moon has been common in Murktide for some time, whether in the sideboard or maindeck. It seems to shift monthly on whether they're mained or sided. Scam has increasingly been joining Murktide, with 2 Moon main being common and three seeing play too. Meanwhile, Cascade Crashers often has Moon as well as Magus of the Moon either maindeck or sideboard. Even the 4-Color versions are getting in on the action.
I'm not sure if there's a specific metagame pressure causing this uptick in Moon, but I do know that it's limited to MTGO. I'm not seeing Moon effects in the paper results more often than in October, so the cause is currently limited to online play.
It might be metagame pressure, specifically a fear of Tron or Amulet Titan. There could also be more need to answer Urza's Saga. It could also be just a random whim that's gotten pervasive. MTGO do be like that sometimes. I'll be watching to see if this trend persists and/or migrates into paper.
The Simple Answer
Of course, it is also possible that I'm reading in. Perhaps Jund Creativity is better than the alternatives. Certainly, it yields tighter and more focused lists. Where most Creativity lists are slightly schizophrenic piles of good cards featuring the Creativity package, the Jund lists are just focused on getting out Archon by any means necessary. Which is a pretty strong strategy in today's Modern.
All Creativity lists run full sets of Fable of the Mirror Breaker and a couple additional looting effects to find Creativity. The Jund lists have Fable plus sets of Bitter Reunion and often Collective Brutality. This doesn't just find Creativity, but it also sets them up for the full set of Persist they all run. Drawing Archon can be a disaster for other decks, but Jund is set up to make it work. Perhaps that's been the right move all along.
Or maybe this was just a flavor of the week or a response to a specific metagame challenge. I don't know. I will be watching to see what conclusions the Magic hive mind comes to.
Red-Shifting
On the other hand, all mediums have seen a noticeable shift towards red decks over the past few months. December is when it finally became noticeable, but this has been happening for some time. It's tempting to blame Yorion, Sky Nomad getting banned, but I suspect that the process had started before then.
The bellwether for this is Izzet Prowess. Prowess excels in formats teaming with toughness-based removal and stumbles against unequivocal removal. It fell off dramatically after Modern Horizons 2 brought in Solitude and Prismatic Ending, but both cards are seeing much less play. That might be because control decks have fallen off without Yorion, but it might be for metagame reasons (more on that next).
With more players relying on red removal now than in the past year, the time has come for Prowess to shine again, going from untiered to Tier 2 in a single month.
I Blame Ragavan
Yorion's banning may play a part, but the expansion of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer decks is also to blame. The monkey pushes decks to be low-to-the-ground and tempo-centric, which is a playstyle red excels at. Red removal is also better in the proactive role that Ragavan needs, keeping the road clear. This has incentivized players to play more red removal.
All that amounts to an increase in Ragavan decks. Rags has always slotted into any deck with red, but its main home was Murktide. Now, Scam and Jeskai Breach Combo are dedicated Ragavan decks in the top tiers. This further pressures decks to have removal turn one, and the best spell for that is Lightning Bolt. Thus, there's a self-perpetuating cycle.
I don't know if this is going to last. In theory, UW Control should dominate Prowess and have game against the Ragavan decks. The fact that it isn't happening means I'm missing something. We'll all have to wait and see how this shakes out.
Plan Ahead
As always, I finish these analyses with a glimpse into the financial crystal ball. First of all, and to reiterate a point from two weeks ago, I don't foresee this current metagame being sustainable. I can't imagine a 2024 with Ragavan in it. Thus, I'd advise moving out of Ragavan (if you haven't already) while the price is still high. I certainly have. The current metagame is steadily warping around Ragavan, and that's a strong sign that Wizards is coming. Understand the risk and plan accordingly.
As for what to move towards, I'd hold off on that until we know more about the next set. All I know about Phyrexia: All Will Be One is that we're back on New Phyrexia and poison is making a return. Not infect, just poison. If infect were returning, I'd advise speculating on all the infect cards for the new Infect surge. As is, the new mechanic might be good enough for Modern, but might also be terrible. Speculating on infect cards might therefore be a bit premature.
To A New Year
And with that, I formally close the books on 2022. I hope that I can finally move past the statistical problems and the metagame starts to correct itself. I will see everyone next month to see if my faith is rewarded. Until then, invest with caution; there are turbulent times ahead.
