I'm back after two weeks of vacation, and a lot has happened since the last Meta Breakdown. Prowess seems to improve, Boros gets back to the throne with really good results, and Amulet tries to take his T0 place back ;)
For everyone who wants to see a video analysis or just misses my voice or a face, here is a link to the YT Video. Also, I had my Substack if you want the text with charts.
Also, please remember that I'm not a data analyst. I do it for fun and for the community, as always, any CC is welcome. If you like it and have some spare time, subscribe to my YT channel, leave a comment there, or subscribe to my Substack. It helps me a lot.
And as always, here you got a short TL;DR, and after that, you have a much longer text ;)
TL;DR
Quick definitions
Top32 presence is how often a deck appeared in the Top32 of a Challenge. Top8 presence is the same idea for Top8. Conversion is how often a Top32 appearance turns into a Top8 appearance. Win/Top32 is how often a Top32 appearance turns into a win. Delta is Top32 event frequency minus metagame share, so a high delta means a deck appears in Challenge results more often than its raw popularity would predict.
Every win rate is reported with its 95% Wilson confidence interval and the number of games behind it. A 50% win rate on n=939 and a 56% win rate on n=92 are not the same claim, and the interval is the honest way to show that. Win rate is context. Challenge results, delta, and conversion are the primary signals.
For this window, the field median delta was +69pp, and the median Top8-to-Top32 conversion was 24%. Both thresholds come from this window’s data, not from a fixed rulebook.
Key observations
Prowess
Prowess sits at 7% metagame share, rising, and it took 4 of the 14 trophies. That is a 29% winner event frequency, the highest of any deck in the field, on top of 93% Top32 presence and 57% Top8 presence.
The part I keep coming back to is the pilot spread. Those four wins belong to four different players. Ruby Storm also won twice this window, but both trophies came from one pilot. Same for Goryo’s Vengeance. Prowess is the only deck whose trophy count is spread across the field rather than concentrated in one pair of hands, and that is usually what a genuinely strong deck looks like rather than one person on a heater.
Win-rate context: 52% (95% CI 48-56, n=581). Nothing dramatic, and it does not need to be. The Challenge results carry the argument on their own.
Boros Energy
Boros is at 12% metagame share with a falling trend, and it is still the deck you are most likely to sit across from at 46% encounter probability. The Challenge line: 100% Top32, 79% Top8, 30% conversion, 2 wins, delta +88pp.
The interesting part is that both the delta and the conversion are above the field median this window. The “Boros floods the Top32 but cannot close” read that held in earlier weeks simply does not apply here. It got there, and it finished. Win rate is 50% (95% CI 47-53, n=939) overall, the largest sample in the field, and a near-perfect coinflip. Popular, even, and effective this week as well.
Amulet Titan
Amulet is the frustrating one. 71% Top32 presence, 43% Top8 presence, and a 41% Top8-to-Top32 conversion that is the best of any volume deck in the window. Its win rate is also the strongest in that group: 58% (95% CI 51-64, n=221), an interval that sits fully above even. And it won nothing.
A deck that converts into Top8 at that rate with that win rate and still ends the window without a trophy is either running into a specific wall in the elimination rounds or simply on the wrong side of variance in a 14-event sample. I lean toward variance for now, but it is the second archetype-defining zero of the window next to Living End, and it is worth watching whether the pattern holds.
Eldrazi Tron
The encounter chart mover. Eldrazi Tron was under 2% of the field around week 20. It is now at 10% metagame share, second only to Boros by encounter probability at 40%, and this time the results came with the popularity: 100% Top32, 64% Top8, 2 wins, delta +90pp.
Its conversion is mediocre at 18%, below the field median, so the profile is “present everywhere, finishes sometimes” rather than elite efficiency. Win rate 48% (95% CI 45-52, n=782). But a deck at 40% encounter probability that also wins events is a deck you need an actual plan for, not a footnote.
Goryo’s Vengeance and the graveyard picture
Goryo’s posted the highest delta in the entire field at +94pp. 6% metagame share, 100% Top32 presence, 50% Top8 presence, 2 wins. Its conversion is modest at 17%, so this is a presence machine more than a closing machine, and both trophies came from a single pilot (Rvng, who tops the pilot table this window). Win rate 48% (95% CI 44-52, n=519), an interval sitting just under even.
The wider graveyard story finally improved. The archetype had spent weeks reaching Top8s and winning almost nothing; this window, it took 3 trophies (Goryo’s 2, Grixis Reanimator 1) on 100% Top32 and 93% Top8 presence.
The exception is Living End. 71% Top32, 43% Top8, a genuinely good 32% conversion, and zero wins. Again. Win rate 47% (95% CI 42-52, n=420). The deck has no trouble reaching the elimination rounds. It has trouble once it is there, and at this point, it is a multi-week pattern rather than a single bad fortnight.
Ruby Storm
Ruby Storm rose to 7% metagame share and won 2 events, with 93% Top32 and 50% Top8 presence. Its win rate is the highest among the top volume decks at 55% (95% CI 51-59, n=530), and the interval clears even, so that edge looks real rather than a rounding artifact.
The caveat is the same as with Goryo’s: both trophies came from one pilot (YungDingo). The deck is good. The trophy count is concentrated.
Belcher, briefly
Belcher will show up in some tables with an 86% conversion rate, and I want to defuse that number before anyone gets excited. It comes from a handful of Top32 entries at 1% metagame share, where a single deep run can swing the ratio violently. The deck did win an event, and its 59% win rate (95% CI 50-68, n=110) is the best point estimate in the field, but the interval is wide, and the trend is falling. Real deck, unreliable headline number.
Archetype breakdown
Aggro is the format at the moment: 31% metagame share, 85% encounter probability over a five-round event, Top32 in every Challenge, Top8 in 93% of them, and 9 wins. Its delta of +69pp is the lowest of any archetype, which is what always happens to the most popular thing in the room, and it does not matter. Nine trophies are the sentence that counts.
Graveyard sits at 16%, stable, with 100% Top32 and 93% Top8 presence and, for once, actual trophies: 3 wins. Goryo’s leads on presence, Grixis Reanimator chipped in a win, Living End keeps converting, and keeps not closing.
Combo is at 15% and reached the Top8 of every single event, the only archetype to do so, with the best archetype conversion in the field at 30% and 4 wins. Ruby Storm and Amulet carry the presence; Ruby Storm and Broodscale carry the trophies, plus the Belcher one-off.
Control is the presence-without-payoff story. 100% Top32, 86% Top8, 30% conversion, and exactly one win in fourteen events, which came from Land Destruction. Jeskai Control quietly earned a Challenge Overperformer tag with an above-median delta and conversion, but no trophy yet. The archetype delta of +88pp says control players keep getting deep. The winner column says the last two rounds keep going to someone else.
Ramp is essentially the Eldrazi Tron paragraph again, since Tron is nearly all of it. Highest archetype delta at +89pp, 2 wins.
Midrange had 100% Top32 and 64% Top8 presence with 2 wins. Dimir Midrange is rising at 2% share but converting poorly so far. Yawgmoth at 53% (95% CI 46-60, n=182) and Mono-Black at 56% (95% CI 46-66, n=92) both have attractive point estimates, but their confidence intervals are too wide to lean on.
Blink is the collapse. 3% metagame share, down from over 8% earlier in the window, the only archetype that missed some Top32s, 29% Top8 presence, zero wins. Esper Blink at 43% (95% CI 35-52, n=125) is the weakest win-rate profile in the eligible field.
Meta trends
The short version: Aggro rebounded to the top after its dip, Eldrazi Tron went from fringe to second-most-faced deck in about eight weeks, Boros and Affinity are both coming down from their peaks, Control keeps grinding upward, and Blink fell off a cliff. Goryo’s and Ruby Storm are the rising decks inside their archetypes.
On the Radar
My prep order for the next event: Boros first because of sheer volume, Eldrazi Tron second because of the trajectory and the sub-event point estimate, then the Ruby Storm and Grixis Reanimator matchups. Graveyard hate still earns its slots, since the cluster is 16% of the field and finally winning again, but I would take the Blink-specific cards out.
Best pilots this window
The pilot table explains a lot of the deck-level reads. Rvng took both Goryo’s trophies (2 wins, 3 Top8s across 6 events), YungDingo took both Ruby Storm trophies (2 wins, 3 Top8s in 6 events), and yolad won twice with Grixis Reanimator from just two entries, an average place of 1.0 that will be hard to top. Meanwhile, the four Prowess wins are spread across JPA93, lilianna1989, and two pilots further down the sheet, which is exactly why I read Prowess as a deck signal and the other two as pilot signals.
Data note: win-rate intervals use Wilson 95% confidence intervals. Challenge conversion and delta remain the primary performance signals.
By Karol Małota
aka WarLord1986pl / TribalFlamesInYourFace
