Hello everyone!
For this week's article, I am going to talk about the results from the Eternal Tournament Series 2018 Season 3 Week 6, a best-of-three tournament with no sideboards that took place last weekend, and analyse the metagame from there. I will then conclude by giving my thoughts on the deck lists that were brought to this tournament and provide my suggestions on what to play and look out for next week.
Metagame Analysis
This time the tournament had 53 players playing, which was slightly less than the previous week, and still remains difficult to make any concrete conclusions from this data.
As we can see from the chart, control was the most popular archetype this week, making up 42% of the overall tournament and increased from last week's tournament of 24%. This is the first time that midrange has had less of a representation than control, decreasing from 40% last week to 35% this week. Aggressive decks were on the rise as well making up 14% of the metagame, an increase from 9% last week, whilst unfair deck's representation took a significant dip to 10% compared to 26% last week.
Win Rate Analysis
Here I will go through the win rates for each archetype and give my thoughts about them.
Control (45%): I think the reason for control decks performing so badly is really simple. Most of them are not really control decks, as they are anti-aggro decks with no real inevitability or any powerful end game. The Icaria decks all have a better chance than the rest of the control decks in this greedy metagame because of the card Icaria but even they are too fair right now. The rest of the “control” decks will not perform outside of ladder because they only really beat aggro decks in my opinion (at least the ones in this tournaments like Feln or TPS).
Midrange (56%): Performing well as always, midrange is usually the most popular archetype in tournaments and consistently has a good performance for a very good reason, it is proactive, powerful and can adapt to most metagames whilst as the same time it can be as greedy as it wants.
Aggro (44%): The worst archetype right now. It is really hard to beat Grenadin Drone and Hailstorm at the same time, which is why I really think Oni Ronin is very badly positioned in tournaments at the moment. Aggressive decks need to reinvent themselves and I can see decks like Feln Aggro being good now because they have an unfair angle of attack whilst I anticipate aggro decks to go in unfair directions to be able to compete.
Unfair (65%): The best performing archetype. Like I said before, this metagame is really friendly to unfair decks, as aggro decks are really bad, allowing unfair decks to take their time and be as greedy as they want. Additionally, merchants make unfair decks much better and more consistent by themselves.
Deck Analysis
Now I will talk about every deck with three or more copies in the tournament:
Alessi Combrei (65%): Tied as the best performing deck. I was surprised to not see this deck being played last week but it looks like people recovered from their mental lapses.
Elysian Midrange (65%): The other best performing deck. Aggression backed up with counterspells, big fatties with overwhelm to beat those popular token decks and Crystallize to beat any board stall from other greedy midrange decks or tokens strategies. It looks like it is time for Elysian to shine (this is the first time in like a year I think Elysian could be a good viable deck in the meta over Praxis and to be honest I didn't see it coming).
Kennadins (57%): At this point, the metagame shows some signs of being reactive to many of the things this deck does, so I expect it to not perform that well in the coming weeks but we will see.
Icaria Blue (50%): The best performing control deck right now. I'm not sure how this deck or any other control deck that doesn't go over the top will perform in the near future, as it is just too fair in my opinion, but at least this deck has access to counterspells and Icaria.
FJS control (35%): As I said last week, this is not the Icaria deck you want to play right now, as it is another fair control deck, and a strategy I don't see being successful right now, but we will see how the metagame evolves.
The Top 8
Hooru Midrange by BruisedByGod: Big fliers and Hailstorm is a great way to beat tokens, Hailstorm itself and board stalls, whilst Hooru Pacifier is probably one of the best cards in the game right now. This is a really greedy midrange deck, which can be great right now, but I'm not sure if it can beat control decks. Outside of the control matchup, the deck looks good in this metagame. I'm pretty sure this deck, as well as many others, should play Privilege of Rank instead of Lingering Influence. Scout is cool but two power sigils are better than one, particularly in a deck with a curve that goes up to seven and needs triple Justice influence.
Alessi combrei by Watched: Not much to say here as it's a solid deck. Maybe the Crest in the market could be a Find the Way instead but i'm not sure.
Grenadins by Erik9099: Grenadins but much greedier, which sounds like a good plan in this metagame at least for now.
Kennadins (Crunch-less Dragoncrunch) by Flash: -10 points for the awful name and we all know that Kennadins is a superior name! Nothing new to say about this deck, but if you like it, then enjoy it for now whilst it lasts, as the metagame will become more an more hostile for it every week I think.
Feln aggro by SecondBlue: I'm not sure how good this particular deck or list is but I do like the direction it is going in. I do think that aggro decks should start doing unfair things to compete right now and this one can do some very stupid things thanks to Scream+Gift.
Elysian Midrange by DrStein: I talked about this deck in the metagame analysis. I think he should play more power for sure whilst Temple Scribe in this deck is nonsense I think. It is just a bad cantrip and the 1/1 body is basically useless now that Oni Ronin is almost unplayable, whilst he doesn't have Obelisk to take advantage of it.
TJP Ramp by gozuuu: A control deck that goes over the top, which I think can be good right now. The A New Tomorrow in the market should probably be a Harsh Rule and he probably wants to play more copies of Find the Way but I'm not sure really.
Charge rod by Grimfan: Let's be real, I love you Grimfan but I don't think anyone else can top 8 with this deck. Without Call the deck is just too fair for my taste and I think that Hooru Pacifier will become more popular in the coming weeks. This means that a deck which is built around a weapon is not where I want to be, even if the deck can just hard cast seven and eight drops to beat people up as their plan B.
Next Week
As I said before, we live in a very greedy metagame that somehow is still hostile to aggro decks. You should avoid control decks that don't go over the top or have inevitability in the long game and being good at killing units is just not enough for a control deck right now. Aggro decks need to be able to beat tokens and Hailstorm, so maybe Feln Aggro could be good. Midrange decks need a plan to break board stalls so you could either go for big fliers or cards like Crystallize, but you need a way to pass tokens and other big dudes if you want to go midrange. Unfair decks should be prepared, as chump blocking with tokens will probably not be good enough to survive anymore and fliers will probably be popular now so you better have a plan.
For New Players
This time I want to give you a budget deck which I made for new players. It is very cheap and doesn't have any legendaries, with the only expensive cards in the deck being Inquisitor's Blade because it is from Dead Reckoning but you want that adventure anyway so I think it is all right. It is not a top tier competitive deck but it performed OK for me; I played like forty games and have close to 60% win rate with it in top 50 to 70 Masters, so I'm sure it can win games. Additionally, every card outside of Rampage is a staple that will see play in other decks, so you can craft all the cards without feeling guilty.
Rakano Aggro:
On a pesonal note, I want to restart my campaign to make Hailstorm cost 3PPP, as I want aggro to be playeble again, so please help me! I don't want to make Hailstorm unplayable or bad, I just would like it to be played in less decks, so that I can play little guys and attack my opponents without feeling stupid every time.
You can also follow me on Twitter and I post decks on there from time to time (be aware many of them are bad jajaja).
