#metagame

I deleted everything a few years ago because I was frustrated with the way the metagame had excluded furfrou and nerfed mawile in sword/shield and was sick of getting wiped by dweebs spamming zacian/zamazenta/eternatus teams. it felt like all my previous hard work didn't count for much in the new competitive ecosystem. I think I then built a rain dance team around Pelipper and was similarly disappointed at how it fared online. i was also disappointed that nintendo/game freak released Sw/Sh with 'day 1' DLC, ie they locked the more powerful aka 'real' version if you care about competitive battling of their new dynamax feature, 'gigantamax', into the Isle of Armor expansion for an additional $35, on top of semi-requiring subscriptions to Pokémon Home and Nintendo Online.

The year is early 2011.  I am in my senior year of high school.  As one does back then, I am playing Magic: The Gathering more or less daily.  I’ve got a set of about seven friends all doing more or less the same, and we’re having a grand time of it.  Mirrodin Besieged is coming out soon and we’re all down with Phyrexian madness.  I’m graduating in a few months to go out to Massachusetts so I’m just chilling on a victory lap.

Importantly to those playing Magic today, but EDH/Commander, while a thing and popular, was not yet The Thing for casual Magic players.  The commander decks had not yet come out (though had been announced and we were all hyped for them) and the shear density of legends was a thing of the future.  Our format of choice was 60-card casual, either in duals or multiplayer.  My traditional weapons at the time tended to be Naya decks with a lot of landfall and lifegain.  You could expect two artifact synergy decks on the regular.  Mill was a pretty common way to die.  Times were good.

Our story begins in earnest with the release of Premium Deck Series: Fire and Lightning.  For the unaware, this was an all-foil deck WotC put out that was, while crap in terms of reprint value today, a pretty stacked burn deck for a casual table.  My one friend, labeled A here for convenience, had the most cards and had gotten this deck recently.  It was very devastating in duals and we had an amusing time getting annihilated by Lightning Bolts, pingers, and various haste creatures.  Then that deck went back into his collection and we resumed our previously scheduled nonsense.

But A was getting burnt out (heh).  There’s only so many times you can play the same sort of matches before Magic gets stale, everyone who’s played the game knows the feeling.  And so he goes searching the internet for something new.

2011, for those not playing, was possibly the absolute peak of Magic writing.  Big name competitive players were playing weekly at the StarCityGames circuit and then writing about their new decks with cards that would skyrocket in value.  Jace, the Mindsculptor was approaching his height of $100.  The original dual lands, based on hype over Commander as well as Legacy being an actual format people played, were seeing a big rise as well.  Due to this, there were several websites all vying for new, popular writers to make content that would push sales to their storefront of choice. 

While a lot of this was competitively focused, there was also a ton of casual articles coming out as well.  While again, EDH was a popular format, 50%+ of the articles being written were for various 60 card formats.  2-Headed-Giant and Emperor were things people did with regularity.  Star was the pinnacle of multiplayer.  And it is in one of the articles that A found the reason why this is being written, a format that I’ll be calling Pauper Vanguard League.

For the unaware, Vanguard is an established Magic format from way back in the day.  The idea is that you have this avatar that alters your starting life, hand size, and gives you some ability.  There were a couple printed and they’re kinda cool if wildly disparate in power level.  This format gave people an amount of points to create their own vanguard.  You could buy more life, more cards in hand, benefits for your creatures, reduced cost, whatever.  This, A thought, would be the salvation, this would rekindle the spark.  Plus, the fact that it was commons only meant that no one would get priced out, and you could change your deck with ease! So he brought it to the morning meetup before school on Monday, we read the article, all thought the idea sounded dope, and got to building when we went home instead of doing homework.

I don’t recall what the first deck I built was, probably something green and landfall based.  I do remember that it was A who brought in a modified version of that Fire and Lightning deck and absolutely cleaned up.  Not paying for any life beyond the base 10 and just upping his opening hand size meant that his opener had enough burn to kill pretty much anyone.  It was crazy how brutal and efficient it was.

Tuesday comes along.  Everyone knew who the top dog was.  Burn was public enemy number one.  Fortunately for me, you could buy abilities for all your creatures as part of your Vanguard.  One of these abilities was lifelink.  Excellent!  I’ll give all my dumb green creatures lifelink, and that’ll do the trick.  No more dying to burn!

But wait, I realized, why should I be playing green creatures anymore?  The best strategy had been shown to us: Burn.  I should be playing a Burn deck, but a Burn deck designed to beat the mirror.  Make my Burn deck more creature-heavy, a little bigger, and give my creatures lifelink and haste.  Boom, now burn spells to my face are terrible and I can just demolish the Burn decks that haven’t figured out the new rules.

And the metagame clock ticks one minute closer to midnight.

I arrive the next day and to the surprise of not me, everyone is rocking Burn but with different augments (you were allowed to minorly respec your Vanguard daily and we got more points daily too).  I’m the only one who figured out the lifelink tech, but others are running +1/+1 to creatures, lower costs of spells, more life, all sorts of stuff.  A’s burn deck is old news and demolished.  I do pretty well, lifelink being very good in the Burn mirrors which were 75%+ of what I played that day.  Satisfied, I go home, add some new abilities, and get ready for another day.

And the metagame clock ticks one minute closer to midnight.

Thursday morning comes.  It does not take me long to realize that I too have now become the prey.  People have switched from Burn and are now on White Weenie, buying the ability to use some number of uncommon cards.  Have you ever played against a Silver Knight with +1/+1 and lifelink?  While you are playing Burn?  It was nightmarish.  But there was some diversity.  Some people were playing things like my green deck from Tuesday but with the anti-red tech.  Some people were experimenting with artifact decks.  But it was all focused on ensuring that Burn would not be a thing. Burn was now extinct. 

That night I came up with a plan.  The cards I was now fighting were small-medium creatures on the ground.  They were played in large numbers but the decks had no staying power, being built to beat up on fast aggro decks.  Despite being nominally cheap creatures, they were midrange decks in the metagame where everyone’s spells cost one less and every creature had lifelink. 

My idea to beat these decks was to out-grind them.  It was going to be Friday, and Friday was club day, so I needed a deck that would win because I was gonna play a lot.  So I built a mono-blue deck.  One-mana Mana Leak, two mana Divination and Cancel.  Some walls.  The deck was designed to stop others trying to play a proactive game and grind them out.  Once I had the game under control, Ulamog’s Crusher with lifelink would annihilate them out of it. 

And the metagame clock hits midnight.

It’s Friday and everyone realizes something has gone wrong.  We are in a metagame where everyone is still tuned to beating red decks that no longer exist.  The plot has been lost.  I’m winning games, but I realize that it’s wrong, that the room is inbred to fight something and everyone is just hitting each other with bigger and bigger creatures.  Someone figures out some new combination of abilities to next level everyone else but it doesn’t matter.  We’ve hit the point of no return.  This is The Metagame Disaster.

On the next Monday we agree to an alternative points system (probably should have found this one first) but everyone appears to agree that this experiment is over.  We’ve got useless decks that literally do not function without specific rules in place.  We switch back to our normal decks and try our best to move past last week.

It’s a day or two later that A admits to me that he’s been feeling burnout, and I suggest Type 4, a cube draft format where you have infinite mana but can only play one spell a turn.  I turn him towards articles written by several people (yours truly included https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/introducing-type-4 ), and he thinks it sounds fun as hell, builds a cube, realizes quickly that Compulsion is busto, and we all build different cubes to just play from the top of.  Our final spring together continues with gusto and joy and we eventually get back into some more EDH and 60-card.

What did I learn here?  Obviously, I didn’t take this all in at the time, but more and more I can see how it echoes into my game design philosophies.  Given time, people will optimize the fun out of anything.  Some things in games are worth more than others.  Without some effects found at higher rarity, common games turn into grindfests.  Rock-paper-scissors metagames only work if rock is allowed to exist by the game, and nerfs to “unfun” strategies can lead to even worse things popping up.  Second-order effects are essential to consider in any closed system. 

Of the ten archetypes, Fire, Water, Grass, Lightning and Psychic have clear strategies baked into the cards (with Water having multiple, IMO). Fighting, Darkness, Metal, Dragon and Colorless, not so much. Some of these strategies are meta, some are not.

Meta Strategies:

Grass: A surprisingly reliable deck, with access to an excellent supporter card in Erika, healing +50 hp to any Grass Pokemon. Exeggutor is your lead mon - regular or ex, both work - with its high HP and annoying low-cost move that does double damage on a coin flip. While Eggy sponges damage and heals with Erika, you work on building up a Venusaur ex in on the bench. Sprinkle in any support Pokemon you'd like - I think Butterfree's healing ability has great potential. Unfortunately I don't have all the cards for this deck, but I've seen other players use it to great success.

Psychic: The only deck with reliable energy acceleration. It has multiple strong attackers in Mewtwo ex, Alakazam and Gengar ex. The name of the game is building up Gardevoir on the bench so she can use her broken Psy Shadow abilty to attach 2 Psychic energy per turn. That takes 3 turns minimum if you get lucky, with luck being the name of the game. Sometimes, you can have Mewtwo ex ready to dish out 150 damage by turn 3. Otherwise, you have to hope you draw your cards before your opponent sets up. I don't have two copies of the Gardevoir line so my version of this deck isn't up to snuff.

Powerful but Volatile:

Fire: This deck is potentially very powerful but highly luck-dependent. Moltres ex provides energy acceleration... at the cost of a coin flip. You can generate anywhere from 0-3 energy per turn. And unlike Gardevoir, it has to be in the active spot to accelerate energy. The core strategy here is to build up multiple Fire attackers, specifically Charizard ex, while Moltres tanks attacks with its high HP and accelerates energy. The caveat is that once Charizard ex is in the active spot, it won't be able to regain energy from Moltres - and it loses 2 energy per use of its 200-power attack. I faced an opponent with this deck today and they surprised me in the end with a backup Magmar powered by Blaine. Definitely gets results, but cross your fingers.

Water: Like Fire, Water has a luck-based way to accelerate energy - Misty. Unlike Moltres ex, Misty is a supporter card, and you can have 2 per deck. But you can get very unlucky quite easily with this card, as one tails and you get nothing, whereas Moltres ex gets 3 chances to flip heads. Water has a lot of good ex Pokemon, like Blastoise ex and Lapras ex. It's a very flexible archetype, and I've found success with a particular deck (more on that later).

Dragon: Probably the most volatile deck in the game. There are no cards that support Dragon-type Pokemon, which is a problem when Dragonite - a Stage 2 - takes 4 attachments to do damage. Its attack deals damage to the active and benched Pokemon... at random. If you want this deck to succeed, you need max copies of Dratini/Dragonair/Dragonite and a lot of luck.

Noob Trap:

Lightning: Pikachu ex decks are super easy to use! And super underwhelming. It's easy to stack Lightning Pokemon on the bench, but the most damage you can do is 90, and you often find yourself falling short of KOing bulky Pokemon ex before you get KO'd. Unless you're up against a Water deck, the damage just isn't high enough.

Underexplored:

Fighting: This archetype has a surprising number of cards, including two Pokemon ex and multiple reliable 1-prize attackers, but is largely underexplored by the player base. Being Psychic- and Grass-weak when those are two of the best decks is a factor.

Colorless: Colorless cards have a ton of utility but not a ton of power. It's an archetype I haven't seen anyone trying, but as they can be used with any deck, it's still common to fight against Colorless Pokemon. I'd be on the lookout for Fearow, Kangaskan and perhaps Cinccinno.

Underdeveloped:

Darkness: If Psychic is meta, you'd think Darkness decks would be a good counter, right? Unfortunately, there are no Darkness Pokemon ex in the game currently. Without a strong Pokemon to anchor them, this archetype doesn't have any real estate in the meta. That said, I did fight an opponent that combined Mewtwo ex with Weezing and Koga and it actually worked really well.

Metal: There are 5 Metal cards currently. Better than Dragon, right? But the cards aren't very splashable. Meltan has built-in energy acceleration but it has to be in the active spot to use it, and once it evolves it loses that ability. Paired with its low HP, and there's a reason I have never faced a Metal deck. Future expansions will hopefully give this archetype a chance to shine.

My Water deck - Splash Damage

I've recently developed a Water deck that I think is pretty strong. I call it the Splash Damage Deck. This deck plays Articuno ex in the lead and builds up Greninja on the bench. The idea is to combine Greninja's Water Shuriken ability (meaning it activates while on the bench) with Articuno ex's relatively weak for an ex Blizzard attack. With one Greninja, you can amp Blizzard from base 90 damage to 110 damage. With two Greninja, you bring that damage to 130. Not only that, you also do splash damage to the bench. And if Blizzard's 90 power is going to KO the active Pokemon, you can throw Water Shurikens at a Pokemon on the bench, potentially doing up to 50 damage.

I play two copies of Articuno ex, Froakie, Frogadier and Greninja, one copy each of Staryu and Starmie ex as a back-up attacker and cleaner, two copies of Misty and then general support and item cards. I could get rid of two items or two supporters to run another set of Staryu and Starmie ex if I have consistency problems.