The Timeless Metagame Challenge provides an opportunity for the best players in Timeless to show off their skills. For the last two challenges, I’ve led a community effort to collect as much data on everyone’s challenge runs as possible. During the December challenge weekend, dozens of players self-reported their results on discord, resulting in a grand total of 401 runs and 1579 games played. I took the time to tabulate and organize the data, so that we can have fun looking at the results and talk a bit about the metagame. (Full Data)
A quick disclaimer about this data – this is all self-reported and thus it is absolutely riddled with bias. This is not a scientific study, and shouldn’t be treated as such. We’re just a few dozen community members who all worked together to recount our experiences for the weekend. This is all just for fun, and we shouldn’t treat the data in this article as a fact.
Overall Results
Here’s a screenshot of the main spreadsheet, showing every deck with at least 3 runs recorded this weekend. The entire spreadsheet is linked if you want to view it yourself, but I’ll include screenshots for ease for reading.
The decks with 50+ games played and 15+ runs each comprise what most people would view as the “core” of the Timeless metagame. All 7 of these decks were known factors in the meta leading up to the challenge, and they all put up solid winrates with several different pilots playing them.
A 70%+ winrate may seem incredibly high, but keep in mind the biases of this data: the people self-reporting data are spike-y folks who were playing to win this weekend, and they’re dedicated Timeless players who come to discord to talk about the format. The weekend ended up drawing a lot of “format tourists” who don’t usually play the format, so a lot of meta decks had their winrates inflated by playing against opponents who were less familiar with the Timeless format.
What was surprising to me is how close the winrate of these decks ended up grouping. Almost all of the 7 top decks ended up with a winrate between 71% and 75%, an incredibly tight spread all things considered. There are, of course, two outliers which can be seen. Jet storm’s winrate lagged behind by a few percent, but its not alarmingly far behind. The slight dip in winrate for Jet Storm can be attributed to the difficulty in piloting the deck, and variance within the sample of 25 runs. The real elephant in the room, however, is Mardu Energy. Mardu’s 81.54% winrate is head-and-shoulders above the other top meta decks, and it’s hard to explain away this difference merely through sampling bias or variance – Mardu had by far the most unique players and runs this weekend. Let’s walk through the rest of the data before talking about Mardu Energy’s dominance, as there’s a few more interesting data points to cover.
The next few entries (when sorted by number of games played) represent a lot of decks that are generally thought of as Tier 3 in the meta, decks that are viable and can succeed in the hands of the right pilot. Keep in mind, this is where sample sizes start to get really small, with each of these decks having between 3 and 11 runs each. Here, we can see significant differences in winrate, which can mostly be attributed to variance within the small data set, and the efforts of a few skilled pilots taking their favorite decks on a good run.
A lot of these decks were championed by a single player, who played them until achieving a 7-0. A good example of this is Jeskai Chorus Control, which is the newest iteration of the Grixis Chorus Control deck which showed up at The Gathering’s most recent tournament. The same player who took the deck to a top 4 in the tournament, harotsa, took the new deck to a 7-0 finish after piloting the deck through 3 runs, leaving the deck with an impressive 87.5% winrate. Similar stories can be told about Jund Breach, Tainted Pact, Scholar of the Ages Combo, and Mono Black Midrange – where almost all of the each deck’s runs, including a 7-0 run, were piloted by the same player (Snark, alfalfa, sejrlo, and Greenwire, respectively).
Scrolling down further in the spreadsheet, we can see a spattering of midrange and combo decks piloted through just a few runs. These decks don’t have enough data to be worth analyzing, but its cool to see everyone bring their favorite deck to the weekend and try it out!
Metagame Share
I assigned each deck to one of the five traditional archetypes of constructed Magic. As many of us could has predicted, the Metagame Challenge featured an Aggro vs Combo metagame, with both archetypes accounting for >40% of games played at the Metagame Challenge. A lot of people voiced concerns about the dominance of Show And Tell and Energy over the last few months, as those two archetypes have been the clear-cut meta defining decks in Timeless. Let’s break up the above chart to highlight each of those.
Omnitell had a strong presence at the Metagame Challenge, but it didn’t dominate, accounting for 15.8% of overall games played and much less than half of all decks played by combo decks. Energy, on the other hand, has proven absolutely dominant. Let’s look at aggro decks more closely:
That’s… telling…
The 0.4% of “Other Aggro” is comprised of 2 runs by Jund Delirium, which ended 0-1 and 1-1.
This seems problematic, but maybe its just semantics, the delineation between “aggro” and “tempo” and “midrange” can be a blurry line at times. Let’s instead put all “creature decks” into one graph. We’ll define a “creature deck” as anything running at least 10 creatures:
That’s… even more telling. Energy comprises over 75% of creature decks at the Metagame Challenge this weekend. And its not just Energy with the impressive performance, Psychic Frog-based Tempo decks comprised a significant share of the remaining decks at 9.2% of creature decks. In fact, almost all of the non-energy creature decks present last weekend were blue-based Psychic Frog decks. The #1 non-energy creature deck, as well as the #2, #4, #5, and #6 non-energy creature deck all featured Psychic Frog alongside blue staples such as Mana Drain, Tamiyo, and Brainstorm. Energy Decks and Psychic Frog Decks comprise over 95% of the creature deck meta when combined.
To take a break from Energy’s dominance, we were all pleasantly surprised to see how much variety was present within combo decks. Timeless has always been a format where you could build the degenerate combo deck of your dreams, and I’m happy to see it continue to live up to that reputation. Going into the weekend, I was concerned the Show And Tell would have a dominant performance due to the strength of the deck, presence of guides online, and ease of piloting. However, Show and Tell comprised only 38.7% of combo decks this weekend, despite being the overwhelming favorite going into the weekend.
Here’s a table and chart of all 7-0 runs that were self-reported in discord this weekend. Congrats to everyone who managed to pull of the big 7-0!
Once again, we see a clear dominance by Mardu Energy, with Mardu Lurrus Energy comprising 58% of 7-0s, and all Energy decks comprising 65% of 7 win runs.
The Elephant in the Room – Mardu Energy
Before we draw conclusions, I’ll provide a few more pieces of information that the charts miss, and allow you to draw your own conclusions.
First, Mardu is over-represented due to sampling bias of respondents. The people present in my discord server self-reporting their results are spikes, they are playing this challenge to win. Mardu Energy is known as the strongest deck in the meta, and has been a consistent force for months. A lot of people in the discord are incredibly well-practiced in Mardu Energy. Mardu also provides the fastest and most straightforward gameplay of all fair decks in the format. The deck’s power level is through the roof, and the maindeck and sideboard have been worked on by some of the best players in Timeless for months. The deck also doesn’t suffer from inconsistency, and rarely loses to its own draws the way the combo decks of the format can (due to an extreme density of powerful yet interchangeable threats and answers present in the deck). The deck is primed and ready for any good player to pick it up and get a quick-and-easy 7-0. If someone wasn’t sure what deck to pick up for the weekend, Mardu is the no-brainer choice. Some decks like Esper Tempo and Jet Storm have the opposite problem – an incredibly high skill floor and lots of skill required for optimal play, with some games and turns taking forever.
Second, I’m the “Mardu Guy” and this was my discord and my survey. Last Metagame Challenge I got a 7-0 with Mardu and told everyone it felt incredibly strong. This challenge I got two 7-0s early and encouraged people to play the deck. I’ve made sideboard guides and posted gameplay guides for the deck. The people who choose to join my personal discord server are going to be inclined to also play Mardu, with most people telling me they used my exact list, or my list with tweaks.
Lastly, the de-facto best Energy deck hasn’t really changed over the last few months. The Mardu Energy decks ran at this metagame challenge were incredibly similar to the decks ran at the previous challenge. The only difference between my 7-0 lists this time and last time are sideboard adjustments for the new combo decks, and moving two discard spells to the maindeck from the sideboard… that’s it. The Mardu Lurrus formula seems solved, and the deck is incredibly optimized and well-tuned. I’m not sure how much innovation is left to be had within the Mardu Lurrus shell.
Energy as a whole, however, does have some room for innovation and growth. Non-Lurrus forms of Energy are still being worked on and optimized. My hopes are high after seeing an Obosh Energy list and a Companionless Energy list each get piloted to 7 wins by Novos and BinarySoloist. I’m excited to see if any further innovations come to the Energy archetype.
Opinion – Is Energy Too Much?
In my opinion, the incredibly efficient Energy decks are becoming quite oppressive and hurting creature deck diversity in the format. There are very few fair deckbuilding options outside of Energy and Psychic Frog shells, and I’ve been a bit disappointed and frustrated as a deckbuilder. Even as an avid Energy player, I recognize that Energy’s competitive meta share has become very large, and its keeping other creature strategies down. This really isn’t about Energy’s effect on the other top meta decks, this is about Energy’s effect on other creature strategies pushed completely out of the meta – including cool creature-combo decks like Yawgmoth, beat-down decks like Winota, midrange strategies like classic Jund and Sultai, and a slew of potential new brews around other exciting cards in Timeless’s card pool.
I wouldn’t advocate for a restriction based on this data, as I’ve established several times why this data is highly biased. Timeless is also a format where restrictions should only be used as a last resort, and I think restricting an energy card would set a precedent that restrictions could be used to frequently target meta decks in the future. I’ve enjoyed the natural evolution of Timeless’s meta without B&R intervention so far. But I do hope that Energy’s dominance is eventually challenged naturally over time by the introduction of other very powerful fair cards into the format, perhaps Legacy and Vintage creature deck staples like Aether Vial, Green Sun’s Zenith, Eye of Ugin, Grist, or maybe even some busted Initiative cards if we’re feeling daring. I’m not asking for any of these cards specifically, but hope that cards like these get naturally added to the format through Bonus Sheets and Anthologies, hopefully spawning new fair archetypes which can challenge Energy’s dominance.
Closing Thoughts
Thank you to everyone who participated and honestly self-reported their results last weekend. If you would like to participate and future Timeless community events such as this, consider joining my discord server and following my YouTube page.
Here’s the link to my Youtube video on this topic. If you read the article all the way through, you probably don’t want to watch it, since I discuss the same topics in both.
