$100 Freeroll Tournament Metagame Analysis
The $100 Freeroll Tournament saw Anti-Meta Warriors dominate the metagame, securing first and third place while proving to be the best performing deck.
Curious to see which decks were the most represented and had the best records in our last tournament? Read on for more. First, let's get started with a breakdown of the decks that everyone played. Then I'll give you some quick takeaways on their results.
$100 Freeroll Tournament Metagame Breakdown
The Goat Herd is Under Attack
It's hard out there for the shepherds of Goat Format these days. As I highlighted last month in Beating Goat Control Isn't Good Enough, Goat Control is not the dominant force that it used to be. Goat Control was only 23% of the meta, tied with Anti-Meta Warriors. I actually was not expecting the huge representation from Anti-Meta Warriors. This trend speaks a lot for the future of the Goat Format as Anti-Meta Warriors was not only the most represented deck but by far the best performing deck as well. You can see from the top decklists that Anti-Meta Warriors captured both 1st and 3rd place. These placings, however, were not a fluke. Out of the seven players who used the deck, they had a stunning cumulative performance of 21 wins and 12 losses, giving this group of players by far the best winrate in this particular tournament. Interesting enough, not a single Anti-Meta Warriors player went 0-2 drop, which was a feat that was achieved by neither Goat Control nor Thunder Dragon Chaos. These decks instead had cumulative performances of 14 wins and 13 losses for Goat Control along with 11 wins and 11 losses for Thunder Dragon Chaos. I want to highlight Morpp's deck in particular, which was a less commonly seen spin on Anti-Meta Warriors, with 3 King Tiger Wanghu, 3 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, and 3 Blade Knight. Despite finishing in only third place, he had to go 7-2 to get there, as he was knocked into the loser's bracket after round 1. His decklist was a great "no nonsense" build, maxing out on a lot of 3-ofs in order to reduce the variance of his strategy. As I stated in my last article, I think that King Tiger Wanghu, Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, and Blade Knight form a great core for Anti-Meta Warriors, and I still believe that that is the case. All three cards are capable of delivering huge value in a variety of matchups. However, all three major variants of the Anti-Meta Warriors strategy -- Warrior Toolbox, Tiger Stun, and Gearfried Warriors -- were represented in this tournament, and they all put up solid numbers. There are a lot of ways to build this deck, and Anti-Meta Warriors may need to start adjusting their strategy as the Goat Control players stop living in denial and realize that this is not a strategy that they can afford to ignore anymore. I personally recommend that Gravekeeper's Spies move back into the maindeck for Goat Control players as Woawa did to achieve his 4th place finish.
