Keyforge Meta Report – February 2020

February 2020 Meta Report –
Fort Worth, TX Sealed Vault Tour 

Have you ever wondered which decks are good enough to compete at the highest level? My goal is to address this for you.

This analysis is all based on the 11 decks that made the top cut from the sealed format at the Fort Worth, TX Vault Tour on February 6-9, 2020.

This vault tour was the Sealed format, meaning only World Collide (WC) decks were used. Therefore, we cannot determine how powerful each set is in the current meta based on this vault tour. Instead, we will look at:

  1. How powerful is each house when competing only with WC?
  2. What are the top cards to look for in a successful WC deck?
  3. How high of a SAS and/or AERC rating is required for a deck to be considered elite?
  4. What is the AERC profile of an elite deck?
  5. Which deck archetype/s are currently playable at the highest level?
  6. How do I identify an elite deck?

Decklist of Top Cut


https://archonarcana.com/2020_Fort_Worth_Vault_Tour

Based on the number of players in the vault tour, the top cut for this vault tour was only 11 decks. Special thanks to Lady Caffeina for gathering the data from the vault tour.

TL:DR – Scroll to the very bottom for a summary of an elite deck’s profile.

1. How powerful is each house when competing only with WC?

To try to answer the question of how powerful each house is in the current meta, I looked at the percent representation of each house in the top cut at the vault tour. The criteria I decided upon for each tier is:

  • S tier > 90%
  • A tier >= 75%
  • B tier >= 50%
  • C tier >= 25%
  • D tier >= 10%
  • E tier > 0%
  • F tier = 0%


WC Changes from Last Vault Tour:

The first thing you should notice is there is no Mars or Sanctum. Sicne WC does not contain those 2 houses, I removed them from the meta report. The second and more important thing you should notice is how close together all of the houses are in the graphic. Why is this? It is likely due to the fact that the format of the tournament was sealed. This means players had to make due with what they were given to work with. Let’s take a look:

  • Saurian: B → B
  • Logos: A → B
  • Shadows: D → C
  • Star Alliance: A → C
  • Untamed: C → C
  • Dis: C → C
  • Brobnar: F → D

WC Analysis:

As stated above, I think it is important to realize that since this tournament was sealed, players did not have the luxury of scouring their collections and the auction sites for the perfect deck. They had to play with the decks they received. However, we can still see which houses and which cards made their way to the top of the pack. With this in mind, let’s dive in.

Risers:

Let’s start with which houses went up since the last Meta report. Brobnar and Shadows. So, does this mean Brobnar is finding its footing in the WC meta? Nope, far from it actually. I would bet that the only reason Brobnar shows up at all in the top cut is due to the fact that the tournament is the sealed format and the pilots were skilled enough or had good enough houses for the other two slots to keep the Brobnar afloat. Bronar went from 0% representation in the top cut (F tier) to 18% (D tier), hardly inspiring numbers. What about Shadows? Shadows edged up slightly from 13% to 36%. I’m not sure exactly what accounted for this but Shadows does have some helpful supporting cards like Hock to deal with powerful artifacts as well as multiple ways to Steal Aember, still a powerful effect (though not as powerful as it was pre-WC).

Status Quo:

Next, let’s look at what stayed the same from the last meta report on WC. Saurian stayed in the B tier, Untamed stayed in the C tier, and Dis stayed in the C tier. This is not too surprizing. We have seen that Saurian can be top tier when you can choose a specific deck with a synergistic lineup. However, despite the powerful cards, Saurian lineups are sometimes not perfectly in sync. Untamed seems to be mediocre, relying on moderate burst and powerful control cards that date back to COTA such as Nature’s Call, Mimicry, and Key Charge. Dis looks very different than it did in COTA, having a larger focus on purge in WC. There are some very powerful Dis houses involving cards like E’E on the Fringes, Infurnace, Hysteria, Lord Invidius, among others.

Fallers:

Next, let’s look at the fallers. Logos and Star Alliance. Logos and Star Alliance are clearly 2 of the top 3 houses in WC. Logos fell from A to B, a minor drop, and Star Alliance fell from A to C. I think some of the reason for this is that in the Sealed format, you don’t choose what you bring, you get what you get. These houses were still strong, but random chance means people are less likely to bring broken/synergistic Logos or Star Alliance lineups.

2. What are the top cards to look for in a successful deck?

I looked at the most commonly occurring cards in the top 11 decks to help us target which cards to look for in a successful deck. Now, it is important to realize that there is some bias here because not all cards have the same rarity. Therefore, a card that is common within a highly-represented house is more likely to show up for this reason than a rare card, even if it is not necessarily a strong card. It is also worth noting that 11 decks is a relatively small sample size when looking at something like individual cards from such a large pool of possibilities. My impression though is that when trying to analyze if a deck can be successful, keep an eye out for as many of these cards as possible. With this in mind, I present the most common cards in the top cut based on the number of times each occurred:


https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=thero%20centurion

https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=twin%20bolt%20emission

WC Card Usage:

  • 8 x: Thero Centurian, Twin Bolt Emission
  • 7 x: Lilithal
  • 6 x: Etaromme, Eyegor
  • 5 x: Unnatural Selection, Questor Jarta, Imperial Scutum, Odoac the Patrician, Infurnace, Zap, Phalanx Strike, Thorium Plasmate
  • 4 x: Moor Wolf, Ortannu’s Binding, Harmonia, Praefectus Ludo, Exhume, Medic Ingram, Trust No One, Tautau vapors, Cutthroat Research, Titan Guardian
  • 3 x: Mab the Mad, Orator Hissaro, Xenotraining, Regrowth, Musthic, Rhetor Gallim, Chant of Hubris, Terrordactyl, Red Alert, Light of the Archons, Ronnie Wristclocks, Breaker Hill, A. Vinda, Mug, Umbra, EDAI “Edie” 4×4

WC Reaction:

Many of the cards that showed up the most times were new to this list when compared to past vault tours. The returners are Eyegor and Tautau Vapors, powerful cycling cards (Logos) Questor Jarta, an aember burst card (Saurian), Light of the Archons and Medic Ingram which both makes creatures very difficult to kill (Star Alliance), Phalanx Strike, Zap, and Thorium Plasmate which are excellent spot removal (Saurian + Star Alliance + Logos respectively), Exhume which lets you house cheat and instantly play a card out of your discard pile (Dis), Cutthroat Research which allows you to steal more consistently now in WC (Logos), Mug to retrieve captured/exalted aember (Shadows), Imperial Scutum to protect captured/exalted aember (Saurian), Odoac the Patrician to capture and prevent steal (Saurian), Eddie to archive and increase opponent’s key cost, Umbra and Breaker HIll for steal (Shadows), A. Vinda for hand disruption (Shadows), Titan Guardian for taunt protection and card draw (Logos), as well as Red Alert for mass removal (Star Alliance). Unsurprisingly there were no Brobnar cards represented.

Of the new cards, Thero Centurian was an interesting addition. This is a powerful card that is especially powerful when you don’t have to worry about synergizing with other cards. It allows you to control aember while also clearing your opponent’s threatening creatures. Lilithal does essentially the same thing, but with a slightly smaller body and with the slower reap/fight instead of play/fight. Moor Wolf and Mab the Mad can enable Untamed to burst. Xenotraining enables Star alliance to have aember control, and aember control is essential. Etaromme and Ortannu’s Binding allow for some spot removal. Orator Hissaro allows you to ready creatures the turn they enter play, which can be very powerful. It is worth noting that Moor Wolf always comes in multiples, so one deck in the top cut with 4 copies of Moor Wolf can skew things to make it seem better than it is. I think the reason we are seeing most of the cards on this list is due to the sealed format where fewer decks have powerful synergies and cards with standalone value and aember control are more important.

3. How high of a SAS and/or AERC rating is required for a deck to be considered elite?

SAS: 65-76
AERC: 55-73

Based on the top cut, we can see that the lowest SAS score was 65, slightly lower than the 69 from the last 2 vault tours and the highest was 76, down from 83 in the last vault tour. For AERC, we can see that the lowest is 55, down from 63 in the last vault tour and the highest is 73, down from 78 in the last vault tour. These ratings are built lower than last vault tour overall, most likely due to the fact that players couldn’t just bring any deck they wanted and had to play what they were given. While SAS and AERC seem to be quite accurate overall, suggesting that the higher the numbers the better, it also matters where the break down of those points are that factor into the SAS and AERC rating. For instance, does the deck have any glaring weaknesses? No deck can have everything. However, when looking at a deck and trying to determine if it can compete at the highest level, it will likely need a SAS of at least 65 and an AERC of at least 55. If it does not have these things, it will likely have too many weaknesses to compete. A possible exception is a combo or a racing deck that only cares about achieving a particular game plan to win, rather than worrying about stopping the opponent.

4. What is the AERC profile of an elite deck?

Let’s look at the minimum for each of these AERC traits:

A: 7   R: 0   F: 1.3 
E: 14   C:6.5   D: 0
AP: 0   P: 60   HC: 0   O: 0

This data is also very similar to the last two vault tours. Since we are looking at the minimum viable AERC traits, we expect to see low numbers. However, a deck with these minimum traits in all of these categories would be far too weak to compete competitively. There is still a focus on having a fair amount of (A) aember control, (C) creature control, and (E) expected aember, but these numbers are not overwhelmingly high. What’s more, we see certain traits sacrificed here, such as a lack of (R) artifact control, (D) disruption, (AP) aember protection, and (HC) house cheating. I like to think of these traits as nice to have luxuries, rather than must haves like (A), (C), and (E).

I have to stress though that not all decks play a balanced style and some can afford to have weaknesses in some of the areas above, presuming they excel in others. Combo-dependent decks and racing decks are more likely to have multiple weaknesses than a balanced control deck.

5. Which deck archetype(s) are currently playable at the highest level?

My impression of the top 11 decks is that they are mainly balanced aember control decks with very few deficiencies that they make up for with high efficiency. There are a couple that resemble racing decks, but they seem to lean heavily into a sub-type of aember control and do not sacrifice many important AERC traits, if any.

The Bouncing Deathquark podcast breaks decks down into 4 basic archetypes, though a deck may exist within multiple categories, or have a main category with a subcategory:

  • Aember Control: focused on preventing your opponent from forging keys, constantly stealing, capturing, or forcing them to lose aember. Effects such as increasing the cost of your opponent’s keys or preventing them from forging would also be included in this deck type.
  • Board Control: these decks focus on building a board with creatures that can stick, then using those creatures to fight and maintain a creature count advantage or reap to generate aember.
  • Combo: these decks focus on trying to put together a specific combination of cards that enable the win condition. You may have heard of the old LANS/LART decks before Library Access was errated to purge after use. Before that was the case, a player could combine Library Access with Nepethe Seed or Reverse Time to play the Library Access multiple times, enabling a player to draw their entire deck into their hand at once. A less broken and still viable combo is GENKA, which involves Martian Generousity and Key Abduction, enabling a player to trade aember for drawing multiple cards and then forging a key for free. Other notable combos include: Witch of the eye, Dominator Bauble, Control the Weak or Double Tezmal with Rocket boots to lock a player out of the game. Drummernaught and Ganger Chieftain is a popular AoA combo as is Binate Rupture and Interdimensional graft.
  • Racing/Rush: this has been a very successful deck archetype for a long time. It involves playing cards for aember and ignoring the board state. A typical racing deck has many cards with printed “raw” aember on them, and possibly a handful of cards that burst for multiple aember when played under the right conditions. They also may involve cards like speed sigil to make the first creature each turn come into play ready to reap for an aember or soul snatcher to make your creatures sources of additional aember when they die. It is worth noting that a deck does not need to have a high (F) efficiency rating to be considered a racing deck. It is also worth pointing out that since racing decks don’t focus much on stopping the opponent, they tend to have multiple weaknesses.

6. How do I identify an elite deck?


https://decksofkeyforge.com/decks/5f5a87fc-3237-48ee-b2b3-ad58a7beb922

Let’s put everything together to come up with the profile of an elite deck. You can search within your collection, or search decks that you are considering acquiring at Decks of Keyforge. Based on our findings above, an elite deck is likely to have the following characteristics:

  • WC Houses: You are probably looking for Logos or Saurian to pair with anything besides Bronar.
  • As many of the following WC cards:  Thero Centurion, Twin Bolt Emission, Lilithal, Etaromme, Eyegor, Moor Wolf, Ortannu’s Binding,Mab the Mad, Orator Hissaro, and Xenotraining.
  • SAS: minimum of 65 
  • AERC: minimum of 55 
    • A: 7   R: 0   F: 1.3 
    • E: 14   C:6.5   D:
    • AP: 0   P: 60   HC: 0   O: 0
  • Deck Archetype: Aember control or Racing/Rush (with a focus on high efficiency)

Disclaimer: Just because a deck meets all of the criteria above, does not ensure that it will be an elite deck that is capable of competing at the highest level. This is merely guidance you can use in your quest to identify top-level decks. Please keep in mind that this is average data, therefore it won’t necessarily apply to all deck archetypes.

Keyforge Meta Report – January 2020


Albany, NY Archon Vault Tour

Have you ever wondered which decks are good enough to compete at the highest level? My goal is to address this by answering the following questions for you:

  1. How powerful is each house in the current meta?
  2. How powerful is each set in the current meta?
  3. What are the top cards to look for in a successful deck?
  4. How high of a SAS and/or AERC rating is required for a deck to be considered elite?
  5. What is the AERC profile of an elite deck?
  6. Which deck archetype/s are currently playable at the highest level?
  7. How do I identify an elite deck?

This analysis is all based on the top cut decks from the Archon format at the Albany, NY Vault Tour on January 10-12, 2020.

Decklist of Top Cut


https://archonarcana.com/2020_Albany_Vault_Tour

The top cut for this vault tour was the traditional number of 16 decks. Special thanks to Lady Caffeina for gathering the data from the vault tour.

TL:DR – Scroll to the very bottom for a summary of an elite deck’s profile.

1. How powerful is each house in the current meta?

To try to answer the question of how powerful each house is in the current meta, I looked at the percent representation of each house in the top cut at the vault tour. The criteria I decided upon for each tier is:

  • S tier > 90%
  • A tier >= 75%
  • B tier >= 50%
  • C tier >= 25%
  • D tier >= 10%
  • E tier > 0%
  • F tier = 0%

Let’s look at each set separately. I will not include AoA (set 2) here due to it only appearing once in the top 16. However, I will dive into why I felt that particular deck was successful. Let’s start with World’s Collide (WC) since it had the highest representation in the top cut.

WC Changes from Last Vault Tour:

  • Saurian: A → B
  • Logos: A → A
  • Shadows: B → D
  • Star Alliance: C → A
  • Untamed: D → C
  • Dis: D → C
  • Brobnar: F → F
  • Mars: F → F
  • Sanctum: F → F

COTA Changes from Last Vault Tour:

  • Shadows: S → A
  • Untamed: B → B
  • Logos: B → C
  • Dis: C → B
  • Brobnar: C → D
  • Mars: F → D
  • Sanctum: F → C
  • Star Alliance: F → F
  • Saurian: F → F

WC Analysis:

In the first screenshot above, we can see that there are no houses currently in the S tier. However, 2 houses VERY narrowly missed this distinction, Logos and Star Alliance, coming in at 88% usage as A tier houses. Both houses have extremely strong cards in the common slots and both houses enable your deck to operate more efficiently, whether this is card draw and archive with Logos or house cheating with Star Alliance. It seems as if it is difficult to open a WC deck that has a weak Logos or Star Alliance lineup. These houses also produce great lineups that don’t tend to require specific groupings of cards to synergize in order to be successful.

Saurian is the lone house in the B tier at 63% usage. This makes sense as there are many powerful Saurian cards. Although most Saurian lineups are at least average, it seems harder to open a truly elite Saurian lineup compared to Logos or Star Alliance. This is because whatever the lineup is trying to do requires synergy among its own house. This may take the form of building and maintaining a strong board, filling your Saurian creatures with exiled or captured ember to buff your creature power, sending aember back to the common supply, forging keys, or exiling creatures to your opponent to ‘pop’ like “Dino Pinatas” as Dan from the Sanctumonius podcast likes to call them.

Crassassaurus is the epitome of Saurian. It captures a combination of 10 aember from both you and your opponent combined. This is the ultimate risk reward, because while you may have pulled your opponent off of check for a turn, all they need to do is destroy Crassassaurus to get all of that aember into their pool, unless…something prevents that from happening. You could protect Crassassaurus with big taunters or ward so that your opponent has trouble killing it. You could use effects like Praefectus Ludo or Imperial Scutum so that when Crassassaurus dies, the aember goes to the common supply instead of your opponent’s pool. You could use cards that buff power based on aember such as Tribune Pompitus. You could use the aember on Crassassaurus to forge keys such as with Imperial Forge, Senator Bracchus, Senator Shrix, or The Callipygian Ideal. You could even exile Crassassaurus to your opponent and then kill it, sending all of the aember to your pool. Each of these strategies requires different cards to set up, requiring synergy to pull off successfully.

Untamed and Dis are the 2 houses occupying the C tier, both at 25% usage. Untamed is focused mainly on bursting aember with cards like Song of the Wild and Ghosthawk, or board control like Nature’s Call, Caldron Boil, Unnatural Selection, Mimicry, Kangaphant, as well as Anga and Jaga Panpaca. Dis is focused on disruption as usual, particularly in the form of purge in WC. There is also a strong emphasis on board and aember control. Cards like Infurnace, Hysteria, Exhume, and Impspector make for strong Dis lineups.

Shadows has fallen to the D tier. It has some useful supporting cards such as Hock to remove artifacts and some aember stealing tools such as Too Much to Protect and Ronnie Wristclocks, but overall there weren’t too many strong additions to the house in WC. It does have a few board control tricks like Kymoor Eclipse and Inky Gloom to pair with a handful of creatures that capture or steal aember.

There are no houses in the E tier, but Brobnar, Mars, and Sanctum are all in the F tier at 0% usage. Given that Mars and Sanctum don’t exist in WC (outside of legacy mavericks), this isn’t surprising to see them here. However, Brobnar is in the set and still had 0% usage in the top tier. Unfortunately Brobnar is in a bad place, focused mainly on fighting, but without any real way to generate much aember while doing so (unlike in the previous sets, albeit in limited ways: i.e. Ganger Chieftain, Drummernaught or Warsong, War Chest, Loot the Bodies, etc…) There are a few aember loss mechanics, but they seem difficult to execute and may add unnecessary chains. Personally I feel if Brobnar is going to be the fighting house, there need to be more effects to gain aember when fighting.

COTA Analysis:

It should be unsurprising that Shadows sits at the top spot for COTA due to its many powerful steal effects as we can see in the second screenshot above in the A tier at 86% usage (4% below S tier).

Dis is still clearly the second most powerful house in COTA with its myriad of board clearing, aember stealing, and turn disruption cards. Dis comes in at 71% usage and shares the B tier with Untamed, coming in slightly lower at 57%. COTA untamed is famous for extreme burst. Think Dust Pixie, Fuzzy Gruen, Nature’s call, Fertility Chant, Hunting Witch, etc…

The C tier is occupied by Logos and Sanctum, both at 29% usage. Logos has some elite power with the right lineups in COTA, but it is much more difficult to have a top tier Logos lineup in this set compared with WC. Sanctum does many things well, but nothing great. It has beefy creatures to hold down a board and protect smaller creatures with taunts or shields. Many of its creatures can capture aember to stall the opponent. Sanctum can also burst with cards like Virtuous Works, Cleansing Wave, and Oath of Poverty.

Bronar and Mars both come in at 14%. Both houses have potential to produce strong lineups, particularly Mars, but finding decks with elite lineups of these houses is quite rare. Bronar would likely need lots of board control cards like Cowards End or aember control cards like Burn the Stockpile. Neither option fits what Brobnar wants to do which is fight. There are, however, a few cards to make Brobnar burst when it fights. Mars is totally dependent on Mars. A good Mars house synergizes well with itself and ignores the other houses. It would do things like massive draw of Battle Fleet paired with Key abduction, or have multiple creatures that ready each other and perhaps even a Crystal Hive to reap for extra aember.

Star Alliance and Saurian are once again at 0% usage as they don’t exist in COTA.

AoA Analysis:

AoA actually had 1 deck make it into the top cut, finishing impressively in the top 4! This is still very low representation so it is hard to glean much about AoA itself. I think this particular deck’s success is more about the AERC profile than AoA specific cards. Let’s take a look.


https://decksofkeyforge.com/decks/3eb00a5a-2b6d-4cdd-bcd7-e365b7b3c834

On the surface, if you just looked at the SAS and AERC without worrying about the houses or set, you would see an extremely balanced deck. It has good aember control, good board control, good aember generation (The Big 3 must haves). It also has artifact control, good creature power, decent efficiency, decent disruption, great raw aember, a key cheat, and a way to archive. (The Gravy nice to haves). There is absolutely no weakness to this deck when looking at AERC alone. In addition, the deck has a 0 for antisynergy. We are looking at a spectacularly balanced deck.

Digging deeper we can see some solid pieces. It has a beefy Sanctum main house that can hold down the board, capture aember, and house cheat. Those double untamed ambassadors off of a duskwitch could do some serious work. The double Nature’s Call is very powerful in this meta to remove big bodies from the board. It can also be used nicely to recur Chota, as can World Tree, Regrowth, and double Song of Spring. The Whistling Darts x 3 can pop wards and the Miasma can buy an extra turn.

TheNickOfSlots made an excellent point that one of the reasons efficiency (F) is so strong and prevalent in the current meta is because it leads to “decreased variance” or what I like to think of as “consistency,” meaning you can expect the deck to perform about the same way most of the time, rather than having to worry about the inconsistency of finding your answers to your opponent’s deck, which could be in your last few cards. Efficiency enables this by helping dig through your deck more quickly. Although this deck doesn’t have particularly high efficiency, I want to point out that this deck has 4 sets of doubles and 1 set of triples. I feel that duplicates also contribute to high consistency/decreased variance, because you are more likely to find your answers if there are more copies of them in the deck.

In the end I think this deck was successful not due to being in AoA, but despite being in AoA. It is just an incredibly balanced deck with many answers and almost no weaknesses, if any.

2. How powerful is each set in the current meta?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRrDtYD3waX_EQS6f53Me9C3sgKvmoMgweAphmKDHLYm5P1SDEp&s

https://cf.geekdo-images.com/opengraph/img/tPQAqYd4QfI0AW5Mb1wK36fuB_E=/fit-in/1200×630/pic5054769.jpg

https://dragonstrove.com/keyforge-age-of-ascension-deck?utm_source=google_shopping&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyKrxBRDHARIsAKCzn8xNe3QNKLTnj7_tixE-ua5mwesqAA0D6HPeqEWHUHB9ETviv8nnzIUaAoI-EALw_wcB

To try to answer this question, I looked at representation of sets among the top cut at this vault tour. Among the top 16 decks at Albany, 8 were WC, 7 were COTA, and 1 was AoA. This breaks down to: 50% WC, 43.8% COTA, and 6.3% AoA (rounded up). This is a fairly even split of WC and COTA that slightly favors WC. The general consensus still seems to be that WC and COTA are fairly equal in strength. We can clearly see that AoA is weaker, as it only appeared once in the top 16.

3. What are the top cards to look for in a successful deck?

I looked at the most commonly occurring cards in the top 16 decks, separated by set, to help us target which cards to look for in a successful deck. Now, it is important to realize that there is some bias here because not all cards have the same rarity. Therefore, a card that is common within a highly-represented house is more likely to show up for this reason than a rare card, even if it is not necessarily a strong card. It is also worth noting that 16 decks is a relatively small sample size when looking at something like individual cards from such a large pool of possibilities. My impression though is that when trying to analyze if a deck can be successful, keep an eye out for as many of these cards as possible. With this in mind, I present the most common cards in the top 16 based on the number of times each occurred:


https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=vapors

WC Card Usage:

  • 8 x: Tautau Vapors
  • 7 x: Com. Officer Kirby
  • 6 x: Commander Chan, EDAI “Edie” 4×4, Eyegor, Stealth Mode
  • 5 x: Cloaking Dongle, Cutthroat Research, Red Alert, Rhetor Gallim, Senator Shrix, Wild Wormhole
  • 4 x: Exhume, Hollogrammophone, Medic Ingram, Sci. Officer Quincan, Tribune Pompitus, Tribute, Zap
  • 3 x: Armsmaster Molina, Crassossaurus, Daughter, Harbinger of Doom, Light of the Archons, Phalanx Strike, Praefectus Luto

https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=hunting%20witch

https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=miasma

COTA Card Usage:

  • 7 x: Hunting Witch, Miasma
  • 6 x: Routine Job, Urchin
  • 5 x: Ember Imp
  • 4 x: Charette, Fear, Nature’s Call, Niffle Ape, Relentless Whispers, Stealer of Souls, Witch of the Eye 
  • 3 x: Bate and Switch, Control the Weak, Dust Pixie, Effervescent Principle, 
  • Gateway to Dis, Interdimensional Graft, Mother, Nexus, Poltergeist

WC Reaction:

  • I’m not too surprised to see that almost all of the cards that occur 3 times or more in the top 16 decks are from the top 3 highest usage houses: Logos, Saurian, and Star Alliance. Eyegor and Tautau Vapors, both commons, are excellent for cycling through your decks. These were very high on the list last vault tour as well. Other Logos cards at the top of the usage list are EDAI “Edie” 4×4, Cutthroat Research, and Wild Wormhole. Edie helps archive and increases the opponent’s key costs, doing two things at once. Cutthroat Research, a weak card in the days of AoA, has new life, since there are so many ways to increase key costs and make it trigger for the 2 aember steal. Wild wormhole, though somewhat risky, grants aember, cycling, house-cheating, and the ability to help you pull the answer you are looking for, though it is a gamble. The risk can be mitigated by knowing your deck well and remembering which cards have not yet been played. Com. Officer Kirby and Commander Chan are great for house cheating and Cloaking Dongle can allow you to protect your board. Stealth Mode is identical to Scrambler Storm from Logos in COTA, but it has higher usage in a house that is almost always providing good house lists compared to the inconsistency of Logos in COTA. Rhetor Gallim, Senator Shrix, and Tribune Pompitus are all hugely impactful in terms of increasing your opponents keys, forging with exiled/captured aember, or building a powerful board. A Dis card, Harbinger of Doom, made it into the list, which goes to show the value of board wipes in the current meta of big, sticky boards.

COTA Reaction:

  • The majority of cards in the COTA decks are well known at this point as extremely powerful cards. I won’t get into those in detail, but I’ll touch base on the cards that surprised me. Fear, Niffle Ape, Stealer of Souls, and Nexus. Fear has more value now than in the past, since bouncing creatures with aember on them, or creatures who are powerful is very valuable. Niffle ape, considered one of the worst cards in the game, is likely on this list due to how incredibly common it is in Untamed and how many Untamed lists were in the top cut. I do think it is slightly underrated though, since it can get around taunt and elusive to kill small creatures with powerful effects. Stealer of Souls adds a purge effect which has become more common and relevant in the current meta. Nexus is solid artifact control within the strongest house, which is likely why we see it in this group. 

4. How high of a SAS and/or AERC rating is required for a deck to be considered elite?

SAS: 69-83

AERC: 63-78

Based on the top cut, we can see that the lowest SAS score was 69, just like last vault tour and the highest was 83, down from 85 in the last vault tour. For AERC, we can see that the lowest is 63, down from 64 in the last vault tour and the highest is 78, up from 75 in the last vault tour. These ratings are very similar to last time. While SAS and AERC seem to be quite accurate overall, suggesting that the higher the numbers the better, it also matters where the break down of those points are that factor into the SAS and AERC rating. For instance, does the deck have any glaring weaknesses? No deck can have everything. However, when looking at a deck and trying to determine if it can compete at the highest level, it will likely need a SAS of at least 69 and an AERC of at least 63. If it does not have these things, it will likely have too many weaknesses to compete. A possible exception is a combo or a racing deck that only cares about achieving a particular game plan to win, rather than worrying about stopping the opponent.

5. What is the AERC profile of an elite deck?

I’ll start by laying out the mean average for each AERC stat:

A:10.5   R: 1   F: 11.2 
E: 22   C:8.2   D: 4.1
AP: 1.1   P: 92   HC: 1.7   O: 1.8

I’ll start by saying that these numbers were VERY similar to the last vault tour. The efficiency rating dropped a little bit and the disruption and power increased slightly. This data makes sense on the surface. A well balanced and successful deck will typically need a fair amount of (A) aember control, (C) creature control, and (E) expected aember. This has been widely accepted for as long as SAS and AERC has been around. It makes sense that these decks have some (R) artifact control to deal with the game warping effects of cards like Quixxle Stone, Fangtooth Cavern, General Order 24, Soul Snatcher, Lash of Broken Dreams and others. The stat that really stands out as surprising is the (F) efficiency rating, which has a high average of 11. This seems to be a new trend focused on decks that can cycle very quickly. As was pointed out on the Help From Future Self podcast I believe it was (though it may have been Sanctumonious, I listen to both religiously), having a high efficiency makes up for a lack of answers such as low aember or low creature control. This is because you will cycle fast enough to reshuffle your deck and use these answer cards more than once.

Next, let’s look at the minimum for each of these AERC traits:

A: 5   R: 0   F: 0.5
E: 15   C:4.3   D: 0
AP: 0   P: 58   HC: 0   O: 0

This data is also very similar to the last vault tour, though A and C dropped slightly, perhaps due in part to having more decks in the top cut. Since we are looking at the minimum viable AERC traits, we expect to see lower numbers. However, a deck with these minimum traits in all of these categories would be far too weak to compete competitively. There is still a focus on having a fair amount of (A) aember control, (C) creature control, and (E) expected aember, but these numbers are not overwhelmingly high. What’s more, we see certain traits sacrificed here, such as a lack of (R) artifact control, (D) disruption, (AP) aember protection, and (HC) house cheating. I like to think of these traits as nice to have luxuries, rather than must haves like (A), (C), and (E).

I have to stress though that not all decks play a balanced style and some can afford to have weaknesses in some of the areas above, presuming they excel in others. Combo-dependent decks and racing decks are more likely to have multiple weaknesses than a balanced control deck.

6. Which deck archetype(s) are currently playable at the highest level?

My impression of the top 16 decks is that they are mainly balanced aember control decks with very few deficiencies that they make up for with high efficiency. There are a couple that resemble racing decks, but they seem to lean heavily into a sub-type of aember control and do not sacrifice many important AERC traits, if any.

The Bouncing Deathquark podcast breaks decks down into 4 basic archetypes, though a deck may exist within multiple categories, or have a main category with a subcategory:

  • Aember Control: focused on preventing your opponent from forging keys, constantly stealing, capturing, or forcing them to lose aember. Effects such as increasing the cost of your opponent’s keys or preventing them from forging would also be included in this deck type.
  • Board Control: these decks focus on building a board with creatures that can stick, then using those creatures to fight and maintain a creature count advantage or reap to generate aember.
  • Combo: these decks focus on trying to put together a specific combination of cards that enable the win condition. You may have heard of the old LANS/LART decks before Library Access was errated to purge after use. Before that was the case, a player could combine Library Access with Nepethe Seed or Reverse Time to play the Library Access multiple times, enabling a player to draw their entire deck into their hand at once. A less broken and still viable combo is GENKA, which involves Martian Generousity and Key Abduction, enabling a player to trade aember for drawing multiple cards and then forging a key for free. Other notable combos include: Witch of the eye, Dominator Bauble, Control the Weak or Double Tezmal with Rocket boots to lock a player out of the game. Drummernaught and Ganger Chieftain is a popular AoA combo as is Binate Rupture and Interdimensional graft.
  • Racing/Rush: this has been a very successful deck archetype for a long time. It involves playing cards for aember and ignoring the board state. A typical racing deck has many cards with printed “raw” aember on them, and possibly a handful of cards that burst for multiple aember when played under the right conditions. They also may involve cards like speed sigil to make the first creature each turn come into play ready to reap for an aember or soul snatcher to make your creatures sources of additional aember when they die. It is worth noting that a deck does not need to have a high (F) efficiency rating to be considered a racing deck. It is also worth pointing out that since racing decks don’t focus much on stopping the opponent, they tend to have multiple weaknesses.

7. How do I identify an elite deck?


https://decksofkeyforge.com/decks?title=%22Galaxy%22%20Tycho%2C%20Manor%20Arrowsmith

Let’s put everything together to come up with the profile of an elite deck in the Archon format. You can search within your collection, or search decks that you are considering acquiring at Decks of Keyforge. Based on our findings above, an elite deck is likely to have the following characteristics:

  • WC Houses: 2 or more from Star Alliance, Logos, and Saurian, possibly with 1 from Untamed, Shadows, or Dis
  • COTA Houses: Shadows and Dis, plus 1 of Logos or Untamed
  • Set: COTA or WC
  • As many of the following WC cards:  Tautau Vapors, Com. Officer Kirby, Commander Chan, EDAI “Edie” 4×4, Eyegor, Stealth Mode, Cloaking Dongle, Cutthroat Research, Red Alert, Rhetor Gallim, Senator Shrix, Wild Wormhole, Exhume, Hollogrammophone, Medic Ingram, Sci. Officer Quincan, Tribune Pompitus, Tribute, Zap, Armsmaster Molina, Crassossaurus, Daughter, Harbinger of Doom, Light of the Archons, Phalanx Strike, and Praefectus Luto
  • As many of the following COTA cards: Hunting Witch, Miasma, Routine Job, Urchin, Ember Imp, Charette, Fear, Nature’s Call, Niffle Ape, Relentless Whispers, Stealer of Souls, Witch of the Eye, Bate and Switch, Control the Weak, Dust Pixie, Effervescent Principle, Gateway to Dis, Interdimensional Graft, Mother, Nexus, and Poltergeist
  • SAS: minimum of 69, average of 77.3
  • AERC: minimum of 63, average of 69.2
  • AERC minimum traits:
    • A: 5   R: 0   F: 0.5 
    • E: 15   C:4.3   D:
    • AP: 0   P: 58   HC: 0   O: 0
  • AERC average traits:
    • A:10.5   R: 1   F: 11.2 
    • E: 22   C:8.2   D: 4.1 
    • AP: 1.1   P: 92   HC: 1.7   O: 1.8
  • Deck Archetype: Aember control or Racing/Rush (with a focus on high efficiency)

Disclaimer: Just because a deck meets all of the criteria above, does not ensure that it will be an elite deck that is capable of competing at the highest level. This is merely guidance you can use in your quest to identify top-level decks. Please keep in mind that this is average data, therefore it won’t necessarily apply to all deck archetypes. Additionally, an AoA deck that meets all of the criteria above can be just as effective as one from COTA or WC. You are just less likely to find an AoA deck that meets these criteria.

Keyforge Meta Report – December 2019


PAX Unplugged Archon Vault Tour 

Have you ever wondered which decks are good enough to compete at the highest level? My goal is to address this by answering the following questions for you:

  1. How powerful is each house in the current meta?
  2. How powerful is each set in the current meta?
  3. What are the top cards to look for in a successful deck?
  4. How high of a SAS and/or AERC rating is required for a deck to be considered elite?
  5. What is the AERC profile of an elite deck?
  6. Which deck archetype(s) are currently playable at the highest level?
  7. How do I identify an elite deck?

This analysis is all based on the top cut decks from the archon format at PAX Unplugged Vault Tour on December 6-7, 2019.

Decklist of Top Cut


https://archonarcana.com/2019_PAX_Unplugged_Archon_Vault_Tour

This vault tour was smaller than most, so the top cut was just 8 decks rather than the typical 16. Special thanks to Lady Caffeina for gathering the data from the vault tour.

TL:DR – Scroll to the very bottom for the summarized profile of an elite deck.

  1. How powerful is each house in the current meta?

To try to answer the question of how powerful each house is in the current meta, I looked at the percent representation of each house in the top cut at the vault tour. The criteria I decided upon for each tier is:

  • S tier > 90%
  • A tier >= 75%
  • B tier >= 50%
  • C tier >= 25%
  • D tier >= 10%
  • E tier > 0%
  • F tier = 0%

In the screenshots above, we can see that Shadows is the only house in the S tier for COTA, though it is in the B tier for WC. Shadow’s dominance has been evident since COTA was first released with the sheer number and power of steal effects.

COTA has no decks in the A tier, but WC has 2: Logos and Saurian. These houses have some of the strongest cards in the set, many of which are at the common slot.

For the B tier, COTA has 2: untamed and Logos. The untamed cards are typically burst oriented and the logos cards are typically oriented toward cycling through your deck. WC has 1 B tier house: Shadows. This is somewhat surprising due to popular believe that Shadows has become weak, but this may be bias due to its fall from dominance in COTA and AoA.

The C tier contains 1 WC house: Star Alliance. I think this will turn out to be too low of a rating due to all of the house cheating and key control, but we are working with a very small sample size. Dis and Brobnar are both in the C tier for COTA, but I think Dis is too low and Brobnar is too high, again due to a small sample size.

The D tier is reserved for WC this time, with both Untamed and Dis. Untamed seems bursty, but less so than in COTA. Dis seems to have some powerful purge and aember control effects, and I think it is currently rated too low.

There are no houses in Tier E, but Mars and Sanctum both have 0% usage in both sets. These two houses are phased out of WC completely, and were typically considered mediocre in COTA. Star Alliance and Saurian did not yet exist when COTA came out, so they are also at 0% usage.

  2. How powerful is each set in the current meta?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRrDtYD3waX_EQS6f53Me9C3sgKvmoMgweAphmKDHLYm5P1SDEp&s

https://cf.geekdo-images.com/opengraph/img/tPQAqYd4QfI0AW5Mb1wK36fuB_E=/fit-in/1200×630/pic5054769.jpg

To try to answer this question, I looked at representation of sets among the top cut at this vault tour. Among the top 8 decks at PAX, 5 were WC and 3 were COTA, a break down of 62.5% WC to 37.5% COTA. This is a fairly even split that slightly favors WC, perhaps due in part to the fact that it is the first vault tour where WC was legal to play. The general consensus seems to be that WC and COTA are fairly equal in strength. We can clearly see that AoA is weaker, as it was not represented at all in the top 8.

  3.What are the top cards to look for in a successful deck?

I looked at the most commonly occurring cards in the top 8 decks, separated by set, to help us target which cards to look for in a successful deck. Now, it is important to realize that there is some bias here because not all cards have the same rarity. Therefore, a card that is common within a highly-represented house is more likely to show up for this reason than a rare card, even if it is not necessarily a strong card. It is also worth noting that 8 decks is a relatively small sample size when looking at something like individual cards from such a large pool of possibilities. My impression though is that when trying to analyze if a deck can be successful, keep an eye out for as many of these cards as possible. With this in mind, I present the most common cards in the top 8:

WC Card Usage:


https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=eyegor
  • Eyegor: 6
  • Tautau Vapors: 5
  • Ronnie Wristclocks: 5
  • J. Vinda: 4
  • Tribute: 4
  • Phalanx Strike: 4
  • Thorium Plasmate: 3, Cutthroat Research: 3, Too Much to Protect: 3, Legatus Raptor: 3, Questor Jarta: 3, Senator Shrix: 3, Hock: 3, Wormhole Technician: 3

COTA Card Usage:


https://decksofkeyforge.com/cards?aercHistoryDate=&sort=SET_NUMBER&title=mother
  • Mother: 5
  • Nerve Blast: 4
  • Ghostly Hand: 3, Umbra: 3, Hunting Witch: 3, Bumpsy: 3, Wild wormhole: 3

WC Reaction:

  • I’m not too surprised to see that all of the cards that occur 3 times or more in the top 8 decks are from the top 3 highest usage houses: Logos, Shadows, and Saurian. Eyegor and Tautau Vapors, both commons, are excellent for cycling through your deck, something that Logos particularly excels at in WC. Ronnie Wristclocks has been famously strong since AoA first came out, and it makes sense that Too Much to Protect would be on the list of one of the only large aember swing cards available post Bait and Switch errata. For Saurian, we see Tribute, perhaps their strongest card in the set, allowing you to gain and aember and potentially capture 4 at once. This can be combo’d with a number of Saurian cards to either gain the aember yourself or make it go to the common supply when the creature with this horde of aember is killed.

COTA Reaction:

  • Mother comes in at the top of the list and this makes a lot of sense. This is an elite card that your opponent has to deal with in a hurry or give you a large draw advantage over time. Nerve blast is another excellent card, almost always proc’ing since your opponent almost never has 0 aember. I was surprised to see Umbra, which is weaker than Urchin or Noddy the Thief in my view, but I think this came down mainly to being a common card in a high usage house.

4. How high of a SAS and/or AERC rating is required for a deck to be considered elite?

SAS: 69-85

AERC: 64-75

Based on the top cut, we can see that the lowest SAS score was 69 and the highest was 85. For AERC, we can see that the lowest is 64, and the highest is 75. While SAS and AERC seem to be quite accurate overall, suggesting that the higher the numbers the better, it also matters where the break down of those points are that factor into the SAS and AERC rating. For instance, does the deck have any glaring weaknesses? No deck can have everything. However, when looking at a deck and trying to determine if it can compete at the highest level, it will likely need a SAS of at least 69 and an AERC of at least 64. If it does not have these things, it will likely have too many weaknesses to compete. A possible exception is a combo or a racing deck that only cares about achieving a particular game plan to win rather than worrying about stopping the opponent.

5. What is the AERC profile of an elite deck?

I’ll start by laying out the mean average for each AERC stat:

A:11.4   R: 1.5   F: 14 
E: 21.1   C:8   D: 2
AP: 2.3   P: 88.3   HC: 1.2   O: 1.8

This data makes sense on the surface. A well balanced and successful deck will typically need a fair amount of (A) aember control, (C) creature control, and (E) expected aember. This has been widely accepted for as long as SAS and AERC has been around. It makes sense that these decks have some (R) artifact control to deal with the game warping effects of cards like Quixxle Stone, Fangtooth Cavern, Order 24, Soul Snatcher, Lash of Broken Dreams and others. The stat that really stands out as surprising is the (F) efficiency rating, which has a whopping average of 14! This seems to be a new trend focused on decks that can cycle very quickly. As was pointed out on the Help From Future Self podcast I believe it was (though it may have been Sanctumonious, I listen to both religiously), having a high efficiency makes up for a lack of answers such as low aember or low creature control. This is because you will cycle fast enough to reshuffle your deck and use these answer cards more than once.

Next, let’s look at the minimum for each of these AERC traits:

A:7.1   R: 0   F: 1.5
E: 14   C:5   D: 0
AP: 0   P: 58   HC: 0   O: 0.5

This data is very interesting. Since we are looking at the minimum viable AERC traits, we expect to see lower numbers. There is still a focus on having a fair amount of (A) aember control, (C) creature control, and (E) expected aember, but these numbers are not overwhelmingly high. What’s more, we see certain traits sacrificed here, such as a lack of (R) artifact control, (D) disruption, (AP) aember protection, and (HC) house cheating. I like to think of these traits as nice to have luxuries, rather than must haves like (A), (C) , and (E).

I have to stress though that not all decks play a balanced style and some can afford to have weaknesses in some of the areas above, presuming they excel in others. Combo dependent decks and racing decks are more likely to have multiple weaknesses than a balanced control deck.

6. Which deck archetype(s) are currently playable at the highest level?

My impression of the top 8 decks is that they are mainly balanced aember control decks with very few weaknesses. There are a couple that resemble racing decks, but they seem to lean heavily into a sub-type of aember control and do not sacrifice many important AERC traits, if any.

The Bouncing Deathquark podcast breaks decks down into 4 basic archetypes, though a deck may exist within multiple categories, or have a main category with a subcategory:

  • Aember Control: focused on preventing your opponent from forging keys, constantly stealing, capturing, or forcing them to lose aember. Effects such as increasing the cost of your opponent’s keys or preventing them from forging would also be included in this deck type.
  • Board Control: these decks focus on building a board with creatures that can stick, then using those creatures to fight and maintain a creature count advantage or reap to generate aember.
  • Combo: these decks focus on trying to put together a specific combination of cards that enable the win condition. You may have heard of the old LANS/LART decks before Library Access was errated to purge after use. Before that was the case, a player could combine Library Access with Nepethe Seed or Reverse Time to play the Library Access multiple times, enabling a player to draw their entire deck into their hand at once. A less broken and still viable combo is GENKA, which involves Martian Generousity and Key Abduction, enabling a player to trade aember for drawing multiple cards and then forging a key for free. Other notable combos include: Witch of the eye, Dominator Bauble, Control the Weak or Double Tezmal with Rocket boots to lock a player out of the game. Drummernaught and Ganger Chieftain is a popular AoA combo as is Binate Rupture and Interdimensional graft.
  • Racing/Rush: this has been a very successful deck archetype for a long time. It involves playing cards for aember and ignoring the board state. A typical racing deck has many cards with printed “raw” aember on them, and possibly a handful of cards that burst for multiple aember when played under the right conditions. They also may involve cards like speed sigil to make the first creature each turn come into play ready to reap for an aember or soul snatcher to make your creatures sources of additional aember when they die. It is worth noting that a deck does not need to have a high (F) efficiency rating to be considered a racing deck.

7. How do I identify an elite deck?

PAX Unplugged Vault Tour Winner:
https://decksofkeyforge.com/decks/927a3863-b07c-4d8b-8151-8f119a5f6d83

Let’s put everything together to come up with the profile of an elite deck. You can search within your collection, or search decks that you are considering acquiring at Decks of Keyforge. Based on our findings above, an elite deck is likely to have the following characteristics:

  • Houses: 2 or more from Shadows, Logos, and Saurian, possibly with 1 from Untamed, Star Alliance, or Dis
  • Set: COTA or WC
  • As many of the following WC cards: Eyegor, Tautau Vapors, Ronnie Wristclocks, J. Vinda, Tribute, Phalanx Strike, Thorium Plasmate, Cutthroat Research, Too Much to Protect, Legatus Raptor, Questor Jarta, Senator Shrix, Hock, Wormhole Technician
  • As many of the following COTA cards: Mother, Nerve Blast, Ghostly Hand, Umbra, Hunting Witch, Bumpsy, Wild wormhole
  • SAS: minimum of 69, average of 79
  • AERC: minimum of 64, average of 69.5
  • AERC minimum traits:
    • A:7.1   R: 0   F: 1.5 
    • E: 14   C:5   D:
    • AP: 0   P: 58   HC: 0   O: 0.5
  • AERC average traits:
    • A:11.4   R: 1.5   F: 14 
    • E: 21.1   C:8   D:
    • AP: 2.3   P: 88.3   HC: 1.2   O: 1.8
  • Deck Archetype: Aember control or Racing/Rush

Disclaimer: Just because a deck meets all of the criteria above, does not ensure that it will be an elite deck that is capable of competing at the highest level. This is merely guidance you can use in your quest to identify top-level decks. Please keep in mind that this is average data, therefore it won’t necessarily apply to all deck archetypes. Additionally, this was a small sample size of only 8 decks. (The tournament had 72 decks entered to start.)

Rankings with Fantasy Coach Alex

Which player is better? Seems like a simple question right? All we are asking is which player will score more points in the upcoming season. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say so looking back at past seasons we can easily answer this question. However, when it comes to deciding on which player to draft for the upcoming season, we need a system to rank players in order to choose the best available players who are likely to score the most points at their respective positions during the season. That’s where rankings come in.

Rankings are likely the most widespread topic of fantasy football articles that you will come across. Experts and amateurs alike will have opinions on how good players are and many of them will create an ordered list to rank all of the fantasy relevant players (players who will score enough points to warrant drafting). A separate list of rankings is created for each position. For example, you will see a list of QBs ranked in order of best to worst. You will see the same thing specifically for RBs, WRs, TEs, Ks, DEF, and in some custom leagues you will even see individual defensive players ranked (IDP), although that is much less common. (I recommend fantasypros.com and idpguru.com for IDP rankings)

The astute reader may be wondering. Yeah OK Fantasy Coach Alex, that makes sense. I know how to choose a specific QB over another QB based on a list of rankings, but what about when I don’t know if I should choose a QB or a WR next in the draft? How do I compare players of different positions to each other? Don’t you worry, we will cover that in a later article dedicated to the strategy of Value Based Drafting (VBD). For now, let’s focus on determining which lists of rankings we should trust to guide us.

When you play fantasy football, you are likely to join a league hosted by one of the major websites. Yahoo! and ESPN are the two most popular ones. They each have sortable rankings built into their sites, crafted by teams of experts. I feel these rankings are pretty good, but if you really want an edge on your competition it is worth considering alternative rankings as well. My go to resources for rankings is fantasypros.com. They pull rankings from over 100 experts and consolidate them into one master rankings list for each position. If I could only use one source for rankings, this would be the one.

This isn’t to say don’t look at other websites for rankings. I do it and I recommend you do it too if you have the time to spare. This allows you to triangulate by having as many sources as possible to compare.

Alright, so we understand how to compare players of any one position to each other, but this still doesn’t tell us how many points each player will score. Without that information, how do we know how much better the first ranked QB is than the second ranked QB? If the second ranked QB is much less valuable than the first ranked QB, then they might be worth waiting on to draft. Again, hindsight is 20/20 and we can look at years past, but in terms of figuring out how much better QB1 is than QB2, we need to look at projections. Projections are speculated statistics of how well a player is expected to perform in the upcoming season. For instance, it may be speculated that the top quarterback will pass for 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns. Thanks for huddling up with Fantasy Coach Alex. Come back next time, where I will coach you through what fantasy football player projections are and where to find them.

The Basics of Fantasy Football with Fantasy Coach Alex

They say you can’t teach size and you can’t teach talent. That’s true. We can’t all be 6 foot 6, weighing 265 pounds with a 33 and half inch vertical leap and a 7 foot wingspan like Rob Gronkowski. Unlike the physical traits of an NFL athlete, fantasy football success can be taught. It is a skill you can learn, by applying the right set of tools and strategies. In this blog series, I will coach you through which tools and strategies to use, how they work, and when to use them so that you will be yards ahead of your fantasy competition.

You are probably wondering who is this Fantasy Coach Alex guy and why should I listen to him? In the words of the Rolling Stones, please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. A wealth of fantasy football knowledge and a taste of fantasy football championships that is. I’ve been playing fantasy football since 2001. Yahoo! has made their fantasy ratings data from 2009 onward publicly available and since that time, I’ve gone steadily up from Silver (top 60th-80th percentile) to Platinum (top 95th-98th percentile), even flirting with Diamond this past year (99th percentile) falling just two points shy, with three 1st place and two 2nd place finishes over that time.

Why am I writing a blog about fantasy football? The reason is simple. After all of these years of reading fantasy articles, I realized that information about fantasy football strategy and how to win is almost nowhere to be found. There are endless articles ranking players, projecting statistics, and recommending which players to start over other players any given week. There are tools you can use, many of which cost money, that will simplify the game for you. However, you are not likely to find much information out there guiding you on how to succeed, beyond some general advice for the first two rounds of a standard draft, or if you are saavy, maybe a nugget about value based drafting. I aim to fill in this information gap for you.

This first post will describe the very basics of what fantasy football is and how it works. For the seasoned veterans out there, you may wish to skip ahead to the next post. Fantasy football lets participants simulate the role of a football team owner, choosing which real NFL players will play for your squad. The fantasy players on your roster will accrue fantasy points each week based on the actual performance of those NFL players in their games. Pretty simple right? Anyone can play, but not everyone will win their league. I’m here to give you a leg up on your peers.

Typical leagues consist of 8-12 participants, though this can vary greatly. The typical “Standard” league awards:

  • 6 points for a non-passing touchdown
  • 4 points for a passing touchdown
  • 1 point for every 10 yards of offense (excluding passing yards).

The Standard roster consists of:

  • 1 QB (quarterback)
  • 2 WR (wide receiver)
  • 2 RB (running back)
  • 1 TE (tight end)
  • 1 Flex (wide receiver or running back)
  • 1 K (kicker)
  • 1 DEF (defense)

There are many other settings for how points are scored, and many variations on the Standard league scoring settings and rosters. I’ve played in standard leagues and custom leagues. The main league I play in has many custom settings, so the majority of fantasy advice I find out there is not completely relevant or applicable to me, since it generally focuses on Standard leagues. That’s OK. The strategies I’ve learned throughout the years will allow you to adapt to any league scoring settings and roster compositions.

One clarification I wish to make here is that my blog series focuses on “Season long” fantasy football where you draft one team to maintain throughout the entire football season. This is the format that most people refer to when they talk about fantasy football. This is different from “DFS” (daily fantasy sports), where participants draft a team for a day, or in the case of football, for one week, and then the rosters all reset after that. It is important to understand this distinction.

Some of you may be wondering, if you should jump in and give fantasy a try. Maybe you have heard about it, but are too intimidated to start playing. I’m not here to convince you to play or not to play, that’s not the question. What I will do is list a few of the benefits:

  1. It will give you an invested reason to watch NFL games, making the game more fun and engaging even if your favorite team is not playing.
  2. You will gain knowledge about what is going on in the NFL, allowing you to participate in those water cooler conversations at your workplace or when hanging out with friends and family.

Fun facts:

  • The fantasy football industry ($7 Billion in revenue in 2017) is approaching the size of the NFL itself ($13.7 Billion in revenue in 2017), with an estimated 59 million fantasy players in the US and Canada.
  • Many active NFL players play fantasy football

Thanks for huddling up with Fantasy Coach Alex. Come back next time, where I will coach you through fantasy football player rankings.

References:

Wilson, R. (2018, October 20). Fantasy football, the $7 billion industry. Retrieved from
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/fantasy-football-the-billion-industry