The Metagame
The metagame is a popular term among TCG players. You will often hear people refer to the metagame, but if you're new to TCG's or TCG tournaments, the concept of the metagame can be a little ambiguous.
In its simplest form, the metagame is simply what decks and/or strategies are popular right now. People will often refer to specific decktypes when referring to the metagame. For example, you may hear a comment like, "The metagame is dominated by Shadow Priests right now."
Other times, people will talk about how certain strategies are holding up. "Unit rush is dominating right now" or "The metagame is very anti-AvA right now" are some examples of things you might hear as far as how strategies go within the metagame.
Knowing what the current metagame is and more importantly where it's going is one of the most important tools in a TCG. You can have a great deck, but if you want to succeed in tournaments, you have to know what types of decks you will be facing in the tournaments. Knowing what to expect can help you make small changes in the makeup of your deck that give you a much better chance of success.
In addition to being able to make small changes to your current deck, knowing how the metagame looks can help you choose which deck to play. Going into the March qualifier, my team had several decks we thought were all good enough to play in the tournament. Friday night we had narrowed it down to just a few and finally those of us that were still on the fence had decided on a deck. There was one deck and one specific card in particular that were really bad for that deck though. Saturday morning it looked like that deck was going to be more powerful than we initially had thought, so a couple of us made the change to a deck that would fare better in a field where that deck would be popular. I, sadly, did not make the change and stuck with the original deck.
Round 1, I lost to the exact deck we were concerned about and went on to finish a disappointing 3-3 while my two teammates who made the change both went on to play on Sunday. Their metagame call ended up being much better than mine and the results showed that.
Knowing metagame trends can help you stay one step ahead. There is usually a cycle to a metagame. One deck will rise up and show itself as the deck to beat. As that deck becomes popular and foil will rise that can take that deck down. Once that deck catches on, the popularity of the original deck to beat will start to wane and other decks will rise up that can beat the foil deck.
The foil deck then becomes its own worst enemy. Its success against the deck to beat pushes the deck to beat out of the metagame making the foil weak against the other decks that have become playable now that the "best" deck is gone. Once that happens, the foil deck will go away because it doesn't have its easy wins around anymore. Once that happens, the original deck will come back. It's all a vicious cycle.
It's not always that simple. Sometimes, the deck to beat doesn't have a specific foil, and sometimes there are three or four (or more) roughly balanced decks that keep each other in check similar to the branches of our government.
Knowing these cycles and predicting where the metagame will go can help your tournament success a lot.
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