Venoki is making a comeback in the late Epic Era of Season 5 in Axie Infinity: Origins. We also see a significant amount of Confused teams at the Top 100. The meta is certainly looking relatively diverse compared to previous seasons.
The latest complaint from the community after the “feels bad” factor of Rise and Ruin is the amount of long games and “unfun” factor with Sustain, Confused, and Hot Butt, which makes up of about a third of the Top 100 but drop down in usage as we go down the ladder. It would be interesting to do an investigation (e.g. a survey) to see what are the factors determining the popularity of archetypes, though this is beyond my expertise.
Before I jump into the meta report, I want to share a bit about some future plans. I can see that the data in the report can be improved in multiple ways, e.g. the Archetypes distribution is currently a snapshot of what the players last played. I am currently in the process of improving the way I calculate my statistics to provide more accurate and more comprehensive information besides the Top 1000. I also aim to provide more details on how the statistic are calculated and how they should be interpreted.
In the near future, I plan to change my main blogging platform to one that has more functionalities. I do want to continue to provide informational content to the community. Your support would be very much appreciated. For now, the main way to support is to subscribe (which is free for now) and use my Lunacian mode: maurice. Thank you so much as always for your support!
tldr for the week:
Venoki is back with good win rates for most matchups at Top 100
Hot Butt and Confused have the highest win rate with increasing popularity
Leafy’s win rate is dipping below 50% at Top 100
Archetypes Distribution
The archetypes at the top are largely similar to last week. The biggest shifts are the rise in Venoki Poison and Confused in the Top 100. There is a Sandal team as well as 1 (or 2) Perch team(s) at the Top 50. The “Multiple archetypes” in Top 100 is a Confused team with an alternative win condition of Perch, which is sitting at Top 20 at the time of writing.
It is good to see that there is still room for innovation and optimisation over the course of the Epic Era, which means the meta is diverse and “forgiving” (i.e. not dominated by an optimised OP archetype) enough for new ideas to seep through to the Top. The main limitation factors to the rate of optimisation and innovation are Axie availability and the rate of Axie breeding. This is what makes Axie unique compared to other digital card games.
As for the archetypes that are not making it very far on Top, we have non-Venoki Poison, Jinx, Glorious Mane, and Triple Owl. These archetypes see significant usage at Top 500 and Top 1000 but only very few get up to Top 100 or Top 200, suggesting that people are trying but not getting the results to get to the Top.
Do note that the archetypes distribution above is a snapshot at the time of writing of what the players last played on the ladder. We know that many players switch teams regularly, and so this is not the best representation of the archetype distribution on what players may expect to face on the ladder (which is the information that is more useful). Moving forward, I aim to provide archetype distribution information based on the matches played on ladder instead of just a snapshot of the last played teams by the top players, which should be a better representation on what archetypes are played (and are expected to face) on the ladder.
Archetypes Matchups and Win Rates
Archetypes Overall Win Rates
Hot Butt and Confused are the big winners in terms of win rate across the Top 1000. Venoki Poison and 1 Sandal team are doing pretty well in the Top 100.
In terms of the big losers, Sponge and Tiny Fan are falling off. AoE and Momo are close to unplayable at Top 1000. Glorious Mane and Triple Owl are struggling at Top 1000. The Tri Spike variant of Leafy is not doing as well in the Epic Era compared to the Rare Era.
The win rates overall are relatively even for most other archetypes, which is great for the diversity and balance of the meta. The fact that so many archetypes can have close to even win rate means many archetypes are viable and playable in this meta at the Top 1000.
Do note that currently the way these win rates are calculated are based on matches involving at least one player currently in the Top X. This is certainly not perfect as players rankings go up and down. Also, it includes the win rate of the opponent which could be a lot lower rank. For example, there could be a Top 100 player matching with a player ranked 500, and the ranked 500 player who lost that match is counted as a loss in the Top 100 (as the match involves a currently Top 100 player). Also, the currently Top 100 player could be at a much lower rank when the player played that game. Having said that, the statistics still gives a good representation of what archetypes are doing well or not well overall at the top of the Leaderboard but the labels of Top 100, 200, 500, and 1000 are be taken as matches involving at least one player currently ranking at those ranks.
Moving forward, I will revise that way the statistics is calculated to provide more accurate information on what the win rates are for particular Victory Stars brackets.
Here I will only focus on the most popular archetypes that have significant amount of data for the matchup statistics to be relevant. Moving forward, I plan to apply a threshold on the minimum number of matches to filter out the statistics calculated from only a few matches. For now, do note that 0% or 100% most likely means 1 or very few number of matches played.
Also, the matchup charts should be read as the archetypes on the Left (vertical axis) against the archetypes on the bottom (horizontal axis), e.g. Venoki has a good matchup (above 50%) against Sustain and Jinx.
Players at the very top have figured out how to play against Leafy. Venoki has a 50% win rate against leafy at Top 100 while Leafy is still favoured as we go down the rank.
It is still very difficult for Leafy players to win against Sustain. Leafy is also suffering against Hot Butt and Confused as these two archetypes have too much “Sustain Power” which slowing down the Leafy teams with Cursed cards. This is why the overall win rates of Leafy dropped below 50% for Top 100 and Top 200. By now, the Top players have built their teams to at least be able to fight with Leafy, otherwise those teams would not be able to get to the Top.
Venoki and Poison
Venoki is back with most of the Poison teams running Venoki now. Non-Venoki Poison is not common at the Top 1000. While Momo was nerfed hard, Venoki was still left there at the Top, though interestingly we do not hear much complaints for Venoki compared to Momo despite its success. This again shows the point that people mostly complain based on the “feels bad” moments, rather than its power level or success.
Venoki is still tough against Leafy except in the Top 100. This is the main thing that is stopping Venoki from taking over. Even the best Venoki teams at Top 100 only manage to get 50% win rate against Leafy, which is quite impressive given the matchup. Other than Leafy, Veonki has pretty much all positive win rate (or at least even) across other popular archetypes (except Sandal, Cuckoo Piranha, Tri Spikes, and Perch which are all quite rare on the ladder).
Topaz is still a solid pick in this meta. It is still good against Leafy, managable against Venoki (except top 100 with 45% win rate), but suffers against Sustain and not so good against Jinx, Hot Butt, and Confused. As long as Leafy is still around, Topaz will stick around until all the meta is dominated by Sustain, Jinx, Hot Butt, and Confused.
Sustain and Navaga Sustain
Sustain will continue to be a thing as long as Leafy and Topaz are around. Navaga Sustain and non-Navaga Sustain have pretty similar matchup spread with Navaga doing better against Leafy as it has a way to finish the opponent off with combo.
The matchups against Venoki (Poison in general), Cursed teams (Jinx, Hot Butt, and Confused) and of course Pure Damage Sturdy Fighter.
The main difference between Navaga and non-Navaga Sustain is against Glorious Mane (and maybe Triple Owl too). The lack of Indian Star in Navaga Sustain makes it harder deal damage to the carry Axie, allowing the carry Axie to deal damage without fearing the Reflect DMG. It is interesting to see that both forms of Sustain have similar performances, perhaps slightly in favour of Navaga Sustain with its better win rate against Leafy.
Hot Butt is great against Leafy, good against Topaz, amazing against Sustain. The main problem with Hot Butt now is Venoki Poison. Hot Butt is a good pick for the meta but you will need to be prepared to lose some matchups like Venoki and Glorious Mane.
To fight against the mirror and other Cursed cards teams, many Hot Butt teams are teching Lotus to gain an advantage for those matchups. The fun thing about Hot Butt teams is that there are so many ways to build the archetypes with a combinations of Summons, Discard, Lotus, Confused / Swirl / Doubletalk, Rosa for Sleep etc. If you are looking for an archetype that you can optimise your own way, Hot Butt is certainly one to look at.
Confused, on the other hand, are more constrained and optimised as many parts (and even classes) are pretty much fixed. You will need copies of Confused, Swirl (or Innocent Lamb) and Pigeon Post to Hand Lock, Garish Worm for Discarding cards from opponent’s Hand, Nimo tails for ramp, Bumpy to gain Shield, Energy Guru and Energy Shard for ramp.
It is finding a lot of success at all levels among the Top 1000 as it is Leafy, Topaz, and Sustain. However, it is tough against Veonki, and very tough against the other Curse cards archetypes of Jinx and Hot Butt. We are now seeing more and more Confused teams being played. I assume this is because the breeders have been at work and are now making more optimised Axies available for Confused teams.
What an exciting Era we are having with so many different teams running around. It may not be fun for everyone as the slower teams (Hot Butt, Confused, and Sustain) are the ones with the highest win rates. I expect Hot Butt and Confused to continue their growth until the end of the Epic Era.
Best of luck in the Arena at the end of the Epic Era! Stay tuned for the upcoming changes with the data analysis and blogging platform which will happen gradually in the next few weeks.
Thank you so much as always for your support! If you find the report informative and would like to see more, consider hitting the subscribe button, check out my Youtube channel, and use my Lunacian code: maurice for a little support!
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Additional Data Dump
Rise & Ruin is finally Rising and Ruining people’s games at Top 100.
Venoki’s Poison is becoming the new Nut Hunter as the new Starter Rune in making it to the Epic Era.
