Hello Spellslingers! Here is a breakdown of the metagame from the January season, based on data taken from mtg-ss team ladder games.

metagame
Metagame Breakdown

Ral

Ral took a whopping 13.2% metagame share with an even 50% winrate, proving mostly popular thanks to his face paced rapidfire playstyle. Ral performed best early in the season but began to slow down as competitors took a larger share of the metagame pie. Ral continues to search for a consistent strategy to best Teferi, but remains the deck to play if you want something with high skill expression, fast games, and a chance to takedown any matchup.

Teferi

Coming in next was Teferi at 12.7% metagame share. Teferi was the immovable object to Ral’s unstoppable force, boasting the highest recorded winrate of all the archetypes at upwards of 67%. Teferi found favorable matchups against the entire field sans one spellslinger, the only deck that showed consistently favorable results against Teferi - Ashiok. Expect Teferi to continue to dominate the February season despite the nerfs to some of it’s early game stability.

Liliana

Liliana is the third most popular spellslinger at the moment, thanks to the fresh and splashy reanimator strategy at 8%. She performed best against mid-range green decks like Nissa and Domri, but will run into trouble against lower tiered strategies like Chandra. Liliana also struggled to close games against blue decks, once players increasingly began to include cards like Pixie Trickster and Shell games. This can be seen in metagame adaptations from the likes of Kiora Ramp and Vivien. Recent balance changes to Liliana should not have a major impact, as any hits to the decks overall goldfish speed will be offset by increased stability from the buffs to cards like Grave Titan.

Drizzt

Tied for third most popular spellslinger is the dual-wielding dark elf, Drizzt, also representing 8% of the metagame. Drizzt found it’s best matchups against opposing creature decks, but could also take games from Teferi under the right circumstances, although not consistently. It also boasted an impressive winrate against Serra, a playstyle with limited ways to prevent Guenhwyvar from snowballing out of control. If you are comfortable with Drizzt, it will likely still be just as good going into the new patch as it recieved no adjustments.

Domri

Bringing up the rear of the top 5 most played spellslingers is Domri at 7.1% of the meta and a 56% overall winrate. Domri werewolves boasted an impressive winrate against most of the early field but eventually found foils in Liliana and Teferi. Domri will likely remain popular going into the new metagame as he recieved little to no adjustments.