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With Season 5 came the 3 Starter Axies and who would have thought that they (at least 2 of them) can dominate the meta. Rare Era has always been all over the place, especially in the early stage of the Era. Do note that the Contest Missions were ongoing for the past few days, so the data is likely to be more biased towards usage of Starter Axies.
tldr:
Diverse meta with Leafy being the most dominant archetype
Venoki and Momo seeing significant play rate at Top 100
Topaz, Sustain, Triple Owl, Hot Butt all viable at Top 100
As expected, Leafy becomes the most popular archetype after the nerf of Topaz which was the main archetype keeping Leafy in check last season. Breeders have been breeding a lot of Leafy Axies during the off-season which contributed to the dominance of Leafy on the leaderboard.
Then we have the teams featuring the new Starter Axies, Momo and Venoki. The community is quite split in terms of how people feel about Starters making it to Top 100, but I personally think that having more new ways to be competitive on the Leaderboard makes the meta more diverse which is a good thing for gameplay.
Topaz is still strong despite the nerf, especially with the good matchup aginst Leafy. Sustain is still around to capitalise on Leafy as well. Triple Owl with the buffed Bubble Shooter Rune seems to be doing well too in Rare Era. Again, happy to see that a Starter Rune contributing to the diversity of the meta.
Hot Butt may finally make it this Season with Confused, Sleep, and/or Summons. Jinx is still around as well as non-Venoki Poison teams. We are also seeing some interesting experimentation with Sandals. Of course there are other archetypes that I fail to capture. I suggest you check out axieboo.com to check out more archetypes, live information on archetypes across the Top 100, and more!

Believe it or not, Topaz is still winning the most at Top 100 despite the nerf, so do not sell your Topaz team yet! Of course this is mostly due to the dominance of Leafy which is a good matchup for Topaz.
Hot Butt is also doing pretty well at the Top though the sample size is relatively small. This could also be due to players not knowing how to play against it and not tech to deal with Hot Butt.
Sustain is doing very well at lower Top 1000 as players are less prepared to fight against Sustain. For Top 100 players, I am sure their teams are teched to at least draw with Sustain.
Leafy, Triple Owl, and Momo are the more aggro teams that are well represented in the meta and have not bad win rate.
Venoki and Poison in general are having a tougher time as players are teching hard against Poison. Jinx is also not having a good time as Leafy is everywhere. The experiment with Sandal is not going particular well, but we will have to wait until the more optimised versions come out.


Leafy is having a great time right now, especially with Momo and Venoki seeing quite a bit of play as players are trying out the new Starter Axies in Season 5. Having said that, Leafy does have its counter in the forms of Sustain, Topaz, and Hot Butt. It is hard to finish off good Sustain with Twin Tail; Topaz is still very fast for Leafy to handle, especially with Shields from Bumpy mitigating quite a bit of damage; Hot Butt can Heal and Sleep to stall Leafy for long enough. I expect Leafy to still be dominant for the whole Season 5, but it is not without its counters.
Topaz is still doing well this Season due to Leafy. Leafy, Sustain, and Momo are the only good matchups for Topaz. Topaz loses to Jinx, Triple Owl, Poison, Hot Butt. Play Topaz if you are feed up with facing Leafy and do not want to play Sustain, though be expected to lose a lot of the other matchups.
Sustain these days techs hard against Poison given how much Venoki is around, so it does have a good matchup against Poison. The main target for Sustain is Leafy. If you want to beat Leafy and Poison, Sustain would be a good option. Just hope you do not match into Jinx and Hot Butt, both of which are not very common at the moment.
A new archetype based on the new Starter Axie, Momo. It functions very similarly to Triple Owl in the sense that it takes time to get its damage going with Feather stacks and Momo’s Power - Concentrate. Usually you run 2 support Axies to tank damage while getting the stacks up. It has a pretty even win rate across the board, which makes it a fun archetype to play as it has a solid chance of winning in every matchup. Having said that, Momo suffers against Leafy and Topaz as the damage comes too fast for Momo teams to handle. The key to beating Momo teams is to just clear the Axies as fast as possible before Momo ramps up its damage.
On paper, Venoki is very strong with its Power, Rune, and Venom Nail to stack Poison extremely quickly. The problem is that many teams are now teched to deal with Poison with Cleanse and/or Silence Whisper. The passive healing from the Leaves for Leafy teams also buy them more turns to deal damage before the Poison ticks them down. I still expect Venoki and Poison in general to have a spot in the Top 1000 but it may be difficult for it to break into Top 100 in the Rare Era. Let’s look forward to Venom Master in the Epic Era.
Triple Owl takes the form of Aqua this time with the buffed Bubble Shooter dealing 1.5% target’s current HP per Hit of Little Owl. Together with the Feather Earring Charms from Momo making it easier to maintain Feather stacks, Triple Owl could be the team to beat in the Rare Era in Season 5. The only ‘bad’ matchup for Triple Owl is Momo, which could take advantage of the targetting ability of Momo’s Attacks if the Triple Owl Axie is not supported well, but otherwise Triple Owl is doing okay against other archetypes.
Hot Butt teams are finally making it this Season given the meta has slowed down. Hot Butt teams usually runs with Sleep and maybe Summons. It does well against Leafy, Sustain, and Topaz but it is frustrating to hard lose to Jinx. It can also be tough against Momo and Triple Owl as they get the time to ramp up their damage, and they only need a few cards to deal massive damage. When tech properly against Poison, it still has a chance but Venoki can be too fast in stacking up Poisons for the Hot Butt team to handle.
Jinx is in a sad spot with Leafy and Poison everywhere. Triple Owl and Momo can also be tough for Jinx for the same reason as Hot Butt. You just have to hope you keep queueing into Sustain, Topaz, and Hot Butt.
I include Sandal here as we saw some experimentation but it did not go very far. Here Sandal teams refer to teams with at least 2 Sandals on their team. Sandle is still a strong card which some top players are playing in Leafy teams as another way to deal massive damage, but having a Sandal-based team can be a bit difficult as it can become awkward to use when the damage does not line up, resulting in massive overkill.
It is great to see a relatively diverse meta with many archetypes being viable to get to Top 100. While it would be good to have the information on the new Starter Axies earlier so that people theorycraft with more information before the season starts, it is still nice to have the Starter Axies being competitively viable, adding to the diversity of the meta. I am sure the meta will continue to evolve over the next week as more players are trying different things out.
Best of luck in the Arena! I aim to produce a meta report once a week (usually Monday or Tuesday) during the Season. 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!
Lunacian code: maurice
https://www.youtube.com/@maurice_ccy
https://www.twitch.tv/mauriceccy
https://twitter.com/mauriceccy
https://www.publish0x.com/@mauriceccy
Frail Egg seems to be the hidden secret at Top 100!



With Season 5 came the 3 Starter Axies and who would have thought that they (at least 2 of them) can dominate the meta. Rare Era has always been all over the place, especially in the early stage of the Era. Do note that the Contest Missions were ongoing for the past few days, so the data is likely to be more biased towards usage of Starter Axies.
tldr:
Diverse meta with Leafy being the most dominant archetype
Venoki and Momo seeing significant play rate at Top 100
Topaz, Sustain, Triple Owl, Hot Butt all viable at Top 100
As expected, Leafy becomes the most popular archetype after the nerf of Topaz which was the main archetype keeping Leafy in check last season. Breeders have been breeding a lot of Leafy Axies during the off-season which contributed to the dominance of Leafy on the leaderboard.
Then we have the teams featuring the new Starter Axies, Momo and Venoki. The community is quite split in terms of how people feel about Starters making it to Top 100, but I personally think that having more new ways to be competitive on the Leaderboard makes the meta more diverse which is a good thing for gameplay.
Topaz is still strong despite the nerf, especially with the good matchup aginst Leafy. Sustain is still around to capitalise on Leafy as well. Triple Owl with the buffed Bubble Shooter Rune seems to be doing well too in Rare Era. Again, happy to see that a Starter Rune contributing to the diversity of the meta.
Hot Butt may finally make it this Season with Confused, Sleep, and/or Summons. Jinx is still around as well as non-Venoki Poison teams. We are also seeing some interesting experimentation with Sandals. Of course there are other archetypes that I fail to capture. I suggest you check out axieboo.com to check out more archetypes, live information on archetypes across the Top 100, and more!

Believe it or not, Topaz is still winning the most at Top 100 despite the nerf, so do not sell your Topaz team yet! Of course this is mostly due to the dominance of Leafy which is a good matchup for Topaz.
Hot Butt is also doing pretty well at the Top though the sample size is relatively small. This could also be due to players not knowing how to play against it and not tech to deal with Hot Butt.
Sustain is doing very well at lower Top 1000 as players are less prepared to fight against Sustain. For Top 100 players, I am sure their teams are teched to at least draw with Sustain.
Leafy, Triple Owl, and Momo are the more aggro teams that are well represented in the meta and have not bad win rate.
Venoki and Poison in general are having a tougher time as players are teching hard against Poison. Jinx is also not having a good time as Leafy is everywhere. The experiment with Sandal is not going particular well, but we will have to wait until the more optimised versions come out.


Leafy is having a great time right now, especially with Momo and Venoki seeing quite a bit of play as players are trying out the new Starter Axies in Season 5. Having said that, Leafy does have its counter in the forms of Sustain, Topaz, and Hot Butt. It is hard to finish off good Sustain with Twin Tail; Topaz is still very fast for Leafy to handle, especially with Shields from Bumpy mitigating quite a bit of damage; Hot Butt can Heal and Sleep to stall Leafy for long enough. I expect Leafy to still be dominant for the whole Season 5, but it is not without its counters.
Topaz is still doing well this Season due to Leafy. Leafy, Sustain, and Momo are the only good matchups for Topaz. Topaz loses to Jinx, Triple Owl, Poison, Hot Butt. Play Topaz if you are feed up with facing Leafy and do not want to play Sustain, though be expected to lose a lot of the other matchups.
Sustain these days techs hard against Poison given how much Venoki is around, so it does have a good matchup against Poison. The main target for Sustain is Leafy. If you want to beat Leafy and Poison, Sustain would be a good option. Just hope you do not match into Jinx and Hot Butt, both of which are not very common at the moment.
A new archetype based on the new Starter Axie, Momo. It functions very similarly to Triple Owl in the sense that it takes time to get its damage going with Feather stacks and Momo’s Power - Concentrate. Usually you run 2 support Axies to tank damage while getting the stacks up. It has a pretty even win rate across the board, which makes it a fun archetype to play as it has a solid chance of winning in every matchup. Having said that, Momo suffers against Leafy and Topaz as the damage comes too fast for Momo teams to handle. The key to beating Momo teams is to just clear the Axies as fast as possible before Momo ramps up its damage.
On paper, Venoki is very strong with its Power, Rune, and Venom Nail to stack Poison extremely quickly. The problem is that many teams are now teched to deal with Poison with Cleanse and/or Silence Whisper. The passive healing from the Leaves for Leafy teams also buy them more turns to deal damage before the Poison ticks them down. I still expect Venoki and Poison in general to have a spot in the Top 1000 but it may be difficult for it to break into Top 100 in the Rare Era. Let’s look forward to Venom Master in the Epic Era.
Triple Owl takes the form of Aqua this time with the buffed Bubble Shooter dealing 1.5% target’s current HP per Hit of Little Owl. Together with the Feather Earring Charms from Momo making it easier to maintain Feather stacks, Triple Owl could be the team to beat in the Rare Era in Season 5. The only ‘bad’ matchup for Triple Owl is Momo, which could take advantage of the targetting ability of Momo’s Attacks if the Triple Owl Axie is not supported well, but otherwise Triple Owl is doing okay against other archetypes.
Hot Butt teams are finally making it this Season given the meta has slowed down. Hot Butt teams usually runs with Sleep and maybe Summons. It does well against Leafy, Sustain, and Topaz but it is frustrating to hard lose to Jinx. It can also be tough against Momo and Triple Owl as they get the time to ramp up their damage, and they only need a few cards to deal massive damage. When tech properly against Poison, it still has a chance but Venoki can be too fast in stacking up Poisons for the Hot Butt team to handle.
Jinx is in a sad spot with Leafy and Poison everywhere. Triple Owl and Momo can also be tough for Jinx for the same reason as Hot Butt. You just have to hope you keep queueing into Sustain, Topaz, and Hot Butt.
I include Sandal here as we saw some experimentation but it did not go very far. Here Sandal teams refer to teams with at least 2 Sandals on their team. Sandle is still a strong card which some top players are playing in Leafy teams as another way to deal massive damage, but having a Sandal-based team can be a bit difficult as it can become awkward to use when the damage does not line up, resulting in massive overkill.
It is great to see a relatively diverse meta with many archetypes being viable to get to Top 100. While it would be good to have the information on the new Starter Axies earlier so that people theorycraft with more information before the season starts, it is still nice to have the Starter Axies being competitively viable, adding to the diversity of the meta. I am sure the meta will continue to evolve over the next week as more players are trying different things out.
Best of luck in the Arena! I aim to produce a meta report once a week (usually Monday or Tuesday) during the Season. 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!
Lunacian code: maurice
https://www.youtube.com/@maurice_ccy
https://www.twitch.tv/mauriceccy
https://twitter.com/mauriceccy
https://www.publish0x.com/@mauriceccy
Frail Egg seems to be the hidden secret at Top 100!





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