Season 8 sees a number of originally Epic Runes got downgraded to Rare (with nerfs). The most notable one is for sure Giant Bubble, which is everywhere across the top meta. Having said that, it could just be an early meta
tldr:
Giant Bubble spreads through the meta but not the strongest(?)
Feather, Anemone, and Poison with high win rate
Goo and Mít Sleep doing well if not for Giant Bubble
Player Base Statistics
Rank # Players Rankings
Challenger 34 1-34
Dragon 447 35-481
Tiger 5066 482-5547
Bear 5049 5548-10596
Wolf 5976 10597-16572
Boar 7092 16573-23664
Hare 4356 23665-28020
Chick 5300 28021-33320
Egg 2881 33321-36201
The number of players seems to be comparable to that of the similar period last season but not any sign of significant increase. Unless the whole crypto and web3 gaming space pop off, I do not see any reason for any significant changes in player numbers.
Archetype Usage
Overall archetype usage
Runes and Charms minting time changed to only 1 day for Season 8, so I decided to look at Days 2-4 at the beginning of the Era. As usual, it is difficult to define archetypes, especially for early Era and for Rare Era.
In this particular Era, Giant Bubble is dominating the early meta with many different teams and builds running Giant Bubble just because its effect feels strong and because it is a new toy to play with that is finally viable. This is why there are a lot of "Multiple archetypes" as many existing archetypes also can also run Giant Bubble. Of course, there are also the Sleep-Poison, Leafy-Sandal etc.
Having said that, many archetypes are viable to climb in the early Era such as Feather, Anemone, Poison, Goo, Jinx, Leafy etc. One notable exclusion is Spikes, which is not doing as well compared to last season in the Rare Era.
Other notable new faces for Rare Era is Glorious Mane, which is also downgraded from Epic to Rare, as well as the new Starter Axie, Mít, with its sleep synergy.
Archetype Win Rates and Matchups
Overall Archetype Win Rates
Despite Giant Bubble's early success, players at the very top are finding it difficult against other archetypes such as Feather, Poison, Anemone, and even Goo.
Feather, Poison, and Anemone are the strongest archetypes in terms of winning over the top 1000+ players. Leafy, Glorious Mane, Fury Aggro, and Sandal are also on the climb. As mentioned, Spikes is the main archetype that fell compared to last season.
Another archetype worth mentioning is Goo. It is finally here (and the first time I bother defining it as an archetype in my meta report) in Season 8. Goo's effect is finally strong enough to be played and it is very annoying to play against when you see your strong cards flying off to the Discard pile.
Archetype Matchups
As it is the early meta, the overall archetype matchups seem pretty even without anything standing out too much. First thing to note is Giant Bubble, which is effectively another Aggro archetype, and it includes any teams that run more than 1 Giant Bubble, hence there is a lot of viability within the archetype.
2 archetype stands out to me in terms of matchups - Goo and Mít Sleep. Both archetypes have largely positive win rates against most archetypes, except Giant Bubble (and Fury Aggro for Goo). This means Giant Bubble is the main thing that is keeping these 2 archetypes in check. It would be interesting to see how the meta evolves as players are bored with Giant Bubbles or start finding it difficult to climb with Giant Bubble. Goo and Mit Sleep definitely have some potential to shape the top meta.
Conclusion
This Rare Era feels like one that is about Giant Bubble and how to win against it. It is certainly not at the level of last season's Healing Pulse, but it could feel like Rise & Ruin some seasons ago. I am looking forward to seeing Goo finally dominating the meta, and the only thing blocking its way is Giant Bubble.
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Additional Data
# Matches Played in Days 2-4
1800+ 342
1700-1800 1047
1600-1700 1550
1500-1600 4416
1400-1500 11243
1300-1400 30181Do note that these are not all the matches played as I ran into API limit problems and may not be able to collect data from all matches.
