The Pauper Team Trios format has gained much traction in the LPI circuit over the last few years, but the current season has elevated it to a never-before-seen degree. This is partly because team trios events now contribute to Top Pauper Player qualification, thanks to LPI points, and partly because of Colosseum Team Trios location change. Starting this year, CTT will be held in the same location as Paupergeddon, doubling its cap to 64 teams, i.e. 192 players.
This article is part of the buildup to CTT, and I will show you the metagame of the last few team trios events, and present some of the most dangerous teams you could find at the tournament.
Metagame
Thanks to the organizers’ kindness, I’ve managed to get the metagame of the last five PTEs (Pauper Trios Events) that got over the minimum threshold of 11 teams:
- Rolling Trio, Caserta, September 28th, 15 teams
- C’mon!, Katowice, September 29th, 24 teams
- Pauperstellar, Firenze, September 29th, 28 teams
- RadioAtog, Mori (TN), October 5th, 29 teams
- Halloween Special, Savona, October 27th, 12 teams
For a total of 108 teams (324 players).
Here you have a table with the meta share of each deck in the past five Team Trios events combined. Regular “Meta %” counts players, while “Meta % per team” says how many teams had the deck in their formation.
It’s actually very similar to the regular Pauper meta. The biggest differences are these:
- White Weenie is one of the most played decks in Team Trios
- Kuldotha sees slightly more play in Team Trios
- Mono Blue Terror sees slightly more play in Team Trios
- Green decks like Gruul, Walls, Elves, Bogles and Dredge see slightly more play in Team Trios
- Affinity and Gleezard see slightly less play in Team Trios because they are in reciprocal conflict
In general, proactive decks tend to see more play, because they often use unique cards, and they are less easily countered by hate cards in Team Trios, where at most one player per team can play each hate card. Also, decks that are perceived as “less optimal versions” of another deck rarely see play in Team Trios (e.g. Dimir Terror vs Mono Blue Terror).
To see last year’s metagame, you can read my previous article.
Positions
Have you ever wondered if there’s a pattern to which decks are in the middle position and which ones are in the lateral positions? I’ve often regarded any talk about a relation between decks and position as pure superstition, but let’s dig into the data to see if we can see anything.
In the following table, if a deck has a high “difference”, it means that it saw more play in the middle, while if it has a low “difference” it means that it saw more play on the sides.
There’s a popular saying that fast decks go in the middle to allow the captain to talk to the teammates without worrying about the timer. Our data on Kuldotha would seemingly confirm this idea. But notice how Gruul Monsters (an equally fast deck) exhibits the opposite quality. To me, this suggests that these are turbulences due to the low sample size, but feel free to reach your own conclusions and engage in the mind game of choosing a middle deck that beats linear decks, or a deck that beats those that beat linear decks etc.
By the way, the advantage of having a fast deck in the middle is lower than it could appear at first thought, because if the middle match finishes early, the opposite team also has an additional mind to apply to the lateral matches. You only get an advantage if your lateral players benefit more from the captain’s suggestions than the lateral players on the other side.
Another aspect to consider is that the middle player needs to be the best of the three to suggest the other two, but the best players often shy away from proactive decks. Is that a rational behavior? I don’t think so, but it’s a fact that things tend to go this way, and this is probably one of the factors that don’t make us see a decisive presence of proactive decks in the middle.
Deck Combinations
I find it very interesting to investigate which three-deck combinations end up being chosen for team trios tournaments. It may come as a surprise to you that it’s really hard to find two teams with the same three decks, but it’s a natural consequence of the math involved. While for a regular Pauper event you can choose among a few dozen decks (and I’m being generous), for team trios you can choose among several hundreds of valid combinations.
But I must admit that the current metagame is peculiar, because top decks share way fewer cards than in the past. It’s easier to choose your combination when you can play multiple tier decks in the same combination, and this brings a bit more homogenization to the field. For the future, we can probably expect even further homogenization, as the format gets solved and the field becomes more competitive.
To count combinations, I’ve shortened deck names and sorted them alphabetically within combination names. I haven’t taken into account deck position when differentiating combinations, I only considered the decks.
That’s right, we had 72 unique combinations out of 108 entries!
The most popular combination performed well, winning two of the five events (Rolling Trio and Pauperstellar). Playing three tier 1 decks proves to be a good strategy.
Teams to Beat
Team Trios is a format where you tend to always see the same names in the final stages, with more frequence than in single-player tournaments. But we are in a new era of Team Trios. CTT 2024 will be the biggest Pauper Team Trios tournament ever, and it will be your chance to take down the old guard.
Lampredoni
The defending champions and former finalists of CTT.
- Matteo Palma is on an active streak of four consecutive 1st places in Pauper Team Trios, where he holds a lifetime 100% top4 conversion rate.
- Paolo Donfrancesco is on an active streak of three consecutive 1st places in Pauper Team Trios, where he holds a lifetime 83% top4 conversion rate.
- Tommaso Loss has won four Pauper Team Trios in the last year and has a lifetime 80% top4 conversion rate in this kind of event.
Golden Pigs
The OG final bosses of Team Trios. With the occasional replacement of one member with Paolo Donfrancesco, this team has won 5 tournaments, and is particularly dominant at RadioAtog, of which they’ve won three editions out of four. This year they will venture in Rome for the first time, hoping to put their experience to work.
- Mirco Ciavatta holds a lifetime 88% top4 conversion rate in Pauper team trios.
- Giovanni Gesiot holds a lifetime 86% top4 conversion rate in Pauper team trios.
- Pietro Bragioto holds a lifetime 91% top4 conversion rate in Pauper team trios.
At CTT 2024, Pietro Bragioto will be replaced for the first time by Giorgio Venditti, finalist of the last Paupergeddon.
Scugnizzi in the Land of Fires
In the back row of this photo, in the first, third and fourth positions from the left, you can see the members of this historical team: Giovanni Navarra, Emanuele Navarra and Daniele Migliaccio. While these players don’t have access to most Team Trios tournaments for geographical reasons, they’ve enrolled in CTT twice, and ended up in the finals both times, winning the 2022 edition, and surely they’re looking to repeat the feat. For this year, Giovanni Navarra will be replaced by Tommaso Aselli.
I Bimbi di Nadia
My data only goes back a couple of years, but, as far as I’m aware, the only other player who’s won multiple Team Trios is Pietrangelo Manco. He’s played in different teams, but always with players from the group known as “I Detrattori dello Stonkato”. This time, he will be joined by Stefano Ghiara and Giovanni Postorino.
Left to right: Nicola Mingione, Tommaso Loss, and Pietrangelo Manco, winners of Rolling Trio.
As a closing note, I’d like to warn you about Polish players. Their pauper community has grown a lot, and they’ve recently held the first-ever LPI-affiliated Team Trios outside of Italy, so they’ve been training. Additionally, I’ll remind you that they’ve already placed a team in the top4 of CTT 2023.
See you at CTT 2024, don’t miss out!
