Aetherdrift Draft Week 4: Trends, Highlights, and Card Insights

Week 4 of Aetherdrift Draft is over and the meta seems to be settling down as more players are losing interest in it. In this last week nothing much changed in terms of color preferences and win rates and it is becoming increasingly unlikely that we will see any significant shifts in the meta in the future.

Nevertheless, let’s take a closer look at some numbers.

Player Interest Over Time

The number of Premier Draft games declined by 32.24% last week from 149,473 to 101,277.

Traditional Draft games saw an even bigger decline of 50.73% from 28,421 to 14,002. Notably, until last week, the decline was significantly smaller for Traditional Draft compared to Premier Draft

Looking at DFT’s green curve, we see a nearly linear decline, marking the lowest game count among all sets from the past year.

Due to the low number of games, the following charts have the last two weeks combined. This is necessary to obtain more reliable statistics without excessive noise.

Shifts in Color Preferences and Win Rates

The graph below didn’t change much compared to last week but only solidified the current state. Two-color decks with and without splashes make out about 80% of the decks and have the highest win rate on average.

Black got slightly more played in the last week, making it now officially the second most played color after Green.

Archetype Performance

Regarding archetype popularity and win rates the picture is also similar to last week. This makes Selesnya, Orzhov, Simic, Rakdos and Golgari the best-performing archetypes. In terms of win rate, they have all been comparable over the last two weeks.

The remaining archetypes are similarly close in performance, except for Boros, which is clearly the weakest.

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Cards of the Week

Let’s take a look at some cards that stood out this week.

Secret Gold Cards

Salvation Engine looks shiny but only has a win rate of 55.3% overall. In Azorius, however, it jumps to 59.4%. Be aware of that and don’t first pick it, but once you are in that lane, be sure to pick it up. It’s for sure a fun card to build around.

As a side note, this vehicle is surprisingly strong against Green decks and was featured in this week’s data deep dive on beating Green. Check it out here.

In the same vein, Ticket Tortoise is a card that is only good in Azorius. Not only is it an artifact itself — something White/Blue decks care about — but when you're on the draw, it often enters alongside a second one (a Treasure). This bumps up its win rate from an overall 53.4% to a solid 56.3%.

ALSA Movers

Marshals' Pathcruiser keeps climbing in popularity and this week we've seen its ALSA value shave off another half turn.

he secret is out: Engine Rat has been performing exceptionally well against Green decks, and drafters are valuing it more and more.

Riverchurn Monument is also rising in popularity, as players look to check the 'mill-kill' off their DFT bucket list. But the card is definitely real and not just a meme, so be sure you give it a try next time you open one.

On the flip side, some rares have underperformed and are now being drafted later.

As we've seen in every weekly update so far, the Boros signpost uncommon Cloudspire Skycycle continues to fall in draft rankings.

That wraps up this week’s updates. Not much has changed in the meta as more players move on from the format. Let us know if you are still engaged in Aetherdrift or if it already became stale. Reach out on Bluesky to join the conversation, and if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to our free newsletter