MTG Meta Hub Methodology
What each module actually measures, straight from the engine that computed it — not a paraphrase. If we can’t measure something honestly yet, the module says so instead of guessing.
Commander & Brawl Tiers
Deck-frequency tiers computed by us from the Archidekt public decklist corpus: 'trending' = newest decks (orderBy=-createdAt), 'established' = most-viewed decks (orderBy=-viewCount). Tier is the commander's deck-count rank-percentile within its bucket (S>=90th, A>=70th, B>=40th, C>=15th, else D). This measures popularity + momentum, NOT a constructed win rate — we don't have proprietary tracker telemetry for that (see METAHUB-SPEC.md's honesty rails). top_inclusions = the non-land cards most often played alongside that commander across the decks we scanned. Tournament-result axis (topdeck.gg): pending_key.
Limited Tier List
Real win rates from 17lands' public PremierDraft card ratings (CC BY 4.0) for the current premier set. Tier = ever-drawn win rate vs the field (S>=56%, A>=53%, B>=50.5%, C>=48%, else D); sample_size = game_count. Cards with no recorded games render 'unrated', never a guessed tier.
Ban List & Legality Tracker
Snapshot of Scryfall's machine-readable legalities (the ban truth) as of this bulk-data pull. Scryfall's legality statuses are legal/not_legal/restricted/banned — there is no separate 'suspended' status, so Vintage-style restricted cards are reported alongside banned rather than inventing a status Scryfall doesn't expose. See the linked Wizards announcement page for the human explanation and change history; Scryfall doesn't carry ban dates, so this row does not claim a 'last B&R change' date it can't ground.
Rotation & Set Calendar
Recent real (non-digital) expansion/core/commander/masters sets from Scryfall's /sets endpoint, newest first — near-zero maintenance per METAHUB-SPEC.md module 4. 'standard_legal' is read directly off whether Scryfall reports ANY card from that set as Standard-legal (ground truth, not a hand-maintained rotation calendar).
Format Snapshots
One hub-card row per tracked format: legal-set list + banned/restricted counts from Scryfall legalities (ground truth), our own coverage state for this hub (honest 'pending' where a module isn't live yet), and cite-and-link-only external tracker URLs (untapped.gg, MTGGoldfish) — we NEVER ingest their numbers, only link to them by name.
Attribution
Card data, color identity, legalities, and set/rotation dates — pulled from Scryfall's public bulk data with a custom User-Agent, cached at least 24 hours per Scryfall's guidance to add value rather than mirror the API.
Limited card win rates and sample counts, from 17lands' public PremierDraft card-ratings export. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — attributed here and on every Limited row.
Commander/Competitive Brawl decklist search, used at low volume with paging and aggressive caching out of courtesy to their API — "Decklists via Archidekt" on every commander-tier row, each linking straight to the real decklist it was computed from.
Real tournament results for constructed formats. The client is built but disabled until an API key is provisioned — Standard/Pioneer/Modern currently render an honest "tiers pending tournament key" coverage state instead of a number. Full credit and a link-back will show on every row once it's live.
Card images via Scryfall.
The honesty promise
- Every row carries its sources, sample size, computed-at timestamp, and a confidence badge — high, medium, low, or sample.
- Low-sample rows render visibly faded, with the count shown rather than hidden.
- We never imply a win rate we don’t have. Limited cards 17lands hasn’t recorded games for render
unrated, never a guessed tier. Where a tracker (untapped.gg, MTGGoldfish) has real telemetry we don’t, we link to them by name instead of guessing at a number. - A dead data source ships its module with the last good data and an honest stale stamp — it never invents a fresh-looking number.
- Nothing from untapped.gg, MTGGoldfish, AetherHub, Moxfield, EDHREC, or MTGA Zone is fetched, re-hosted, or re-published as ours. We cite and link, never ingest.
- This payload’s status is currently
published— the page shows a SAMPLE DATA banner whenever it isn’tpublished.