We are 1 week into the Rare Era of Season 7 in Axie Infinity: Origins and we have a somewhat expected meta with Sponge (Bubble Bombs) leading the way. Quite a number of archetypes are viable at the top, which is a good sign, but the amount of Sponge can be a problem, especially given the lack of counter play against it.
With the introduction of Parts Evolution in Axie Origins, it gives players more incentives to play besides AXS and SLP rewards. To me, it is a good change in terms of player experience for casual players, but the pro players will have to adapt in getting access to high level evolved Axies to perform at the highest level.
tldr:
Sponge (Bubble Bombs) is the main dominant archetype as expected
Spikes and Poison are doing well too at the top
Jinx (also Hot Butt and Perch!?) can be good in countering Sponge
Player Base Statistics
Rank # Players Rankings
Challenger 136 1-136
Dragon 1404 137-1540
Tiger 8221 1541-9761
Bear 5837 9762-15598
Wolf 6224 15599-21822
Boar 6813 21823-28635
Hare 4960 28636-33595
Chick 7135 33596-40730
Egg 4027 40731-44757
A week in and we have over 44000 players who played Axie Origins, though around 15000 players are at <500 Victory Stars, i.e. never progressed very far. Close to 10000 players are at Tiger or above, which is a better representation of players who spent a significant amount of time in the game. As usual, many players are stuck at Tiger given how tough the competition can be on top. Only 136 players are in Challenger at the time of writing, but I am sure the player base will continue to shift up as more players play enough to reach the Tiger floor.
Archetype Usage
Overall archetype usage
# Matches Played in Days 4-7
2000+ 9
1900-2000 738
1800-1900 6679
1700-1800 11810
1600-1700 19620
Unforuntately due to some technical issues (either my internet issue or the API upgrade), I was only able to gather data for the top 600-ish players or so. Having said that, I hope this gives enough data to give an idea of how the top of the meta is like.
At the time of writing, there is only 1 player at 2000+ who is playing Sponge (Bubble Bombs). Sponge is the most dominant strategy at the top of the Leaderboard but it is good to know that at least there are other archetypes up there including Spikes, Poison, Jinx(!?), and Anemone. "Multiple archetypes" is mostly Spikes teams with a number of Poison cards as there is quite a bit of synergy with Viper's Venom on Tri Spikes.
In Challenger we can also see significant amount of Feather (AoE), Sandal, Sustain, Triple Owl, and Confused (Swirl) as well. There are still people playing Topaz and Leafy but we will have to go lower down the ladder to find those.
Archetype Win Rates and Matchups
Overall Archetype Win Rates
It is not surprising that Sponge has the highest win rate, but Spikes and Feather are not far behind. Jinx is surprisingly uncommon but it is one of the few archetypes that has a positive win rate against Sponge (the other main one being Hot Butt). I can see some top players may use Jinx to snipe other top players playing Sponge.
Anemone and Poison are also viable but I believe they may require more evolved parts (i.e. higher level Axies) for them to be more effective. It would be interesting to see how this may change as the season progress when top players gain access to higher level Axies (from buying from marketplace, grinding, and / or scholarships).
Archetype Matchups
This is the overall matchups for 1600+ VStar, which largely contain data from non-optimal teams. For matchups in each VStar brackets, see Additional Data below.
The notable matchups are Jinx and Hot Butt doing well against Sponge. Perch seems to have a very good matchup against Sponge but there are too few people playing Perch at the top 600 to get enough data for it. Sponge may struggle against faster aggro teams like Feather, Sandals, and Anemone.
Unsurprisingly, Sustain is still around, farming on suboptimal teams. Now with Bulwark, there are more ways for Sustain to deal damage to close out games. If you hate Sustain, go play one of the curse teams - Jinx, Hot Butt, or Confused.
Conclusion
After nearly 2 months of off-season, we are finally back with another Season, another meta. Despite the late nerf to Bubble Bombs right before the Season starts, it is not surprising to see Sponge still be on top and will likely to stay on top as many top players placed their bets (and AXP) on their Sponge Axies this season.
The main change of this season is of course Parts Evolution. I would expect many casual players will stick to 1 or a few teams only throughout the season to level up and evolve their favourite Axies. For me, it certainly changes the way I feel when I play the game. As a casual player, I feel good seeing the +XXX AXP popping up after every match (with stamina), be it win or lose. I hope we all enjoy the season and forget about how bad it feels to be OTKed by 13 Bubble Bombs.
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Additional Data
