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Magic Online provides some interesting opportunities for data analysis, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon. While this study is by no means exhaustive, I do think that we can learn something from the results.

Basically, I looked at the draft finals replays of a bunch of premiere events toward the end of the release events and kept a tally of all the color combinations played by the players who made it that far. In the end, I looked at one group of events and then another group a few days later. I feel that color combinations are actually a pretty good indicator form M11 as distinct within-color archetypes are less present in the core set when compared to, say, Rise of the Eldrazi. In RoE draft there were at least three different high level U/R decks, for example, all of which functioned VERY differently from each other. In M11 there certainly are some archetypal variations (mainly straight control vs. straight aggro), but these variations are relatively minimal and there are very few cards that truly excel in particular narrow archetypes but are bad elsewhere. For example, an aggressive U/W deck might want Aether Adept more than a controlling build, but both decks are quite interested in that card. As a result, it's relatively more accurate to lump all decks of a certain color combination together and learn something from those results. It's not perfect, granted, but it's a lot less labor intensive than watching all the replays in general, constructing decklists, and then making some sort of judgment call about how aggressive or controlling a given deck is. Again, in ROE it was really obvious when someone was playing Kiln Fiend vs. Mnemonic Wall Control even if both decks were U/R. In M11, it's much more difficult to tell the difference. Also, just to head possible criticism off at the pass, I did not cherry pick this data. I looked at the results of all the events that were available at a specific point in time on each day. The data that I posted is all the data that I have -- I didn't intentionally pick these two sets of data out of a larger pool of data sets intentionally to make a point.

Anyway, here are the results for the first set of data:

 

Mono White: 1

White/Green: 1

Mono Black: 1

Black/White splash Red: 1

Green/White splash Red: 1

White/? (replays too short to tell if it was in fact mono white or not): 1

Blue/Red: 1

Red/Green: 2

Blue/Black splash Red: 2

Red/White: 3

Black/Red: 3

Black/White: 5

Blue/Black: 6

Blue/White: 12

 

While not entirely surprising, these results certainly are dramatic. U/W was the clear winner, taking home fully 30% of the finals slots. U/B also performed well, especially if you add in the two decks that splashed red. B/W was surprisingly effective. Beyond that, the most striking result is the almost complete absence of Green, with only 10% of the finals decks featuring the color. Think about that; fully three times more U/W decks made the finals than all decks containing Green combined. The final tallies by color show 25 White decks, 21 Blue decks, 18 Black decks, 13 Red decks (9 if you don't count splashes), and 4 Green decks.

Now, it's important to remember that this data doesn't really show us what the best colors and color combinations in the format are, per se. In fact, it's possible that it says more about the draft metagame at that particular moment in time more than it does about the quality of colors in a vacuum. If that's true, then we might hypothesize that following these results U/W would become drafted more aggressively (and thus become somewhat overdrafted) while more people would stop drafting Green, thus leading to it becoming underdrafted. It's also possible that Red might become more underdrafted, especially as a main color.

Lets check in three days later at another set of results and see what happened:

 

Mono Blue: 1

White/Green splash Blue: 1

Blue/White splash Red: 1

Red/Green splash Black: 1

Green/White splash Red: 1

Blue/Black splash Red: 1

Blue/Red: 1

Black/Green: 2

White/Green: 2

Black/White: 2

Blue/Black: 2

Red/Green: 3

Blue/Green: 4

Red/White: 4

Blue/White: 4

Black/Red: 9

 

Running the individual colors, we have Red with 20 (17 if you exclude the splash), Black with 17 (16 if you exclude the splash), White with 15, Blue with 15 (14 if you exclude the splash), and Green with 14. What a difference! Red and Green have both seen an explosion in their success while White and Blue both took pretty big hits. Black was the most stable color of the bunch. Looking at the archetype scores, U/W and U/B both fell off a cliff while a number of Red and Green decks made gains. Red/Black in particular was a big winner. If you look at Blue and White independently, you'll notice that all of their combinations except the ones that involved Red and Green dropped dramatically. Another interesting dynamic in play is the relative increase in the success of decks with splashes. Now this might just be a random variation or it could be a sign that Blue and White did in fact become overdrafted, and the quality U/W and U/B decks that used to be holding down the other archetypes were now diluted enough to lose. Also, it's possible that more people jumped into Blue and White early on and then abandoned those plans due to being cut off, resulting in a greater ratio of decks that were short on playables and thus forced to splash.

 

Regardless of what exactly happened, the ripple effect that the metagame shift created is nevertheless fascinating. Some archetypes (such as U/G) became viable and even quite good in this environment when they were all but unplayable before. I wish I had more experience with M11 draft that might allow me to speculate as to why particular decks began to flourish when U/W became overdrafted. I'd hazard a guess that there is something to be learned about the U/W and/or U/B vs R/B matchup here, but I can't really guess as to what that might be. I hope this exercise was helpful!