The first result was Pauper. Ponza is more commonly a Modern archetype. Let me search more broadly.
Good — there's a Gruul Ponza in Pauper with meaningful data. Let me also check if there's a Modern version and get the full matchup matrix for the Pauper Gruul Ponza.
Now let me pull all matchups for Gruul Ponza against the top archetypes in the meta over the last 60 days.
Here is the Gruul Ponza matchup winrate matrix for Pauper over the last 60 days (May 28 - Jul 28, 2026). Overall archetype winrate is 49.3%. Matchups sorted by winrate:
FAVORABLE (>55%)
vs Tron: 87.5% (14-2, 16 matches) — dominant
vs Golgari Garden: 78.6% (11-3, 14 matches) — very strong
vs Gates: 64.0% (16-9, 25 matches) — solid edge
vs Jeskai Ephemerate: 63.6% (7-4, 11 matches) — favorable
vs Dimir Faeries: 56.5% (13-10, 23 matches) — slight edge
vs White Aggro: 55.6% (10-8, 18 matches) — slight edge
vs Grixis Affinity: 54.8% (17-14, 31 matches) — nearly even but positive
EVEN (~50%)
vs Mono Blue Terror: 48.4% (15-16, 31 matches) — essentially a coin flip
UNFAVORABLE (<45%)
vs Jund Midrange: 41.9% (13-18, 31 matches) — losing
vs Red Madness: 35.7% (20-36, 56 matches) — bad matchup, most-played data
vs Red Rally: 34.8% (8-15, 23 matches) — bad
vs Dimir Terror: 33.3% (5-10, 15 matches) — bad
vs Elves: 31.6% (6-13, 19 matches) — rough
vs Spy Combo: 28.6% (4-10, 14 matches) — worst matchup
The big picture: Ponza's land destruction game plan shines against Tron, Gates, and Golgari Garden but struggles badly against the format's most popular deck (Red Madness, 10% meta share) and combo/aggressive strategies. The Spy Combo matchup is the worst, which makes sense given the combo's independence from lands. Sample sizes on the lower-end matchups (10-15 matches) should be taken with some caution.
Sources: Data from 68 Pauper tournaments (52% MTGO, 28% Melee, 21% Cardsrealm).