Season 11 Week 4 Metagame Update

by Noah R-G

Welcome back to your weekly stats blast! Let’s find out how those new MKM cards performed last week, and take a look ahead at the spicy decks coming to the VML meta this week.

Last Week’s Results

Performance graph for decks with 3 or more players; the size of the circle is the number of decks, and the height is its win rate. Azorius Tempo and 4-Color Legends overlap circles with the same number of players and win rates.

Even though I pointed out last week in the “Top Decks vs Top 3” segment that Bant Toxic has been performing well against the most popular decks, I still was not expecting it to end up at the top of the meta this week! After hovering around 60% for the first two weeks, Bant Toxic takes the top spot with a 71.4% win rate across 7 players this week. Outside of some Reasonable Doubt Reasonable Doubt s in a couple decks (giving their creatures menace in addition to the taxing counterspell part of the card), very little about Bant Toxic has changed with the new set release.

In second place this week is Azorius Control, with a 70% win rate and 10 players. My new favorite card No More Lies No More Lies is putting in some work, and every Azorius Control player agrees: all 10 players put 4 copies of No More Lies in their mainboard.

Dimir Midrange (66.7% win rate, 3 players) and Esper Midrange round out our top winners this week. Only one Dimir Midrange player added cards from the new set, a Long Goodbye Long Goodbye , an Etrata, Deadly Fugitive Etrata, Deadly Fugitive , and two Cryptic Coat Cryptic Coat s. Like I mentioned last week, Esper Midrange players were split on whether to add new cards or not. I want to give a shoutout to Hastur on my testing team, who won her match thanks to the inclusion of Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth as late-game lifegain and card draw.

As for last week’s most popular deck, Boros Convoke definitely underperformed. Across 25 players, Boros Convoke earned only a 41.2% win rate. The meta also seems to be shifting against Mono-Red Aggro and 5-Color Domain, which both only achieved 33.3% win rates.

Top Decks vs Top 3

Each week, I list the archetypes that perform the best against the most popular decks. Here are the best performing decks against last week’s top 3, which have multiple wins against the archetype:

Boros Convoke: Bant Toxic (Simic Toxic, Azorius Control, Esper Midrange, and Esper Tempo have 1 win each as well)

Esper Midrange: 5-Color Domain, Rakdos Midrange, Bant Toxic, Mono-Red Aggro

Azorius Control*: Esper Midrange (Bant Toxic and 5-Color Domain have 1 win each)
*While there were 3 decks with 10 players each last week, I picked Azorius Control for this segment due to its high win rate.

Week 4 Decks

Welcome to Week 4, where unique decks reign! No, seriously, 35 players are playing a deck with 2 or fewer versions of it, the single largest group in this week’s meta with a 28.5% metashare. That’s almost double this week’s most popular deck!

“Other” represents decks with 2 or fewer players.

Boros Convoke still remains at the top, with 18 players and a 14.5% metashare, though its popularity has waned since last week. Esper Midrange and Azorius Control remain on its heels, each with 17 players and a 13.7% metashare.

After that, there are a handful of other decks with multiple players. Mono-Red Aggro, Bant Toxic, and 5-Color Domain all have 7 players (5.6% metashare each), and Rakdos Midrange has 6 (4.8% metashare).

Spice Corner

With the unique decks having double the metashare of the most popular deck this week, I’m doing a special double-size spice corner! This week’s most unique decks include Rebecca Black’s Abzan Roots, Sam Bogue’s Temur Ramp, Nyxxborn’s Grixis Anvil, and Robin’s Sultai Reanimator.

Rebecca Black’s “Insidious Abzan” deck aims to take advantage of Insidious Roots Insidious Roots with regrowth and reanimation effects on the deck’s many cheap creatures. The lifegain in the deck, such as Case of the Uneaten Feast Case of the Uneaten Feast , fuels Amalia Benavides Aguirre Amalia Benavides Aguirre and lets her become a large threat quickly while the board grows wide.

Sam Bogue’s “Burning Down the House” uses Worldsoul's Rage Worldsoul's Rage to both burn their opponent’s life total and fuel the next Worldsoul’s Rage with land reanimation. Board wipes like the titular Burn Down the House help keep Sam in the game until they’ve ramped up to their win condition with the help of Aftermath Analyst Aftermath Analyst and the 30 lands in the deck.

Nyxxborn’s “Anvilristocrats” is an artifact sacrifice deck using Gleaming Geardrake Gleaming Geardrake and Krenko, Baron of Tin Street Krenko, Baron of Tin Street as rapidly-growing threats. Between bargain cards and Oni-Cult Anvil Oni-Cult Anvil , there are a lot of ways for this deck to sacrifice its numerous artifact tokens.

Robin’s “Worming into your heart” aims to reanimate the biggest threat possible: Atraxa, Grand Unifier Atraxa, Grand Unifier . This self-mill deck puts a lot of permanent cards in the graveyard to take advantage of fathomless descent effects from Squirming Emergence Squirming Emergence and Terror Tide Terror Tide .

Full weekly stats can be found here.