Season 11 Week 2 Metagame Update

by Noah R-G

Welcome to your weekly stats blast! Last week’s most popular decks were 5-Color Domain, Esper Midrange, Mono-Red Aggro, and Rakdos Midrange. Did those decks live up to the hype, or did a less-popular archetype sneak into the top?

Last Weeks’ 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. Several decks with only 3-4 players overlap circles.

Season 11 opened with a commanding performance from Rakdos Midrange, whose 10 players earned an incredible 80% win rate this week! Gruul Aggro and Esper Legends, each with 3 players, had a 66.7% win rate.

Rounding out the best performances, Golgari Midrange (5 players), Esper Midrange (12 players), and Bant Toxic (10 players) each managed a 60% win rate.

VML players entering an unknown meta came prepared to stop the popular 5-Color Domain, which only earned a 41.2% win rate between its 23 players. Mono-Red Aggro managed a little better, at 44.4%, but it was still a tough week for Red Deck Wins.

Top Decks vs Top 3

Each week, I’ll list the archetypes that perform the best against the three most popular decks that week. This will be based on season-long data, rather than week-by-week like other stats.

5-Color Domain: Bant Toxic performed the best against this deck, with all three Bant players winning their matches against Domain. The two Rakdos Midrange players also won against Domain. Gruul Aggro, Golgari Midrange, and 4-Color Slogurk each won their only match against Domain.

Esper Midrange: Esper Midrange was difficult to beat (probably why it’s so popular this week!), and its only match losses were to Mono-Red Aggro, Bant Toxic, and 5-Color Slogurk.

Mono-Red Aggro: Last week, Mono-Red lost to Azorius Control, Esper Legends, Dimir Midrange, and 5-Color Domain, all tough matchups that can out-grind classic Red Deck Wins strategies. It also lost to Azorius Soldiers, which can outpace Mono-Red’s creature generation.

Week 2 Decks

“Other” represents decks with 2 or fewer players.

It’s Week 2, and we have some consolidation of decks this week with only 29 archetypes. Esper Midrange has taken the top slot with 20 players (15.6% meta share), followed by last week’s deck to beat, 5-Color Domain (18 players, 14% share). After a commanding performance last week, Rakdos Midrange is the third most-popular deck with 15 players (11.7% share).

There aren’t many new archetypes this week, but I expect that to change with Murders at Karlov Manor’s launch. Remember, MKM becomes legal starting in week 3! Make sure you don’t include MKM cards just yet in your VML decks.

Spice Corner:

This week’s most unique decks include Cora Stobie’s Jeskai Dragons and Kora Benck’s Selesnya Aggro.

Cora’s Jeskai Dragons deck (also called “Here There Be Dragons”) hopes to take advantage of Sarkhan, Soul Aflame Sarkhan, Soul Aflame to overrun her opponent with discounted dragons like Decadent Dragon // Expensive Taste Decadent Dragon Expensive Taste
 and Zurgo and Ojutai Zurgo and Ojutai . With some burn and early game removal to keep the pressure on, I look forward to seeing these dragons soar!

At a glance, Kora’s Selesnya Aggro deck looks like a fairly normal convoke deck running Knight-Errant of Eos Knight-Errant of Eos and cheap token effects to ramp into it. But the tokens are the key here, with anthem effects from Pollen-Shield Hare // Hare Raising Pollen-Shield Hare Hare Raising
 and Restless Prairie Restless Prairie buffing the myriad of creatures this deck can generate. This deck can build itself up quick, and can rebuild just as fast after a board wipe.

Full weekly stats can be found here.