Season 11 Week 3 Metagame Update

by Noah R-G

Welcome back to your weekly stats blast! We’ve got some spicy new cards from Murders at Karlov Manor this week, but first let’s see how last week’s decks performed.

Last Week’s Results

Second verse, same as the first? Rakdos Midrange is once again the top deck, with a 72.7% win rate across the 11 non-mirror matches played in Week 2. Time will tell if the cards from Murders at Karlov Manor will have what it takes to unseat the top dog. (Doesn’t this all seem eerily familiar to last season?)

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 the same number of players and win rates overlap circles.

Dimir Midrange (6 players), Boros Convoke (3 players), and Azorius Soldiers (6 players) had 66.7% win rates. Bant Toxic (11 players) and 5-Color Domain (18 players) both also achieved over 60% win percentages last week.

The curse of popularity strikes again! Esper Midrange, despite being the most popular deck of week 2 with 20 players, only had a 38.9% win rate. Will the most popular deck of the week ever achieve a winning record?

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:

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

5-Color Domain: Golgari Midrange, Rakdos Midrange, and Bant Toxic

Rakdos Midrange: 4-Color Slogurk, Bant Toxic, and Simic Artifacts

Seems like Bant Toxic is the deck to pick if you expect to play one of these decks but aren’t sure which!

Week 3 Decks

It’s Week 3, and that means murders are legal! … Wait, wait, it’s Murders at Karlov Manor that’s legal now (please do not commit actual Murder Murder ). We’ve got some exciting new archetypes and funky additions to old decks.

“Other” represents decks with 2 or fewer players.

As the new hot deck of Standard, Boros Convoke has shot to the top of the popularity boards thanks to Warleader's Call Warleader's Call and Case of the Gateway Express Case of the Gateway Express shoring up some of its previous weaknesses. Last week, Convoke had 3 players. This week? A whopping 25 players, with an additional 3 on Naya Convoke. That means Convoke decks are now 21.9% of the meta, the highest total so far this season! In fact, so many people are playing Boros Convoke that it has 4 separate mirror matches this week.

Esper Midrange also remains at the top of the meta, with 18 players and 14.0% metashare. There seems to be a split between the players, with some running new cards like No More Lies No More Lies , Long Goodbye Long Goodbye , and Ezrim, Agency Chief Ezrim, Agency Chief , while others stuck to only pre-MKM cards.

The remaining top 5 decks are Rakdos Midrange, Mono-Red Aggro, and Azorius Control, with 10 players and a 7.8% metashare each.

Like with Esper Midrange, Rakdos Midrange has a split between players adding new cards (the aforementioned Long Goodbye and Deadly Cover-Up Deadly Cover-Up as the big ones) and players sticking to what they know.

With almost no new cards for it in the set, Mono-Red Aggro has largely stuck to its pre-MKM build. That said, shout out to Sam Bogue for being the only Red Deck Wins player to add some of the new cards to their deck, with the additions of Frantic Scapegoat Frantic Scapegoat , Fugitive Codebreaker Fugitive Codebreaker , and Connecting the Dots Connecting the Dots . I’m looking forward to playing against those this week!

Thanks to No More Lies and Ezrim, Agency Chief (both mentioned above), Azorius Control is enjoying a resurgence of popularity. Some players are also using Deduce Deduce and Intrude on the Mind Intrude on the Mind as additional card advantage. Watch out for Doorkeeper Thrull Doorkeeper Thrull in those sideboards!

Spice Corner:

This week’s most unique decks include Charlotte Little’s Jeskai Creature Combo and InterplanarBeacon’s Naya Aggro decks.

Charlotte’s “Stormless Storm” Jeskai deck generates a large army of little dudes using Third Path Iconoclast Third Path Iconoclast and Monastery Mentor Monastery Mentor with a wide array of cheap but powerful noncreature spells. With the additions from MKM of Call a Surprise Witness Call a Surprise Witness (to turn discarded Mentors into flying prowess creatures) and Lightning Helix Lightning Helix (my personal favorite burn spell), this is an interesting twist on the Azorius Tempo deck that’s been floating around.

InterplanarBeacon’s “Naya Gays n Theys” is a White Weenie-style deck using the new Delney, Streetwise Lookout Delney, Streetwise Lookout to double Halana and Alena, Partners Halana and Alena, Partners triggers (making those little weenies not so little anymore). This is a go-wide deck that takes advantage of other triggered abilities like Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon to build an army that overwhelms its opponents.

Full weekly stats can be found here.