Season 11 Week 5 Metagame Update

by Noah R-G

Welcome back to your weekly stats blast! I hope everyone who went to MagicCon Chicago had a great time. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got going on in 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.

Last week, Esper Midrange took the top spot, with a 73.3% win rate across 17 players. Esper Midrange players still seem to be split on whether or not new cards from MKM fit the deck or not, but some like Cryptic Coat Cryptic Coat are finding their way into different midrange builds.

Continuing its strong streak, Bant Toxic earned a 60% win rate across 7 players. While there’s nothing new and exciting from MKM in the deck, it’s a reliable winner against a variety of popular archetypes.

Azorius Control had a 53.3% win rate across 17 players, just barely holding onto a positive win rate.

The largest individual archetype, Boros Convoke had a 50% win rate across 18 players. While better than its week 3 showing, the deck has yet to earn a positive win rate in the VML meta.

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: Rakdos Midrange, Azorius Tempo and variants, Bant Toxic, 5-Color Domain

Esper Midrange: Slogurk, Boros Convoke, Rakdos Midrange, Bant Toxic

Azorius Control: Esper Midrange (Bant Toxic and Mono-Blue Tempo have 1 win each)

Week 5 Decks

We continue the streak of unique deck domination, with 32 players playing a deck that has 2 or fewer versions of it, a 25.4% metashare!

“Other” represents decks with 2 or fewer players.

The single largest archetype is Azorius Control, with 19 players and a 15.6% metashare. Its followed closely by Esper Midrange, with 17 players and 14.8% metashare. These two decks have favored matchups against a variety of archetypes, so it’s unsurprising they continue to be the top dogs of VML thanks to No More Lies No More Lies (who knew Mana Leak was a good card).

Boros Convoke has fallen in popularity, down to 11 players and a 9% metashare. It will likely continue falling if the deck doesn’t pick up a few wins this week.

The brand new 68-card special, the new version of 4-Color Slogurk is here! 9 players are running this over-sized deck, 7.4% of the meta. Relying on the power of Aftermath Analyst Aftermath Analyst , this deck attempts to turbo mill lands into its graveyard to pump Slogurk, the Overslime Slogurk, the Overslime , then reanimates those lands to ramp into Atraxa, Grand Unifier Atraxa, Grand Unifier .

Spice Corner

This week’s unique decks include gwynmtg’s Boros Discover, Ashlizzlle’s Simic Artifacts, and Charlotte Little’s Dimir Reanimator (the first repeat brewer for this season’s spice corner!).

gwynmtg’s “I really hope my opponent is still playing esper[..]” deck is a Boros combo deck, focusing on the discover power of Chimil, the Inner Sun Chimil, the Inner Sun to block counterspells (a must-have against her opponent on Esper Midrange) and cheat out cards like Virtue of Courage // Embereth Blaze Virtue of Courage Embereth Blaze
 and my beloved elephant lad Quintorius Kand Quintorius Kand . On the lower end of the curve is a burn/life gain plan with Lightning Helix Lightning Helix and Heartflame Duelist // Heartflame Slash Heartflame Duelist Heartflame Slash
.

Ashlizzlle’s “COOKIES” deck aims to animate non-creature artifacts with the power of Tough Cookie Tough Cookie and Zoetic Glyph Zoetic Glyph and build a wide board with animated Map and Food tokens. A sufficiently built-up Teething Wurmlet Teething Wurmlet and Surge Engine Surge Engine provide strong late-game threats, but the deck looks to excel at applying constant pressure throughout the match.

Charlotte’s “Only chumps and pro tour competitors learn one deck” deck hopes to mill or discard a whole lot of big cards into her graveyard in order to fuel Conspiracy Unraveler Conspiracy Unraveler casting costs and reanimate at instant speed with Reenact the Crime Reenact the Crime . The usual reanimation targets, like Atraxa and Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness Etali, Primal Conqueror Etali, Primal Sickness
 are here, but Toxrill, the Corrosive Toxrill, the Corrosive is an interesting bit of tech.

Full weekly stats can be found here.
As of writing this article, we’re still waiting on results from a few matches that had extensions due to MagicCon Chicago travel.