Season 11 Week 6 Metagame Update
Welcome to the penultimate week of regular rounds! We’re in week 6, and players are starting to do the math on if they have a chance at making playoffs. Let’s take a look at the state of the VML meta with our weekly stats blast.
Last Week’s Results
Esper Midrange remains on top with a 91.7% win rate! 6 Esper players played the mirror match last week, but the remaining 12 players have earned the highest win rate ever for a meta deck since I started crunching these numbers. This has become the deck to beat this season, with an overall win rate of 59.6% across the first five weeks. If you make the playoffs, this is definitely a deck you’ll need to be prepared to face.
Bant Toxic once again is at the top of the results list, with a 66.7% win rate across 6 players. The deck is consistent and performs reasonably well against a large share of the meta, but it rewards player experience with the deck.
Gurking its way into the top is the 68-card special 4-Color Slogurk Ramp, with a 66.7% win rate across 9 players. The meme is no longer just a dream for Gurk fans. This week will show whether it will outperform its cousin Slogurk Legends, which has only had an over-50% win rate once this season.
Azorius Tempo rounds out our winning decks this week, with a 60% win rate across 5 players.
Azorius Control and Boros Convoke, two of the most popular decks last week, both struggled as the meta has started to adapt to their presence. Azorius Control’s 19 players earned a 42.1% win rate, and Boros Convoke’s 11 players earned a 36.4% win rate.
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:
Azorius Control: Slogurk Ramp, Boros Convoke, Esper Midrange
Esper Midrange: 5-Color Slogurk, Rakdos Midrange
Boros Convoke: Azorius Tempo, Rakdos Midrange, Esper Midrange, Bant Toxic, 5-Color Domain
Week 6 Decks
I love when the deck pie chart looks like this. Lots of reasonably sized slices, showing that VML’s settled on a diverse meta this season.
Esper Midrange is the single most popular deck, with 18 players having a 14.8% metashare. With lots of answers (both the proactive kind like Deep-Cavern Bat
Deep-Cavern Bat
and the reactive kind like No More Lies
No More Lies
), the deck is tough to prepare for and tough to beat.
Boros Convoke and Azorius Control remain popular this week, with 17 players and a 13.9% metashare each. 5-Color Domain is back this week as well, with 11 players and a 9% meta share.
While not the astounding numbers we saw the previous two weeks, the “Other” category of decks remains vibrant with 18 different archetypes and a 15.6% metashare. I love seeing the experimental brews VML players come up with!
Spice Corner
This week’s unique decks include janMelantu’s Jeskai Eggs and Talia Bael’s Mono-Green Ramp.
janMelantu’s “Phyrexian Omelette” is an artifact deck aiming to take advantage of the numerous 1-mana artifacts that can replace themselves (the so-called “eggs”) to pump up Gleaming Geardrake
Gleaming Geardrake
and Patchwork Automaton
Patchwork Automaton
. Outside of the mana base, the mainboard runs zero rare cards (and only a few in the sideboard: 1 Tarrian's Soulcleaver
Tarrian's Soulcleaver
and 2 The Millennium Calendar
The Millennium Calendar
), meaning you can try it out for pretty cheap on Arena!
Talia Bael’s “We don’t need Nykthos for devotion” is a green ramp deck hoping to meld Titania, Voice of Gaea
Titania, Voice of Gaea
and Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
through a lot of self-mill effects. If that doesn’t work, the deck has plenty of mana to cast and re-cast Cityscape Leveler
Cityscape Leveler
to destroy all your permanents. The new Archdruid's Charm
Archdruid's Charm
is a key piece of flexibility in this deck, able to get any of the pieces needed to win or remove pesky artifacts and enchantments.