Season 11 Week 7 Metagame Update
It’s the final week of regular season games for VML Season 11! Best of luck to everyone who needs a win this week to make playoffs. Here’s your weekly stats blast!
Last Week’s Results
Rakdos Midrange came out on top last week, with an 80% win rate across 5 players. With little impact on the deck from MKM (aside from the Rakdos surveil land Raucous Theater
Raucous Theater
), Rakdos Midrange has been relatively unchanged throughout the season.
Once again landing itself a spot in the “winningest decks” category, Bant Toxic’s 4 players earned a 75% win rate last week. With the fast and inevitable clock from proliferated poison counters and a handful of very dedicated players, this deck has consistently been at the top.
Rounding out the winning decks from last week: Azorius Control’s 17 players had a 64.7% win rate, 5-Color Domain’s 11 players earned a 63.6% win rate, and Esper Midrange’s 18 players earned a 56.25% win rate.
The third most popular deck last week, Boros Convoke, had only a 47% win rate across 17 players.
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 popular decks, which have 3 or more wins and a positive win rate against the archetype:
Esper Midrange: 5-Color Slogurk, Rakdos Midrange, 5-Color Domain
Azorius Control: 4-Color Slogurk Ramp, 5-Color Domain, Esper Midrange, Boros Convoke
Boros Convoke: Rakdos Midrange, 5-Color Domain, Esper Midrange, Azorius Tempo
Week 7 Decks
With the most popular decks falling out of favor as the meta adapts (and some players doing more experimentation if they’re no longer in playoff contention), we have a very evenly balanced meta this week.
While Esper Midrange (15 players, 12.3% metashare), Boros Convoke (13 players, 10.7% metashare), and Azorius Control (13 players, 10.7% metashare) remain the most popular decks, their overall representation has fallen to only being about a third of the meta combined (last week they were around 42% of the total meta combined).
5-Color Domain stays steady from last week, with 11 players and a 9% metashare.
The “Other” category, with all deck archetypes that have 2 or fewer players, remains popular as players experiment with fun combos this week. Overall, I think this season has ended up with a healthy and diverse meta (but we’ll see those stats next week with some big pre-playoff data analysis once results are in).
Spice Corner
This week’s unique decks include Hastur’s Sultai Multiverse Combo and Amanda’s Mono-White Midrange.
Hastur’s “Breachmaxxing” deck is a Sultai reanimator deck aiming to recast its namesake Breach the Multiverse
Breach the Multiverse
as much as possible to reanimate Conspiracy Unraveler
Conspiracy Unraveler
to keep the mill-reanimate loop going. Breach the Multiverse is not the only reanimator however: this deck runs 14 different reanimation effects, as well as Repository Skaab
Repository Skaab
to get the sorcery ones back from the graveyard. Tempest Hart // Scan the Clouds
Tempest Hart
Scan the Clouds
is a unique inclusion, adding to the graveyard with its adventure half and growing fast once the creature half is on the board and Hastur can cast numerous 5+ mana spells for nothing more than a couple exiled cards from the graveyard.
Amanda’s “White Thrice?” deck is a Plains-heavy Lay Down Arms
Lay Down Arms
variation on mono-white midrange, with 4 main deck copies of Doorkeeper Thrull
Doorkeeper Thrull
(a good meta call: her opponent has been playing Jeskai Convoke with a lot of ETB effects). Alongside the usual suspects for white-based midrange decks, this deck includes Steel Seraph
Steel Seraph
and Boon-Bringer Valkyrie
Boon-Bringer Valkyrie
as top-end lifegain and finishers. The flip removal package of Unyielding Gatekeeper
Unyielding Gatekeeper
and Aurelia's Vindicator
Aurelia's Vindicator
adds instant-speed bounce effects to the deck.