VML Season 12 Week 4 Metagame Update
Welcome back to your weekly metagame analysis! For anyone playing at RC Dallas this weekend, best of luck! For everyone else, let’s dive on into the data for the upcoming week.
Last Week’s Results
Last week, four decks earned an over 70% win rate. Holding onto their title of “winningest decks”, Dimir Control and Boros Convoke were the most successful decks overall. Dimir Control earned an 83.3% win rate across 6 players, while Boros Convoke’s 8 players earned a 75% win rate.
As is often the case, Bant Toxic finds itself among the winningest decks, its 7 players earning a 71.4% win rate. Temur Analyst rounds off the group of highly successful decks, with its 17 players achieving a 70.6% win rate.
The most popular deck of the week, Esper Midrange with 19 players, earned a respectable 52.3% win rate. The third most popular deck, Golgari Midrange with 14 players, only managed a 28.6% win rate.
Top Decks vs Top 3
Each week, I list the deck archetypes that have been the most successful against last week’s popular decks in VML. The suggested counterpicks are based only on data from VML season 12. As the season goes on and we get more data, this segment will get more accurate.
Esper Midrange
Current Overall Win Rate: 56.3%
Counterpicks: Dimir Control, Bant Toxic, Domain Ramp, Temur Analyst
Temur Analyst
Current Overall Win Rate: 53.7%
Counterpicks: Bant Toxic, 4-Color Slogurk, Gruul Aggro
Golgari Midrange
Current Overall Win Rate: 37.8%
Counterpicks: Azorius Control, Domain Ramp, Esper Midrange, 4-Color Slogurk, Temur Analyst
Week 4 Decks
Temur Analyst regains the top spot this week, with 16 players and a 12.7% metashare. It’s followed closely by Azorius Control, with 15 players and a 11.9% metashare.
Boros Convoke has risen to third place, riding on the momentum of its recent success in the meta. 13 players are running this aggro deck, for a 10.3% metashare.
Esper Midrange has fallen out of the top three again, with only 12 players and a 9.5% metashare.
The number of unique archetypes is on the rise this week, with 18 archetypes having 2 or fewer players, for a total metashare of 15.1%.
Spice Corner
This week’s most unique decks include keyo’s Orzhov Midrange, Noor Singh’s Azorius Tempo, and hotsoggy’s Jund Roots.
keyo’s “Snorse in a Hospital” is an Orzhov midrange deck centered around the titular snorse themself, Caustic Bronco
Caustic Bronco
, who creates card advantage and, when saddled, life loss for their opponent. While much of the deck shares some of the usual suspects with Esper and Dimir Midrange, some of their more unique choices include Hostile Investigator
Hostile Investigator
for card advantage and discard, Anointed Peacekeeper
Anointed Peacekeeper
for stax and information, and Sorin the Mirthless
Sorin the Mirthless
for a difficult-to-remove card advantage that can provide blockers in a pinch.
Noor’s “My girlfriend made this deck for me :3” is an Azorius tempo deck that aims to play at instant speed as much as possible, with flash creatures like Stoic Sphinx
Stoic Sphinx
and Tishana's Tidebinder
Tishana's Tidebinder
, plenty of instants like Memory Deluge
Memory Deluge
and Three Steps Ahead
Three Steps Ahead
, and of course the only planeswalker with flash, The Wandering Emperor
The Wandering Emperor
. Dust Animus
Dust Animus
is a nice way to bank some mana for later turns to make a flying threat with lifelink, or as an early blocker if needed.
hotsoggy’s “A Medieval Game, Obviously” is a Jund graveyard deck that uses Insidious Roots
Insidious Roots
to take advantage of bouncing creatures in and out of the graveyard by ramping with plant tokens and going wide on the board. The deck runs plenty of ways to return creatures to hand (Undead Butler
Undead Butler
), directly to the battlefield (Lively Dirge
Lively Dirge
), or off into exile to be taken advantage of by Agatha's Soul Cauldron
Agatha's Soul Cauldron
.