VML Season 13 Week 4 Metagame Update

Welcome to the spookiest month of Magic! October means ghosts, ghouls, and whatever nightmares come fresh from the haunted house plane. Let’s dive into the first metagame breakdown of the new Duskmourn Standard!

Last Week’s Results

With a commanding 85.7% win rate and 7 players, Orzhov Midrange cemented itself at the top of the Battle of the Bloomburrow Midrange. It was followed close behind by Dimir Midrange, whose 12 players achieved an 80% win rate, tied with the 5 Mono-White Token Control players.

Domain Ramp pulled off a better performance than in week 2, with its 9 players earning a 55.6% win rate. Gruul Prowess and Golgari Midrange, the most popular decks of week 3, both were under a 50% win rate, with Golgari Midrange under 40%!

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 13. As the season goes on and we get more data, this segment will get more accurate. (Note: Duskmourn may throw off the matchups; I’ll still do cumulative results for this segment, but in the post-season wrap-up I’ll note any big difference between pre- and post-Duskmourn.)

Golgari Midrange

Overall Win Rate: 52.6%

Counterpicks: Jeskai Convoke (71.4% win rate vs Golgari Midrange, 7 matches), Gruul Prowess (58.3% win rate, 4 matches), Dimir Midrange (56.7% win rate, 10 matches), Domain Ramp (51.9% win rate, 9 matches)

Gruul Prowess

Overall Win Rate: 50%

Counterpicks: Dimir Midrange (91.7% win rate vs Gruul Prowess, 4 matches), Orzhov Midrange (88.9% win rate, 3 matches)

Token-based control decks also see some success, with Mono-White and Azorius winning a total of 3 out of 3 matches.

Dimir Midrange

Overall Win Rate: 60.4%

Counterpicks: Domain Ramp (58.3% win rate vs Dimir Midrange, 4 matches)

Little is consistently good vs Dimir Midrange, or at least not in big enough numbers to confidently declare as a counterpick. Rakdos Lizards has won 2 out of 2 matches.

Week 4

Of course, all those counterpicks and win rates are about to get thrown out the window: it’s the first week of Duskmourn in VML, and many of us are already running into the nightmare of Leyline of Resonance Leyline of Resonance in Gruul Prowess, which is this week’s most popular deck for a reason. However, with only 18 players and a 15% metashare, Gruul Prowess is not as popular as some midrange decks were in Bloomburrow Standard. There are a smattering of other prowess builds floating around the meta, in Rakdos, Boros, Izzet, and even Mardu!

Domain Ramp is the second most popular deck this week, with 15 players (12.5% metashare) picking up some shiny new toys in the form of Overlord of the Hauntwoods Overlord of the Hauntwoods and Overlord of the Mistmoors Overlord of the Mistmoors . The Hauntwoods overlord is arguably a better Topiary Stomper, which Domain lost to rotation, and the Mistmoors overlord is a powerful token generator.

Golgari Midrange remains the most popular midrange deck, with 14 players and a 11.7% metashare. Few decks are running any new tools in this archetype, aside from the two players running The Swarmweaver The Swarmweaver .

Dimir Midrange is hot on Golgari’s heels, with 11 players and a 9.2% metashare, and it did get a new card draw tool with Enduring Curiosity Enduring Curiosity .

Spice Corner

Before I start this week’s spice corner, I want to give two shoutouts. The first is to Ryan and Mora for submitting Duskmourn Sealed decks against each other, and the second is to the three players playing Temur Storm! Unfortunately for the Storm players (and me, who would love to highlight this deck), it just missed the cutoff.

Each week, I showcase some of the most unique decks in the VML meta (defined as “there is only one person playing this deck” and, as much as possible, showing brews from different players). This week’s most unique decks include january’s Dimir Oculus, Lapsy’s Gruul Delirium, and GSCNow’s Orzhov Reanimator. (Lots of graveyard decks this week thanks to Duskmourn!)

january’s “EVERY MOVE U MAKE EVERY BREATH U TAKE ILL BE WATCHING U <(o)>” is a graveyard tempo deck centered on Abhorrent Oculus Abhorrent Oculus , a powerful threat that gives you free creatures on your opponent’s turn. Like its Azorius counterpart, this deck tries to fill up its graveyard in order to cast Oculus, but it has plenty of ways to cheat out this three-mana threat (as well as other cards) through reanimation (No One Left Behind No One Left Behind ), disguising (Cryptic Coat Cryptic Coat ), and copying (the back side of Invasion of Amonkhet // Lazotep Convert Invasion of Amonkhet Lazotep Convert
). The fun part about running an Oculus deck in Dimir is that it lets january use Satoru, the Infiltrator Satoru, the Infiltrator for free card draw every time she manifests dread.

Lapsy’s “RG good cards with da graveyard” is a delirium deck with plenty of dual-typed cards like Wildfire Wickerfolk Wildfire Wickerfolk and Fear of Missing Out Fear of Missing Out to quickly get delirium for the powerful bonuses on those and Omnivorous Flytrap Omnivorous Flytrap . The deck runs plenty of self-mill, and also a cheeky Say Its Name Say Its Name /Altanak, the Thrice-Called Altanak, the Thrice-Called combo; the sorceries aid the main game plan, and Altanak is a powerful finisher for the deck.

GSCNow’s “Turn 4 Lesbians” is a reanimation deck using a Cynical Loner Cynical Loner saddling Caustic Bronco Caustic Bronco to slip her choice of big threats into the graveyard before reanimating them on turn 4 with Rite of the Moth Rite of the Moth . Overlord of the Balemurk Overlord of the Balemurk is both a cheap graveyard filler and a good reanimation target, but arguably the biggest threat of the deck is Valgavoth, Terror Eater Valgavoth, Terror Eater , which is hard to remove (sacrificing 3 nonland permanents to its ward cost is a lot of permanents) and easily gets out of control (because now you can cast those sacrificed permanents!).

Full and up-to-date weekly stats can be found here. This season, all my stats articles will be posted the day after decklists are released, due to my schedule this semester making Tuesdays hellish.