VML Season 13 Week 6 Metagame Update

by Noah R-G

With only two weeks left in the season, players are starting to do playoff math. Best of luck if you’re still in contention! And for those who aren’t, I hope you’ve got some fun games ahead of you! Let’s dive in and see what’s coming for the penultimate week of Season 13 rounds.

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.

With a commanding 87.5% game win rate, Azorius Tempo’s 10 players have taken the crown for “most dominant deck of the week”. Abhorrent Oculus Abhorrent Oculus is a card that demands answers as soon as it’s on the field, and wow this deck has ways to cheat it out if they can pitch it to the graveyard early. Pack some grave hate; I have a feeling this deck may only get more popular!

Not to be left behind, Mono-White Token Control is second place for the week, with 10 players earning an 80% win rate. Its slightly-more-red counterpart, Boros Token Control, also had a good week with 4 players and a 75% win rate.

Dimir Midrange also had a strong week, with 9 players achieving a 57.1% win rate off the back of Enduring Curiosity Enduring Curiosity . Domain Ramp’s 10 players had a perfectly divided week with a 50% win rate.

Gruul Prowess continues to fall to prepared players. Its 14 players only managed to achieve a 28.6% game win rate last week. The terror of the ladder faces a much tougher battle when opponents can prepare for it, even with the strength of Leyline of Resonance Leyline of Resonance .

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 has definitely thrown 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.)

Gruul Prowess

Overall Win Rate: 47.13%

Counterpicks: Orzhov Midrange (91.7% game win rate vs Gruul Prowess, 4 matches), Dimir Midrange (77.8% win rate, 6 matches), Mono-White Token Control (75% win rate, 4 matches), Golgari Midrange (61.1% win rate, 6 matches), Domain Ramp (57.1% win rate, 7 matches)

Mono-White Token Control

Overall Win Rate: 68.1%

Counterpicks: There’s not yet enough data to give a confident counterpick. Dimir Midrange (66.7% win rate, 2 matches) and Domain Ramp (66.7% win rate, 2 matches) are the only decks with more than one match win against Mono-White Token Control.

Azorius Tempo

Overall Win Rate: 63.3%

Counterpicks: Like Mono-White Token Control, there’s not enough data to confidently give a counterpick. There’s not even enough data to give a deck that’s won more than once against it. As someone who’s played previous iterations of this deck though, pack grave hate and don’t let the Oculus live.

Week 6

“Other” represents decks with 2 or fewer players.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given its strong performance in the meta, Mono-White Token Control is the most popular deck this week, with 17 players and a 15.2% metashare. This deck is very splashable, with four color variants this week. Pure Mono-White, Boros, and Azorius are the three most common, but Cora Stobie is experimenting with an Orzhov splash using Kaya, Spirits' Justice Kaya, Spirits' Justice and Kaya, Intangible Slayer Kaya, Intangible Slayer .

Domain Ramp is in second place this week, with 13 players and an 11.6% metashare. There are also a few spinoffs in the unique archetypes section (check out the Spice Corner for one of them!).

Azorius Tempo is on the rise, with 11 players and a 9.8% metashare. Time will tell if it can hold onto the commanding win rate it boasted from last week, or if the meta can adapt in time.

Gruul Prowess has fallen in popularity and now shares the same player count with Dimir Midrange; both decks have 9 players and an 8% metashare.

Now that it’s the end of the season, many player are experimenting with unusual archetypes, and the “Other” slice of the pie has 31 players and a 27.7% metashare, covering 24 different archetypes!

Spice Corner

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 are ninalovesfun’s Simic Merfolk, Mel Woods’ Rakdos Reanimator, and Brittney’s 4-Color Control.

ninalovesfun’s “Merfolk?!” deck is, as the name suggests, a merfolk kindred deck running some of the surprisingly powerful merfolk currently swimming in Standard. Vodalian Hexcatcher Vodalian Hexcatcher is a Modern-playable lord that can double as a tax on noncreature spells that otherwise might prey on this deck. Deeproot Pilgrimage Deeproot Pilgrimage takes advantage of the many non-combat ways to tap merfolk in this deck (for example, Subterranean Schooner Subterranean Schooner , Zephyr Singer Zephyr Singer , and Lost in the Maze Lost in the Maze ) to pump out plenty of extra tokens to fuel Hexcatcher’s tax.

Mel’s “RAKDOS” deck is a reanimator deck hoping to cheat out Overlord of the Boilerbilges Overlord of the Boilerbilges , Trumpeting Carnosaur Trumpeting Carnosaur , or Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness Etali, Primal Conqueror Etali, Primal Sickness
from the graveyard. Coiling Rebirth Coiling Rebirth offers a way to even double the ETB effects of Overlord and Carnosaur, provided Mel doesn’t mind giving their opponent a card. With 6 card types in the main deck, Fear of Missing Out Fear of Missing Out has a decent chance of activating its delirium ability and creating an additional combat step, which can mean game over with the large creatures this deck reanimates.

Brittney’s “80 card special” is a domain-offshoot that wants to use Doppelgang Doppelgang to create numerous copies of the three Overlords it runs: Overlord of the Boilerbilges Overlord of the Boilerbilges , Overlord of the Mistmoors Overlord of the Mistmoors , and Overlord of the Hauntwoods Overlord of the Hauntwoods . The domain package, particularly Up the Beanstalk Up the Beanstalk and Leyline Binding Leyline Binding buys her time and ramps her up to the mana needed to cast Doppelgang.

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.