Hello dear Leviathan commander players, in this article I will present you how the meta was shaped in the fourth quarter of last year, as well as throughout 2022. At he end of each part, I will present a list of the most popular cards in Q4 (top10) and in 2022 (top20) divided into types of cards.
As in the previous article, I will discuss all commanders by dividing them into three categories: the most winning cmd, most often in the top 4 and the most used in Q4 and 2022. In addition, I will discuss Partner Commanders in the same way compared to last year.
The data that I will present to you here was created on the basis of the reports you sent with the attached decklists. Let's start with information on how many tournaments took place in Q4. Well, this season there were 51 of them (which gives us an average of 17 events a month - 2 more than in Q3) and contained 565 decks.
Most winning commanders in Q4
We'll start with the commanders who scored the most podiums in Q4.
Winota tops this category with 5 wins. Right behind her, Grist came in second with also 5 wins and Yuriko came in third (4 wins). They are followed by Light-Paw and Tivit with 3 wins each. The commanders in the 6th-10th place got 2 wins each and the commanders in the "other" got 1 win each during the Q4 season.
Now let's briefly discuss our top 3 of the Q4 season and why they won so much:
Winota - as I discussed it during the analysis of the previous quarter( and every player knows her very well), I can only add that the current metagame is very good for her. The lack of very strong Control Commanders (Shorikai, Niv-Mizzet Parun), the increased speed of the format and the increase in the number of creature based decks are the perfect environment for her to shine even more. Her ability to generate 30+ power on the battlefield from three 1/1on turn 3-4 continues to be a force to be reckoned with. After the release of the new cards from Phyrexia: All will be One, Winota may become even stronger and we will probably see her again in the top 3 most winning commanders in Q1 - 2023.
Grist - as in the case of Winota, the current metagame serves him very well, because for the first six months of 2022 he was unable (despite the high frequency of appearances) to get more than one win. Only the banning of Shorikai and Parun's Niv-Mizzet gave him more opportunity to reach the podium more often. He definitely draws his strength from his loyalty abilities and deck style (midrange with reanimation elements). In a meta full of creatures and walkers, he is the perfect removal on CZ with his -2. His +1, on the other hand, is quite efficient at defending him and fueling the graveyard for his -5 loyalty ultimatum ability, which he can drain a fair amount of life from opponent. He also has the advantage of being a 1/1 creature in other zones outside of the battlefield. This is quite useful when Grist ends up in a grave (instead of CZ) from where he can be resurrected with Unearth or reanimate spells. I think that from now on we can often expect him to be at the top of tournaments in the world.
Yuriko - our ninja friend has been with us for a long time. Despite this, she has not been as successful as this season so far. Her strength still lies in her ninjutsu ability and draining hp for the mana value of a revealed card. It's hard to say at the moment whether the metagame change will be favorable for her or not. Definitely the easiest matches for her are against slower decks and with low number of mass removal.
The most common commanders in the top4 - Q4
In the category of the most frequently appearing in the top 4 in tournaments, Winota (11 times) is again on the first place, followed by Grist (10 times) and Yuriko (10 times). As you can see, the other commanders apart from the top four have almost the same frequency of appearance. In addition, I can remind you that some of them were not used too many times during Q4, and yet they appeared in the top 4 at events quite a few times. Also here you can see that tournament tops are not dominated by one type of strategy.
The most used commanders in Q4
In this chart, there is only one major change in our leaderboard, and that is the appearance of Prossh in third place with 16 uses. You can see that despite the passage of 10 years from his release, he is still strong and popular enough to compete with new commanders. Other than Prossh's top 3 appearance, another change is Yuriko's first place (20 uses) and Winot's dethronement (18 uses) to 2nd place. We can also see that the entire top 10 is quite mixed and not dominated by one type of deck(for example Control). An interesting fact is that in the "others" there is a large number of commanders with a use of 10-12. Among them there is the newly banned Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes with 12 uses, making him 11th, or on 8th place togheter with Light-Paw, Hogaak and Leovold in this category.
The most used cards in decks in the Q4 season
In this section, I will present you the popularity of cards in the form of top10 based on the received decklists, which gave a total database of 18991 cards.
Most winning commanders in 2022
Now we will move on to discussing the whole of 2022. Starting as in the case of the Q4 season with the commanders with the most victories collected.
At the end of the past year, Winota turned out to be number one with 15 wins. Right behind her (without much surprise) in the second place is the most famous duet Esior//Jeska with the result of 11 victories. Yuriko is third with 9 wins. One of the interesting things you can see in the chart is Shorikai, who took 6th place along with Aminatou, Raffine, Niv-Mizzet Reborn and Galazeth. What is most admirable, however, is that he achieved a record of 7 wins in just 4 months of his legality, and yet he was among the top winning commanders of 2022.
I don't think it makes sense to focus on the top 3 most winning commanders in this case because they've been featured many times already. Let's move on to the next category.
The most common commanders in the top4 - 2022
In this category, our top3 included: Winota - 36 times in the top4, Grist - 31 times and Tasigur - 28 times. Niv-Mizzet Parun, who was banned six months ago, achieved 6th place with 22 top-4 achievements in tournaments. Right behind him in 7th place is our old man Prossh with a score of 21 times.
The most used commanders in 2022
In the last category again in the top3 we see: Winota on the 1st place with 84 uses, Grist on the second place with 63 uses and Yuriko on the 3rd place with also 63 uses. Looking at how often players reached for the above three commanders during the year, it is much more clear why they were able to achieve such results (high number of wins and high number of times in the top4). Their popularity and the frequency with which players reach for them is probably due to their strength as cards and adaptation to local metas. In our top 10 frequently reached commanders, we also have two banned ones: Niv-Mizzet Parun 50 uses (over 6 months) and Shorikai 45 uses (over 4 months). It's very likely that if they hadn't been banned, they would have dominated the top of every category I've discussed over the last year. An interesting fact is that Prossh (the oldest commander on our list) is again in the top 10 with a score of 46 uses, which gives him the popularity of Shorikai :)
Most winning Partner commanders in 2022
Separately, I decided to discuss the partner commanders themselves, summing up their performance with various combinations. As before, we start with the number of podiums earned at events throughout 2022.
Here, without a doubt and without any surprises, the first place went to Jeska, Thrice Reborn with 17 victories. Second place went to Esior, Wardwing Familiar with 15 victories. An interesting fact is that together they achieved 11 wins as shown in the extra chart below.
The remaining 6 victories were achieved by Jeska with several other partner commanders. Among them, is the recently popular Yoshimaru, who himself took third place with a score of 7 wins. On the other hand, on the fourth place we have Thrasios along with Rograkh, both winning 5 times. As you can see, the zero mana kobold 0/1 is able to lead the player to the 1st place. Another interesting fact is that another very well-known duo, Thrasios//Tymna, won together only once! The rest of their victories were in conjunction with other partners.
The most common Partner commanders in the top4 - 2022
In the graph of the most frequently appearing partners in the top 4 at tournaments, it is again seen that the first place belongs to Jeska (53 times) and the second place to Esior (50 times). Compared to them, Thrasios (3rd - 24 times) and Tymna (4th - 23 times) already look pretty pale scoring less than half of what the red walker. On the other hand, places 8-10 look poor against compared to her. This shows how much power she had before she finally received a ban hammer on January 9 of this year.
The most used Partner commanders in 2022
No change here either. The first two places belong to Jeska, who was reached by players as many as 78 times during the year, and Esior by players 76 times. The others were less popular(by almost half) when it came to the choice in terms of power lvl. Nevertheless, we can see that despite the special starting hand rule when playing with more than one commander, partners are still popular among players. We will definitely see a drastic change in partner commanders in the coming months.
The most used cards in decks in 2022
Based on the decklists I received from you(in reports from the whole year), I created the top 20 lists of the most popular cards . The database that was used to create them contains 78,609 cards.
Summary
I hope you were able to stick with me to the end of this article summarizing the Q4 season and 2022. For my part, I can add that as a committee, we try our best to follow our Leviathan meta and what decks very often get 1 place or are considered toxic beacuse of their play style. For this, however, we need your help in the form of reports and opinions. For which we are really greatful.
In addition, I can tell you two things! One is to create such articles at the end of each quarter and year. The second thing is a surprise that you will see in a few days! You should really like it :)
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