First post on Hive, let's see how this works!
I wanted to share some thoughts about the deck I ran this weekend, managing 24 wins.
You'll notice that GUDecks labels it as Board Wipe Death, and while I see the similarities, I would consider it a Mill Deck instead. Your standard BWD deck would be running End Times, Neferu, and Polyhymnia. We take out these cards and replace them with more draw, in the form of Wind-Up Roller and Runed Asp. Since we aren't running End Times and Neferu, we have to use other tools to clear boards/stall the game out. This includes burning their board with Sulphuric Rain + sleep, Eva, and chaining Demogorgons. Generally, we want Apocalypse Now to be one of the last cards we play, making sure that they cannot refill the board too wide after we play it.
Since we aren't running Polyhymnia, our late-game relies on our Jason pulls. At first glance, it appears that we are leaving our late-game up to Jason RNG. However, if we ran the opponent out of cards, it really shouldn't matter which legendaries we are dropping down since they milled/used their removal already. As long as we are adding some type of late-game into our deck, ensuring we don't take fatigue damage.
It's very important to have the opponent's decklist up while we are playing. Keeping track of their threats/removal can help us decide whether it is safe to use an Apocalypse Now or drop a Demogorgon. Let's say we are playing against Control Deception, and we know they still have their Polyhymnia. We have to be sure to save an Apocalypse Now, or a Ward Ping + Reap to deal with it. Similarly, if our opponents deck is not running any late-game threats, we know it is fine to use Reap in the mid-game to stabilize.
So why would we run this list over traditional BWD? In my opinion, this deck gives us better win-rates against control, without hurting our aggro match-ups. It gives us better win-rates because along with Jason, we have the additional win condition of milling their Jason/Polyhymnia/Demogorgons/Removal. Control decks like to sit back and not play too many cards. This makes them extremely easy to mill, and since we are the ones in control of the milling, we can play it so that we avoid milling ourselves. The aggro match-up is not worse because we still have all the sleep + healing + ramp as traditional BWD.
The general gameplan against aggro should be to ramp with Fanatics to 7 mana as quickly as possible. This does not mean that we need to Half-Life our Fanatic 100% of the time, especially if we are not feeling pressure from the opponent. But it does mean that we should hard mulligan for it, along with Eva. At 7 mana we can start clearing the board and healing with demos. If your hand is Demo + Demo + Canopic Hoarder and we are low on health, the correct order would be to play both Demos, and if one survives, we start sleeping with Canopic. This order allows us to get more value from the Demos, since they will continue to swipe at the opponents board the more we sleep it.
Well guys I'm realizing that I could go more in depth with a mulligan guide/gameplan for each match-up but I don't want the post to be too long-winded. I may make a follow up if there is any interest in that type of post. For now though, you guys can check out my last 2 VODs at www.twitch.tv/clutchgu. I played the deck on stream, and in the older of the 2 VODs, I go through different variations to land on the list that I played on the weekend. (I apologize in advance for the muted audio in certain spots). If you guys have any questions feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading :)
