The hurricane put us out of power for ~24 hours, so when I got power back, I had to rush through games to get them in. I decided to strap on the king of coin flips: aggro light. As it turns out, I ended up 50/50. To be fair to Lysander, I did throw 2 games. Part of the downside of sticking to aggro and midrange decks is I don't have a ton of practice at 8-9 mana, so a few things I should have saw coming surprised me.
I was only in Ethereal Diamond, but honestly, I couldn't tell a difference from Mythic. It was the same meta decks. The sad thing is that 9 wins in mythic would have gotten me more LV epic packs. As it is, I only get one. Oh well. Missing out on an extra 2-4% chance for a Blade of White Plain isn't something I'm prepared to lose sleep over.
The Deck
Half of my games were played with this deck:
Either you pop off early and draw your buffs when you need it or you lose. Everyone knows aggro light's strategy, and all you have to do to beat it is keep the board clear. This is fairly easy given how puny the creatures are. I'm not sold on the pacifist in particular. Magic, deception, and light handle it easily. Control deception actually takes it from you and beats you up with it.
The deck has plenty of reactive cards, and I really like Militant Theist in particular, but going second still feels bad.
More generally, one of the worst feelings about the deck is that even after buffing a card, many area still able to be levied/blight bombed/etc. For example, I tried skeletal hoplite:
But even after a 1/1 buff, he can be levied. A blade borrower sets him back to 0 strength. He can be blight bombed. A starshard bolt still kills him. This is bad news. As a 1 mana drop on his own, he's great. If they spend 1+ to remove him, it's not so bad. But if you buff him with a Felid Tracker and then they blight bomb him, you've lost 2 mana to a 1 mana removal (I'm counting the buff as worth roughly 1 mana). Now I understand the appeal of Netherborne Binder:
If they can answer your turn 1 binder, then it's identical to the hoplite. All the same removal works on both. However, if you get a +1/+1 buff on it, 3 strength and 4 health invalidates a lot of removal. Starshard bolt still works along with Curse of Greed, but now you've at least wasted some of their premium removals.
I also really dislike not having any 5 mana creatures. Even just 2 Guild Enforcers would allow the deck to extend the window for winning. An Enforcer with Canonize is certainly a win condition against lots of decks. Especially if your early cards can soak a lot of removal.
What I'm up to Now
I've been trying to practice card draw magic. It didn't go well and I'm now in Solar Gold. My goal at the moment is to get back into Ethereal Diamond and then practice CDM when I'm above the shield line. Honestly, I may try to just get back into Mythic, though. Honestly, Diamond and low MMR mythic feel very similar, and that way my p2e rewards are better. Just depends on if I can make it.
I also want to build a new light deck given my lessons learned from this weekend. Will need to pick up 2x Binders if I do. Also, if it has any success I'll write it up here on HIVE to share.
Hope you all had a better weekend ranked than I did!