I get it.
- Nature gets a power boost.
- All the non-whales shift to nature (40% of the meta this weekend)
- Whales all shift to BWD as a hard counter and farm non-whales.
I actually played several decks this weekend trying to avoid the complete burnout that has been steadily growing over the past few months. To be clear, I love weekday play. There's no pressure, and I get to experiment with decks to keep things fresh. To maximize my weekend rewards, though, I generally stick to my 'best' deck. That's been taking a toll, so I changed course.
Biggest Lesson Re-Learned
Just because someone gets lucky and hits 23 wins with an Aggro War deck doesn't mean you'll do the same. I went 1/4 after switching to aggro war and gave up.
Most enjoyable deck
I wanted to stick with faster games, so I went with the enigma that is MightyUncle's aggro nature deck.
Deck Code:
GU_1_5_IDNIDNCAuCAuHAEHAECATCATCCOCCOCAvCAvIDKIDKIALIALIDSIDSCByCByIDMIDMIDOIDOGAnGAnIDFIDFIARIAR
I posted recently about this deck. MightyUncle has an 81% win rate right now with it even though it's only .03 ETH. The rest of the field is only 58%. If you want more background on the deck, check this post.
You can see my performance with it is slightly worse, but a respectable 77% so far with only 9 games played. This weekend was especially hard on this deck.
My 25th Game
My record coming into the game was a personal-worst 14/24 games. I needed to win this one to get a single legendary pack! My opponent? Shocker! My 4th BWD match.
Well, that's a lot of cards we don't own! Even so, this isn't the most optimized BWD list and their win rate with it is only 66%.
The result? I won!
Game keys
Animal Bond:
Keep pressure while maintaining card advantage (or at least parity). This partners really well with Wildfire and forced them to burn board clears on badgers.
Buff Cards
Sudden Bloom in particular was the MVP. I drew them both. I firmly believe that any deck with Sudden Bloom should be running Starving Sabertooth in the 4 mana slot.
It's a nasty combo.
- Go face with Sabertooth (who isn't confused)
- Cast Sudden Bloom
- Eat creatures for regen.
Furthermore, The large numbers of other non-confused creatures in the deck are important.
Blessed/Avraxus
The average nature-vs-BWD game goes like the following:
- Start out strong.
- Get death to around 15 HP.
- Get slept for several turns.
- They heal up and you lose.
Avraxus short-circuits this. I was dropping all four of my blessed cards looking for him.
I was able to find him on my third try (stag). At that point, the odds are on my side. I had 30 HP to my opponent's 17. The expected damage per turn of 2.5 (plus a small number extra for ties) would have me win by a mile. I was able to play 2 of him the first turn I had him. My Opponent pulled 1 down the next turn. I got the final one.
Avraxus has a second benefit against BWD: he fills the board with 1/1 creatures which greatly reduce the value of playing a Demogorgon.
Avoiding the Mill
With Vrock's and Scarabs in the deck, expect to get milled. When you get around 7-8 cards in hand, this aggro deck has lots of cheap creatures to drop. I think this confused my opponent. Several times they setup a nasty mill with Sulphuric Rain only to have me drop lots of cheap creatures from hand, avoid the mill, and get all my cards back. In the process, they milled their own Jason and one other card.
Ultimately, some of my cards did get milled, but this deck isn't dependent on any single card, so it wasn't a huge deal.
Game Summary
In total, my opponent healed for
- 1 Nibble (5)
- 1 Reap (4)
- 1 Death, Unborn (7 -> 20 hp. Heal for 13)
- Total: 21
They played 2 Apoc Now clearing my board and slept my board 3 times.
Even so, I was able to maintain enough pressure to close the game 2 turns before Poly could drop and win it for him. I'll be the first to admit it required luck in what we both drew and being able to find Avraxus. On the other hand, this cheap deck did surprisingly well.
Closing thoughts
In total, I went 3/4 against BWD with my decks. 2/2 with MightyUncle's buff/midrange deck. It's a surprisingly versatile list at a very reasonable price point. It does better than average against BWD because of its ability to buff creatures and put pressure on fast. However, if they get the full siren2x + Canopic 2x + Halflife 2x, you're gonna have a bad time.
I still wonder about Underbrush Boar instead of Black Jaguars. I'm also amazed at how well this deck handles big targets without Lightning Strike. You should definitely give it a try. I'm starting to wonder if the large win percentage disparity is simply because even incredibly new players can afford the deck. 16k games is a lot. That has to be dominated by players outside of Mythic.