This post intros some tools and shows how I (and you) can use them to understand what you are likely to face when you click that "Play" button and queue up for weekend ranked. You can also get some clues at to what is likely working.
gudecks.com
Player stats
https://gudecks.com/meta/player-stats
This is a nice quick look to see what the top players are playing. Check those people with 20+ wins and see how they are doing it.
The big (enormous) caveat is that these players have expensive decks and play in Mythic (which is very different from lower ranks). That puts a limit on the usefulness of this, but it's still important. You can find ultra-competitive decks and then make substitutions for the cards you don't have (hopefully for cards that still serve the same purpose i.e. removal).
Let's take an example: [8M]Dragonstorm won all 25 games. Quite the accomplishment! How did he do it? Well for starters, his deck is worth 1 ETH:
Before you toss up your hands and scream P2W, let's look closer. (Also, there are of course some P2W elements in TCGs, but that's another post.)
- Jason: 0.4 ETH. Honestly, its usefulness in this mid-range deck is borderline - certainly not worth the cost. Swap him for basically whatever you want.
- Pyramid Wardens (2x): .22 ETH. Undeniably a strong card, but swap for Skeleton Heavies or Guild Enforcers. Your deck will take a hit here in expected win %, but it's still viable.
- Magic Missle: .24 ETH. Blade of Styx is the closest replacement but is weaker.
The bulk of the price of this deck is in those 3 cards. You can absolutely still play this archetype without them. In fact, the win condition is arguably the Valka's Presence god power + Sole Survivor (.003 ETH). You're (probably) not going to win 25/25 games with the substitutions above, but that doesn't mean you can't hit 17 wins in Mythic (some weeks maybe 15 and some 19).
This is also 1 deck. You can check other top players to see if there are decks that you can more closely emulate.
Top Decks
https://gudecks.com/meta/top-decks?timeFrame=1&userRank=4
Importantly, sort this table to Mythic only, and on Saturday, filter Time Frame to "Last Day". This will show you how decks are performing in weekend ranked (which is more competitive than weekday play). The idea is similar to looking at top players. Find decks for the god you want to play with solid win rates
godsunchainedrightnow.com
https://godsunchainedrightnow.com/
A gold mine.
You can filter this to Mythic only, but for any filter, you can see what gods are being played and even what god powers. On the left above, we can see that 32% of people are choosing to play nature, and of those, 64% are winning their matches.
So what's the important take away here? Yes, Board Wipe Death sucks to get matched against, but you probably shouldn't build your deck to hard counter it. Only 13% of people are playing death, and most of them are likely zombie decks simply due to how expensive the BWD cards are. This is a game of probabilities. Try your best if you match up against BWD, but don't feel bad if you take the loss. You won't face a ton of them.
Twitch
This is one I've just started doing, and the benefit is marginal, but I've matched up against (and lost to) enough streamers that it makes me feel better. Gudecks will tell you who is streaming GU, or you can check twitch directly. If I see an elite player streaming, I like to make sure they are in-game before I press "play". Matching up against Feanor/CopperPitch/TheeSamBam/FakeMews is tough. Odds are, they've already finished their weekend ranked, you are still try-harding to finish yours, and they still beat you. #feelsbadman
A note: please don't "stream snipe." This involves actually trying to match up against streamers and then looking at their hands while you play them. The community is still small enough that you will get called out for it, quickly blocked by streamers, etc.
Summary
I hope these tools help you improve your weekend ranked strategies. They've helped me a ton. Build your deck to have the highest expected win percentage you can against the popular gods and decks. Then roll the dice each weekend and see how you do. Getting 17 wins in mythic is absolutely possible. If you are just starting out, you probably can't do it consistently with F2P cards, so I'd target the Shadow ranks while you build up some epic/rare DO cards. Keep winning those and using your GODS tokens to buy cheap upgrades for your deck. You'll be ready for Mythic in short order. Also, the number of players in Mythic has grown drastically. It has become much easier to compete in Mythic as a consequence: there are only so many Pyramid Wardens to go around. Your chances of facing the top cards are dropping.