Being blessed with some $GODS for being an early adopter of IMX/GU, I was hungry to earn even more with the Blessing of the Gods event while simultaneously trying for packs with the Weekend Ranked event.

One of the deck archetypes that I always enjoyed playing in card games was the Zoo archetype, which has themes of using low-cost, mana-efficient units to end the game early with an overwhelming board presence. This being my second week playing GU, I wasn't so sure of my deckbuilding abilities just yet, so I took the easy way out and netdecked. Yes, I'm that guy.

Deck Overview

Being the dirty little netdecker that I was, I went to GUDecks and did a little searching to find a Relic War deck that boasted a 75% winrate. It had a total deck cost of about 0.16 ETH, but its cost was mainly due to the inclusion of two Scythes of the Harvest which cost 0.06 ETH each as they were coveted epic cards in the Genesis set.

To cut down on the cost, I replaced these two cards with some cards that I had available and ended up with this deck (View on GUDecks). The total cost of the cards came to about ~0.03 ETH (~120 USD), which was pretty reasonable - I sold two Master Tacticians for 0.022 ETH each to be able to buy this deck.

The deck focuses on high quality low-cost creatures and relics to end the game early with an overwhelming board presence.

First Impressions

As I had experience playing other card games like Hearthstone, I was already accustomed with the concepts of value and trading efficiently with my units. I found the deck very easy to pick up and play, with no huge hurdles even in my first few games. After all, the Zoo archetype is quite simple - control the board against other aggressive decks, and go face if against a control deck.

Card Review

After playing 56 games with this deck (and a few more with an earlier version of the deck), I found certain cards to pull their weight heavily while I found some others being less useful. Here are my thoughts on some of the cards in the deck.

Tavern Brawler was easily one of the most valuable units in the deck, being able to deal with opponents' early threats. I found that I used Tavern Brawler in most matches to gain board control against other aggressive decks. Although it doesn't have any impressive card text, it is a valuable staple card in this deck.

Dockside Prowler is an unassuming 1-cost unit, but its Hidden ability enables many other cards in the deck to shine, such as Thunder Caller and Redfume Serum.

Thunder Caller is one of the units that can snowball hard if the opponent does not have any answers to it early. Going first, a common combo is to play Dockside Prowler on turn 1 and use the extra mana gem to get Thunder Caller out.

I found Out of Its Misery to be hard to use correctly at times since it sacrifices current board presence for a strong unit. More times than not, I saw it sitting in my hand for many turns as I was not able to find a good time to use it.

As much as Valka's Captain is a strong unit, being able to get out a 2/1 weapon with its body, I found that the lack of Vikings in the deck really hurt its playability. This might be a fault of the deck having too few vikings though.

Results and Concluding Thoughts

I managed to get 21/25 wins starting with a rank of Twilight Shadow for the Weekend Ranked event. With a ~75% win rate throughout, I managed to reach Ethereal Diamond at the end of the weekend, which was pretty impressive by my standards. This is no Tier 1 meta deck by any means, being absolutely destroyed by some deck archetypes, but it seems strong enough to hold its own during the Weekend Ranked events.

I hope that you found my experience with this deck interesting! Hoping to see more of you in the arena soon.