I just completed my weekend ranked with 18 wins out of 25 games (personal best). I'm submitting this deck for @jungleboy1 's competition. At one point during the run, I was 16/19 and thought I would do better than 18 wins. I learned some valuable lessons in my final 6 games. In this post, I present my deck, how to play it, and the large role of luck in weekend ranked.
The Deck
Deck Code:
GU_1_5_GAwIDNIDNCAuCAuCATCATCCOCCOCAvCAvIASBEXBEXBCCBCCIDKIDKCBxCBxCArCArGAbIDMIDMICHICHGAnIDFIDF
If you read my nature creature tier list post, this deck won't surprise you too much. I do need to credit @fakemews for the idea to replace my Vanguard Axewomen for Low-Hanging Fruit, though. More on that later.
The game list:
God Power
This deck allows for flexibility in the god power selection depending on what god you match up against. Your two choices:
Selena's Mark
Play against:
- War
- Deception
- Light
You'll see that this deck was very successful against War. Selena's Mark is a big part of this success. War doesn't usually run a ton of removal spells (and aggro war wants relics to go face). Instead, they play a lot of aggressive creatures - often with little health. Being able to ping them to death while healing up (partially countering their Slayer GP) is a big deal.
For Deception, this gives us another tool to reach hidden creatures (we see you Shadow Kitties). Against sleep deception, you probably want Animal Bond, but that is much rarer compared to hidden rush. If you know what your opponent is playing, you can pick accordingly.
If Light can't hold board presence, they lose. Mark is also great for clearing ward and protection when playing Light.
Animal Bond
Play against:
- Nature
- Magic
- Death
In the mirror, I go with Animal Bond. Unlike War, Nature creatures are beefy, which means you are much less likely to clear them with a 1-damage ping. In addition, the randomness of nature means that they suffer if you can get wide with little tokens like badgers.
Magic has a ton of hard removal spells. You will gas out of creatures unless you pace yourself. Play a creature from hand and a badger whenever you can. By and large, Magic's creatures are so weak that badgers are decent creatures to keep board or ping for favor.
Death is admittedly a tricky one. Zombie death is what I ran into most, and arguably being able to ping 1/1 Zombies is attractive. The problem is their board gets so wide that the Mark is really unreliable. In addition, 1/2 badgers are also excellent for clearing zombies. Also, if you run into Board Wipe Death, you definitely want badgers.
Low-Hanging Fruit
After seeing FakeMews run this, I decided to swap my Axewomen out for it. Mainly because FakeMews is a better player than I am, and that's what he did. However, my intuition of why it was a good swap seemed to play out as I expected.
This deck has an insane ability to ping targets. That's especially true when running Selena's Mark GP. Faeflame Blade is another big source of direct damage. Low-Hanging is often able to finish off a target. That damage is also great for hidden creatures with 1 hp.
Not only is the damage great but it also creates a Vibrant Fruit.
In most cases, that's 2/2 stats. Just like an Axewoman but better, because that second 1/1 gets added to a stronger creature. The 1/1 apple boi generates just as much favor as Axewoman when going face and gets your board just as wide. Most of the time, when I played Low-Hanging Fruit, I found myself glad I had it instead of an Axewoman.
Those Last 6 Games
Humbling, as you can imagine. I started getting visions of going 20+ wins, but they were dashed. Most of those L's were to mediocre (at best) decks. A few of the players had started the weekend below Mythic. They each played well (I take nothing away from them), but they also hit perfect curves while I struggled to get strong hands during mulligan. Sometimes, your opponent is just going to have the answers even if your deck is more expensive and "better".
This caused me to look back at my first 19 games and realize how much luck was involved. I didn't hit a single BWD or ultra-expensive control War deck. I went second a lot, which isn't great, but I usually found my blades, boars, wardens, or canopy barrages in the mulligan. Part of that is deck construction: this deck is full of reactive cards. Still, part of that great opening run was luck.
Summary
I hope you were able to learn something from this post. If nothing else, leave an F for me in the chat for those last 6 games.