Every weekend, tens of thousands of players put up their best decks to compete in the Weekend Ranked event for a chance at free packs. Every week, I post about my experience playing during this heated event.
Once again, the best players gather to battle it out in the Weekend Ranked event. This time around, I ended up on the losing end, attaining only 11 wins in my first 25 matches of the weekend. Admittedly, I'm quite disappointed with the results that I obtained, but I think it was a good learning experience. Even though most people in the GU community tend to share their best-performing decks (and for good reason), I'd like to share my underperforming deck and experience with the community; I think a look into decks that aren't as successful can help shed some extra insight into what makes a deck good.
Deck Overview
Deck Link: GUDecks
For the past few weeks, I've been playing variations of the Aggro War deck archetype in the Weekend Ranked event to moderate success (16 - 19 wins in Mythic), but I decided to try something new and run a Nature deck instead. There are quite a few players using inexpensive Nature decks and scoring over 20 wins in the Mythic Weekend Ranked bracket, so I was curious to see whether I could replicate those results. I ran this deck in a few matches before the Weekend Ranked event started and got a really good win rate, so I thought that it might do decently during the weekend as well. Alas, that wasn't the case.
My deck includes many good value cards that you see in nearly every mid-range Nature deck, like Faeflame Blades, Giant Pangolins, and Overgrown Rhinos. Instead of explaining why I inserted these cards, perhaps it would be better to only explain the cards that don't appear in every Nature deck, as well as my experience using them in the matches.
Iron-tooth Goblin is an under-statted 2-cost creature that essentially destroys the opponent's relic. In the current meta, Iron-tooth Goblin has many targets. Against War decks, it often has a target, including the extremely annoying Enduring Shield. Even the Lambasting Wand in the Sanctum is destroyed by a single Iron-tooth Goblin. However, its 2/2 body is really weak, and playing it when your opponent doesn't have a relic is terrible. In my opinion, it is a 1x include at most, but even then I think it's a little underpowered and situational.
I included Gersemi in my deck mainly because I unpacked it in one of my Core packs. Naturally, legendaries should be more powerful than other cards, right? I initially thought that Gersemi's Regen buffs would help survivability for the other big units, but it truly functions as a "win more" card in this deck. If I don't have board control, a 4/2 is useless, and if I do, then I'm probably already winning.
Performance and Matchmaking Breakdown
Starting Rank: Mythic
Wins: 11/25
Reward Packs: 2x Core Rare, 1x Core Epic, 1x DO Rare
Theoretical pack value based on current pack prices: $2.47
| Opponent Deck | Score (Wins / Total Games) |
|---|---|
| Nature | 2 / 7 |
| War | 5 / 8 |
| Magic | 1 / 5 |
| Death | 2 / 3 |
| Deception | 0 / 1 |
| Light | 1 / 1 |
| Total | 11 / 25 |
A terrible flop! Against other Nature decks, it seems like my deck was inferior in some aspects. The core of the deck was similar, but their choice of tech and supporting cards outshone mine. Out of curiosity, I decided to look at the Weekend Ranked results of the mirroring Nature decks only to find out that most of them didn't perform very well in the Weekend Ranked event as well. Perhaps, this mid-range archetype of Nature has too many counters in the current meta.
Against War, my decked performed rather decently. The inclusion of Iron-tooth Goblin definitely helped with this - I destroyed 2 of my opponents' Enduring Shields on turn 2 which helped to massively swing board tempo early on in the game which snowballed easily into wins.
The faction that I had the most trouble with this week was definitely Magic - I was very frustrated when I faced 5 magic decks within the span of 6 matches. In each match, it felt like the opponent always had the perfect answers. A Street Conjurer on turn 1, followed by a barrage of removal spells for every single creature that I put out. On turn 5, I often had no creatures on the board and a small hand size. My opponent would follow up with large creatures that I had no chance of removing. Extremely frustrating - where did all these Magic decks come out from?
The rest of the matches weren't too noteworthy, other than the one Zombie Death deck that I lost to because of the infamous Necroscepter and Cursed Obelisks combo which immobilized my board. I absolutely abhor Zombie Death decks (when they are played against me, of course), which is why I'm thankful that they don't perform too well against other decks 😂
Historical Performance
This week was my worst-performing week since I started playing Weekend Ranked seriously. From this brief stint with a tryhard Nature deck, I often found myself frustrated with the randomness involved in many of the Nature cards that I included. I realized that I often did not have enough board control to control the randomness and much preferred consistency and reliability - I'm currently trying out another variant of mid-range Nature that cuts down on the randomness and will report back with the results.
Past Weekend Ranked posts and performance in order of recency:
| Time Period | Deck | Score (Wins / Total Games) | Starting Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2022 W2 (Current) | Mid-range Nature | 11 / 25 | Mythic |
| Jan 2022 W1 | Aggro War | 18 / 25 | Mythic |
| Dec 2021 W4 | Aggro War | 19 / 25 | Mythic |
| Dec 2021 W3 | Aggro War | 16 / 25 | Mythic |
| Dec 2021 W2 | Aggro War | 21 / 25 | Twilight Shadow |
Concluding Thoughts
A terrible Weekend Ranked result for sure, but this disappointment will only fuel my competitive spirit for the future. Perhaps the people who have scored really well with Nature decks on the weekends can offer a different perspective, but I had lots of trouble controlling the randomness of Nature decks. Til' next time!
Post Header image source: Gods Unchained Media Kit
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