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.
With the Weekend Ranked rewards update coming in hot this weekend, competition is getting fierce - Mythic players are rewarded for battling at the top with not only increased card packs but also extra $GODS. Together with the matchmaking change that aims to match players of different ranks much less regularly, the Weekend Ranked event is becoming more competitive. This weekend, I continued to run my Tempo Magic deck that continued to give a good performance, ending my first 25 matches with 18 wins.
Deck Overview
Deck Link: GUDecks
This deck is a budget version of Copperpitch's original Tempo Mage deck without the Pyramid Wardens, Ancient Texts, and a copy of Form of Power. (Although over the last week, cards like Pallas, Champion of Magic and Pallas' Wand have risen in price rather significantly, making this less of a budget deck now.)
I'll go through a few of the changes that I made since last week, as well as a few thoughts on some of the cards after playing over 100 games with this deck archetype.
I chose to include 1x Warp Engineer and 1x Form of Power to replace both my Flying Carpets. The sole reason for not including 2x Form of Power is simply because I didn't feel like shelling out another 0.02 ETH for another one (nor shell out more for the objectively better Ancient Texts), so I decided to give Warp Engineer a try. Warp Engineer is... middling at best in this deck with its rather underwhelming 1/3 body. Even though it's often played as a "free" card by playing it before another 2-cost or greater card, I don't think it's worth the card slot and I'll probably cut it in the next week.
The good thing about Warp Engineer is that it will most likely be a key part of most Magic combo decks down the line, so it's a worthy buy before some Solitaire Magic archetype becomes tier 1.
Pallas, Champion of Magic has shown itself to be really good when matching against slightly less aggro decks, although it is almost unplayable if the board control is conceded to the opponent. It serves as another value machine alongside Pallas' Wand and All-seeing Spire and can be a great wildcard against tough matchups since it is possible to Delve spells from other factions. Nothing is more satisfying than using the opponent's faction's spell against them to win the game!
I found Defend the Ramparts to be a little lacking in many circumstances - it's a dead draw against control decks, I usually don't have a Structure on the board to get that additional 1 damage, and 2x 2 damage is hardly enough to deal with aggro decks. I'm thinking of replacing it with something else, but I'm not sure what yet.
Performance and Matchmaking Breakdown
Starting Rank: Mythic
Wins: 18/25
Reward Packs: 2x Core Rare, 1x Core Epic, 1x Core Legendary, 2x DO Rare, 1x DO Epic, 1x DO Legendary
Theoretical pack value based on current pack prices: $36.96
| Opponent Deck | Score (Wins / Total Games) |
|---|---|
| Nature | 5 / 6 |
| War | 5 / 8 |
| Magic | 2 / 3 |
| Death | 3 / 4 |
| Deception | 2 / 3 |
| Light | 1 / 1 |
| Total | 18 / 25 |
I had a great start to the weekend with only 1 loss in my first 13 games, but things went downhill in the second half of my matches. To be fair, I noticed myself making many misplays - often realizing the mistake right as I made them. Dealing too much damage with the Monolith instead of saving up power for the next turn, bad Sanctum plays, and unoptimized card play probably accounted for a few of these losses, although the rest were simply due to bad match-ups and poor draws.
This deck particularly doesn't do well against War decks unless the Iron-tooth Goblin manages to snipe a T1 Enduring Shield from the opponent - War decks have access to many Blitz creatures that make quick work of the low-attack creatures in this deck while still having monstrous late-game units like Hector. Even with the War nerfs, they still pose a big threat to this deck.
The current meta also seems to have decks that include Munosian Infiltrators that work very well against pretty much all creatures in this deck. With how buggy Munosian Infiltrator works with Ward, it made some games extremely frustrating - the game completely breaks down or works unexpectedly. Playing a Munosian against a 1/4 Warded Pallas doesn't make it a Warded 1/1, but it also doesn't leave it as an unwarded 1/4 - it can take 1 hit from a Faeflame Blade to become a 1/1 and dies from the second hit.
In this game, my All-seeing Spire became a 0/0 due to a combination of Munosian Infiltrator's weird interaction with Ward. I couldn't attack with it, my opponent couldn't attack it, and for some reason, my God Power became totally unusable as well. And yes, the Spire still continued to draw me extra cards each turn. GU Devs, I know you have a lot on your plate but this interaction literally breaks games. #plsfix
Highlights and Game Footage
vs Structure/Control Magic
The game video is sped up 2x for your viewing pleasure.
In this match against Structure Mage, Pallas proves himself to be a valuable asset by giving me removal that helped to deal with my opponent's big creatures. Without Pallas, I would most likely have lost!
With a well-timed Reap and Ratify, I obliterated my opponent's chances of coming back to steal a victory. You could say that I got extremely lucky with the Delves though, as I've had experiences of delving unplayable cards with Pallas a few times before.
Historical Performance
The elusive 20-win weekend feels so close, yet so far. With 8 weekends in Mythic, I have gotten close 4 times, but getting close means nothing and I will be striving to have at least one 20-win weekend. Even though I don't have a fully-optimized deck, with some matchmaking and card draw luck, I know for a fact that it's possible to reach the big 20.
I'm also trying my best to rotate Gods in my roster to keep things fresh, but I'll most likely still be running Tempo Magic next week. What's next in line? Probably Deception, since I unpacked a copy of The Hollow recently and would like to give Deception a try.
Past Weekend Ranked posts and performance in order of recency:
| Time Period | Deck | Score (Wins / Total Games) | Starting Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2022 W1 (Current) | Tempo Magic | 18 / 25 | Mythic |
| Jan 2022 W5 | Tempo Magic | 19 / 25 | Mythic |
| Jan 2022 W4 | Mid-range Nature | 17 / 25 | Mythic |
| Jan 2022 W3 | Mid-range Nature | 15 / 25 | Mythic |
| Jan 2022 W2 | 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
It was another nail-biting Weekend Ranked for me that crushed my 20-win dreams with 3 consecutive losses at the very end. Some of the matches were a little too close for my liking, and I'll be doing some deck revision over the week to inch myself closer to the 20-win mark next week.
Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend matches!
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