Surprising Climb

A few weeks ago I was lamenting how my efforts at climbing the ladder in Standard Constructed for November's season was not working:

Its amazing how quickly the meta shifts in Magic the Gathering. Just a little while ago I was celebrating getting to Platinum Standard Ranked with my mono black deck and now I'm getting beat around the face like no one's business, languishing in Gold 3 and 4.

 That was back on Nov 5 and I stuck with the deck for another week to give it time and see if it could bounce back (or if I could play it better more accurately) but while I climbed to the cusp of Gold 2 I could not bridge the gap.

I decided to try something else on Nov 13, switching from the mono-black deck centered around Ayara and Liliana to a Rakdos Sacrifice deck that leaned heavily into the Cauldron Familiar/Witch's Oven combo.

At first it did not seem to make a difference, falling all the way down to one loss from back in Silver. It seemed like I was facing nothing but control decks based around Doom Foretold and Fires of Invention! By the middle of the month I had written the season off as I had very few rare wildcards to draft with and was getting very frustrated so I decided just to ride it out and plan for December.

And then something strange started to happen. I started to win more. I don't know if the meta shifted so I saw fewer control decks, or if I relaxed after giving up so I played tighter, or my luck of the draw changed, or some combination of all three but I began climbing from the bottom of Gold IV and after a few days was hitting Gold 2 and 1.

"Maybe I will get back to Platinum this month," I thought, and sure enough, I did.

Highlight is Rakdos Sacrifice deck.

So my original goal of getting to Platinum 2 is back on the table!

About the deck: the base engine of Cat -> Oven is what this deck is built on. They are both one mana to cast and operate without further mana investment, pinging the opponent for 1 each turn and gaining me 1 life in return. And it operates at instant speed so if someone tries to kill the cat early, I can simply remove it myself and bring it back later.

Everything else in the deck is gravy. Mayhem Devil can deal a lot of extra damage if left unchecked, Cavalier of Night and Rankle can beat down as well as trim the herd on the other side of the board, Reaper of Night is value add with some draw cards, and my spells are around removal to make sure I don't die until they do.

Biggest threats to this deck besides bad luck on the draw are decks with tools to remove the Oven and control decks with lots of counter spells. A particularly bad matchup is against the Esper control deck making rounds that uses Doom Foretold to slowly clear the board and take apart my engine and then cripple me with Ethereal Absolution.

I'm going to ride this deck out to the end of the month and see if Plat 2 is reachable in 5 days. Next month, maybe back to mono black with Cat Oven and Ayara?

Limited Success

While my woes in Standard Ranked continue and this season is a write off for the most part, let's talk about Limited Draft.

I love doing drafts, either in Arena or in person. The thrill of opening a pack and seeing what's there, finding bombs, building a deck... it all appeals to me in a visceral way. The first sets I really understood what was going on and what I was doing (largely thanks to Limited Resources podcast) was War of the Spark, and the base set of M20 followed thereafter and in both of those I had moderate success.

But then Throne of Eldraine drafting started and... wow... I did not do so well.

There is someone about Throne of Eldraine that flummoxes my drafting. I know the card values, I know the deck archetypes, I know about drafting the hard way versus easy way, but for the first 9 drafts I struggled to get to 3 wins before the third loss. I never felt this bad in the previous two.

But then I got my first 6 win deck which bolstered my morale, and a few drafts later another 6-3 deck and my average in Eldraine started to look less like a disaster. Still didn't run the full 7 wins though...

That brings us to my latest draft. I pay the gold, open Pack 1 and see that smirking bastard, Oko:

Right then, that's an easy first pick! I continue on, selected other blue and green cards for what I think will be a Simic Food deck.

But there is a problem: the green cards are not coming to me. One of the 7 bots is cutting my green cards and leeching my card pool! I opened pack 2 looking for a good card to complement Oko but saw Robber of the Rich, and I wasn't changing lanes for that. But on the other hard, Merfolk Secret Keeper and Didn't Say Please kept showing up, and the bot cutting my green cards continued to, well, cut my green cards!

By the end of two packs I had this card pool going on:

In pack 3 (pick 2 no less) I did manage to score Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig but the rest of the cards continued to be scarce on good green cards. So I was left at the end of the drafting with a conundrum: Green-Blue, Blue splashing green, or go full on mill deck Mono Blue?

How can you even consider NOT using Oko, you ask? I mean, he is a super bomb and voted most likely to get banned from Standard next week. But...... I didn't have the cards to support him in the Simic food deck where he shines best. I decided reluctantly to cut him (*gasp*) and go pure mono blue:

With 5 Merfolk Secret Keepers, a Lucky Charm, 3 Didn't Say Please counter spells, I felt pretty good I could mill consistently and score some wins.

And boy did it ever! I went 7-1 with only one fast RW aggro deck killing me when he had 2 cards left in his library. There were a couple other close games but the milling always won out in time.

Sorry Oko, maybe next time.

Post Script: So that Oko I drafted, mythic rare? I had one already from the Renewal gift when set rotation happened, so this was my second copy of the card. And in the packs I got for winning this draft? I opened a THIRD Oko! You know what this means, right? Guaranteed banning incoming...

Back to the Drawing Board

Its amazing how quickly the meta shifts in Magic the Gathering. Just a little while ago I was celebrating getting to Platinum Standard Ranked with my mono black deck and now I'm getting beat around the face like no one's business, languishing in Gold 3 and 4.

Not Climbing The Ladder :(

The big issue is that when Field of the Dead was banned, decks around Oko, The Thief of Crowns started to dominate the format, typically in green ramp decks that overwhelmed the opponent and turned their best pieces into 3/3 Elk tokens.

Oko Oh No!

The meta shifted in response to this with more focus on controlling decks, either based around something like Esper Doom Foretold or Fires of Invention enchantments. There is also a fair number of Red and Gruul aggro decks.

My black mono decks, both last season's version and my new one based around Ayara and Midnight Reaper/Liliana Dreadhorde General, do decently against those aggro decks, but the Oko and control decks are very difficult for me to deal with because they have the tools to dismantle parts of my engine fairly easily in the midgame and then overwhelm me with big powerful spells/creatures in the late game.

Look at my stats:

Doesn't look too bad in the matchups, right? Yeah, the Simic is crushing me but everything else is ok...

OMG OUCH! A lot of those decks are really similar Fires of Invention variants which are dragging me down from a win rate of 63% last season to 55% this season, hence the stalled at Gold 3/4 tier.

So I'm going back to the drawing board, just not sure if I'm going to ride the rest of this season out and try again fresh next one, or craft some sort of deck that can get me over the hump.