So Close, Yet...

... So far.

I was running along fine since reaching Platinum 4 tier and it seemed like Diamond was easily within reach thanks to the broad shoulders of the Questing Beast and friends, and then Theros Beyond Death started to impact Standard.

Right around when I was one win from Platinum tier 1 in fact. I started getting hit with Legendary Enchantment gods, Escaping Titans, Mono-white aggro decks and Mono-black devotion decks (Gray Merchant of Assholery is on my Hate list). I was forced to make some modifications to my deck like removing Midnight Reapers for some Return to Nature instants that do triple duty against enchantments, enchantment creatures, and escape creatures in the graveyard, but even with those changes I was not doing as well.

Before Theros my record was 47-27 (64%) and after is was 53-53 (50%). While I expect the record to flatten out as I climbed the ranks, it is apparent I need to go back to drawing board.

That being said, I did manage to put on a winning streak last week and got into Platinum 1 and yesterday was twice within 1 win of my goal of Diamond. Failed to convert both times and the second time had a wonderful little 5 game losing streak. With only a few more days left of this month's season I'm not hopeful I'm going to make that goal, but that's OK. I've already started planning for next month's deck...

Blue White? Blue Black? Mono-white? Mono-black? Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Going On An Adventure

At the beginning of November I set a goal to climb the ladder to Platinum and after a few missteps I did so with a Rakdos sacrifice Cat Oven deck. In December I wanted to expand my horizons and do a control deck on the ladder and failed to reach Platinum again, but stilled learned a lot.

January, the last month of the Throne of Eldraine standard meta, I decided to try a Green Black Golgari Adventures deck as it seemed to be one of the toughest decks I was running into on Arena. I'm happy to report that its not even the middle of the month and Platinum rank has been achieved.

Now I'm going to see if I can climb to Diamond before the end of the month.

I started off with a deck I got from @MythicMeebo who used it at the Mythic Championships to a top 8 finish.

I didn't have a great start with it, having a 2-4 record. So I switched to a similar deck:

I played this one a lot, 79 matches, and while I had some early success climbing to Gold 3 quickly it flattened out. At a 54% win rate I was not going to climb very well. The problem seemed to be that it was too slow to kill early, and lacked a lot of end game power. I tried a version with more Beanstalk Giants and a Liliana Dreadhorde General, but really it was too late or too easy to counter. I always felt I was fighting from behind.

So finally I switched to this deck:

This deck had the four mythic Questing Beasts and three Rankle, Master of Pranks which both increased the ability of the deck to hit hard and fast in the early game or as surprise damage in late game. Ideally I overwhelm the opponent before they can stabilize, and if they do stabilize then Cavalier of Night or Massacre Girl can break the deadlock.

One of the things I learned from these decks is the importance of card draw from the Edgewall Innkeeper and Foulmire Knight (and less so from Vraska). Those extra cards are necessary to keep up the pressure against counter spells from control decks or removal from other decks. Without them the deck runs out of gas and its hard to get going again.

My current deck is working well at the moment, but I've got an eye on some substitutions in case it flounders on the ladder. Noxious Grasp is useful in a lot of situations but could be swapped for something like Lucky Clover to get more value from the adventure spells (as long as you have enough targets or enough life for the ones that take your life as a cost like Swift End), and the Great Henge is OK but rarely affects the outcome of my games, its more of a "win more" card so I might swap it out for another Cavalier of Night who is a definite momentum swing.

Look out Diamond, here I come!