A weekly recap of my Mythic Weekend Ranked experience, this time doing a challenge of only using cards from the Welcome and Core set. This is my third weekend doing this challenge. Previously I completed a Free-To-Play (F2P) Gauntlet with all the Gods to show that they can all compete and get Legendary packs. See the summary thread here.
Well it happened again, got to 15 wins with a WelCore deck! I think most people knew that Nature has a strong base and that’s why it was dominating the lower ranks. I thought there were some key cards that are missing from the Welcome and Core set but I guess it’s enough to do pretty well this weekend!
| Weekend | 18 | 19 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| God | Light | War | Nature |
| Wins | 15 | 12 | 15 |
| Prize (USD) | $27.5 | $16.5 | $27.5 |
Here’s the deck that I used, costing 0.052 ETH or ~$14.
The reason I did decent with this WelCore deck is because it worked quite well with the new trendy deck: Anubian Death. I faced a few versions of it, even ones with Demogorgon, but I was able to keep a pretty high win rate against them. The <50% win rate against Nature was expected as I was using a limited version of their decks, but I didn’t expect to see so many of them. I didn’t face any Magic at all which would’ve been the only matchup where I’d use the Animal Bond GP over Selena’s Mark.
As stated before, Nature was always considered the best budget/starter option because it had the best free cards. The creatures are usually overstated with the drawback of being confused. On top of that, Nature also has good relics and removal as well.
Notable WelCore Cards
There’s a lot of notable WelCore cards in Nature, with the Broccolis and Jaguars and Canopy Barrage, so I wanted to highlight the ones that changed with Core Refresh as well as one that I didn’t expect to do so well. Staff of Roots is pretty great; it does the same total damage as Faeflame Blade but all in one turn, plus with the condition met you get a 1/1 body that heals your God as well, alleviating a bit the downside of taking face damage for board control. Valewarden Minotaur, even after its recent nerf of -1 strength, provides good value plus healing which can’t be beat. Finally, the card that surprised me was the jolly Green Giant; it won the game for me countless times. It doesn’t have any immediate impact on the board when it’s played, but its stats as well as overkill makes up for it. It’s a big threat if your opponent can’t get rid of it, and with its high health it’ll be hard for them unless they have unconditional removal. It’s great against Anubians because it doesn’t matter if they have their 1/1 frontline up, this can reach over it and kill other things with overkill.
Missed Cards
Compared to the deck that I used in the F2P Gauntlet Challenge, I would say not too many cards were missed now. The one card that I would have loved to have would be Celestial Stag; the value it can generate can be game-winning if left unchecked. Finnian Fruitbearer, while not necessary, can improve the early game (note that from the WelCore sets, the only Wild 2-mana Nature creature is Black Jaguar!). I didn’t miss Giant Pangolin because it’s in the same slot as Green Giant and as stated above, it was carrying its weight. Jaguar Staff is nice, but I think there’s enough relics in the deck, and it’s more prone to relic removal compared to Staff of Roots.
Next week I’m deciding between Deception and Magic; I think the former has a better chance in this Anubian meta, so depending on if it gets nerfed, I might go with Deception. I’ve been trying to think of some kind of Death deck but its WelCore offerings are quite underwhelming… leave a note if you have any ideas!
My first MJ packs! And I screwed up my screenshots again haha so I only captured one of the Epic packs. Nothing too exciting here but I guess a Shadow Reclaim if I ever wanted to play Anubians. Barksworn Hunter is a good Nature card but it's quite cheap.