Mythic Weekend Ranked with Only Welcome and Core Cards: Deception Edition, 8 Wins…

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 fourth 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.

Weekend 21 May 6th – May 8th

Going to the last half of the Gods here in the WelCore challenge, and it’s the ones I predicted that would have problems… and what a problem it was! I only got 8 wins! And this week I actually had time to practice with the deck during the win… and it wasn’t pretty. I tried an Hidden Rush version and a Midrange version and I was getting <30% winrates with them… I though the Hidden Rush one could be ok but there was just way too much Nature in the meta and it does not do well against them. I finally decided to go with the Midrange version as it felt like it could do better. I actually made a post on Reddit asking which one I should play, and it was pretty close with Midrange winning for a bit, then the next day I checked and Aggro was winning by quite a lot haha. I think I made the right choice though, even with 8 wins… I think it would’ve been less with the Aggro.

Weekend	18	19	20	21
God	Light	War	Nature	Deception
Wins	15	12	15	8
Prize (USD)	$27.5	$16.5	$27.5	$12

Here’s the deck that I used, costing 0.050 ETH or ~$9. And for reference here’s the Hidden Rush that I tried.

Matches

As expected, I faced A LOT of Nature decks. And since I dropped a few ranks while losing so much, I didn’t see as many Anubians. Regardless, it was a bloodbath haha. Not sure if there’s much to say here.

WelCore Analysis

I knew Deception was going to be in the bottom half of the Gods in terms of WelCore decks, but wow. There are certainly strong cards, though one did get nerfed before this week, but a weak early and mid game hurts it. Another thing is that there isn’t much value generation/draw in WelCore (save for Screams in the Night for Nether/Aggro decks); a lot of the good ones are in Divine Order.

Notable WelCore Cards

Hunting Trap is one of the most efficient removals in the game, as it scales very well into the late game. Rapture Dance is a very good board wipe that punishes opponents that go wide, although many players will try to play around it. Witherfingers is still a decent finisher, although with the nerf where it’s not stealthed anymore hurts it a lot against most Gods; against Nature it doesn’t matter because they have Lightning Strike anyways or The Hunt.

Missed Cards

Compared to the deck that I used in the F2P Gauntlet Challenge, a lot of good cards are missing. Divine Order was pretty good to Deception. Stoneskin Poison is amazing for shutting down Aggro or even removing a Frontline for Aggro. Armor Lurker is really good and trades 2-for-1 most of the time and sometimes even more, unless it gets Canopy Barraged of course. Patient Pickpocket and Ludia’s Dedicant are amazing value cards; the latter you can hide with your GP and activate at the same time. Guild Enforcer, while already good on its own, is even better for Deception because of the Guild synergy. If you need some reach, use a Selfless Guildmate on it and you can hide it for another attack next turn. It’s a good stall too for when you want your opponent to go wider for a punishing Rapture Dance.

Going Forward

Next week I’m gonna do Magic; I played some games with a Control deck and it didn’t do well… a little better than Deception but I’m not hoping for much haha. I’m seeing another sub-10 win weekend. So why am I playing Magic instead of Death? Well… I think Death is even worse than Deception and Magic haha. That’s gonna be a very very bad weekend for sure, but it’ll be a good end to this challenge :p

Last Week's Rewards

My first MJ Legendary! Asenath, which isn’t really used in Anubian Decks anyways, worth about ~$4. Got a Frey, Archmage too from a Core Epic; too bad it won’t quite work in a WelCore Magic deck.