Introduction
Last Weekend Ranked event I started in Ethereal Diamond, playing Control Nature. I managed to pull a few consistent wins and got myself into Mythic early during the week.
It's actually easier to stay in Mythic than to stay in the other top-mid ranks because there aren't loss points and safety thresholds and you need a worse consistent win rate to actually get under the MMR threshold (1340) to fall to ED. If you manage to keep the win rate above 50% without big losing streaks you don't de-rank, while this is not the case for the ranks just under Mythic.
I've been doing the Daily Play & Earn (DP&E) in Mythic during this week with some shiny cards rented from LootRush. In this post I'm going to go over the results and the impressions of my week-long experience playing Control Nature in the top rank.
The deck
Sword Breaker Sage is a card I happen to have in Diamond; otherwise I'd be playing with 2x Rust Away.
Crawling Madness is great against aggro decks but doesn't do much against anything else. Alternatives with a potentially bigger impact in the current meta would be Dread Marauder, Gang Shade (to try and disrupt Prophet of Progress or Ulrika for example), or some draw / tutoring with another Looter, Blade of Whiteplain or Path of Nature.
Matchups
I played a few games with Ramp Magic in the middle of the week when I felt like Control Nature wasn't working very well, but those didn't count for DP&E.
I summed up the results of all the CNature matchups in the table above. The meta in Mythic is quite different from the mid and lower ranks. There is less aggro and the deck choices are not influenced as much by the deck cost. There are a lot of people playing with shiny decks, either with cards they own, rented cards, scholarships, or a mix. I would say in general most people find a way to be able to play with any deck they want, even if they don't own all the cards.
Another thing I noticed is that in spite of all the chat in Discord about people playing with worse-performing decks as a compromise to cram more cheap shiny cards into their lists, I can't say I remember anyone playing with an obviously low-quality deck. For sure there were people experimenting with less common decks, but I can't say I remember matching with people playing very shiny decks with questionable card choices.
In fact, more than 65% of the matchups were against meta decks:
Amazons 14.3%
Atlanteans 13%
Carvings 13%
Bomb Dragons 7.8%
Vespids 5.2%
Zoo War 14.3%
Of these most frequent matchups, my best results were against
Zoo War (72.7%)
Amazons (72.7%)
Atlanteans (60%)
The worst matchups were
Vespids (0%)
Carvings (20%)
Bomb Dragons (33%)
The win rate against Bomb Dragons was surprising and disappointing. When I play that archetype I usually lose against CNature because they manage to out heal the damage, but I guess one needs to find all the healing early on to be able to outlast all the damage spells and void interactions. Some mistakes on my side and some bad draws led to this result, I guess.
Apart from these difficult matchups, there were other, less frequent ones that I felt were also very problematic: Mayday, Tempest Altar, Relic War, Ramp Magic - these combo decks that don't care about building a board are hard to deal with and they usually reach their win condition much faster than CNature, which is a particularly slow deck. Faster CNature decks with more draw that are able to play That Which Feeds Us more frequently are also very difficult to win against.
Deception decks with Captured Hearts, Charm, Path of Deception, and Lycel were also very hard to deal with, especially with Thievery GP. Now that the GPs changed maybe this matchup will become a little bit more balanced.
Card choices
At one point I decided to run only 1 Shines / Dearly because I was running into too a lot of aggro and those cards usually brick in these matchups. But then the odds of finding those critical cards in time against more control-y decks go down significantly, so I put the 2 copies back in.
I play with 1 Writhing Wolfpack and 1 Staff of Aberration to deny the Wolfpack Afterlife effect. I'm not sure if this setup is the most optimal, but I like the concept and I think I had mixed results with it. Wolfpack can also be reset with Shines, and at 8 mana it is a safe play, as you can play both cards in the same turn. Wolfpack alone can also be useful even if the opponent destroys it, as it resets any buffs when the creatures return from the void and thus creates suitable targets for Drag Down.
I never actually tried Dread Marauder, but I've seen it played against me with devastating effects. I don't know if it performs better than the Wolfpack / Staff package, but it was very popular a couple of months ago, perhaps before ToD came out.
I also play with Narcilla. For 4 mana the removal potential is really nice if the board state is favorable. Sometimes opponents concede on the spot if Narcilla is able to clear most of their board. Other players in Discord also seem to agree this is a solid choice for this archetype.
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Final impressions
Although I managed to stay in Mythic this week, the matchups against a lot of popular decks were very unfavorable. The results towards the end of the week were particularly bad, which contributed to a global win rate of slightly under 50%. There are a lot of people playing Carvings at the moment. Vespids, although not that frequent, feel more damaging to the overall win rate than they actually are.
Most combo decks win easily against CNature, especially if you can't remove key cards with Dearly / Shines in time. In some cases it's impossible to time their use efficiently because you cannot be sure if the opponent already has the critical card in hand or not.
The deck also makes for very long and drawn out matches. I think overall the current meta is not in a good place for this deck to be appealing in Mythic and I'll be looking at trying something else next week. I think I played against 2 other CNature players this week in a total of 77 matches.
It may still be a good choice to rank up consistently, as the matchups in the Gold ranks and ED can be quite different from Mythic - the matchups are more creature-centric, and aggro decks are more common.
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good progress! I would add Zaskia but all depends what diamonds you have and how much aggro there is
What would you replace for Zaskia?
I would take this list as a best vs any deck CNature: https://gudecks.com/decks/GU_1_5_BCeBCeKDSKDSLAHLAHLAILAILALLALMBBMBEMBEMBONACNACNAFNAGNAGNALNCaNCaNCfNCfOAJOAJPAfPAmPAmQAM?godPowers=100121&creator=%3C#5ca8ac%3Eplok&userId=3756879&archetype=Control%20Nature Check out Marauder, It has combo with DD, Shine, Reg xD Deer out, madness out. (Well I play the deer and madness but I have diamonds so all depends what you have)