Hey, I've been playing GU for over a year now, reaching Mythic consistently. here are my thoughts on most popular decks. If anything feels wrong or is missing explanations, please let me know in the comments bellow :)
Here are the explanations, going from best to worst decks
Carving War :
Carving War is an extremely powerful combo deck for War. In my opinion, it is currently the strongest deck in the game, mostly because of its ability to draw most of its combo pieces early in the game. Cards like ‘’guardian of the pines’’ and ‘’Dreadwing’’ helps you consistently draw carvings. As for Ulrika, the centerpiece of the deck, she can be easily drawn either naturally or by using Creature-Draw tutors, like ‘’out of its misery’’, ‘’spoils of War’’ or even ‘’the trial begins’’. Also, unlike most combo deck, this archetype has a great ease with board control. Either by using spells that deals direct damage to enemy creature or simply by using ‘’bloodhound cavalry’’, board control shouldn’t be an issue. In conclusion, the shear strength and reliability of this deck makes it a much deserving spot in the top 1 deck for the current meta. The only things to look out for when playing carvings War are hand disruptors. Cards like ‘’dearly departed’’ or ‘’cutthroat insight’’ can greatly push back or nullify your counter all together. Since War has no counter to this, all you can do is hope to draw your combo faster than they draw these few counters.
Control Nature
Control Nature is a crazy strong deck that classes itself in the midrange section. You have board wipes, God heals, infinite value creatures, relic removal, board control and the list goes on. You can also effectively use dearly departed, paired with shines on us all for a guaranteed win into certain matchups which is really annoying to be on the receiving end. The real only downside of this archetype is the lack of draw. All your cards are incredibly strong by themselves, but without a clear-cut ability to draw effectively, you might be overwhelmed by an opponent who has a lot of cards in his hands at all times. You also lack a clear end game: either you hope your opponent forfeits the match after rendering their own deck useless or by getting a beefy That Which Feeds Us. BUT, you do not have any certainty of winning the game with either, which some might find annoying.
Mayday Deception
Admiral Mayday has been my most played deck EVER. I will drop a in-depth analysis soon but until now, just know this: it’s a great combo deck, able to push back a ton of decks with either ‘’toast to peace’’ and ‘’sartonian spymaster’’, beefy guys with ‘’lady marcella’’ and ‘’second-rate first mate’’ or by using mayday itself. You also get to use amazing cards like ‘’cutthroat insight’’ or ‘’crooked quartermaster’’. You can also effectively get your combo pieces with the god power ‘’flip’’. Flip can also be used to return mayday to your deck to counter the opponent maybe using a ‘’dearly departed’’, which might ruin your game otherwise. All in all, mayday is a ton of fun and amazingly good archetype, but the difficulty to learn and the constant choices to make can and will throw some people off. The only real issue of this deck is the NEED to draw the correct cards at the correct time. You can effectively counter almost anything, if you get lucky.
Bomb Dragon
Bomb Dragon Death, or BDB for short, is a very simple but effective archetype. The ability to almost always have something in hand to play into almost anything is great. The deck is easy to learn without much depth which can be interesting for newcomers. It has draw, board control, God damage, etc… theres not much to say about BDB other than how annoying it feels to go against. It 100% deserves it spot in high-A Tier.
Atlanteans Magic.
like BDB, Atlanteans, or atlants for short, always has something to play. It’s a mashup of very strong cards that gets a strong board pressure. With the ability to foresee, you always hope to draw Francesca early on. Being able to hit your opponent’s god with a full board, then summon a 15/15 god blitz is insanely strong. BUT atlants has a clear lack of draw, meaning there’s a possibility for you to be unable to actually summon the 15/15 while your opponent just gets high pressure. You’re also vulnerable to cutthroat insight or dearly departed ruining your combo, but most will just brute force through and still win.
Refresh Nature
Refresh Nature shares the same abilities has Control Nature, but trading some card-power for a clear-cut win condition, Xansiddion. Although Xansiddion is very powerful, it might take a turn or two to get him all juiced up and win the game. This opens up the ability for your opponent to either kill or take control of it which makes it somewhat unreliable, but still very strong. The clear lack of draw is also a big issue for this archetype. Although, I would say this deck is harder than control Nature.
Amazon Nature
Taking a break from everything I've said about Nature yet, this deck is very different. This really is just a big mashup of cards that are weak alone but strong together. With creature giving you the ability to deal board damage by summoning other amazons, that might deal even more damage after you summon even more amazon. You have CONSTANT PRESSURE, even with the extra possibility of doing 18+ damage in one turn with arkmonian onslaught. Great and easy deck, easy to learn, not much depth but oh-so strong.
Relic War
Relic is the archetype I’m currently playing with. The archetype has a great ability of pushing off board control while you’re building up a behemoth of a relic to maybe insta-kill your opponent. With cards allowing you to board wipe and cards allowing you to destroy creatures for very cheap, you pretty much guarantee your juiced up relic to hit your opponent. But, the biggest issue with this deck is relic removal. If your opponent is lucky, they might draw they one and only card able to destroy your relic, rendering your deck useless. It’s an easy deck to pick up with a lot of depth to it, making it a great choice for beginner to more experienced players. Also, there's only one card in the Sanctum that removes 2 durability from your opponent's relic. You need to be careful when buying things from the Sanctum, has to not let your opponent pick it up and destroy you relic with it.
Heal Light
Heal Light is a good archetype that can and will counter most other archetypes. With its ability to get their god’s health up to 99, they can be very hard to finish off. With the bug Light variant also getting both board pressure, board control and more god health, you really can’t go wrong picking up this deck. It is VERY beginner friendly and will certainly get you some hate for it. But is a great way to rank up without having to use much to any brain power.
Bitter Endings
Bitter Endings, or BE for short, is another combo deck, but is very different. In my opinion, this is the hardest deck to pick up and to rank up with, but can be insanely rewarding. I will not go in depth at all and will rather suggest you to look up guides online if you wish to pickup this deck. Other than that, this deck enables you to reliably draw your entire deck very very early on, while also getting board control and stopping enemies from attacking. Although this deck is very good, a simple dearly departed can end your game right then and there. Ive thought a lot about putting BE higher in the list, but the difficulty of it made me need to put it down. A good BE player though, will make this deck feel like an unstoppable force.
Food Chain
Food Chain, or FC for short, is also a combo deck. Although, it does not have the ability to insta-kill, you can very easily get 40 mana worth of creature on the board by turn 5. It is a very easy deck to pick up, very reliant on luck. If you don’t draw a certain card, you might not even get to use your deck at all.
Chosen one Light
Chosen one, or CO for short, is an archetype that recently got a much-needed card able to power your deck up. This deck is based on getting one specific card that can set one card as the chosen one. Then, other cards with use that chosen one’s stats to buff up their own ability. Choosing a 13/13 as the CO then enables other cards to benefit from these high stats. Its an easy deck to pick up but extremely luck reliant, basing their entire deck on hopes and dreams of drawing one of their two cards that can enable the combo to begin with.
Mutation Nature
Mutations are reliable, able to get insane board control, easy to pick up, lots of depth and able to get out of tough situations if youre lucky enough.
Zoo War
Zoo War is the pillar of the game. Without it, combo decks would run free of any counter. Although the deck is easy to pick up and play, you do get some situations where you actually need to predict what the opponent might be planning. All in all, I consider this deck to be what I consider the ‘’perfect middle’’ of all deck, making sure the deck isn’t just filled with filthy combo abusers.
Control Deception
Control Deception will most likely win by being annoying more than actually killing your opponent's god. I really fear the moments when I run into one. This deck is fairly easy to pick up but has a lot of depth. Luck is also very needed for this deck, although some might just forfeit after realizing what they're playing into.
Guild Deception
its just a mashup of fairly strong cards, cheap and easy to play, would only recommend this to beginners.
Dread Death
too luck based to be good, easy to counter, although it’s ability to snowball the game is very present, it just lacks where other decks succeeds.
Anubian Death
Too luck based to be higher in tier list and also too annoying to play against for me to want anyone else playing it.
Card Draw Magic
Doesn’t have much going on for it. Gets countered by zoo/aggro archetypes, gets countered by fast counters. Easy to pick up and learn though.
Zombies
Reliable at being annoying, you have great board pressure and control throughout the match. But, if you cant draw ‘’corpse explosion’’, you just lose. The deck that I recommend for beginners the most because of how easy it is to rank up with.
Hidden rush Deception
Easy to counter, no real power creep, board control is there but not much going on for them sadly. Delapore was really hype, until everyone realised how mid she really was.
Ramp Magic
Slow combo, countered by other combos, aggro/zoo, anything really because of how powercrept everything got and how nerfed mysteries are. That really brought down the average strengh of this deck. Some can make it work, most will get better results with any other combo decks.
Spellslinging Schoolteacher Magic
Usually used with Lost in the Depths (LitD for short), it is the fastest possible insta-kill in the game, but the unreliability of the combo, if unlucky, is very present, also gets hard countered by aggro/zoo and midrange decks. Best deck if you just want 5 minute games that are 50/50.
Olympian Light
Possibility to get very juicy creatures, but with power creep giving most archetypes the ability to just destroy them renders them obsolete in high ranks, would recommend to pick up for beginners.
Coronet
Please don’t pick this up. Also usually used with LitD, Coronet (or Coco) centers around getting 9 mana creatures to overwhelm your opponent. I, along with most of the community, agree for this to be the most toxic deck in the game.
Mill Deception
Only archetype I think is really bad is mill Deception. Your win condition is hoping you make your opponent overdraw an important card. But, you might just make them draw their entire combo for free, helping them more than anything else. You also enable aggro/zoo/midrange deck to have a handful of cards all game, helping them more than anything else. Bad deck, only deck I wouldn’t recommend.
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Interesting tier list. I don't agree with some of your descriptions, but it would take an entire new post to explain everything xD.
Keep on posting and check out other stuff on Hive as well!
Like Guild Deception can be really strong, someone a while back joined the game and got to Mythic right away with a deck that was $4-8. It plays like a toolbox and can be pretty effective. Not S tier, but still pretty good.
Mill Deception with all the sleeps is extremely dangerous and difficult to counter if you don't have relic removal and they draw well. The overall win rates are not fantastic, but they seem to have a niche in the current meta.
Guild deception feels just too little of everything. its good for spamming cheap units. But, easily countered by war and nature that has ''random board damage'', bypassing hidden and order. It can reach high ranks, like all other decks, but it will be much harder than other higher ranked deck in my opinion.
As for Mill deception, I feel like it is a deserved ''bad'' tier. The relic is the only thing going on for the deck, and a deck built around 2/30 odds is weak. Plus, in the process of trying to draw the relic, you just end up giving insane value to the opponent.
also both going for cheap, I would recommend zombies, that are better and easier, or relic, which is much better but much harder, while both being in the under 10$ category.
Mill can counter aggro with sleeps and by the time the sleeps run out the opponent is dead from all the chip damage - in an ideal scenario. But I haven't played it much myself, this is just from what I see others do to me xD
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STOPEndless That Which Feeds Us is a clear endgame though...
I couldn't agree with the last position for MILL DECEPTION. I always retreat after a few turns because of the amount of Sleep my enemy manages to put me in, as well as removing my cards from the table.
i'm playing war carving, although i'm missing the star card of the deck. good article.