Intro
I spend too much time in GU's balance discord channel. A player name keeps coming up: mightyuncle. Why? Because of his ability to pilot incredibly cheap nature decks achieving win rates high above the rest of us. He routinely achieves 20 wins in Weekend Ranked. He doesn't stream or have gameplay vids (that I could find), so I thought it might be fruitful to look at his deck and try and glean what he could be up to.
The Deck: "Mighty Midrage"
Deck Code:
GU_1_5_IDNIDNCAuCAuHAEHAECATCATCCOCCOCAvCAvIDKIDKIALIALIDSIDSCByCByIDMIDMIDOIDOGAnGAnIDFIDFIARIAR
That estimated price isn't a typo: 0.03 ETH. Also, look at the deck stats. He is achieving an 82% win rate over a large sample size of 140 games. Meanwhile, the general population has copied his deck and played 16k matches achieving only 59%. Clearly, there is some key component to piloting this deck to unlock its potential.
First Clue:
Every card is 2x. No Chiron, Finnian, or any of Nature's other amazing legendary cards. To me, this screams that a hard-mulligan strategy is in play here. With this setup, you have a roughly 40% chance to get the card you're looking for in your opening hand. In my mind, there are only three cards that could be the target:
While Sudden Bloom is definitely a win condition, I just can't see a hard mulligan for a 6 mana card. Falling Star seems a bit iffy, too.
Second Clue:
Limited confusion.
This is kind of obvious, but as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, when you are running a buff deck, you want more control over the creature you're investing extra mana in. With 2x Wildfires and 2x Sudden Blooms, having some non-confused creatures is important. This makes me lean towards Wildfire.
Third Clue:
The mana curve is almost flat. It's not dominated by 1- and 2-mana creatures, which is very common for nature decks. Wildfire rewards wide boards. The wider the better. If the mulligan target is a turn 3 Wildfire, I think we'd see the deck skewed more towards low-cost creatures.
So, how to play it?
The primary win condition is to arrive at 6 mana with creatures on board for Sudden Bloom. My first guess is that a hard-mulligan strategy for either Jag Staff (preferred) or Wildfire (second pick) is the key. While Falling Star puts creatures on board, a bunch of 2/2 confused badgers isn't exactly prime targets for buffing.
Looking for a 5-mana drop in the mulligan phase is unintuitive, but not unheard of (e.g. Mirage looking for Well of Power in his Ramp Magic deck). This could explain the large disparity in win rates between mightyuncle and everyone else.
Because we are looking for either card, we have something like an 80% chance of getting one of them in the mulligan. Then, you're looking for any of the great early game cards that nature has (faeflame, marsh walker, etc).
Testing
I have exactly zero decks with an 80% win rate over 140 games. I'm almost certainly more like those people playing the 16k games and scratching their heads. This means I could have this completely wrong. Maybe he is after the wildfire and then banks on his solid creature list to fill the board. Maybe not by turn three, but maybe on turn 4-5 he's established 3 creatures and then seals the deal with Wildfire. Every creature is Wild after all.
The only way to really figure it out is to play the deck. I'll start by trying to hard-mulligan for the staff or wildfire. With a really high chance of getting one, I should be able to tell quickly if it's effective. If not, I can then change strategy.
Closing Thoughts
At .03 ETH, I think everyone should own this deck. It's a riddle, and the promised reward is an OP win percentage - at least in the current meta. If you look at mightuncle's overall performance, he is clearly a top-tier player. So far, he appears to be keeping his secrets to himself.