Hello everyone,
So most of you hive readers and friends on here, knows by now that most of my posts are about bringing and showcasing good and fun decks that helps bring players wins. However, lately I was thinking of doing something different, that can help either new players, or inexperienced player with a certain deck and wants to start playing it.
Since I always keep playing different decks, this means I face a lot of different matchups, so I decided to start explaining and showing different matchups for different decks, along with a narrated video about how I am piloting the game! This can help many players get familiar to these matchups and do better in the future!
So our first matchups for this series, we are going to be doing a card draw vs aggro and dragon war!
Card draw vs Aggro War
For each matchup explanation, we are going to be talking about what the archetype playstyle is, how to think while gping up against it and a good starting hand to do so!
Aggro War Playstyle
As the name suggests, Aggro war is all about being aggressive with your creatures, getting as much face damage as possible to your opponent to finish him off early, while using buffing cards and relics to dish out even more damage. It relies heavily and taking control since the beginning of the game and then using mid game strong creatures or spells to snowball even more. Such as these cards:
How to play against it with card draw!
Now ever since War god power Slayer got removed, it became so much more difficult for war to finish off the opponent with 1 less crucial weapon in its arsenal, which makes it safe to say that the way to play against aggro war is a little different now.
The way to go about it is, you can sacrifice a little in the early game and take a little damage with 2 things in mind:
1- Do not make him go very wide because you do not have much area clear until 7 mana.
2- The damage you sacrifice to take should be used to build up your hand and drawing so that you can start taking control against you opponent.
To do both of these things these are good starting hands to do so:
Here is 1 hand with and 2 without pyramid warden for people who do not own it. If you haven't done so, check my previous post for good alternative for the expensive cards.
You can use the Tracking Bolt and Street Conjurer combo after giving focusing on drawing for the first 2 or 3 turns since most of the creatures your opponent will play are going to be 2 or 3 HP maximum.
Card draw vs Dragon War
Now this archetype is somewhat new, and it took me a little bit of time to get used to it and understand it.
Dragon War archetype
The dragon war archetype the way I see it, is a mix between aggro war and control war. Because in this deck and at each stage, you have a specific purpose that each works together and underatnading those phases is the key to beating this deck. So let us go more in details and talk about each stage of the game.
Early Game
In the early game, the focus for dragon decks are playing early game creatures to pose some threat, but most important keep stacking Dragonite shards which are the key to this deck. He will try to take as less damage as possible while at the same time getting those shards in. The key cards for this are these 2:
Mid game
His goal at this point will be to keep clearing as much as possible with the many clearing options he has, or if he is already in control of the game, he will pose more threat with strong creatures while getting even more Dragonite shards for his hand. Here are the creatures he can use to do so:
or for further board clearing he can use:
Late game
Now basically late game is the cherry on top of the cake for this deck. At 7 mana he will already have strong enough creatures to hold on if he was not in deep trouble of course, and at 8 mana he will basically spam Dragonite Shards and keep summoning strong dragons for 1 mana only!
How to play against it with card draw!
Now after explaining in details how does this deck work, let us talk about how we should counter it using card draw magic.
Since we already established that Dragon deck does not pose much threat until 5 or 6 mana almost, the key to winning with card draw here is to set up a really good hand from early on in the game so you can keep taking control of things all the way. If you have a really good tempo going on, all you need is 3 or 4 turns and your opponet is in deep trouble! So the goal here is to have a slow starting hand but a hand that can set us up for the upcoming 2 or 3 turns. Here is an example of it:
This hand should set us up real good early on, and will give us insane tempo that will help us dominate the game since the beginning of the stages!
Gameplay
Here is a gameplay against both these archetypes where I explain each step of the game to further clarify everything we talked about previously
Conclusion
So here is how to play against both of these matchups according to my experience since I have been using card draw for quite a while now! I can safely say both of these matchups are pretty favored to us at the current meta, but of course not everytime you get the starting hand or draws that favors you so do not feel down if you lost some we all go through this!
That was it for this one, I hope these type of series and posts interests you, if they do be sure to let me know in the comments this encourages me a lot to keep doing and improving them for you all in the hope that I help anyone in this game! Be sure to let me know which matchups you would like to see next too. Take care and I will see you on the next one!
Mad Love, Peace out <3