Jungle Boys Ranked Weekend Rundown

Introduction

Mortal judgment has been unleashed on the arena, and the meta is in flux. I have been playing control nature decks every weekend and thought of changing it with the times and playing some amazons this weekend. I had a mediocre to good weekend going 15/25 and will be breaking down my deck and the match-ups I faced.

I didn't run any MJ cards in my deck as I didn't buy any new packs, waiting till the meta settles to snag some cards at a good price. Although there are some amazon cards that I will be most likely adding to this deck in the future.

The Deck

I call this deck the amazon swarm. It is all about swarming the board, gaining board control, and having a finisher card such as "Arkominian Onslaught" or "General Orythia" being played. It is an aggro-mid-ranged deck that is easy to pilot with no brain cells burnt, just the way I like it.

I used the pack stalk tech that I learned from @kstreet to pump out as many cards as possible onto the board. I have utilized sixteen two or less mana cost amazon creatures to achieve this.

"Canopy Sniper," I believe, is one of the most underrated cards for Amazon decks. This sniper will snipe her way to board control kingdom. I played a match-up against light, and they dropped "Zealous March"; I was Board-wide with two canopy snipers and "Arkominain Onslaught" on hand; guess what happened? Yes, the sniper sniped down most of them to give me board control back.

"Ferocious Rougarou" is another card with some bad rap around it and is barely played. I play this as a mid-game placeholder, especially as I can buff it up with my low-cost creatures. If I don't manage to hit either "Arkominian Onslaught" or "General Orythia," this bad boy will hold the board for me and give me some breathing room. In my opinion, this card is more valuable five cost to me than cards such as "Jungle Princess" or "Mytros Daughter." Another card that I am looking to add to this deck is "Barksworn Hunter" as I believe it's a significant upgrade to this deck.

Lastly, I utilize the most standard nature removals for board control, such as "Canopy Barrage" and "Lightning Strike." You may wonder why I don't go with "Primal Guidance" as a removal, especially in an Amazon deck; the reason is that I value the other nature removals higher than it. One downside this deck has is not having a relic removal, which in this meta is helpful. I may update this deck with "Sword Breaker Sage," although I need to decide between cutting either "Gersemi" or the "Spell Catchers." I want to note that you will want to stay away from running "The Hunt," a mistake I made in my earlier amazon decks, as you will want to end the game before this card can be played or at least close to it.

The Match-ups

This week the brunt of the matches was against war and nature, which I faced in 17 of the 25 games. I was lucky not to match up against any death decks. With Anubuans rising, who would want that? Yes, RNGesus was on my side this weekend.

Even though the meta is highly aggro, and war is suited explicitly for aggro play, they seemed to be struggling this weekend as MJ didn't really help them out as much as I thought. There was a lot of Viking play from past weeks, and I didn't have much trouble with those decks as amazon aggro is more potent, especially with going "Selena's mark".

On the other hand, nature is a 50/50 match-up, in my opinion, especially as most decks I faced were nature regen aggro variations. It highly depends on your first draws, as you will be fighting for the death for board control and hoping your removals hit the correct targets. Although one thing with the amazon aggro variation is you ramp up slightly faster, giving you a slight advantage.

Light, as in with nature, comes down to early card draws and especially who goes first. Light going first is a tough pill to swallow as they will be at an inherent advantage in regard to board control. You will need to wisely utilize your removals and hope your canopy snipers will be drawn early. As I eluded to before, I believe canopy snipers greatly help with winning this match-up.

Magic as a match-up is all about the war of attrition, as the decks I faced were both control variations. If you can go board-wide early before they get their board-wide removals, you have a greater chance to win. I utilize cards such as "Amazon Spellcatcher" and "Barksworn Protector: early to mitigate most of their spell damage. Although they have spells coming out of there, you know what, and if you can hold on and go face, this match-up is mostly winnable. Do not get frustrated early is another point of advice I would like to give.

Deception is an easy match-up in theory, although I had a negative win rate this weekend against them as all my early card draws were, pardon my french GARBAGE. Again, the match-up is to hold your board control and go wide as fast as possible before they get to their removals, such as "Rapture Dance." If they aren't running rapture dance by any chance, you have a freebie, and it is usually a winning match-up.

Conclusion

This week wasn't the best showing I have had, although I had alot of fun playing Amazons and theory crafting this deck for this weekend. I will definitely be tinkering with this deck and see if I can have a better weekend in the future. Hopefully, I get to dodge all Death Decks like the past weekend. I hope everyone had a fun ranked weekend with alot of wins.

Twitter - https://twitter.com/TheJungleBoy4