[Aurora Open #2 - First Place ] 5M Mechs + Lineup

A variant of Mechs using Grappling Hooks and Flame Throwers to narrow down corridors and help set up big detonate turns - turning green enjoyers and low mobility stat farmers in a 1km radius very sad very fast. The original list ran Bombslinger, Underground Brigand and Emperor's Command. I opted to swap those out for Faeries, Ritualist, Garudan and Meteor to further improve the green and combo/slower matchups. With an event count of 10 this list isn't the best shell for flipping Faeries consistently. However this isn't a major downside as you have the tools with Detonate to counter any overly expensive, unit based investments targeting Faeries. Even if you end up not utilising them for damage, they make for excellent collectors with the utility present in the flying keyword. Ritualist lets you curve out Carrier on turn 3 and helps glue some of the different combo pieces together like fishing for Detonate, Hook or looking to flip Faeries. This archetype was popularised by the player sjb, who had some great success climbing to high positions on Faeria's ladder ranking with it. It's a delicate piece that requires a sensible setup.

My other decks were:

https://www.faeria.com/the-hub/deck/4857-no-dlc-dream-reaver-enchant
https://www.faeria.com/the-hub/deck/4766-no-dlc-blue-7s
https://www.faeria.com/the-hub/deck/5476-red-rush-9

Overall I was quite satisfied with how this lineup performed. The two red decks covered the weakness of my heavy blue decks (high mobility yellow and blue) and in return gave me a solid standing into red's counters (green and big, single target threats). With Reaver and Red Rush having a set of very decisive matchup tables (90/10, etc) I felt it was good to counteract on some of that swinging discrepancy with a decent pair of flexible picks.
In the finals the adjusted Mechs (see above) got a shot at answering both Green Ramp and Crackthorn while Blue 7s didn't get a sizeable showing in this tournament. Nonetheless 7s does combine a heavily synergistic kit with a decent capacity for swarming board, alongside a pesky, single, red flex slot in Garudan. This makes it a lot easier to pilot into just about any midrange. With a low land count comes quick access to the powerwheel and high levels of adaptability. Early aggression can be haltered by dropping Ancient Herald turn 2, playing for Windfall+7s+Archon on turn 3, staying out of trade range with Farm Boys, Battle Toads, Mochies to set up Mirror Phantasm/Mythmaker, cheating out an early Magnus with a lot of +1s, turning the tides (quite literally) with Baeru - just to name a few.

Of course all the flexibility in the world can only get you as far as your knowledge of all the different decks/archetypes goes - keeping the odd Meteor in hand when facing a slow cooker, rushing with a Baeru when going against an Emerald Salamander; the list goes on. There are a many funky applications, both in gameplay and in deck adaptation, that can enable you to get far. Seeing them and knowing when to play for which one is a tough beast to tame.

Either way the standardised 'bring 2 counters' rule can still be applied here; the slight variations on our flex picks ultimately don't deter the odds for our desired counters to a meaningful degree. Going beyond the game of counters within the colour pie my next step is always analysing the decks capabilities for board-centric (long term value/high board presence) and non board-centric (from hand damage/aggression/ inevitability/otk) play. From there on if I can consider '2 counter' to apply reasonably well to that dynamic my probing is usually done and the lineup complete.

With all that, albeit at times demotivating, in mind I'd be extra chuffed to see you have a go at ironing out the blind spots in your lineups. Yes, it is most definitely hard work but I hope I could give half of a decent explanation when diving into my reasoning behind why you would want to chose to adapt some of your lists.

With that in mind keep at it and don't fall off the outer edges of the matchup spread.

Sincerely,

A Lizard