Notes & Combos

Early M1 - Azamina Labrynth

This list is similar to the one from last season as the meta hasn't changed much since then. On that note, I'm still opting for Azamina Labrynth for ranked as I feel it has the best aspects of a productive control deck right now: It's rather resilient, scales resources well, and has a good toolkit that slants against the meta without over-reaching and ending up clunky in the less popular matchups. A lot of its negation and interaction on a whole is readily accessible and in-house; When it gets ahead it's easy to preserve that advantage and stay ahead - you're not non-engine needy to manage an opponent and keep them out (a pitfall that's not uncommon to other control decks.)

Equally important, it's generally good into a number of the midrange decks that litter the landscape currently. Beyond the inherent ways it pushes back, part of that is due to the metagame being solved enough at this point that it's started folding in on itself with answers, and those answers are not adept or aimed at handling you.The other part is you’re often indifferent to the incremental grinding and related dynamics those decks thrive on.

By this, I mean it has a variety of ways to undercut having to play neutral against those decks. Sometimes, you just slam a turn zero or one mill spell, it resolves, and you snowball to an easy win. Sometimes you make life a legitimate resource and just race the opponent for the easy win as the deck has good opportunities for direct damage and it's common for players to be dropping to 4k on their opener. Regardless of the method, I appreciate those kinds of bits being built in as it made this climb a lot more smooth.