Notes & Combos

Early M1 - Unchained Labrynth

Another season completed and this deck continues to march along as a reliably sturdy pick.

On the environment front, the metagame is still both combo centric and percussive enough where you can't truly afford to lean back on more traditional control approaches and expect a lot of immediate success right now. Being able to instantly challenge boards, or at least, prevent / downsize them before they get going, remain attractive properties to have, and reaching for this particular direction of Labrynth is more complementary to that than alternatives, so I stuck with it for another month.

Adding on to this, this deck was already pretty successful last season for climbing so the only new big matchup to account for was Kewl Tune, in which this isn't positioned too shabby against. The Unchained engine of course is useful in a world where Mix and Reco are commonly picking apart fields, making them more of a liability to use. And the higher ceiling and extra interaction to pressure their board and lines from the dogs was pretty handy - especially on your own turn post Clip / KTS when cleaning up their front row is desirable.

However, the real perk with this hybrid right now is largely in its dexterity. Being able to hold Barrier or any other blowout while presenting frontward facing threats that represent multiple interactions like Rage means you're rarely the one under pressure to blink first, and it also means you're more of a nuisance to solve with scattered levels for the opponent to consider.

I've seen a bunch of players try to play a tighter trade based approach to deal with Kewl Tune, leaning on more pieces of disruption but fairier ones like Imperm and other options around that strength level to help accomplish that.

In my experience, KT was too efficient for this to be reliable. Exchanging 1-for-1 with mild hand traps while their typical NS essentially represents a 1.5 given the theme’s mechanics, naturally plays too much in their favor and was often a losing race.

You don't exactly have to out interact Kewl Tune, I've found that being more surgical in the way you complicate and undermine their game while promoting your own was better. And embracing that helped out a lot in getting this season’s climb done