by Alan » Wed Jan 10, 2018 5:54 pm
In ranked play, there are 13 ranks, from 12 down to 1, after you climb through rank 1 you reach Legend. The ladder is reset each month, though if you're Legend through rank 4 you reset to rank 5, if you're rank 5-8 you reset to rank 9. There is a monthly reward card, you get 1 copy for reaching rank 9, 2 copies for reaching rank 5, and 3 copies for reaching rank 1.
My ladder goal each month is just to go from rank 5 to rank 4 so that I don't have to climb far to get 2 copies of the reward card. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, this month I went on a win-streak and reached rank 4 using a mid-range Battlemage (Red/Blue) deck by the second day, so I've made my first foray into building my own decks to play on the ladder. I tried making a few action Mage decks that failed pretty horribly, then tried making some Market decks. Swindler's Market is a green support card that deals 1 damage and heals you for 1 health each time you play a 0-cost card. Market Archer is the most popular variant, since there is a 0-cost 1/1 red card (Nord Firebrand) with charge that you can summon, and a neutral 0-cost card (Close Call) that unsummons a creature. Red also has several cards that boost the attack of other cards, so if you have several Nords and a couple Close Calls in hand, Market on the board, and 1-2 attack boosting cards (a support called Northwind Outpost, and a creature called Orc Clan Captain) you can burst for 20+ damage in one round. Theoretically it's possible to do something like 80 damage in a round with the ideal set-up (each player starts with 30 health). I started out trying to make a Market Archer deck but it's a popular enough archetype that anything I came up with was just strictly weaker than what's already being played, so I tried a Market Hexmage Assassin. Lillandril Hexmage is a 5-cost card that does 2 damage for each action you play (I tried to use this heavily with the action Mage decks I was creating earlier), and in my market Hexmage Assassin deck I included 0-cost cards that are actions, as well as other cards that can generate 0-cost actions. Early on in testing my problem was that the early-game was too weak; against aggro decks I died before I could do the combo, and against control decks I couldn't bring the opponent low enough in health to be susceptible to the combo (unlike Market Archer, the burst turn from my deck was more like 10-15 damage). I think I have something that works now; my early game mimics one of the meta decks (an aggro-ish Assassin deck), which allows me to bring the opponent down to 15 or lower health during the early to mid-game while generating 0-cost cards and playing cards that include additional card-draw, with the hope that by turn 8 I can play Hexmage with Market. With four 0-cost cards that's 12 damage from hand. Unlike with an Archer deck, opponents don't play around that possibility as much since Market Assassin is not often played and I try to disguise the true nature of my deck until my burst turn. Alternatively, on turn 9 play Hexmage with Lightning Bolt (a 4 cost 4 damage action that can target the player directly), which is 6 damage, and if I have any 0-cost cards in hand each one allows me to do an additional 2 damage. Against decks without support removal, I can play Market earlier on; the dream is having multiple Markets on the board when I play Hexmage and my 0-cost actions. Theoretically I could have 3 Hexmages on the board, 3 Markets, with each 0-cost action dealing 9 damage and healing me for 3 health. That's not really something that could ever happen though.
