How to Excel at Weekend Ranked (and earn a lot!)

I am one of the top 10 highest earners of weekend ranked packs in Gods Unchained history, earning over $5.7k in packs, in addition to 16 "Top 10" Leaderboard finishes in the past year. I will now tell you all the "secrets" to earn maximum rewards!

What is Weekend Ranked

Every weekend from Friday morning in the USA to Monday morning in the USA, there is a countdown timer going in-game and a banner that says "Weekend Ranked". During this event your first 25 games of the weekend are counted and there is a chart that you can look at and see how many packs you will be rewarded based on the number of wins you achieved in those 25 games.

(There is an additional bonus that is unrelated to the count of games played. That is: win 30 games and you get a rare Divine Order pack worth ~$2.49 USD)

The key idea here is you want to start the weekend ranked in Mythic and then get 17 wins. This will net you a legendary pack and rare pack from Divine Order, worth a total of $27.50. If you're not a Mythic tier player, never fear! Look at the chart and see how many wins you want to shoot for and set a goal.

So now that you know you have 25 games to maximize your rewards, how do you win the most you possibly can?

Deck Choice

Obviously you're going to need a deck if you're going to be playing in the event, so this is a good starting point.

Some general tips:

• Pick a deck and STICK WITH IT for the entire event. If you must make minor tweaks that is ok but only after a big enough sample size. Don't swap things in and out after every game, you're not doing yourself any favors!
• Do NOT play a deck you've never practiced with before! Ideally, don't play with a deck you don't have 50 repetitions with already. As you play a deck over and over, you master it. You know the ins and outs without thought and can make the correct plays more frequently.

What not to do:

• Complain that the game is Pay to Win and quit. I've seen many free to play decks in the top 10.

But how do you know how to pick the "right deck"? Enter, THE META.

The Meta

In order to choose the right deck you need to know what everyone else is playing.

For easy example, if the best deck at the time runs an OP relic, you would want to counter that by running relic removal. Likewise, if the most prevalent deck is War, you'd want to counter War.

This is a good website to check before starting your weekend ranked. If everyone is playing aggro War/Nature, the counter is to play Control War or Control Death. Why? Nature has some big beefy creatures, and the only way to take them out is some hard removal like Carnage Sweep and Sole Survivor or Apocalypse Now and Reap. Aggro Nature doesn't have much Ward and is just begging to be rekt by spells. Same pertains to War. War also can put heavy damage on you every turn, therefore you need to heal. Control War and Death both have ways of healing for 50+ health.

Point being: some of these decks aren't as good as their Win Rate suggests. They just happen to run into their best matchup the most often. New players LOVE Nature and War currently. But the meta is always shifting. So this is the type of thought process you will need to have every time a new balance patch rolls out.

Look Up Your Opponents Deck

You may not like it, but currently your opponent is looking at your deck RIGHT NOW.

Go to GUdecks.com, search for your opponents name, and look at their most recently played deck. If you don't and they are doing it, it is akin to playing poker while your opponent can see half your hand.

(To be clear, I don't like that this isn't a guaranteed two way street. I've proposed to the team that they add decklists in client so it is just open decklist all the time. Any other solution will ALWAYS give advantages to those who seek them. However, that is not in the scope of this article, and suffice to say this shouldn't be an edge you are gaining NOR giving up. Money is on the line, don't give your opponent an edge they are taking from you.

Best Time to Play

What time you play only matters if you are attempting to come in the Top 10, where you'll be awarded with even more prizes. If you play on Friday, everyone's MMR has been reset to a maximum of 1350. Since beating someone with a much higher MMR nets you more MMR per win, it goes without saying that everyone having the same MMR is going to stifle your chances of having a high MMR, and MMR is how the top 10 is tie-broken. Once players have had time to play all weekend, some will have deranked and you'll be less likely to face them, and some will now have MMRs as high as 1600 or even 1700! The average Mythic MMR rises steadily throughout the weekend. Getting paired with players with higher MMRs on Sunday means you'll gain more MMR per win than someone who played on Friday (and also importantly, lose less MMR per loss! Though pro-tip: if you want to come in the top 10, you probably shouldn't lose more than 2 games out of 25.)

Closing Thoughts

There's no secret weapon to automatically come in the top 10 week after week. After all, there are now 75k weekly players! Getting in the top 10 is now harder than ever.

You need to exercise critical thinking even before the first game takes place, deciding what deck counters the meta. Then you'll need consistent play to hit those 17 wins at Mythic and get yourself some free legendary packs!

~Copper

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