Elysian Fliers: 36-4 in league

This is my league deck that went 36-4 this month. I was expecting the deck to do well but not this well. I definitely ran hot throughout my games, but I did win multiple where I mulliganed to six with tight play. My previous best month in league was 34-6 with a top 50 finish. I didn't play any games in week one this month. I typically do play my week one games if I have a pool that can support a two color + splash (it can be a heavy splash) build without playing too many bad cards. I'd say about 60-70% of the time I put something together for the first week. This month I wasn't quite there and had awkward fixing so I started in week two.

At the beginning of week two I was able to put together an Elysian fliers deck that's not too far off of my week four deck. I've also uploaded my full pool to check out. It was really hard to build a deck without the smuggler. I absolutely love splashing half of a smuggler and putting impactful splash cards in the market. I also looked at decks with Marley and/or Steelbound Dragon but there just weren't enough playables in those colors week two to make something consistent and I value consistency very highly in sealed. A lot of games you win by just playing reasonable units on curve while your opponent stumbles on a influence and an awkward curve. I had the main infrastructure of the deck together by week two. In week 3 the big addition was a Grodov's Favored, and in week four I only replaced one card. I played 18 power since I was playing a few high cost cards and a few extra are good fodder for a lightning sprite.

The basic game plan is to play some dudes on curve to hold down the ground while I quickly kill them in the air. The four games I lost the opponents had proactive openers backed up by combat tricks and I had slightly awkward draws and lost the tempo game. Corrupted Behemoth is my best ground creature. It's huge and gains life to stall effectively. Grodov's Favored is a close second and plays an important role to silence opposing fliers or must answer bombs. I don't have any hard removal in this deck unless you count wasp, so it was very important for me to play around combat tricks as much as possible and save my tricks for impactful situations or when they were absolutely necessary. I was also very aggressive about stunning/silencing opposing fliers. My opponents often had one large flier while I had several smaller ones, and stunning it for a few turns with a fend off or Terror on the Mountain was enough to tempo them out. Sodi's choice was also nice for this.

As for bombs in this deck, Crow is the absolute all-star. The card is obscene on turn 3 and easily runs away with the game. Hunting Pteriax is good to close out the game. I normally wouldn't play Skyward Seer but it's awesome in this particular deck since I have such a high density of fliers. A lot of my openers went something like stranger/evangel -> three drop flier -> EZ spark turn four to tutor up crow/pteriax/wasp depending on what my opponent had been doing. Gnash is only in this deck as a big ground creature, I have no way of triggering muster other than Sodi's Choice. A lot of opponents thought I did though and spent a lot of resources to kill him which was great for me. Terror on the Mountain is alright - I played it because I was already in the colors but I wouldn't go out of my way.

This deck was an absolute blast to play. I think it shows how powerful flying is in sealed and that you don't absolutely need hard removal to perform well if you have a consistent two-color deck with a gameplan.