I might not have much experience with the unupped deck, but I've played the upped one a lot and I've got some idea about the difference between the two versions. My hunches might be off about many of the matchups I haven't tested, but at least I'm pretty sure Neptune is a great matchup. Like I said, I played four games against him, which isn't a lot, but I did face the early permafrost and won through it exactly the same way as with the upped version, and I have no reason to assume that was a fluke. If you start out slow and just keep building up mana, at some point he'll have a hand full of CC and you'll completely lock him with Eternity. Only play out your ghosts once you've got enough saved up. At that point he'll kill some of them by unloading all the stuff he had in his 7 cards, but you'll have the second fractal coming and an Eternity keeping at the very least one ghost functional. In the few games I've played I had no problem finishing
even when Neptune played a permafrost before I had dealt a single point of damage, and I can't imagine how he could completely stop you unless you're doing something wrong.
While writing this post, at this point I was bored enough to open up trainer and do some testing to back myself up. I started out with Elidnis. Won the first game. Second one I died to three poison, would have been easy if I played a single shard. Won the third. Conclusion: definitely not a skip. Then I tried Osiris. The first game played out like many others I've experienced with the upped version of this deck and other time-based FG grinders: he started out with 3 time towers, then played turtle shield and an Eternity before his first pharaoh. I happened to have an opening hand with a lot of mana and an Eternity, so by that time I had my weapon out and kept rewinding a pharaoh every turn. Eventually he drew enough towers to get a second one out, but he died before he got 5 scarabs out. Second game I had a mana-light draw and conceded early. Third game I get a solid draw but Osiris has a great one: a hand full of towers and no shields or weapons to slow himself down with. He gets a couple of pharaohs out before I start rewinding stuff and it looks hopeless, but I still play it out for kicks. In the end I get him down to 69. Conclusion: not a good matchup, but you'll know whether you're going to lose early, so conceding on the spot would be foolish.
Lastly I tried Divine Glory. You mentioned it's a problem that he starts playing miracles? Have you ever played any established deck against gods with miracles? No, you don't just run out all the damage you can and hope you'll punch through. You play out a small amount of damage and then unleash a one turn kill once they are in range. Actually, you do mention that in your guide on Miracle, so why on earth would you not do that against DG? Anyway, first game I start out slow, but he chokes on swords with not enough animates and explosions with no fire mana and never does anything relevant. Lucky? Yes. Unusual? No, not really, DG does that at times. Second game he does draw burning towers and explosions, but I let him burn them on towers. Once I'm at 20 life (with 3 swords out) I unload my hourglasses at once with a shield and get going. Eternities and hourglasses soak up the explosions he draws from this point on and I win leisurely. Conclusion: I expected I'd win maybe one game in three so 2-0 is probably lucky, but who knows, if 10 men can go 10-2 in this matchup upped, maybe it's actually pretty good unupped too. In any case, definitely not a skip. Other gods with PC, I don't know, but for the record, I never said I thought they'd all be this good. I have no delusions about Octane being winnable, for one.
Oh, and a couple of specific things:
Chaos Lord: Why would you play a ghost on its own? It will do more damage if you save it to play with the others.
On this one I was mostly referring to this -
He has little CC, so play ghosts as soon as you can unless he draws a Maxwell’s demon.
- and my point was that you shouldn't risk getting your ghost killed unless you can afford it. Anyway, Chaos Lord doesn't have any healing, so an early ghost that gets to hit for a few turns can easily be worth it, especially if you have an Eternity to protect it against a single demon. Also I forgot this about Lionheart in my previous post; I've never focused on the deckout plan against him with any deck, but I think someone said that Lionheart could now rewind to keep himself alive at times. If the deckout plan works 100% then disregard this. If it doesn't, I'd like to point out that it's not only possible but even quite easy to win with damage against him, and I'd always try to do that unless he gets his scarab production running very quickly, which doesn't happen often.
Frankly, while I respect you for coming up with a very good deck, looking at your posts in this thread, it looks like you're far off on how it should actually be played.
