Notes & Combos
I played Labrynth Eldlich Ishizu just like last season and for a lot of the same reasons: The combined engines give you a hefty grind game that can often lean on the side of obnoxious - allowing you to outvalue pretty much every other control and midrange option in the format when it gets going. The deck's non-engine is now decently slanted to match up against Tear so it can also hold up when facing the most popular combo deck too.
I opted for this over the typical Lab deck that was running around (the one that's on Di-Fi, DDG, D-Barrier, etc) because it was way overturned for the Tear matchup and thus was underwhelming, and at times, even rough into rogue (especially Exo and Floo), which is still a sizeable part of the ladder. It was also too dependent on going first in its choice in tech cards to really climb fast with (I'm not good at winning coinflips).
Tips / Notes
-
I played zero Lovely a good amount of the time. She's just not that great right now as there's not much you want to pop against Tear in isolation and her reset effect loses hard to shufflers. I still played her when I was seeing patches of rogue on ladder (where she's the most useful) and that's why I still included her in the list you're seeing so people are aware that she was there through the climb.
-
A lot of Labs (and Eldlich decks for that matter) aren't running GKT as a flood and I think that's a big missed opportunity. The card was great all run; It speeds up your turn clock on your lands, is free with furniture / lich cards, and it practically invalidates the Tear matchup on full resolution. So its floor is a solid resource engine and its ceiling can just straight-up solo games against the most popular matchup right now. It's also a searchable floodgate which is highly relevant too.
-
Being a Lab deck with a bunch of access to Zombie World helped a ton throughout the climb, as your Floo matchup is significantly easier and you can even turn zero ZW lock Floo which I was able to do twice. ZW is also a soft flood against Tear since it messes with Kit and can actually fizzle fusion attempts for her at times if you're chaining it off of Banshee (or at the very least make them go neg / make something they didn't want to make).
-
A lot of Lab and Lich decks aren't on hand traps or many going second options- maybe at most playing X / Evenly, but I think a fuller, dedicated package of them is too good to pass up in this meta if you want to climb fast.