[Tips] Beating Very Hard Opponents

[lazylockie]

This is a WIP of all the data I've gathered on how to beat those pesky very hard opponents:

Oreius (UG Threshold)
You NEED the 1/4 Plant to hold off the Nimble Mongooses for a few turns. For the pet, all of them will be easily outclassed by his creatures, so Wolf Pet if you have lots of first strikers in your deck or simply let them be bait for Dismember

A control shell works best against him, control the board as you see fit and let him mill himself in a couple turns. Also, don't forget to play around Daze, he really knows how catch you off guard.

Hercules (GW Aggro)
Your pets should hold very well any creature from him, except his 8 lords: Wilt-Leaf Liege and Knight of New Alara. You should be packing plenty of removal for the lords. If your removal is red, don't let him stack multiple lords or else it'll be impossible to get rid of them. Overall Hercules isn't very difficult, it's just that AI tends to stack all their lords somehow.

Darrin Stephens (U Affinity)
You need to be prepared for mono-punch Blightsteel Colossus (that comes from Tinker), you have two angles of attack: get rid of Colossus (Pacifism, Unsummon, Path to Exile) or countering Tinker. You also need to be prepared for those key cards: Master of Etherium and Etched Champion. Master of Etherium is enormous in this deck and Etched Champion has protection from all colors. The optimal way to solve this is to use a non-red mass removal spell, but since it's a quest mode and they aren't always available, you can get rid of Master of Etherium and sort of race Champion with your plant pet. Packing a few artifact creatures also helps with the Etched Champion problem.

You also can abuse the fact that now we have access to sideboards. Pack a few artifact hate in your SB and the matchup suddenly gets much more easier. Naturalize is plenty on almost any set and maybe you're lucky to get a couple of Shatterstorm, Creeping Corrosion or Shattering Pulse, those really seals the deal against Stephens or any artifact deck

I'll be updating this thread soon!