Rank 18!
Man this climb has been SLOOOOOOOWW. I was definitely spoiled by the large K factor they had previously that made climbing Ranks super fast. Gone are the days where on a good day I could climb 2 Ranks. I think this might actually be better for people like me who don't play Ranked for 8 hours a day to stay in a relatively high position on the ladder, but yeah, it feels worse compared to the previous fast rate of achieving Ranks.
Also I'm relatively proud of my 119-54 Win/Loss record. A win rate of about 68% at my position on the ladder is significantly higher than most of the people around me, according to gwent.io
I've been using another Crokeyz deck to climb:
http://www.gwentdb.com/decks/22867-crokeyz-kambi-axemen . I did substitute Decoy for ADC, and Crokeyz himself has made further changes which I didn't actually like (Adding a 3rd shackles and Skellige Storm, removing Donar and the First light). Playing Vanilla Geralt seems like a weird choice, but it's been working out enough for me that I didn't really feel like changing it. (Regis: Higher Vamp or Renew would probably be top choices for substituting). There's definitely a more subtlety than one would initially expect in piloting the deck; identifying what threats you can shackle in earlier rounds and what threats you can let slide; how to sequence your cards so you have the highest possible chance in drawing all of your golds for your last round while being at least on even card advantage, etc. One thing that surprised me was how often straight up passing if you lose the coinflip is actually effective in letting you go to Round 3 with even card advantage. As of right now in the meta I think there's really only 2 decks that are really bad matchups for it, 1 being Scoia'Spell, and the other being the Northern Realms Weather Witches list by Smoonay.