Recently, there was a post on GU Reddit of a person complaining on how dominant removal is in this game (link to an original reddit post here ). As GU is very tempo oriented game (way more than for example Hearthstone) removals are necessary to keep it in check and enable player that is behind on tempo to return to the game. On the other hand it might often be irritating to see a minion we have just put on the board get insta-anihilated by opponents spell. Alternatively, the board we have carefully built is wiped by board clear. While most of those situations might feel bad, we can actually benefit from them by knowing how to "play around them".
The following analysis will focus on most popular cards - it will contain majority of wel-core removals + some most popular expansion cards. It provides some tips on how to play around removals playing against specific classes.
Nature
The common theme of nature's removal is randomness. In case of 2 most popular nature single target removals - Canopy Barrage and Lightning Strike one can not pick the target. As a result, the best way to avoid removals in early game is to just clatter the board with a bunch of weak minions. Use your hero power, or favor minions to hide big targets behind them. When it comes to playing around the hunt, it is also fairly simple - pay attention to have more than 8 health on the board. The hunt gets exponentially weaker with an amount of health you have on the board. To give you an example: if you have 2 4/4 creatures the hunt will kill 100% of them. If you have 4 x 4/4 there is only 11% chance for it to kill even a single one.
One more argument that I have heard when it comes to canopy barrage is that it is played on turn 1-2 when we do not have yet opportunity to clutter our board. My answer to that is - so what? He removed one of your early minions but no longer has Canopy Barrage. We can actually use that behavior of nature players to our advantage. If we have 2 early game minions - one of which we would like to stick to the board, we can bait the barrage by playing the disposable one first - thus making the second one safer once played.
Death
Deaths removals could be grouped into 2 categories. Early and mid game it has access to multiple single target removals. Late game it has powerful (but also expensive) board wipes. The countermeasure to the first category is simple - we should not ride on a single minion on the board when facing death - it is better to spread our power across multiple. How to face second category though? You should not "over commit" to the board. What does it mean? Lets say that we have a strong board whereas our opponent does not. Lets say it consists of 3 minions and have more creatures in our hand and mana to play them. By doing so we "over commit" - making an already big board even bigger, but also making it juicier target for board wipe. On the other hand by keeping those minions on our hand, and even letting our mana go to waste, we prepare ourselves for what comes after the board clear - rebuilding our roster. As all of deaths mass destruction cards are expensive, it does not allow our opponent to build board in the same turn as playing them. If we can rebuild our presence in the turn after the wipe, we bring him back to square one.
It also needs to be noticed that most zombie decks do not run the mass wipes, so - if playing zombies - we do not need to worry that much about over commitment.
Deception
Deception has quite a good variety of tools for single target removals. As usually - in this sort of situations - you should focus on having multiple minions rather single strong one. Unfortunately, above 6 manna, situations gets more complicated - due to the most popular deception card - Rapture Dance. Having multiple minions essentially pumps this card. The best way to counter it is to keep 2-3 mid size minions - in this way rapture dance is not a threat for them, and removal of single minion will not be that impactful either.
One more tip you can use to minimize effect of deception removals is to try to keep your minions health above their attack.
War
War has tons of early and mid game removal (even more than listed on a picture above). Moreover quite a bit of AOE that deals set amount of damage to all minions. The best solution to face Wars removal is to have few but strong cards on the board, as its removals mostly deal fixed (and not excessively high) amount of damage. The most significant exception from this rule is Carnage Sweep, and to an extent Sole Survivor (which has way higher damage cap). The best way to play around Sole Survivor is to pay attention to remove cards with high attack from the board - as Sole Survivor has mana cost of 6, and it is tough to play big minion alongside it in the same turn. Unfortunately, it is way higher to play around Carnage Sweep, as requirement of having a weapon to trigger its extra effect is not huge.
Light
Most lights removals have specific conditions to work (like Light's Levy or Purification Filter), or have significant downside (like Conversion leaving 2/2 minion with protected on their side). As a result, early on they are not that harmful, with one exception - Light's Levy - which can pose very significant tempo shift on turn 2 or 3.
On the other hand Light does not have any significant AOE. So the best strategy is to use multiple smaller minions. This is even better strategy, as even Lights single target removals are not very efficient to remove smaller minions (with the sole exception of aforementioned Light's Levy).
Magic
Ok, this one I concede. Magic has every kind of removals:
Early removals: Illuminate, starshard Bolt, Tracking Bolt
Mid game removals: Wyrmbreath, Mind Jolt, Astric Implosion, Epiphany
Hard removals: Ratify
Aoe: Crystal Rain, Inferno
The best way to counter magics removal is to observe what they play. One can't include all of the removal in the deck (cards in the picture would already make 28/30 cards in a deck so you cant really have all of them), and there is certainly no guarantee to have them all at hand when needed. When playing against Magic, just test your opponents hand. Put the same type of threats multiple times in a row to drain his hand from specific kind of removal. This sort of testing should be easier, as a lot of removal in a deck, means less tempo and threats in it.
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Magic is the most pain in the butt to play around removals. Before 5 mana, your best bet is to go wide fast and play beefy creatures.
Good analysis, although I do think that you can't always play to counter board clears since that'll make you lose tempo, and that can easily lead to a loss if you're playing a tempo deck against a more control deck. There's definitely a fine line between playing too few and too many creatures though.