Fear not my f2p brethens. Invest all your resources into miniboxes only. Time has prove this: Sylvan/Fur Hire/Vendread/Magnets/Triamids/Darklords/Ritual Beasts/Yosenju/Shiranui are all metas! You can reach KoG by day 4 playing this game just like me!
Darklords WAS good without banishment. New addition indeed bump up the deck consistency to top meta. But even without banishment, darklords already great deck to kog nonetheless.
Darklord was trash before Banishment, just like DM before Circle. Other mini-box decks mostly need staples like Cosmic Cyclone, Canadia, Floodgate, or Treacherous to be optimal. Also KOG title is meh compared to KC Cup. You don't need to reset the box to reach KOG if you play Flower Cardian or Superheavy Samurai. But both decks suck in KC Cup.
If your deck has to rely on staple cards to perform well it means that your deck is actually bad.
It will instead be a "staple deck, supported by your archetype" when your archetype is supposed to be the core.
Seeing those staples everywhere is making the game boring. They should add a "staple cards-limit" in the ban list in addition to the limited and semi-limited ones.