Why Bomb Warrior dominated Hearthstone Grandmasters Americas

The first day of the Hearthstone Grandmasters tour has come to an end, and the European and Asia-Pacific regions showcased a small variety of decks. Some players brought Conjurer’s Calling Mage, Tempo Rogue, and even a Hunter. But when the decks were revealed on stream for the first day, fans groaned. Nine out of 10 decks were the exact same: Bomb Warrior.

Bomb Warrior has seen a lot of success on ladder for a multitude of reasons. First, since it has a variety of removal and control tools, it does extremely well against aggressive decks across the board. On top of that, it has strong removal tools like Shield Slam and Execute for large minions that an opponent can play one at a time. If an opponent happens to stick several large minions, the Warrior player still feels fine since they can play Brawl and all but one of those minions is instantly cleared. But with so many tools for slowing down the game, what is the deck’s win condition?

Bomb Warrior gets its name from a variety of cards that, when activated, shuffle a card into their opponent’s deck that reads “cast when drawn, you take five damage.” Shuffling multiple copies of these cards into your opponent’s deck means that they’ll never know when an onslaught of bombs will blow up in their face, either putting them into potential lethal range or killing them right there. Cards like Blastmaster Boom and Archivist Elysiana seal any weaknesses in the deck and make it top tier.

This deck composition was considered safe by many players because it has few weaknesses and no player knew what deck they’d be playing against before the matches began. One player, Eddie, who plays for Lazarus, almost didn’t bring Warrior, but he was advised by a friend to switch to the explosive deck. Judging by his win, he was probably happy he made that decision.

While we’ll likely see more variety as the weeks go on and more players feel safe with experimenting or trying their own style, the highlight of the eight-hour stream was what felt like a quick 2-0 victory for Firebat over the only non-Warrior deck of the day. And even that put a bad taste in fans’ mouths since it solidified the meteoric dominance of Bomb Warrior.