Introduction
And we are back with the awesome Pre-expansion Brewing Series!
With the expansion just around the corner, players have not been as lost since Classic, because of the high number of playable cards rotating out with the new Format introduction.
So, thinking about that, I decided to make a pretty cool, but short, series of Brews for you to test. A lot of different strategies, different builds and different classes for you to play.
The experience I have been getting through the expansions building different brews and everything gave me the edge in every expansion’s start, and I am here to give you guys that same edge too, are you ready for some amazing Midrange Brews? 😀
C’Thun Druid
After a quick read of the Expansion cards and a deep analysis on cthun, I ended up figuring C’Thun is indeed a Midrange-centric card and the explanation (that I haven’t given anywhere else in details) I am going to be putting here:
C’Thun doesn’t have enough power to finish the game on it’s own. An empty board C’Thun deals lots of damage, right? But your opponent will have been playing an Attrition game (at least) against you with your Control Deck. You’ll be playing weak Cultists, that’ll be generating a very low value while not generating any tempo at all. In the end,you’ll be building your whole deck around a single card that won’t win you the game in any way.
Ok, but how does Midrange help with that? Midrange Decks are usually meant to take over the game during the Mid-stages of it, by playing strongly on the curves of 4-7 and finishing the game with a big finisher. Let’s say Midrange Shaman takes over the board, out tempos the opponent playing Midrange with powerful removal and wins with either pure pressure, or some Windfury combination with rockbiter-weapon, meanwhile pre-nerf Midrange Druid would win with the savage-roar combo.
Against an opponent with full health your C’Thun isn’t likely to be as impactful as it would be against an opponent with let’s say 14-16 Health, and if you’re fighting for Board Control against your opponent (because your deck is built to do just that) your C’Thun is going to be even more powerful.
So, after all these thoughts we realize how C’Thun should fit a lot more into a midrange Shell than any other shell in the game.
Alright, now Druid is losing the Combo, sure. But instead it is getting C’Thun and a shell that seems to be even more consistent than today’s Overpowered Midrange Druid.
This is a build that curves quite well, has a lot of interactions with fandral-staghelm, and has a very powerful Finisher in the form of C’Thun, so I don’t know about you, but it looks quite powerful to me.
Azure Drake and Ancient of Lore are both remains of old Midrange Druid that still needs to be played because of how they allow you to cycle through your deck easily. Sure Lore got nerfed, but it is still versatile enough that you’ll want to run it nonetheless.
Midrange Shaman
This build was a lot harder to make than it looks.
Midrange Shaman never existed before. Sure, it actually did, but not as a powerful deck to be played on the ladder and expect to get awesome results with.
I have always been a Shaman lover. I have to admit Face Shaman isn’t my favorite deck, but Midrange Shaman sure is. Even when the deck wasn’t good enough, or even considered playable, I was there spamming the Ladder with it. That netted me a golden Shaman before Season 1 was even over. Now, 2 years and 2000 more Shaman wins later, I am back to build what is supposed to be a meta-defining deck, and despite people common thoughts that all you have to do is throw all new cards together with the already good Shaman cards and you’re good to go, building this deck was quite difficult.
The thing about Shaman Midrange Strategy is that it resembles that of an Aggro deck, but instead of the “all-in” shell the Shaman players opts for a consistent approach.
You can’t simply drop your low-cost minions and Tempo-generating cards to put all good cards without worrying about your game – you’ll be destroyed if you do so.
So, you have to build a deck that is aggressive enough, but also consistent that it can take games even against the most control-ish of the decks.
So this deck was born. A lot of awesome interactions, the possibility of a powerful snowball, and a consistent game that you’re likely to have even odds against mostly anyone.
This deck runs no long-game survival tool against Aggro, no healing at all, but instead we choose to race the Aggro decks. I believe this is the first thing most people will notice about this deck, and I have to say that is indeed the correct choice. If we start to worry about aggro a lot, we’ll be losing all of our Control matchups or end up playing a completely different deck, but since today the Brew of choice is Midrange, I believe this to be the most powerful build for you to play.
Midrange Warrior
This deck is totally inspired in ShtanUdachi’s Midrange build that was piloted by Xixo to EU’s Rank 1 Legend. A lot of cards of that build are dropping out, but a lot of cards are also showing up that we won’t be missing the rotating cards as much as people think.
This is obviously a varian-wrynn centered deck, so it runs a lot of Taunts and immediate-impact cards. This is good, we don’t lose any of these in the rotation.
I think the biggest loss for this deck in the rotation is deaths-bite, but then every other Warrior deck is losing that too. In the other hand, and different from most Warrior decks, this one deck can easily run ravaging-ghoul without a problem. The card will not only activate Enrage, acolyte-of-pain or armorsmith, this card also allows us to use battle-rage – which, mind you, is much better than blood-warriors – in order to draw a lot of cards and keep the tempo in our favor.
Sure, Warrior lost Death’s Bite and because of it maybe this deck isn’t as powerful as it could be, but I believe this to be a powerful enough build for you to playtest.
To be even bolder, I have to say that in case this build actually works, this is supposed to be one of the strongest decks in the game post rotation, as it has tons and tons of anti-aggro defenses as well as very powerful tools to win the attrition War against mostly any Control deck out there.
PS: I know you’ll be bashing me because I said bloodhoof-brave was bad in my review and here I am running one copy of it in my deck, but in a deck like this with tons of Whirlwind effects, this seems to be a Taunt a lot more powerful than senjin-shieldmasta can be, thus the 1-of.
Closing
And here we are, finished with the Midrange Brews. These decks look awesome, and I just can’t wait to try them out in the Ladder once the rotation comes.
Are you guys excited as well? Let me know in the comments! Don’t forget to come back here to post the playtesting results of the builds I posted, because once the expansion (and the formats) hits, i’ll be doing my best to fix every bit of issue these builds have in order to give you guys the best Legendary rank possible!
Love you all, see you in the next article,
Cuddles,
Nuba
Published: Apr 24, 2016 04:46 am