Decks to Play – Happy New Year!

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to the final chapter of 2015’s Decks to Play article!

This final week we didn’t have many changes in the metagame, no new archetypes appeared and instead we had quite a lot of people playing already known powerful decks to the high ranks.

My friend list, which has a lot of top Legend players, kept going up and down in the Top 100s playing already known lists, and my researches found zero new decks in the radar, so instead of showing you the typical top-ranked decks I show you guys every week, today I am bringing you a couple of alternative options for you to both ladder with as well as reach the Legend rank!

The Metagame

The most played deck in the Legendary Ladder right now is still Ostkaka’s Ragnaros Secret Paladin, Face Shaman suffered a huge drop in popularity as Renolock became even more popular.

Reno Lock decks are still very different from one another, each spotting its own alternative builds to fight either Aggro or Control, varying a lot. The only thing all these decks have in common is how they can easily steal wins from Face Shaman, and how Handlock disappeared from the game after Reno Lock saw the light.

Midrange Druid, went up in popularity the past 2 weeks became of how consistent it is and how good it can win against anything that isn’t Face Shaman or Secret Paladin. The deck’s popularity however is mined by Secret Paladin’s popularity, and while the deck shall be a good option to play against anything that isn’t Face Shaman or Secret Paladin, those 2 decks still remain a huge portion of the metagame and will keep Druid’s popularity in check.

Oil Rogue, saw an extensive rise in play as many Rogue players are testing different builds. The Sprint version seems to be performing slightly better than the Gadgetzan Auctioneer (Miracle) version and is the most played Oil Rogue version in the ladder. Keep in mind most people that play these decks disregard the metagame and would be playing that deck anyway since it poses a very different playstyle than Hearthstone’s general Midrange and Aggro decks.

Other decks are very low on popularity and not so good on the metagame to worth a whole paragraph, but let us name a few of these decks: Control Priest, Control/Reno Warrior, Midrange Hunter, Aggro Druid, Tempo Mage, Midrange Paladin and Tempo/Raptor Rogue are all decent tier-2 strategies that just don’t have an overall good enough winrate in the metagame to be playable by a lot of people on high ranks.

Nuba’s Tempo Raptor Rogue

This is a very nice list of mine. very few lists are spotting cairne-bloodhoof nowadays but I noticed how hard it is for a lot of the Control Decks to deal with Cairne, since no one is expecting Cairne, it becomes a nightmare for the opponent to deal with and ends up generating a lot of value.

Note how a lot of today’s Aggro decks, including Secret Paladin, tend to do its best to fight for board Control, and this particular version of Aggro Rogue can both go face a lot easier than other versions, is more consistent, as well as have more persistent minions that give other decks trying to Control the board a lot of trouble.

I have been experimenting this on the Legendary ladder and managed to grind a couple of ranks and got a 65-ish percent win rate on a small sample size of 20 games where I playtested this.

I am still uncertain if this deck is capable of breaking the top 100s barrier, so I am dropping it in favor of a more playtested deck list.

I however am certain this deck can easily get you to the Legendary rank, and this is the deck I will be farming Legend next season. Maybe, with enough playtesting results, I am able to tell if this deck is capable of reaching top 100 next season, stay tuned in this website for playtesting results once the next season starts!

Kolento’s Zoolock

Another deck that has been playtested was Kolento’s Zoolock. The deck seems decent enough that can easily bring you to the Legendary rank, but I don’t believe this should be the deck you should be playing to reach high Legendary ranks, as part of its success is given to how unexpected this deck is.

Oh, keep an eye out and try not to drop flame-imp or doomguard while you have Mister brann-bronzebeard on board, bad things tend to happen.

Camel Hunter

Remember that old Camel Hunter we spotlighted at Brews to Play back when League of Explorers was still being released?

Well, apparently someone called Datdantho was able to reach Legend with a very similar version to the one we posted!

In his list, however, Datdantho used a different approach than we did when it came to traps: Instead of the standard Freezing Traps, Datdantho used Explosive traps, which makes a lot of sense in today’s metagame.

So, in case you are interested in playing a different Hunter strategy, this is the one you should be testing! 😀

Conclusion

Today’s meta report is basically what we could expect from the end of the first competitive season of 2016. People won’t be risking their ranks by playing untested decks unless their only aim is either Rank 1 Legend or rank 9999 Legend.

I have had a lot of fun with the Raptor Rogue list I posted and is the list I would suggest you playing in case you are not into playing popular lists as Ostkaka’s Secret Paladin.

I hope you guys have a wonderful 2016, that all your Hearthy wishes come true and that every one of you have a lot of success, no matter your objective!

I love you all cuties, hope to see you again later!

Lots and lots of cuddles,

Nuba

---