Decks to Play – A Whole New Metagame Shines Upon Us!

Introduction

Hello cuties, this is the first Decks to Play article since League of Explorers was fully released, and today we have so much to talk about!

League of Explorer was the most impactful expansion this game has ever had, you can argue that Naxxramas had as much impact, but the number of new archetypes this expansion created was as big as Naxxramas and deserves at least as much respect.

With the bunch of strong playable card added this expansion we were able to witness a huge twist in the metagame, and basically everything has changed.

Decks to Play is a weekly series that talk about the best decks that should be played according to my analysis of the ladder, in this series we often see the best decks of the Week tuned by myself, we also discuss a lot about things that happened during the week and how players should proceed in their ladder experience. In other words: This is the series you should check in order to get yourself ready for your ladder experience!

This week, I bring you guys the best Post-LoE decks!

Aggro Shaman

The most famous deck that has been around the ladder is Aggro Shaman. The deck itself made tons of changes in the metagame, forcing some classes up and some others down. People argue this is the best deck in the metagame, and I can’t help but think those guys are correct, since this deck has high chances of winning against over 90% of the metagame.

This deck plays around dealing tons of damage within a very short period of time, demanding immediate response otherwise the defending player will be dead. The cards that made this deck possible were the new 1-drops: sir-finley-mrrgglton and tunnel-trogg. Finley transforms Shaman’s not-so-aggro hero power into something more aggro-ish, capable of putting more pressure than Totems, while the Tunnel Trogg is arguably the best 1-drop in the game right now. This, combined with the arsenal of Burst damage Shaman has, made Shaman the top tier Aggro Class in the game, and in case you want to win games quickly, this is the deck for you.

Reno Jackson Decks

Countering Face Shaman decks comes the reno-jackson army. The card itself was able of creating tons and tons of different decks, and probably every class is capable of doing a competitive “Reno” deck.

If you are interesting in countering Face Shaman decks, Reno Jackson is the most successful way of doing that. Usually combined with Weapon destruction tools, such as acidic-swamp-ooze for Warlocks and harrison-jones for other classes (Warlocks won’t need the Draw Jones provides, and its best playing without such Draw), to deal with the almighty doomhammer the Reno Jackson decks are the best bet at beating Aggro Shaman’s Aggression.

Warlock is the best class to build a Reno Jackson strategy, because it has tons of redundant cards that although different, have similar effects, allowing Warlocks to have a deck filled with 1-ofs. Warlock’s hero power is also another major plus for building a deck around Reno Jackson.

Currently, the strongest Reno Jackson builds play around with feugen+stalagg duo, making the Control matchup more consistent. Warlocks in general have a decent Control matchup, thanks to Life Tap and lord-jaraxxus.

If you want to play something to deal with those pesky aggro decks, Reno Warlock is the deck you should be playing.

Control Priest

Another deck that became very strong post-LoE was Control Priest. People are still experimenting a lot with the class, and the best list is yet to be found, but as far as playtesting goes, even the most sloppy of the builds is proving to be consistent enough to do good in the ladder, which lead us to believe that whenever the perfect Control Priest build is found, the deck is likely to find a place in the top tier of the Ladder.

Thinking on that, I have been doing tons of Playtesting with Control priest and found a build that might as well be one of the best, if not the best! Of course, we still have much to test in order to know more about this archetype, because Control Priest is both not popular – people tend to prefer easy decks as well as fast decks, and this deck is neither – as well as it has a very tough learning curve.

museum-curator is simply awesome – there are tons of game-winning Deathrattle cards for you to pick in the Control matchup as well as a lot of Anti-aggro ones for you to pick in the Aggro matchup – it not only is supposed to always give you the card you need, it is also a pro-active play early on in the game. I also took the liberty of adding jeweled-scarab to the Control Priest list given the high number of both anti-aggro as well as anti-control 3-drop cards priest has.

confessor-paletress is another card I like a lot. The card seems better than ysera in this particular metagame because it not only lets you heal yourself when it is played and demands 2 removal, it also can not be stolen by shrinkmeister+cabal-shadow-priest combo most Control Priest decks are still running.

In case you want to play something very different, yet very powerful and fun, this is the decklist for you!

Other Notable Information

A lot happened during this last week, and although today I am only giving you guys 3 Deck lists, I want to discuss a little about what other classes got from LoE:

• Paladins got keeper-of-uldaman, which was added to both Secret as well as Midrange paladin lists, making it so the class stays at the top of the tier list. There are also a couple of 4fun Murloc decks playing around with anyfin-can-happen but I don’t believe those are playable enough to be worth a higher mentioning – The card is complex enough that it deserves deck building, but not good enough that it will be able to compete.
• Rogues got both tomb-pillager as well as unearthed-raptor, making both Miracle and Aggro rogue viable. I would suggest you to stay away from Miracle rogue, as the deck seems very weak, despite this week’s hype about it.
• Warlocks got their all-star 2-drop, dark-peddler. Warlocks also got a new archetype called “Flood Zoo” which was made possible thanks to reliquary-seeker. I don’t believe the deck is anywhere close to dominating the meta or even have a substantial presence, and that is why I am not posting the list together with the main powerhouses, but in case you are interested in knowing the list, it is right there ->
• Warriors got nothing, you can argue Patron Warrior got sir-finley-mrrgglton, but I believe that it wasn’t as good of an addition to the deck as most are thinking, and that the class as a whole is arguably much weaker now when compared to last season where Control Warrior was playable. My suggestion here is to stay away from Warrior altogether.
• Druids Arguably got nothing, since mounted-raptor didn’t prove itself to be better than shade-of-naxxramas but the class itself is already so strong it won’t suffer from it as Warriors.
• Mages got ethereal-conjurer which is basically a decent substitution to azure-drake in case you prefer to discover rather than to draw a card. This doesn’t push mages up, but also won’t push the class down as both Freeze Mage as well as Tempo Mage were already strong enough and other archetypes messing around reno-jackson might show up.
• Hunters got tomb-spider, which makes Midrange Hunter more consistent but also less bursty. I believe Hunters will need a major boost in the coming expansion in order to remain playable, as it has been pushed down in the tiers for quite some time already.
• Priests and Shamans were already discussed previously.

Other interesting information is the metagame composition around ranks 5 and 3. The past 3 days I played around 100 games with my Reno Warrior to farm the last few wins I needed to get my Golden Warrior. Because of the high number of games I played, we can say the data collected is very close to the real image of the metagame, which is:

1. Paladins: 20,5% – Mixed between Midrange and Secret.
2. Shamans: 19.2% – All Aggro.
3. Druids: 16.7% – All Midrange.
4. Warlock: 15.4% – A mix of every possible build, but over half of those matchups were Renolock.
5. Warrior: 9% – All Control.
6. Mage: 6.4% – Half of those were Freeze, half were Tempo.
7. Hunter: 5.1% – only played against 4 Hunters, 2 of those were face, 2 were midrange, all of them lost miserably.
8. Priest: 5.1% – All Control. Interesting as I only played against 4 Priests, and none of them were Dragon Priest.
9. Rogue 2.6% – Only played against 2 Rogues, one Miracle and one Raptor.

Note Aggro Shaman is the most played deck you’ll be facing this week, followed by Midrange Druid, then Secret and Midrange Paladin, this information might come in handy when picking a deck to ladder with!

Conclusion

Aaaand this is it for first week of a fully released League of Explorers expansion!

A lot is still to happen, so don’t forget to stay tuned in our website for more amazing reads regarding everything that is happening in Hearthstone, because a lot is still to be shown!

I hope you guys are enjoying this series, and that I have been able to pass you guys all the information you need to become a better Hearthstone player! 😀

I love you all!

Cuddles,

Nuba