Mean Streets of Gadgetzan has shaken up the meta and we are proud to bring to you the latest viable decks that you can try for grinding to desired ranks. Our first installment of Legend Decks of Gadgetzan can be found at – Legend Decks of Gadgetzan – Week 1. With many more players hitting legend and trying out new cards, we have more fresh decks for you that popular content creators and professional players used for their grind to high legend ranks.
All of the above decks have been tried and tested by not only the original deck creators themselves but also by me in Ranked Play and I’ve put together a list of some of the better performing decks from what I gathered in the past week. The decks feel refreshing and add a nice twist to the meta. Some of the decks below are quite niche but due to the unstable nature of the meta you will be able take your opponents by surprise due to them not being able to accurately predict what you are playing.
Egg Druid (by J4CKIECHAN)
We all know how big of an innovator Jackie is when it comes to making quirky decks that seemingly work despite looking like off-beat fun decks. Some of his best creations include Camel Hunter and Egg Druid. His Spiderman Hunter was one of the first Hunter decks I really enjoyed a long time back and now he is back with a new take on his old Egg Druid deck. Egg Druid in its older form had a lot of sticky minions that were used from Curse of Naxxramas and it was a great deck overall. However, with the departure of a lot of key cards in the 2016 Standard rotation we were left high and dry with newer cards not adding anything to the deck and it went out of favor over time. But with the new expansion it seems like the deck is making a comeback. It is a very niche deck and it more of a fun and surprise pick to use on ladder. Jackie managed to pull Turn 3 wins with the deck on legend ladder on stream and maintained a winrate of almost 70% while playtesting the deck.
Mark of the Lotus is one of the new cards that have been making an impact. Token Druid was previously taken to Rank 1 Legend by Feno and the card worked wonders in the list and the one mana cost difference compared to Power of the Wild made quite the difference. Egg Druid works in similar fashion to Token Druid but it is a lot faster at what it does and does not pack any lategame. You want to flood the board repeatedly and make it stick. Once you establish board presence you have the potential to burst down your opponent using your board buff cards or Savage Roar for a ton of damage. With so many area of effect spells being made available in the current expansion you have nothing to worry about because you have Soul of the Forest to cover you on that front and having sticky minions or adding deathrattles to your existing board presence makes sure you keep getting the chip damage in every single turn and eat away at your opponent’s health pool.
So what makes Egg Druid so great? Since Pirate Warrior is quite popular now, being able to flood the board allows you to eat away the abundance of 1 HP minions that they pack and you will be able to counter other aggressive decks just as well. Some of the more popular decks in the meta right now do not have proper board clears to deal with the kind of board presence the deck is able to generate and you will easily be able to take people by surprise. Most people you face on ladder will generally mulligan against you assuming you are running a slow deck like Jade Druid but in turn get smashed once you start generating your tokens and burst them down in one or two turns very early in the game before they are even able to react to your board using their area of effect spells. It also mixes some Pirate and Beast synergy in the deck as well. Bloodsail Corsair is one of the more interesting picks in the deck because of how most aggressive weapon decks use one weapon with 2 durability and smack you in the face once as soon as they equip it. Being 1 cheaper than Acidic Swamp Ooze and the ability to pull out Patches the Pirate makes this seemingly bad card and appealing pick.
Control Shaman (by wiRer)
White Eyes is one of the best cards from the expansion for Deathrattle decks but unfortunately only Shamans will be able to take advantage of the card due to it being exclusive for Thrall and Morgl. Control Shaman is by no means a bad deck and there players like ApDrop, VLPS and wiRer who have taken the deck to legend in the past and the addition of White Eyes makes N’zoth Shaman a lot more appealing. One of the biggest concerns of Control Shaman was that they drew way too much against Control decks and failed win in fatigue a lot of the time.
On the other hand, the deck drew aggressively but the healers were either too inconsistent or too slow. Hallazeal the Ascended combined with high damage AoE spells is the most powerful heal combo possible in Standard right now and you can heal yourself to 30 from 1 HP using something like Elemental Destruction on a substantially large board. But the combo pops up way to late into the game and you want to get cheap answers for sustain which Healing Wave just failed to provide due to the Joust mechanic which doesn’t always work out properly and you might not get the desired amount of heal you need. Enter Jinyu Waterspeaker and it’s a different ball game together for Control Shaman. With 5 heal cards including Hallazeal The Ascended and multiple AoE removals and spot removals, the deck doesn’t lack anything at all to beat both aggressive and control decks. You also have a lot of taunts to keep aggressive minions from smacking you in the face and it does a great job in the meta against both Control and Aggro decks.
White Eyes is one of the best value cards in the deck and you are able to add up to two Storm Guardians back to your deck making the deck good enough to counter slow decks that tend to go into fatigue. Except Jade Druid I have had no trouble against most decks and I had a lot of fun playing the deck. Jinyu Waterspeaker is one of the cards that can give Antique Healbot a run for its money and I feel it beats Antique Healbot by a long shot and it would be really an auto-include in any mid range or lategame heavy tempo deck due to the perfect balance between its cost, heal and stats. Overall, this is a deck you definitely need to try out if you have all the cards for it and happen to love control style decks.
Combo Renolock (by Asmodai)
If you are a fan of OTK decks and have not had the opportunity to try out Combolock in the past then you should definitely try the deck out in its newest avatar. With a multitude of cards pushing singleton decks in the new meta Renolock is back with a bang and you should be able to find great success with the deck in the meta. One of the best advantages of Warlock as a class to support singleton decks is the availability of Life Tap, which is one of the top hero powers in the game if not the very best.
You have access to a ton of removal and AoE options and the deck is very thin on the lategame front. Instead, you have access to a 20 damage burst combo that can extend to 28 damage if you manage to pull a second Power Overwhelming from Dark Peddler.
The deck is heavily tuned to beat aggressive decks and has a great combo win condition as well. You need to bring down the cost of playing Leeroy Jenkins, Faceless Manipulator and Power Overwhelming to at least 10 mana using Emperor Thaurissan. It serves as your primary win condition but not the only way to win the game, if you want to use up some of your combo pieces to survive then go ahead and do so because you will be able to outlast your opponent and dry your opponent out of resources in the long run anyway if they are playing aggressive decks. However against control decks you want to preserve all the pieces of your win condition because of their ability to shut down your big minions and stay at a reasonable health pool.
Unlike a lot of other lists that run extremely greedy cards, Asmodai chose to do away with all that and create a refined list that just works out in the meta. He had an insane winrate on the legend ladder and hit Rank 1 quite handily beating some of the best players in the game in the process.
MidRange Secret Hunter (by NickChipper)
If you have been wondering where did Secret Hunter disappear off to in the meta, the answer is it has gone nowhere. It seems like Secret Hunter is going to stay and with some tweaks to beat the meta, the deck is back in action. NickChipper found decent success with the deck and it puts away a lot of the slower cards the deck originally had in favor of more aggressive early game and a secret package that is bent towards beating aggressive decks. You have Alleycat which has great synergy with cards like Knife Juggler and Scavenging Hyena, two cards that did not see play in Secret Hunter for the most part. Explosive Trap and Bear Trap are clutch secrets thrown into the package and they have the ability to stop aggressive decks in their tracks quite handily. The deck has no end-game win condition and seeks to end the games by turn 7 or 8 at best. It is a fast mid range build and excludes a lot of popular secrets that used to be played to make sure the deck is able to counter the meta.
Cat Trick is one of the notable absentees that do not make the cut, and it was one of the most popular cards in the builds earlier. With so many minion heavy decks floating around it makes sense to cut cards that offer little or no value and make room for secrets that help you control the board. With so many charge minions floating around, Freezing Trap is not as its best in terms of value right now and it allows you to fit in some key minions instead. Two copies of Snake Trap is also something that has not been seen much before and it makes sense to have as many tokens on board as possible for chip damage across the turns and also deal with 2/1 minions that are so popular in the meta right now. Explosive Trap has been one of the most devastating secrets for me because of how good it is in the meta right now. Due to the popularity of 3 HP minions it lost value in the previous meta but with 1 and 2 HP minions making a comeback it is time to bring back one of the few sources of pseudo AoE effects Hunter has access to.
You should give this a shot if you like to play Hunter and I feel the list is quite refined and works as intended. It does play out a little differently from the older Hunter lists that you might be accustomed to so it might take a little bit of time getting used to the ordering of secrets and other facets in planning out your turns.
Jade Aggro Shaman (by Spo)
If you are a fan of aggressive decks then here is the right deck for you. Aggro Shaman is being considered by many to be a top tier deck right now and there is more than enough reason to believe so. With a variety of synergies that come together and offer you a ton of burst damage to pound through your opponent’s health pool as well as minions that are extremely efficient for their cost, there is no surprise that the deck is performing admirably in the meta right now. It has all the early game that any Aggro Shaman player is accustomed to and also includes a handful of Pirates to take advantage of the weapon synergies. Patches the Pirate makes yet another appearance in the deck. It seems like every aggressive deck is trying to fit in a handful of pirates to make use of Patches and the free value it offers players and the added consistency in draws that go into effect once he is played out from the deck.
Crackle was one of the most important cards in the pre-Standard Aggro Shaman and the less reduced burst damage was something that always bothered me. But with the addition of Jade Lightning, Shaman now has access to a lot more burst damage and you can go all in on your board and even if it gets wiped out you have 24 total burst damage from spells alone without any buffs. You also have an abundance of weapons in your arsenal to make use of and there just isn’t enough weapon removal in any deck to properly counter the deck. Aya Blackpaw is a nice inclusion in the deck as well since you are running a total of 4 Jade Golem cards and being able to generate high value board presence in a fast deck is something Aggro Shaman seeks to do anyway.
Aya Blackpaw is not the best of inclusions in my opinion and I did play with the deck but she felt a little too slow for what she does in this kind of deck since you often lose your board and go for the all-in face damage plan anyway turn 5 or so onwards and trying to build your board back doesn’t always help. However, the results might be different for other people so you might want to stick to the decklist and see how see works out for you and judge for yourself. I find the inclusion of a second Flamewreathed Faceless a lot more fitting in the list and I’ve made the change in my own list but have left the original creator’s decklist intact for you to try for yourself.
Hope you have a fun time with the decks and try them out on ladder. If you have any decks that you have been trying, feel free to share them below in the comments below and we’ll try them out! We will come back with more decks in the coming weeks to bring you the best decks from professional players and streamers so stay tuned!
Published: Dec 14, 2016 08:10 pm