Introduction
This article was supposed to be out yesterday, but I am working with a lot of stuff lately that I simply did not have time to post this.
However, there has been some good things about it, mostly that I had time to do more playtests and deliver you guys a few upgraded lists, even upgrades to the ones I posted on my last Premium article submitted here!
Today I bring you my bunch of meta-adapted deck lists that I have created to make up for the huge appearance of Pirate Warriors on the ladder that simply overperformed and gave me inimaginable results, as well as predicting a future metagame filled with Midrange Shamans once again (which is basically the same techs that you use against both decks).
Reno Dragon Priest 2.0
So I start off with a deck that I have completely crushed the ladder with: Reno Dragon Priest. But not just any version, a couple of days ago I posted a version that I was dominating the ladder with, which was an updated version of my initial playtest list.
However, much has changed since two days ago as the metagame is evolving pretty quickly and we need to adapt to those changes, and because of it I had to make some drastic changes to the last build.
Firstly, I kept my initial trend and cut a lot of Late game from the build because after tons of testing we could notice how the deck simply didn’t need that much late game given the high number of card-steal mechanics that the deck has to make the Control matchup super good.
Then a lot of other things came on board, like both the Pirate Warrior matchup being a bit of a coin toss – even though it was slightly favorable, I wasn’t enjoying the “slightly” part at all, so I decided that this metagame needs a lot of weapon removal, not only because of Pirate Warrior but also because Midrange Shaman seems like a much better deck than Pirate Warrior that just died out because of the MSG Hype, but that also gets countered by early-game weapon removal.
Anyway, back to the deck, the MSG hype also brought a wave of horrible decks to the ladder – Jade Druids. The thing about Jade Druid is that if your deck is super slow and let your opponent do their plays (usually the definition of Control decks) you lose the game. Well, we couldn’t let that happen, so I invested more on early game defenses and things to play, and turned out that despite still playing a Control Reno deck, I am actually capable of rushing down the super-slow-clunky-master Jade Druid consistently.
Reno Mage 2.0
Another deck that got slightly altered in order to fit the metagame was Reno Mage.
I basically made the same changes I did on the Priest with the exception that I didn’t go too deep on getting the deck to have better early game defenses as the deck didn’t quite needed them very much.
So, a lot of people have been asking me how to play against Jade Druid with this deck, and the game plan is quite simple: Finish the Druid off with Spells. Jade Druid has only one game plan – do to nothing for 10~ turns and then start dropping big stuff on the board to slam the opponent in the face for a lot of damage if those stick – All you have to do is play like a Freeze Mage, save your bursts for Face damage, deal damage with your minions early on, and if they somehow take over the board, just frost-nova + doomsayer.
In the Pirate Warrior game you already have mistress-of-mixtures which helps tons early and later in the game, both the weapon removal Oozes are also BiS cards to fight the meta-dominant deck right now, everything else pretty much goes around kill everything they do, freeze their face so you don’t get smashed by a weapon and heal yourself with reno when you’re in lethal range without ice-block up (always try to calculate their burst).
This deck is basically a Value Mage deck that despite having only 1 of each card is actually very consistent given its super high amount of card draw mechanisms and redundant removal.
Reno Warlock 2.0
So I went on and on about which deck I should spotlight as my third deck in this article, because I simply could not find a deck fitting for this slot as I playtested a lot of them.
Token Druid seems to have lost its light in just less than 24 hours after it was spotlighted as the #1 Legend deck, Midrange Shaman (With Jinyu Waterspeakers) kind of gets destroyed by Dragon Priest, Pirate Warrior hasn’t changed a bit since it was first mentioned, so I realized that I had to go back and simply create yet another deck.
So I went back all the way to the drawing board and decided to do yet another reno-jackson based deck, and started working on Renolock. The first three cards I added to the deck were Reno and the two Oozes, because why not?
The results of the playtest is basically proof that every Reno deck with two early-game weapon removal are going to be godlike in this meta, as every one of them has ways of beating the most played decks right now.
I believe Reno Lock to be, of the bunch, the least strong of the bunch right now because of how it overly depends on drawing Reno Jackson before turn 6 in order to survive against Pirate Warrior (but if you do, you instantly win the game), however there are a few upsides to this like how strong the deck seems to be in the Priest matchup which is quite a common one nowadays.
The 20-damage Renolock combo also wins a lot of Control matchups on the spot, and was the reason why I didn’t lost so many games when I was behind.
Closing
Reno Decks are the most fun decks I could think of, every time I think about playing something else, I just go back to Reno because I simply want to play them over anything else in the entire game.
These deck lists were picked out of the whole playtesting bunch I had at my disposal up until this very moment, I have to admit I didn’t even think I was going to make a triple-Reno article when I started this and it just ended up as is.
I hope you guys enjoyed this article, and in case there is anything you would like to ask or add just feel free to post it in the comments!
Love you guys, we’ll be seeing each other again later,
Nuba
