Running Wild: Meta Report

Introduction

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to another edition of ”Running wild”, my weekly wild article series. Last week I gave you three wild decks that I personally enjoy to play and a week before that I gave you my ”January meta report” where I’ve covered wild meta decks for the first time. Today I’m going to focus once again on the current meta wild decks but I’ll go a little bit more in depth than just posting you a link on where to find the latest wild meta report. You will be getting 3 short wild deck guides based on the latest wild meta report. I’ll be using this meta report which is only 6 days old and I don’t think that much has change, or anything at all, in those 6 days.

Sit back, relax, and let’s dive right into this! 🙂

The Current Meta

As you can see from the meta report the current wild metagame is eerily similar to the standard metagame. There is a very good reason for this and that reason is kazakus. Yes, you’ve heard me, the reason for the two metas being so similar is kazakus and not the pirate package. Why kazakus over the pirate package? Because kazakus made Reno mage and Reno priest viable in both formats and Reno deck to work better in the wild format. The latest expansion, Mean Streets Of Gadgetzan, is still relatively new and players are still experimenting with their new Reno decks. Many players have been frustrated by the current standard metagame so they have tried switching to wild but because not all of them have wild cards they’ve been using their next best choice which is their standard Reno decks. Reno decks need only a handful of cards to transition from standard to wild format. 

Not everybody likes to play aggro and those who don’t need a good way to counter it but because most people don’t have older cards, especially the newer players, they play the thing that counters the pirates in the standard format which is Reno decks. Besides, we finally have two new Reno decks, so it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you that those decks are seeing more and more play. With the upcoming nerf to spirit-claws and small-time-buccaneer and the next expansion right around the corner we will most definitely start seeing less and less Reno decks at the very top of the wild meta report ladder.

3 Decks To Play

Before I go ahead and give you some wild decks to play please keep one thing in mind. I won’t be covering pirate warrior and aggro shaman. The reason for this is that those decks literally have only 1 card different from their standard counterpart so it will basically be as if I were covering standard pirate warrior and aggro shaman decks. Reno decks at least have several different cards. I’ll also pick only one Reno deck because all of them have pretty much the same wild cards in them which are piloted-shredder, antique-healbot, sludge-belcher, loatheb and doctor-boom. I want to keep this list as wild exclusive as possible!

With that out of the way, here are 3 decks for you to play!

Reno Warlock

First deck on the list is the oldest and the most powerful Reno deck out of all three, Renolock. You already know the deal with this one. Renolock revolves around playing a single copy of each card in your deck so that you can play reno-jackson and heal yourself back to full health. This deck has been around for years, ever since League Of Explorers was introduced, and pretty soon it will become a wild exclusive decks. Those of you who mostly play standard are well familiar with this decks, some of you might even play it, but the wild version is so much more powerful then the standard one that it is not even funny.

You have not one but two gigantic early game taunt minions, dirty-rat and deathlord. While I still consider deathlord to be better early game taunter I can see why people are using dirty-rat so much in standard, especially now when there are 3 Reno deck running around. The possibility of dragging out an opponent’s reno-jackson is way too good to pass up and if you actually manage to do so then you’ve most likely just won that game. deathlord has its own pros which are having 1 hp more than dirty-rat, pulling something from the deck instead of from the hand, being much more useful and harder to remove if it hits an empty board and you being able to summon it again with nzoth-the-corruptor. Other survivability tools are second-rate-bruiser which never ceases to surprise me because I’ve originally thought that the card was not as good as it has proven itself to be and sludge-belcher which is the best taunt minion in the entire game. sludge-belcher is pretty crazy because you need to effectively kill it twice to fully remove it and you can bring it back with nzoth-the-corruptor. Last but not least is the antique-healbot which is simply an amazing healing neutral healing card.

Other powerful tools which this deck has are darkbomb which can remove those 3 health 2 drop and 3 drop minions, piloted-shredder which is along sludge-belcher and deathlord one of the best deathrattle minions in the entire game and loatheb which will save you from certain doom more times than you can count. It can stop a miracle rogue when it play gadgetzan-auctioneer and it can stop freeze mage from dealing lethal after it hits you with alexstrasza or gets multiple fireball spells from archmage-antonidas.

Things that I would change: I love playing malganis as an additional source of survivability and I’ve found myself using power-overwhelming and leeroy-jenkins more often in my Renolock because I’ve found myself in a position where I just need to deal lethal damage out of nowhere before an enemy Reno deck plays their reno-jackson and heals up. I also run a faceless-manipulator because I love to combine it with the previously mentioned two cards.

Secret Paladin

Oh, boy, dig daddy Uther is back to smack you with his Christmas tree. In my last article I’ve briefly talked about the secret paladin deck and I’ve mentioned it being one of the most powerful decks in the entire game. Now I’m happy to be able to show you the actual deck because although some of you might be familiar with it there are always those who aren’t and who are seeing this deck for the first time. For those of you who are new to secret paladin and the wild format, this version of the deck is even stronger than the previous version of it which had haunted the ladder for many months.

How do you play this deck? It is incredibly simple. What you want to do with this deck is to play powerful minions on curve until turn 6 when you play mysterious-challenger and most likely seal the game on that or on the following turn if you’ve managed to keep your opponent from gaining board control. What makes this version of the deck even more powerful than the original one is the fact that this version can actually win you the game even if your opponent manages to play around your secrets on the following turn and thus manage to save themselves. If that happen you can simply go into the late game, play your deathrattle minions and then smack your opponent with nzoth-the-corruptor on turn 10 but NOT before you’ve managed to get your tirion-fordring killed first. It is not impossible to come back from that but it is a bit harder to do.

For those of you who are new to this deck and wonder about the secret synergy, here is how it goes: If you attack your opponent then the first secret that activates is noble-sacrifice, followed by avenge because a minion had just died, followed by redemption which brings back the 2/1 minion and then competitive-spirit activates on your opponent’s next turn to buff all of his/her minions. Last but not the least is repentance which is the easiest one to play around.

Mech Mage

Waaaait a minute! This deck isn’t in the meta report!

No, it isn’t. This one is my own personal choice. You see, there are a lot of players out there who have started playing after the introduction of the standard format and some of them might be looking for a cheap wild deck to try out the format which is why I’ve added mech mage, the cheapest wild exclusive deck that I could find, to this list. Mechmage is an amazing aggro deck which could use more love.

First thing that you might have noticed about this deck is the similarity between cogmaster and small-time-buccaneer. You can say that cogmaster was the original small-time-buccaneer from way back when. The deck revolves around the very powerful synergy that mech minions have. cogmaster is your early beatdown card but mechwarper is your bread and butter. For those of you who are wondering how mechwarper works, yes, it can lower a cost of a mech minion to 0 which allows you to empty your hand and fill your board exceptionally quickly. That is the point of the entire deck. Fill your board with mech minions which are powerful on their own and then just proceed to hit face. You’re hitting face almost the entire time and your opponent will fall pretty quickly. The deck is in a way very similar to pirate warrior. If it gets going it can win you games in no time but if you run out of steam than you’re most likely going to lose. Fun and cheap deck for newcomers to the wild format!

Conclusion

We’ve reached the end of yet another wild article. I’ll be taking a very short break from the wild articles next week and then I’m returning to the weekly wild schedule and I’ll be covering various individual wild decks along with posting wild meta reports. Now that we know that small-time-buccaneer is receiving a nerf we can expect a shift in the wild metagame which might bring to light some of the more obscure and underplayed wild decks such as ramp druid, mech mage, mech warrior and deathrattle priest. I’m looking forward to exploring the format once the pirates are gone! 🙂 The meta report wasn’t exceptionally long nor very different from the last one, which is why I’ve focused on 2 decks from the report and 1 outside of it, because the situation has been quite stale and it hasn’t changed in a while.

As always  if you’ve liked this article do consider following me on twitter https://twitter.com/Eternal_HS. There you can ask me all sorts of Hearthstone questions (unrelated to this article) and I’ll gladly answer them as best as I can!

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