Standard Power Rankings – Episode 1

Introduction

So I totally took the idea from Channelfireball: basically, there is a “Power Ranking” that is updated weekly with the best cards in the format, in today’s case that format is Standard.

Basically, this kind of article is directed to the people looking to craft a card or to build a deck around it. Here we’ll be saying the cards that have impacted the format the most during the week, with some insights on why they did it and how they affected the Decks they were being played on.

Power Rankings won’t simply number the best cards from 1 to 10, they’ll number the most impactful cards during said week, in today’s case we have the first week of Standard!

Rank 1 – Flamewreathed Faceless

This big dude right here totally dominated the ladder during the first week of Standard gameplay. The fact is Shaman was already powerful during the last weeks of Pre-WOG Format, but it was just a simple “Face” deck, some even say “Rexxar in disguise”. With the Standard format, Shaman lost zero playable cards, while gaining tons and tons of powerful cards with Whispers of the Old Gods. Of the whole bunch, Flamewreathed Faceless was the most important of them all, and made an appearance in every single Shaman build possible, allowing the deck to generate even more tempo when combined with other cards from previous expansions such as tunnel-trogg and tuskarr-totemic.

Rank 2 – C’Thun

Who could deny that C’Thun generated quite the huge number of decks this week? Everyone tried a C’Thun deck, and of every single class too! Fact is, different from yogg-saron-hopes-end decks, some C’Thun decks actually worked, and they were pretty powerful for a first-week decks.

The most impactant deck of them all until now was C’Thun Druid, which was so blantantly obvious that I wouldn’t imagine it happening any other way – Because of how powerful dark-arakkoa is by itself, and how easy it is to picture the deck’s curve in our minds, C’Thun Druid was sure to be the first C’Thun playtest build seen on the Ladder. Other C’Thun decks started showing up later last week, C’Thun priest seems to be quite weak, while C’Thun Warrior does looks promising!

Truth be told, in the end all the C’Thun decks were pretty obvious, so it was natural to see a huge rise of C’Thun decks this early in the game. The question that remains is if C’Thun decks will be able to compete toe-to-toe against the batch of refined decks that we’ll be seeing in the near future.

Rank 3 – Darkshire Councilman

And who would have ever believed that this fat guy was going to be the reason why Zoo decks managed to stay alive post-rotation?

Darkshire Councilman was the sole reason Zoo decks could maintain their power post-rotation. While Zoo itself lost all of its Deathrattle cards, the deck changed a lot and became something completely different. From a fully persistent and reactive deck, Zoo turned into something like a Tempo deck with a lot of Proactive plays simply because you have the ability to slam a 1/5 on the board that grows exponentially the more the time passes.

On a deck like Zoo, Darkshire Councilman becomes a real threat, and something to be feared all over the ladder, and that is why the card deserves a Rank 3 in our first Power Rankings.

Rank 4 – Ravaging Ghoul

Talking about Sole reasons for decks to exist, here we go with Ravaging Ghoul, the sole reason for a lot of today’s Warriors build to exist.

Patron Warrior was the most obvious build, so it was the first to rise, but with the refinement of decks we are starting to see quite a lot of different Midrange and Tempo oriented builds playing around with Ravaging Ghoul.

Truth be told, this card has so many interactions with Warrior cards that it was hard believing this card wouldn’t make the cut in at least half of the Warrior decks we would be seeing.

From Patron to Midrange Warrior and even some crazy Control builds, Ravaging Ghoul not only made a lot of archetypes possible, it also complemented some already existing ones and that is why it stays in the Rank 4 of our Power Rankings!

Rank 5 – N’Zoth, the Corruptor

And here we are with the Rank 5 of our Power Rankings.

Everybody knows a lot of people were going to test N’Zoth decks, but what I didn’t believe – and many didn’t know – was that some of these decks were actually going to be pretty good!

N’Zoth created thousands of new archetypes, from the stronger ones – Rogues and Paladins – to doubtable ones – Priests and Hunters – everyone created their own version of N’Zoth decks, and they’re there making those Control decks cry everytime.

Much like C’Thun decks, N’Zoth decks were simply born from the hype itself, and only time will be able to tell us whether or not N’Zoth decks will be able to compete with the refined decks we are about to witness within the next couple months, but I have to admit that different from C’Thun decks I don’t believe N’Zoth decks will go much further.

Nonetheless, N’Zoth had a very important role to play in the first week’s Ladder, and has a well deserved Rank 5 in this week’s Power Rankings!

Ranks 6 through 10

Rank 6 call-of-the-wild.

Rank 7 xaril-poisoned-mind.

Rank 8 steward-of-darkshire.

Rank 9 mark-of-yshaarj.

Rank 10 faceless-summoner.

Closing

Today’s metagame is a very new one, and a lot of still to change, but in case you want to know which cards you should be crafting or playing around with first, the Power Rankings should be a very good starting point for you guys to put your eyes on!

Did you like the Power Ranking idea? Would you be interested in seeing more Power Rankings in the future? Let me know in the comments, your opinion matters a great deal to us here at Hearthstoneplayers!

Love you guys, hope to see you again in our next article!

Cuddles,

Nuba

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