Our Favourite Hearthstone Decks of All-Time

Recently, Hearthstone's pros and streamers started posting on Twitter their personal top 5 decks of all time.

We think these kinds of Tweets can be entertaining; Not only you can understand a player's tastes when it comes to game strategies, but they also show which era pros are tied to the most. For example, many people included decks from GvG and Frozen Throne, which are respectively when the game started getting famous and when Blizzard decided to go all in with power level and printed the Death Knights.

We content creators decided to try this idea ourselves and to propose it to our community. Therefore, we'll now proceed to showcase our all-time favorite deck and explain why we have fond memories of them. Join us in the fun and let us know about your favourite deck in the comments down below.

Sinti - GvG's Control Priest

Control Priest was my absolute favorite deck to play back in the day. Those were the times where Control Warrior was the top dog and Control Paladin was actually a thing :D Control Priest with Thoughtsteals was a deck that could rival them, since you could get additional resources from the enemy. Back then, there were almost no tools to generate extra cards, so squeezing every bit of value out of every card was the name of the game.

I don't remember the exact composition of the deck, but it was something like this.

I loved the matches against Warrior especially: they were like chess games - I knew he had 2x Shield Slam, 2x Execute and 2x Brawl; he knew I had 2x Shadow Word: Death, 1-2 Mind Control(s), 1-2 Cabal Shadow Priest(s) and 2x Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combos; we also knew we both had Dr. Boom, Ragnaros the Firelord and Sylvanas Windrunner, plus potentially some other big hitters.

So it became a game of chess, a game of chicken: who can better bait our the other one's removals and still keep at least one threat alive to seal the game. You knew exactly what kind of removals your opponent could have, because there were not many options at the time. Sylvanas was probably one of the most interesting cards: both players had to play around her effect to prevent the opponent to gain value from it and therefore to "waste" one more removal. Also, who remembers the not-so-budget-but-oh-so-sweet "Mind Control"? Sylvanas + Shadow Word: Death :)

This is where Thoughtsteals would often come in play and give me game winning advantages: stealing removals or big Legendaries would give me more resources to play with, eventually outlasting my opponent. I can't remember how many Tirion Fordrings I stole :D But as it is true today, even back then there were duds: for as many Legendary cards as I've gotten, I got about as many friggin' Deadly Poisons and Tinker's Sharpsword Oils, because with GvG Oil Rogue became one of the strongest decks and many people played it. That led me to tech in Blingtron 3000: you might laugh now, but I've won games on the back of this card when buffing the weapons with Poison, Oil, or both :) It also acted as a pseudo weapon removal, which was nice. I have turned my disadvantage into an advantage. Discovering new ways to counter your opponent with a limited card pool was pretty cool thing to do.

The deck as it was then would not stand a chance today: so much more card generation was introduced in basically every class since then.The Discover mechanic was a big step forward in that regard. As more of those tools were introduced, Steal Priest archetype was slowly born and you could really make your opponent cry when you were beating them with their own win condition :) Small shout-out to Tess Greymane, who allowed me to have as much fun with Burgle Rogue as I had with Steal Priest.

linkblade91 - Rastakhan's Rumble's Elemental "Value" Mage

I could not decide between Quest Taunt Warrior and this Elemental "Value" Mage deck. That being said, this was the first deck I posted and wrote up a guide for, and it's been taking up a deck slot despite no changes since Rastakhan's Rumble, so I guess it's my favorite.

I called it a "value" deck because its primary goal was to generate a bunch of stuff and use it to grind out a win. Primordial Glyph, Lesser Ruby Spellstone, Servant of Kalimos: lots of ways to create cards in-hand which could then be affected by Leyline Manipulator. And I can't go without mentioning the Queen, Frost Lich Jaina. The deck was simply okay against Aggro and not very good against Combos that don't care about the board state, but it could shine in Control vs Control matchups. I love when two decks go to Fatigue: both players giving it their all, trading blows and big minions until they're completely drained...only to prove your deck can go the distance that much more, and you win (or they concede). It's like a 10-round boxing match straight out of a Rocky movie :D

Mage has received some new cards lately in MDF like Confection Cyclone and Grand Finale, so maybe it's time to give Elemental Mage a spin again.

FrostyFeet - Rastakhan's Rumble's Odd Control Mage

My favourite deck of all time has to be Control Odd Mage during Rastakhan's Rumble. I've never truly cared about playing Ranked, but this deck was a ton of fun in addition to being pretty solid against the Spell Hunter-infested meta of the time, so I actually ended up reaching Legend for the first time in December 2018.

Fireblast Rank 2 was a great early game control tool and combined with Pyromaniac it also became a draw engine, all while progressing Jan'alai's Battlecry condition. Dragon's Fury was the early board reset if your opponent had gone too wide for your Hero Power to handle, quite often used as a direct counter to Greater Emerald Spellstone. Jaina was instrumental at stabilizing in late game, before taking full control with Baron Geddon and Jan'alai's Ragnaros. Alanna was my greedy tech: since I got her from packs during KnC and she was a great fit to the deck, I was basically obligated to include her. It's quite sad that the deck only lived for four months, as rotation pushed the key parts of it to Wild when Rise of Shadows launched.

This deck was what I would like Mage to be as a class: control with spells and win through value. Sadly, the current state of Mages seems like "win through randomly generated nonsense or not at all". Maybe one day Control Mage will rise again, but I doubt I'll ever have as much fun as I had with Odd Control Mage.

Echo - The Boomsday Project's Deathrattle Hunter

While I have had tons of different favorite decks over the years, including MSOG Anyfin Paladin, MSOG Miracle Rogue, and frankly any other deck that was viable in MSOG, probably my favorite decks over the years have been Deathrattle Hunter during The Boomsday Project.

The deck had a ton of solid matchups all around due to the strength of Devilsaur Egg and the numerous different deathrattle trigger cards like Play Dead and Terrorscale Stalker, to the point where the deck was able to get away with no actual tools to pop the egg since it was better for the opponent to do it himself, often resulting in a free 5/5. Then in the top end, you had the Kathrena package, which despite being incredibly suboptimal, I always loved opting for more aggressive recruit targets in the form of a second Charged Devilsaur and Ultrasaur, which for decks that did not have any hard removal/polymorph would win the game on its own. Ultrasaur beatdown is definitely up there for my favorite strategies, and the deck definitely made it not a complete meme. Finally, the deck has Deathstalker Rexxar too, solely just to beat up on control decks as a 6-mana win the game.

Overall the deck had a ton of swing turns and led to some crazy mirror matches, especially with the inclusion of Mind Control Tech. I do wish that Hunter could return to this playstyle, focusing more on getting a sticky board and then having the opponent need to think whether it is better to play it safe and trade or push for face damage, but given the tools that the class has gotten recently, I don't see it returning any time soon.

ShadowOfSense - Kobolds & Catacombs' Cubelock

I've had many favourite decks over the years, including quite a few that I know people would hate me for - Original Res Priest, Original Freeze Mage - but I have to say that the very first builds of Cubelock back when Kobolds & Catacombs released were some of my favorite games of Warlock I've ever played.

Admittedly, a lot of that is because the deck was far too good - collectively it's had two nerfs and two Hall of Fame rotations, though I don't think it can be blamed for Mountain Giant and Doomguard - but it always felt like the perfect tension of playing Warlock and messing with your Health and handsize, without ever having to actually worry about overdoing it and losing the game.

The deck is of course defined by - and named for - Carnivorous Cube, which combined well with the various mana-cheating cards in the deck to create massive boards that the opponent couldn't easily clear with a single card. Especially potent for this was Dark Pact, which not only killed your Cube for an immediate minion doubling (and protection against Silence effects) but also healed you for a massive 8 Health before the nerf, allowing you to use your life aggressively and take full advantage of Lesser Amethyst Spellstone.

My absolute favourite card in the deck, however, was Spiritsinger Umbra: her ability to cause a board state to swing from near empty to overflowing when combined with Cube was amazing to watch, and the incidental bonuses she provided to cards like Voidlord or the occasional inclusion of Plated Beetle made her a real powerhouse.

Plus, y'know, she's a Tortollan. That alone makes her worth it!

Avalon - Rastakhan's Rumble's Mind Blast Priest

Since when I started played I've enjoyed various decks, but I think Rastakhan's Rumble's Mind Blast Priest has a special place in my heart. It was not the best deck in that meta and surely not the most broken one I've ever played, but it's the first one I started getting remarkable results on ladder with.

The Rastakhan's Rumble meta (the same as Frosty's Odd Mage) was strange: on one hand, Odd Paladin and Midrange Hunter were extremely oppressive and were able to close out games in the very first turns; on the other hand, Odd Warrior and Gallery Priest were two of the most resilient decks to be ever existed. In the middle there were lots of cool strategies, that were able to win games thanks to the high synergy of their whole deck rather than because of the powerspike generated by a single card's strength (Deathstalker Rexxar: we're looking at you).

This is where Mind Blast Priest fell: as a Control deck, its sole purpose was shutting down aggro decks with great defensive tools like Duskbreaker, Tar Creeper and Dragonmaw Scorcher - in particular, playing Duskbreaker against a board of Greater Emerald Spellstone's Wolfs and Scorcher against endless Silver Hand Recruit was one of the best feelings I've ever experienced in this game. But that's not all: Tar Creeper was such a good unit - impactful in every meta since its release in Journey to Un'Goro but never really oppressive. The perfect defensive tool no one was really annoyed about: just great design over there.

For what regards the slow matchup, setting up two turn lethals was challenging - you had to spend a whole turn playing Alexstrasza (and hope to not die) and then sequencing multiple copies of Mind Blast and Shadowreaper Anduin's Voidform pings.

Sometimes I even added some niche cards like Omega Medic for extra survivability or Seance to copy good stuff like Deathstalker Rexxar's Zombeasts, Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk (yes, it works) or just an extra copy of a removal.

Demonxz95 - Madness at the DM Faire's Soul Demon Hunter

Now I know full well that this will be a very bold and controversial opinion, but Demon Hunter is probably my favorite thing to come from Hearthstone this year. I've been playing since Blackrock Mountain and my whole time on Hearthstone has been mostly low-budget and on-and-off. With that said, Demon Hunter has made me more competitive than I have ever been and is probably the most fun I've ever had playing Hearthstone.

Sadly (for me anyway), some of the cards were just recently nerfed, although I'm by no means saying that these changes weren't justified: just slightly disappointing as I am *that* player.

Soul Demon Hunter is a deck that does favor some additional planning and rewards you for it. You certainly will have games where you will just steamroll the opponent without giving them a chance; sometimes though, there will be some interesting choices to make. For example, you might want to save some of your really cheap cards to use them later with Altruis the Outcast. He actually doesn't brick in your hand as often as you'd think he would, and he's just an extremely useful and fun card, so I keep him there and he actually does pretty well most of the time.

Matchups are where this thing gets a bit interesting. The deck is surprisingly versatile, able to play aggressively or defensively. Madness at the Darkmoon Faire gave it some neat tools: Bladed Lady is pretty good when you gain as much Attack as you do - even just playing it on an empty board as a 1 mana 6/6 is not bad; Throw Glaive is also a pretty good card if you get into a sticky situation early and can be combined with Altruis really nicely.

I started playing this deck in Scholomance Academy, but Madness at the Darkmoon Faire gave me a few new cards to use. I love the deck for being easy to access, fun to play and occasionally for giving you some fun and unique challenges to overcome.

OldManSanns - Whizbang the Wonderful

I've always been very casual and borderline F2P with Hearthstone, so my favorite "deck" has always been Whizbang the Wonderful. That might sound trollish, but I am being 100% sincere here -- while he was in standard, I probably played more games with Whizbang than all my other decks combined. 

For those unfamiliar with the card: if you make a deck with Whizbang the Wonderful, he will automatically replace it with one of Blizzard's recommended deck recipes prior to the start of the match. You don't know which of these 18 decks you'll be playing until you see your mulligan, and they vary from Aggro to Control. In terms of competitiveness they were all viable -- some would have winrates in the mid 50s with just a few card choices off of meta decks, while others were distinctly off-meta with winrates in the low 40s. There was something unique liberating about queuing up with Whizbang and just letting go of all the minutiae of optimizing your decklists or calculating what archetypes will have favorable matchups against that day's meta. And best of all: Whizbang would give you access to all the new toys of the expansion for free on Day 1. Archetypes built around cards like Lucentbark and Supreme Archaeology were just too dubious for the average player to justify investing precious crafting resources towards them, but with good ol' Whizzy we could still experience them ourselves and see how fun they could be under the right circumstances.

Fluxflashor - Freeze Mage

Mage is not only one of my favourite classes in Hearthstone, but also World of Warcraft. I mention that because when I started playing WoW, I wanted to play a Mage but was really drawn into Hunter. That desire to play Mage over the years I played Hunter and later Holy Paladin lead to me eventually creating one when coming back to the game after an absence in the last raid tier of Cataclysm. Mists of Pandaria saw my first max-level Mage and I was in love. I like to think that my love for the class in WoW drew me into the amazing flavor that Blizzard gave mages in Hearthstone - it felt like I was playing the real thing!

I remember the first time I saw Archmage Antonidas. The card was immediately interesting and I knew I needed to have it in Golden form. Our king aside, my favourite iteration of the deck was earlier on in Hearthstone. When Aggro was at its hottest, though has it really ever died down, Frost Mage was here to chill it out. Control is such a satisfying archetype to play; It annoys your opponents which feels great, you can overcome crazy situations that you get yourself into which feels rewarding, and then you close everything out with something big which makes you feel like a god. Back to the early days...

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy Hearthstone. You may find me in Battlegrounds more than constructed these days, but it isn't due to a lack of desire to play the new decks, it's just that I miss the old ones and Wild doesn't satisfy that itch due to the overwhelming number of cards. I'm a huge sucker for nostalgia and with Hearthstone it hits harder after spending the past 7 years of my life covering the game. The Naxxramas/Goblins vs Gnomes/Blackrock Mountain era made a great game even better and the pacing of the game was so different than it is today. I think the game is better now with more cards being released, but having Freeze Mage be viable for so long with minimal changes due to so few cards being released was fun when the power level of the deck was so high - the F2P accessibility was unreal back then. This is probably why I'm a huge fan of the unchanging Paladin right now...

There really isn't much to say about the deck itself though. As I said before, control is satisfying to play and Freeze Mage is the definition of a control deck. With the cards being as basic as they are, they describe the deck perfectly and quickly. Draw cards, stay healthy, don't let anything move, and then finish up with Alexstrasza and a ton of frosty face damage or ALL THE FIREBALLS through Tony. I'd really love it if Blizzard would bring back older eras of Hearthstone so the deck could be enjoyed again in its purest form.

More Tavern Brawls that looked at different rotations (or lack thereof) would be a great start but I do think an entirely separate queue for older eras is where we need to be. If Duels can support a dedicated queue, you can definitely bring back older rotations, and even newly created ones, for a pure constructed format. Imagine a world where you could go and play with just Basic, Classic, and Naxxramas cards again. It would allow newer players to appreciate that history, and to be able to jump into a ranked queue with fewer resources required to play. Of course, things aren't always going to be that cheap since it would rotate to newer expansions at some point, but a man can dream! You could call it Timewalkers mode. WoW loves their Chromie stuff and WoWTCG had Timewalkers expansions...

Also, yes, I do understand that cards have been changed and move around since older times. Flagging cards in the client based on their era is definitely in the realm of possibility for Blizzard to do so that part I'm not too worried about. I don't think you can revert cards to their original forms though because it would be too confusing to have cards work differently in other constructed modes. I think we're in the clear though because no one wants to see Undertaker Hunter again =D

Trump did a wonderful video on the archetype back in 2015, which is exactly around when I felt like it was perfect. I'll leave that, and the deck, for you down below. Thanks for reading my ramblings!

What is your all-time favorite deck? Upload it to the database using our deckbuilder and share it the comments!