What are the best tech choices for zoo actually are?

I actually was refining though this week and what I realized is that following 3 cards aren't really good:

Neferset Thrasher - he gave my opponents more lethal then he gave me

Magic Carpet - seems to be just relic of the past and isn't all that good in current meta

Scarab Egg - well those 1/1s are literally not really good not to mention clogging the board.

I actually came up with my own homebrew variant which is somewhat different from lists on hsreplay (by at least 6 cards), I don't claim it to be the most refined, but it is pretty good and carried me to legend. I suppose it has some clanky cards like I'm not so sure about Sea giant, maybe knife juggler would be better in that place, especially now that Mage is getting nerfed. But here is my approach. Any thoughts on best Zoo tech choices?

Well i mostly disagree ...

Neferset Thrasher surely can get you in trouble but most of the time this in combo with Diseased Vulture for example can be very overwhelming for the opponent.

And Magic Carpet is one of the best cards you can use for Zoo - even better in Lackey Zoo - Nice stats for Zoo and the ability is very strong ! There are lots of different Zoo Variants but i think the Carpet has to be in every single one of them :)

The Egg is not the best, thats true but combined with Knife Juggler and for example a Grim Rally this also is very good and it also puts minions on the boad so you can play Sea Giant early on - so i guess it`s not that bad!

At least that`s what i think about those cards :)

What you're saying doesn't match my experiences, but you're probably played a lot more games with this deck than I have with Warlock recently.

I'm wondering what aspects of the current meta don't match well with Magic Carpet. It makes your 1-drops a lot better in the late game, so maybe you consider longer games unwinnable and therefore a boost there is unimportant? But if you're going all-in for a short game, then Neferset Thrasher should be great, because it's good tempo and high-rolling with Thrasher on turn 3 and Vulture on turn 4 is often game-winning.

Did you use a deck tracker? It would be interesting to see if your results differ from HSReplay's and in particular for which matchups. It would also be interesting to see win/loss plotted versus game length, to know which turns could be improved and which turns are hopeless and therefore better ignored.

I thought the main idea of zoo is to have small minions and buff them, but there aren't all that many buff cards in this list. I guess Eager Underling is unplayable, but what about Defender of Argus? It's no Fungalmancer, but it used to be a signature card of zoo decks.

I'm also surprised there is no removal and silence at all in the list. Usually there is at least Soulfire or Ironbeak Owl. Or with the current sets, Spirit Bomb for Vulture synergy or Demonbolt to take advantage of a wide board. Taunts like Zilliax and Khartut Defender are in a lot of decks.

Magic carpet is like second worst card in most popular lackey Zoo according to stats though, when sorted by drawn WR.... so I would say not goo

Quote From Zelgadis

What you're saying doesn't match my experiences, but you're probably played a lot more games with this deck than I have with Warlock recently.

I'm wondering what aspects of the current meta don't match well with Magic Carpet. It makes your 1-drops a lot better in the late game, so maybe you consider longer games unwinnable and therefore a boost there is unimportant? But if you're going all-in for a short game, then Neferset Thrasher should be great, because it's good tempo and high-rolling with Thrasher on turn 3 and Vulture on turn 4 is often game-winning.

Did you use a deck tracker? It would be interesting to see if your results differ from HSReplay's and in particular for which matchups. It would also be interesting to see win/loss plotted versus game length, to know which turns could be improved and which turns are hopeless and therefore better ignored.

I thought the main idea of zoo is to have small minions and buff them, but there aren't all that many buff cards in this list. I guess Eager Underling is unplayable, but what about Defender of Argus? It's no Fungalmancer, but it used to be a signature card of zoo decks.

I'm also surprised there is no removal and silence at all in the list. Usually there is at least Soulfire or Ironbeak Owl. Or with the current sets, Spirit Bomb for Vulture synergy or Demonbolt to take advantage of a wide board. Taunts like Zilliax and Khartut Defender are in a lot of decks.

 

Magic carpet is not that good anymore even with all the lackey, just look at this popular list of lackey zoo:

https://hsreplay.net/decks/VQVACq06amVxkakqS0fgZ/

If you sort it by drawn WR, worst cards are scarab egg, carpet and thrasher... So yeah..

Here is list without lackey package:

https://hsreplay.net/decks/wHV1aHxxZEPCIi8ZvHU3yh/

Vulture is more important there so thrasher is better, but carpet is still bad. So yeah carpet is just not good enough anymore. As for scarab egg it doesn't even run it anyway.

Ok I talked a bit about other decks. Now that I'm home I took a screenshot of my stats for the zoo (luckily can do it on website because I have Premium):

Yeah tekahn is not exactly game winning, but he is decent, I actually included him just because I wanted to include every card that says "Lackey" but he is ok in Zoo, so no regrets.

Worst card as i said before is Sea Giant, but he is not all that bad... As you can see it doesn't get stuck in hand though I usually can play him as soon as i draw him. Reason he is not very high winrate is because it often he just baits hard removal and that is about it. That one time I kept him in Mulligan was against the class I have it for in the first place, he is really good against highlander mage in mid game because they usually don't run Polymorph and Sea Giant is too fat for all the AOE.