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Ran a 30 man tournament with NO Basic or Classic cards. Give it a shot if you want to play something different.

Recently we just finished up a 30 man tournament with some odd deck construction rules. Namely Basic and Classic cards being banned from deck construction, leaving the Adventures and Expansions as the only legal sets. Obviously you can't fully remove them as random effects can still get them, so we embrace that and Discover gets a bump in power.

I wasn’t actually sure if this would really be a playable format or something more along the lines of pumped up Arena decks, but I really wanted to see if we could slow the format enough to get The Grand Tournament cards over to hump and into playability.

So with two weeks of prep time, we did a 5 round Conquest Swiss event with a top eight and ended up with some interesting results. Oh and the deck filters are really bad for this. Seeing only the legal cards for the format was probably the worst part about making decks, please Blizz add real filters / search tools.

The format itself

Removing basic and classic cards strips the identity of certain classes which have never had competitive decks build around not having access to certain class cards. It also means most of the high-end legendaries are no longer a factor and the end game is primarily based around board presence with only Kel'thuzad, Dr. Boom and a few class legendaries really standing out.

OTK combos are a thing of the past, we may have missed one, but nobody came up with anything resembling a real combo deck. There were a few wombo combos attempted, but most combo elements came from discover hitting a relevant combo piece that happened to work in the moment. There was also no deck that could just completely ignore the board and do it’s thing.

Aggro decks take a big hit, Leper Gnome, Abusive Sergeant, Knife Juggler and so on. All gone and all lacking support to clear out taunts easily. Turns out without a cheap two-mana get out of jail free card that taunts are actually halfway decent against aggro. Deathlord is a huge roadblock in this format and nearly every control deck ran it and many of the midrange decks did as well. Without access to a million charge creatures or cheap burn, finishing opponents also became much more difficult and stabilizing was far more common.

This isn’t to say all aggro disappeared though, Mech decks were the level one starting point for deck construction and they were quite strong. Fel Reaver quickly became one of the scariest cards in the format and Mechwarper powering it out was one of the best starts available. By cutting the first two sets out it revealed just how much hard removal was only printed early in the game. Some classes have no good way to deal with an 8/8 and without the BGH safety valve, you get run over or have to spew your entire board in order to deal.

BGH is one of those cards that’s weird in Hearthstone, it wouldn’t be needed if every class had one good hard removal spell or a situational one aimed at giant minions. Kibler’s no fun article still applies since losing your Fel Reaver for basically no value and the opponent getting a minion is miserable. On the flip side, playing a class where your only respectable removal is either now non-existent (Shaman, Warrior) or random (Druid) makes BGH an absolute life saver. The entire format would’ve been different had only BGH been available and it very well may have played better as a result.

(This is why I wanted to do an alternative format in the first place, it recontextualizes a lot of cards and really showcases some of the deficiencies in certain classes and removal as a whole after Classic.)

Classes change dramatically and it repurposes how a lot of the hero powers end up.

One of the most extreme examples was Druid, which at it’s core loses Innervate, Wild Growth and the FON / Roar combo. Obviously there’s even more than that (Keeper, 4/6 Taunt, Swipe, etc.) but you can still build a perfectly functional Druid deck without the rest as long as you have one of those pillars. Instead you're left with a somewhat functional Beast theme and uh… some OK mana to P/T class minions.

On the flipside you have Paladin and Priest where many of their best class cards came in later expansions. Paladin is arguably the best class in this format and that’s without having nearly as powerful a late-game curve (MC significantly weakened, no Tirion, no Divine Favor or Lay on Hands for recovery) and Priest actually has tons of removal- Excavated Evil smashes early mech starts, Lightbomb and Entomb are both great answers to Fel Reaver / Boom.

Classes like Warlock get completely warped, despite having an OP Hero Power it’s incredibly hard to make a functional deck when class cards are just so bad. For every Dark Peddler or Imp-Gang Boss you have a useless Demon or unplayable cute card. Whereas other classes typically had utility spells/minions, Warlock gets saddled with Demonfuse and Fist of Jaraxxus. Zoo was still a thing and Dreadsteed midrange / control was tried and potentially is even good, but we didn’t figure out a consistent enough build.

EDIT: A little more on classes.

In general Paladin suffered the least and had some of the best minions / buffs which in a board control format is huge. Coghammer was also the 2nd best weapon behind Powermace, both of which made a huge difference compared to non-weapon classes. Having a pseudo-removal spell that also buffed a creature down the road was incredibly valuable and Acidic Slime being gone helped with that.

Despite Rogue losing a ton of it's removal, the lack of ways to finish people off meant they could be pretty aggressive with weapon attacks early and still lock the game up. There were a number of games I played with Rogue where I would be at sub-10 life on turn six and still win without an issue. I'd play enough Taunts and my bigger minions would take care of the rest. It helps that Pit Snake and Buccaneer both have value in the late-game so you can overload on 1-drops to not get overwhelmed. Rogue was one of the few classes with a legit sweeper (Skulker) and hard removal spell (Sabotage) so it could handle each class of threat.

Warrior was weird because traditional Ctrl Warrior is obviously dead without Slam, Execute, Brawl and FWA. Dragon Warrior was close to functional, but again your early game suffers so much without cheap removal and hero powers are weaker in this format. You'll never Justicar someone out of the game, you still need to fight for board control the whole late-game or you'll get choked out eventually. A lot of people went Taunt Warrior and while this was an OK answer to Mech decks, ultimately it was pretty gimmicky and still relied heavily on drawing a good curve. Almost everyone who picked Warrior regretted it and even the winner, Caleb, thought Warrior wasn't a good choice ) at least from the decks we had.

Priest was probably the closest to already existing decks. Play lots of solid defensive creatures that improve due to lack of cheap removal, overstated early creatures and zero silence. Stabilize with sweepers and then clean the game up with big neutrals and possibly Confessor. Healing is a lot more relevant in a format where 3 and 5 were the big toughness numbers. Velen's Chosen is also an absurdly strong buff that swung a lot of games when played on turn three.

Mech Shaman and Mech Mage everyone is familiar with I feel like.

Warlock, Hunter and Druid nobody had really good takes on and it's generally up in the air on how to build them.

Speaking of builds, here’s the winning decks and a vertical slice from the Top 8 and some of the decks that did well in testing.

http://imgur.com/a/Vy8RJ

few more: http://imgur.com/a/0FHGA

Winner: Caleb (Paladin, Warrior, Priest - No mechs!) 2nd place: Jeff (Shaman, Mage, Druid - Effectively all mechs)

The top eight was almost almost evenly split between mech and non-mech strategies.

As for the games themselves they were generally slower and I’d say the average game was decided on turn nine or so with actual winning done on 11/12. Most of the mech decks either won by turn eight or lost, though later in the tournament people figured out mech decks that played midrange and could go longer thanks to Gorilla Bot, Clockwork Knight and max Fel + Boom shenanigans. Often they were closer to old Arena where board clears were top priority and as the opponent if you fell behind then you had to decide when to stop trading and just go face to try and race the opponent.

Paladin and Mech Shaman/Mage were generally the best at getting good curve outs and riding them to victory. Mage in particular had Poly Boar and Flame Lance to take care of huge taunts or destroy a massive threat that would otherwise stabilize the next turn. Reversing Switch was also the bane of every Deathlord player as it would turn games into one-sided routes.

In the end the majority of Top 8 decks were Paladin / Shaman / Priest / Rogue. But eight of the nine classes were represented so only poor Hunters got left out.

Best / Most Played / Most Powerful Cards

The general consensus for power was:

Dr. Boom (Balanced, 7, Fair, etc.)

Sludge Belcher (A snap 2-of in any non-Mech deck)

Kel'thuzad (Closed out more games than any other card and also soft lock with Taunts due to lack of Silence / Removal).

Mechwarper (Almost lives up to the hype it had when it first came out in this format)

Fel Reaver (Almost good enough to play on it’s own. Ridiculously strong in a no BGH/Aldor/Execute world)

Most Played:

Dr. Boom (I think every deck started with him)

Sludge Belcher (see above, stats and ability are insane w/o Owl)

Mechwarper (almost every player had one mech deck)

Fel Reaver (see above)

Piloted Shredder (still really good on curve)

Zombie Chow (Best one-drop)

Deathlord (Best early game roadblock)

Jeweled Scarab (Discover was immensely powerful since you could nab Classic/Basic cards off it and card advantage was lower in this format)

Powermace (Mech Shaman was the most played class/deck)

Kel'thuzad (In every slow control/midrange deck)

Best Performing Class Cards:

Keeper of Uldaman (Everyone either thought Pally or Shaman were the best classes and this was by far the best utility card in the format. Removal, pump, the card does it all with a reasonable body)

Muster of Battle (Take away cheap sweepers and this card is unreal value)

Lightbomb / Entomb (The best sweeper and hard removal left in the format)

Quartermaster (see Muster)

Powermace (good weapons are the closest things to solid removal in the format)

Death’s Bite

Coghammer

Totem Golem (efficient)

Dark Iron Skulker (Holy shit a sweeper attached to a body)

Sabotage (Cheap Fel Reaver cleanup that sometimes was a complete blowout)

If you’re looking for something different from Secret Paladin and getting Roared out, give this format a shot! There's still plenty of deck discovery to be done and the games generally allow for a bit more breathing room. Most importantly, everyone who played had some fun.

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