New Ranked Season is upon us! And with Forged in the Barrens expansion merely a few days old, the Standard meta continues its dynamic development. You can already find a lot of viable archetypes for each class on the site, and we've been constantly monitoring for some more updated decks that either took a high Legend finish towards the end of March, or have already managed to become early Legend contenders as of the start of this month.
If you're eager to find some inspiration for your ladder journeys in the coming days, perhaps something below might appeal to your tastes and align with your current card collection. As always, we advise you don't commit too heavily to crafting all the cards you don't own at the moment - the present meta landscape might shift again after the weekend!
Deathrattle Demon Hunter
Jambre has slightly altered his initial list while fighting for the top spots at the end of the season - you will notice Warglaives of Azzinoth did not make the cut after all, with Far Watch Post stepping in to buy more time early on. It seems that was just about enough to grab the qualification for the upcoming Masters Tour. Nicely done!
If you were like me, worrying that Death Speaker Blackthorn you pulled from the packs might be completely useless for now, perhaps it's a sign to reconsider.
Burn Shaman
Pacemanpiff tweeted their early ladder success with this list, as credited to no other than one of Hearthstone's World Champions, Hunterace. The small totem package is interesting, even as Bru'kan and Novice Zapper tend to make the real difference. Some Nature spells can go face with an extra oomph thanks to that sweet spell damage boost.
Deck of Lunacy Spell Mage
There is a new villain in Hearthstone, a faceless menace transforming your spells into higher cost ones. This week, everyone is banding together to complain about the power of Deck of Lunacy. Crane has had a good track record with his take on it, along with many others (some faithful still choose to stick with C'Thun, the Shattered).
Why is it resurfacing now? Turns out there are a lot of strong spells in the current Standard pool, which is why Apexis Blast and Font of Power have found a new life along with the whole Spell Mage archetype. You may laugh in disbelief until Nagrand Slam stomps all over your face several turns early. Then again, maybe it will go back to being a notable meme if there is not enough consistency to be found at the end of the day.
Pen Flinger Aggro Hunter
Americas Grandmaster Rami94 was inspired by a similar list from data whiz D0nkey, and they have both achieved very respectable Legend ranks while hitting people in the face across a variety of means. And we really mean variety. Pen Flinger in Hunter? It's a thing now! If you thought you could catch a well-deserved respite from being called a loser, I'm afraid we've got some bad news to report.
Secret Paladin
BabyBear did not waste time making it to Legend early with this variation on Paladin secrets. No Cannonmaster Smythe, but there is Crabrider! Which means it definitely earns our stamp of approval.
Token Druid
Apollion and several other people sealed their top ladder finishes with reliable takes on the deck we are all familiar with by now. Gibberling power holds up. Seeing as Fungal Fortunes and Glowfly Swarm remain with us, it's not a great surprise. You might notice Guff Runetotem started being cut, though. Some players also like to slot in a copy or two of Guidance.
Fancy anything showcased here so far? Are there certain deck archetypes and classes you are hoping to see more of? Or maybe you have got your own ideas and success stories to tell with decks that might do even better? Our smooth deckbuilder is here to help!
Comments
I watched Zanananan for a couple of hours yesterday while he kept his #1 Legend with his Miracle Priest deck.
His yesterday's list is here for anyone interested:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/25480-zananananans-miracle-priest
I was a couple hours late to include that one, but watching with interest what might become of this particular archetype. The dream of Nazmani Bloodweaver carry will live on at the start of every new expansion, at least.
I love Miracle Priest ever since I watched Firebat play it on stream two days ago. I played a lot of games with it and it has a pretty good match up with every deck I played against. Then I watched Zanananan yesterday play his version of the deck. I learned more ways to play the deck. This deck has made Standard fun to play again. Before this I preferred Wild.
I've tried some Guff Runetotem on token druid and find too slow, or I didn't have a board to buff, or no suficient mana or already lethal
I feel like the deathrattle package in that list could be swappedout with almost...anything and it'd still be god
That might bode well for the future with any good deathrattle card being added.
So Dunk Tank is a nature spell but Pride's Fury is not. Interesting.
all water related spells are Nature.
Buff spells only count as Nature when they are Nature's Blessing (Mark of the Wild, Mark of the Spikeshell) whereas stuff like Pride's Fury and Power of the Wild are considered "Feral" spells (stuff that isn't magic, just Beasts being...Beasts I guess?)
It's not exactly intuitive, but it's consistent.
The Pride's Fury explanation makes sense. The Dunk Tank explanation too considering it has water in it, tho there is nothing about that tank that's natural. All fabricated.
I think there is also a bit of poo in the tank which is nature
for some reason they decided that any spell with water, electric, or plant effects is considered Nature. If you look through the Wild set, there's a lot of questionable choices there too, but they all add up at the very least
Absolutely. And yes, I've seen your forum thread about it.
"This week, everyone is banding together to complain about the power of Deck of Lunacy."
Rightfully so, did you know that the card has an 60-70% winrate when played? The removel of bad spells in combination with Mage's carddraw options make the card insane.
To put it nicely, I'm a much bigger fan of randomly generated mage spells from mana cyclone than randomly generated spells from other classes in mage. Especially since these spells aren't that much random because the higher-costed spell pool is much smaller.
I used to just ignore this card even though its fairly obvious how broken it is when played early along with cards like Incanter's Flow. After all, rng can swing both ways.
And then team5 went on to not only remove some of the worst cards in hearthstone from the list, they also provided this archetype with a 0 mana draw 2 card, as though as its not unfair enough that this deck is more than capable of constantly removing your board and then swinging back hard, by virtue of cheating tons of mana per turn.
I think Refreshing Spring Water should be less refreshing and actually have a drawback to playing it. Deck of Lunacy may be bs, but only because for some reason no minion mage is able to keep drawing cards more efficiently than the class should ever be capable of.
it's actually ridiculous how the core set change and the rotation made all the discover cards so much better by just cutting most of the fat.
I feel like they'll just have to nerf Deck at least for now until more filler spells are introduced. They can always unnerf it for Wild anyways.
Now I wish I had saved my golden version.
Who would have ever predicted that a card with the text "Replace your deck with random cards" would be so powerful?
Not even gonna bother with ladder until the first nerf patch.
Hearthstone: Watch Posts of Warcraft isn't really that fun of a game.
I'm not so sure they might be lined up for any early nerf, as majority of the decks still tend to go Watch Post-lite (though I saw some calls for stat adjustments). Currently there seem to be two camps: Watch Post fans who claim they are the best thing ever to slot in, and naysayers who say they are barely a nuisance without any real impact on games and that everyone is wrong playing them.
to me they're just too much "if you have the wrong deck you just lose turn 3 with no counterplay"
Their stats are too high for their cost. No deck can actually kill a 2-mana 2/4 or a 3-mana 3/5 without additional setup.
Meanwhile caravans are for some reason 1/3s that are impossible to keep alive.
Watch Posts should need far more work to keep alive so they actually need a dedicated deck instead of just being auto includes because "why not?"
On a side note, Crabride can also go to hell, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to print a 2-mana 1/4 with two keywords that scales with buffs.