Greetings everyone, and welcome back to yet another Duels meta report!
It's been a while since the last time we posted one of these, and we hope you'll enjoy the new lists we were able to round up.
Here below you'll find a varied selection of Duels starting archetypes to build around during your run - all of them were brought all the way to 12 wins by their respective creators, so you know for sure that they have some potential - have fun!
VillalobosChamp's Token Demon Hunter
Time passes, but Illidari Strike is still a damn good Hero Power - nothing to do about it. Forged in the Barrens gave Star Student Stelina a handful of new option to improve the archetype's performances overall: Far Watch Post (even though it got it in the recent nerf patch) slows down your opponent's deck, Venomous Scorpid is pretty much another neutral card with some value attached to it and Hog Rancher is just cute, so don't even dare to question it.
Susteve3's Deathrattle Hunter
An already established archetypes gets significantly improve by some addition thanks to the Barrens. While Piercing Shot is arguably a better and universal Kill Command, Burning Blade Acolyte is insane in combination with Death Games: you play a 1/1 with a big body behind, so your opponent doesn't really want to "pop" it and deal with the 5/8; however, if left unchecked you'll be able to go ham with it!
sarantini's Quest Mage
This is a 12-er deck put together by one of our community members. Long story short, you want to combine Embercaster's effect with Open the Waygate's Time Warp to generate multiple turns in a row and therefore win the game.
If you want to know more about this deck and how to play it, sarantini wrote a wonderful guide on the deck page, so you should definitely go there and check it!
Roda's Dude Dragon Paladin
Humble Blessings is good, very good, especially if you fill your deck with big hitters like Alexstrasza, Onyxia the Broodmother and so on. Definitely a polarizing treasure you'd want to play rather than play against.
Disruptor108's Elemental Shaman
In a rather slow Duels meta, the best thing you can do is taking an offensive stance and punishing your greedy opponents with sheer damage to their face. If this is your goal, then Disruptor108's Elemental Shaman is definitely your jam!
ultrarotom's Bomb C'thun Warrior
Talking about a slow meta, nothing describes it better than a Control Warrior with lots of armor gaining effects, a rain of Bombs and the OG C'Thun. If you like boring your opponent to death and want to farm lots of exp, then you should give this deck a spin.
Do you like Duels? What are you playing over there right now? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
This Hunter deck got some good times and an achievement :)
I'm too much of a casual player to get into ranked play. Battlegrounds ties me up for too much time at one sitting. Duels is right for me.
So… thanks for the articles!!!
Hey there, VillalobosChamp here!
Thank you so much for featuring my Demon Hunter list, means a lot.
As a foot note: The reason why Far Watch Post is in the deck, is because it acts as bait. The most consistent way we lose, is when our opponent can deal damage outside the board.
Post exerts pressure, making our opponent's either deal with it, or paying a Mana tax.
Also, a more optimized list should run Mankrik over Hog Rancher, after she just there for the Barrens achievement lol
Any questions feel free to hit me up, especially if it's about Duels Priest. Current format Priest is my Jam! (Shadow Visions <3)
I've been enjoying Warrior with the 'deal 1 damage' hero power very much. You may not always get so far, but winning the first two games feels guaranteed with Grommash and Alexstrasza on your side. Same thing goes for Quest Mage with a spell damage package.
Thanks a lot!
I love the mode but the constant deckbuilding is a real barrier for me.
Those articles are pretty much the only thing that keeps me going.
It's not that I don't like tinkering around ... it's just ... every time? No thank you.
Even worse, when your idea doesnt work out for whatever reason, you can't just fix it like in standard but are stuck in the run for another hour.
And after that you have to play probably a couple more duel runs just to get to play the class of your chosing again..
If at least Duels had the option for you to use one of your recent starting decks instead of building a new one each time you start a run... it would make the mode much more accessible to those who don't want to scroll through their collection to look for the same cards over and over again.
Man that is so true. I hope this idea of your's is suggested to devs, for example to Iksar in his Q&A or something.
That would be such a big Quality of Life change, easy to do, and helps soooooo muuuchhh to save some precious time.
Recently I have seen paladins picking the Hero Power that turns a minion into a 3/3, rather than the one that makes recruits. Adding a 3 mana 3/3 vanilla minion to your hand isn't very useful since you will often have better things to play. And turning an opponent's minion into a 3/3 lets you trade into it with whatever you want.
Yup. The "turn minion into 3/3" is very much undervalued. I guess many people overlook the fact, that it can be casted on enemy minions. This way it almost feels like it's a free Hard Removal, ready for you at every turn... Which feels like cheating, when I played with it :P
I love playing duels and really appreciate when a new one of these articles is put up. It's so much easer to find good decks when they're put together like this instead of scattered across the web.
Even more because there are very few content creators for Duels, so it's not that easy to look for lots of good deck lists.
Anyways, glad you enjoyed Goliath :)
To be honest, i like these mode. Crazy Decks, Crazy treasuers, a little bit overtuned - that's Duels. Sad that there is not so much love for the mode from the community
Thank you Avalon for this article, been wanting to use those tavern tickets on duels runs for a while now but couldn't find decent deck lists till now! Much appreciated
I know there are members who love Duels content, so whenever I'm able to get my hands on some lists I try to publish them as fast as possible.
I'm so glad you appreciated my efforts - have some nice runs! <3