Descent of Dragons, the third expansion of Year of the Dragon, and finally one worthy of this Standard year’s name, has been out for around 24 hours already. The set did not come with a rotation, but its power level is widely considered to be one of the highest in Hearthstone’s history, so it’s only natural that it completely shuffled the meta. Just after Day 1, we’ve already seen a bunch of new, interesting builds. But are they any good? And did we already see any huge surprises, or maybe the new Tier 1 decks are yet to be discovered?
Check out our Descent of Dragons decks for every class!
I’ve spent most of the last 24 hours watching pro players and adding their decks to the site (as well as playing some matches with the most promising builds myself), so I have a quite good idea of what’s commonly played, which decks get to high Legend most often and what builds already look solid. Below, I’ll list some of the lists that caught my attention. Just like every new expansion, remember that the early meta is very chaotic and it might look completely different in a few days. Decks are chosen based on my ladder experience, watching the steamers & pros, talking with other high ranked players and early statistics from sites like HSReplay.net.
These decks are only example lists – meta is adjusting very quickly and more optimized builds might be out at the time you’re reading it! The order of decks below is not indicative of their strength.
9,520
(I talk about the deck below under the 2nd Galakrond Shaman build)
Yep, two best decks from Descent of Dragons so far are two versions of Galakrond Shaman. Instead of talking about them separately, I’ve decided to cover them together – it will be easier to compare them to each other that way.
Some thought that December 5th marked the end of Shamanstone – Evolve has rotated out back to Wild, so there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Out of all the Galakrond cards, so far Shaman’s one seems to be working best. Maybe not necessarily because it is strongest or has the best effect (it’s too early to tell in my opinion), but because it already had a correct deck shell to put into. In case of Zalae’s build, he just made room for it in already existing Quest Shaman build. In case of the other #1 Legend build (from Chinese player 莫论人非baby), he just took the strongest Shaman card packages, added some techs (such as Lightning Storm, which is very useful in the mirrors, and as you can imagine they’re all over the ladder right now), put in the Galakrond package and called it a day. And it works in both cases. I feel like it’s too early to judge which build is stronger – e.g. early after Doom in the Tomb event started, it looked like Quest version would dominate, but it was swept by the Evolve/Aggro build soon. But let’s talk a bit more about the decks.
In case of Quest version – the first question is why would you run both Quest and Galakrond? After all, after you drop Galakrond, your Quest Hero Power gets replaced. The thing is, however, that Quest is usually completed in the mid game, way before you even draw your Galakrond. Then, you don’t play your Galakrond right away, you still wait for a good opportunity. You have at least a few turns of doubled Battlecries, which are honestly pretty nice. Remember that Invoke cards are also Battlecries – so you can flood the board with 2/1’s with Rush very easily by doubling those. Finally, Galakrond himself is also a Battlecry card. Doubling his fully upgraded effect is insanely powerful. You end up summoning 4x 8/8 with Rush as early as on Turn 9, so unless your opponent has some board wipe, he’s very likely just dead next turn. Yes, your double Battlecry Hero Power just gets “wasted” then, but that’s not important if you’re winning the game anyway.
Non-Quest version is more straightforward. It your regular Midrange deck that takes off in the mid game, once you start dropping your Galakrond Invokers en masse, activate Dragon's Pack, then finish the game with Galakrond or maybe Kronx. I really like the inclusion of Electra Stormsurge in this build – Dragon’s Pack is one of the deck’s main win conditions, and doubling it with Electra is sick. On Turn 8, you can play a 3/3 and summon 4x 5/6 with Taunt with just 2 cards and without any other requirements really (yep, you need to Invoke twice, but by that point it’s hard not to Invoke twice).
In both cases, Shudderwock also got a massive upgrade. It floods the board with Rush minions, making it an insane tempo swing. Not only it repeats Invoke cards summoning 2/1’s with Rush, but also Galakrond’s Battlecry, giving you 2x 8/8 and a 5/2 weapon. Funnily enough, it can also replace some of those minions into copies of itself thanks to Faceless Corruptor. While you don’t want those to land on 8/8’s, turning those 2/1’s into 6/6’s is not a bad deal at all. If you want to be super greedy, you can even try running a version with Barista Lynchen – if a minion gets transformed into a Shudderwock, Lynchen’s Battlecry will add it back to your hand. This seems too greedy for the current, pretty fast meta, but might come handy at some point in the future.
All in all, I won’t guess which of those builds is stronger yet, but they’re clearly both very powerful. There’s still a lot of optimization to be done, but I would be really surprised if Galakrond Shaman wasn’t an important part of the upcoming meta once it stabilizes.
When talking to J_Alexander, he mentioned that Descent of Dragons might be to Rogue what Kobolds & Catacombs was to Warlock. It means that basically every card from the set has a lot of potential and should see play. And so far it really shows – Rogue decks look quite strong this time around. I wasn’t that sure about Galakrond, the Nightmare. Or rather, the card itself was strong, but Rogue’s Invoke cards didn’t look that amazing. Everything turned out fine, and as it seems, the best builds aren’t going all-in on Galakrond, but rather treating it as an addition. Other builds, such as takas’ #1 Legend Deathrattle Rogue, don’t even run him at all. Looking at the early stats, both builds are very close to each other both in terms of win rate and popularity, so it’s really up to you which one you try.
However, the most important new card so far is Necrium Apothecary. Because come on, not only you get decently statted card draw (4 mana 2/5, draw a Deathrattle card), but the card also takes that Deathrattle… What does it mean? That if you only run Mechanical Whelp / Cairne Bloodhoof, Apothecary will now summon a 7/7 or 4/5 on death. Even better – if you curve out with Necrium Blade on T3, then you can trigger it immediately. Imagine having a 7/7 and 2/5 that will Deathrattle into another 7/7 up on Turn 4. In a lot of cases that’s simply game winning. So much that the decks even run Wisp to activate the Combo on Turn 4 (even if you don’t need it, Wisp will still be useful later with Faceless Corruptor).
While not played by this build in particular, Flik Skyshiv also looks solid, just as suspected. Paying 1 extra mana for +1 Attack, Battlecry instead of Combo as well as the extra effect to hit a few minions sometimes (which comes up relatively often from my experience so far) is well worth it. While maybe not an auto-include, I suspect that it will be a Rogue staple for the months to come.
Rogue looks very promising so far, and while there’s obviously still a lot of optimization left to do, it might be a solid Tier 1 candidate.
- 1Sky Raider2
- 1Town Crier2
- 1Upgrade!2
- 3Ancharrr1
- 3Livewire Lance2
- 3Skybarge2
- 4Kor’kron Elite2
- 4Restless Mummy2
- 5Arcanite Reaper2
Yeah, Pirates are back. While doing pre-expansion predictions, I said multiple times that I expect Pirate Warrior to be one of the strongest aggressive decks in the upcoming meta, especially early when decks aren’t optimized yet. Aggro decks love the first few days of new expansions, since they can prey on all of those greedy builds (because let’s be honest – people tend to build their decks too greedily at first). Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the deck will disappear from the stabilized meta, but I think that it might be a bit weaker than it is now.
Pirate Warrior got so many powerful cards that I won’t even bother to talk about each one of them – you don’t have to be an expert to see how strong they are. Sky Raider, Parachute Brigand, Ancharrr, Skybarge or Hoard Pillager have turned a basically non-existent deck into one of the biggest forces in the early meta. But that’s what happens when you print ~10 powerful cards for a single deck.
When it comes to builds, there honestly isn’t a lot of room to spare. The deck basically builds itself, since we don’t have that many good Pirates, weapons or other aggressive Warrior cards available right now (but the quality of ones we do is quite high). So far the biggest difference between the builds is whether they include a Rush package or not. Rush package build goes for Town Crier, Restless Mummy and Faceless Corruptor. Other build adds more generic Aggro cards instead. So far, looking at the stats, the Rush version seems better. While Rush is not the perfect keyword in Pirate Warrior (they prefer direct face damage), it does help tremendously against other fast decks, where you can’t win by just going face. Plus, all of the cards from this package are so strong that it makes up for being a little less aggressive.
Deck’s gameplay is not very different from how it looked back in the day. Against slower decks, you want to get as many bodies on the board as possible to maximize your damage over few turns. Then after they get removed, you close out the games with Charge minions and weapons. The deck has a lot of reach, and can easily take down ~20 health from hand assuming no Taunts get in the way. Faster matchups are definitely more difficult, because fighting for board control takes the priority (if you just go face you lose most of the time, simply because your opponent will gain board control and then deal more damage than you do with your weapons & Charge minions). But deck seems to find itself in both worlds so far.
I think that Pirate Warrior should stay with us for quite longer, and while right now stats put it in Tier 1, I’m not convinced that it will stay there. I think that T2 is a more likely scenario after the meta stabilizes, but that’s still a great result for a deck that didn’t exist in Standard 2 days ago.
- 1Arcane Breath1
- 1Shooting Star1
- 3Arcane Intellect1
- 3Conjurer’s Calling1
- 3Flame Ward1
- 3Frost Nova1
- 3Stargazer Luna1
- 4Arcane Keysmith1
- 4Azure Explorer1
- 5Malygos, Aspect of Magic1
- 5Rolling Fireball1
- 6Blizzard1
- 6Dragoncaster1
- 6Reno the Relicologist1
- 7Flamestrike1
- 7Luna’s Pocket Galaxy1
- 8Kalecgos1
- 8Power of Creation1
- 8Tortollan Pilgrim1
- 10Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron1
And finally, we’re getting to Highlander decks. Saviors of Uldum was, without any doubt, renaissance of the no-duplicate decks. Introduction of Zephrys the Great, possibly the strongest Highlander card yet (Reno Jackson‘s effect is more powerful, but also much less flexible), as well as four class cards brought back the Highlander decks into the meta. At first, Highlander Mage dominated, until it got nerfed. Then Highlander Hunter was a solid deck all the way until Descent of Dragons (it was a bit weaker throughout Doom in the Tomb event, but still quite good). Even Highlander Paladin had its moments, and while Highlander Druid per se didn’t exist, no duplicate cards have found their way into Quest build. Overall, it was a huge success.
And now, Descent of Dragons introduces another powerful option for those decks – Dragonqueen Alexstrasza. She’s no Zephrys, but the new Legendary further increased power level of Highlander package. Especially those running Dragon synergies too, given that she has that tribe + her Battlecry adds even more Dragons to your hand (some of which, again synergize with Dragons, but at the very least activate “If you’re holding a Dragon” cards). And so, Dragon Highlander Mage is one of the more popular and promising decks from Descent of Dragons on Day 1.
Of course, while Dragonqueen plays a big role in its revival, she’s no the only one. Dragon synergies seem to fit perfectly into Highlander shell – in terms of Mage, they lean more towards control/value, but they aren’t too slow. Arcane Breath adds more value to your hand while acting as a small removal. Malygos, Aspect of Magic is pretty slow itself, but the cards he produces let Mage catch up on tempo. Dragoncaster is a bit similar to the Arcane Tyrant of old, and so on. New cards to exactly what Highlander Mage wants – a combination of value and tempo, which are both necessary for the deck to be successful. By the way, Rolling Fireball is one of my favorite cards from this expansion, if not THE favorite – it feels good to punish bad positioning, or to set it up so it clears the entire board and gives you so much value.
We’ve seen a lot of diversity when it comes to new builds, but that’s the nature of early Highlander builds. Since you have to choose 30 different cards and not ~20 like in the regular builds, there’s much more room for the early deck building. But I think that Apxvoid is someone we can trust when it comes to Mage builds, and he had most success with one so far (#3 Legend is definitely not bad).
- 1Dwarven Sharpshooter1
- 1Springpaw1
- 1Tracking1
- 2Corrosive Breath1
- 3Animal Companion1
- 3Deadly Shot1
- 3Desert Spear1
- 3Diving Gryphon1
- 3Kill Command1
- 3Unleash the Hounds1
- 3Ursatron1
- 4Dragonbane1
- 4Houndmaster1
- 4Houndmaster Shaw1
- 4Marked Shot1
- 4Wing Blast1
- 6Unleash the Beast1
- 6Veranus1
- 7Dinotamer Brann1
- 10Zul’jin1
The second Highlander build – Hunter. I have to say that when it comes to Hunter builds, we see even more diversity than in Mage. In case of Mage, nearly every player has settled on the Dragon builds (and for a good reason). When it comes to Hunter, however, we’ve seen Dragon builds, Secret builds, Mech builds or even generic builds that don’t focus on any given synergy. This build is definitely the last one – it has a little bit of everything, but the point seems to be “play good card on curve, kill the opponent” – just like in the good old days of Hunter.
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza has proven herself to be very useful. On average, Dragons tend to be bigger and more expensive, so that slow, 9 mana 8/8 body is usually accompanied by at least one big minion. It’s not uncommon to hit one of the big, Legendary Dragons that are just insane when played for 0 mana, or even high roll into a second copy of Alexstrasza, which is just nuts (when I first got one, I honestly felt bad for my opponent).
Dragonbane, a new Hunter Legendary, might be a bit greedy (because it’s pretty bad on the curve, too easy to remove), but when it sticks to the board, the pay-off is just insane. No matter if it removes a minion or hits face for 5, it’s just great. From my experience so far, most of the time when dropped on 4 it just died, but even playing it on 6 and pressing HP right away is not bad. On the bright side, it makes Ursatron even more consistent by adding 3rd Mech you can pull from it. I’m also happy with how the second Legendary – Veranus – performs. While it had some hits and misses, even in the worst case scenario it being a 6 mana 7/6 makes it pretty solid. And then just hitting one bigger minion is usually more than enough for it to be amazing.
The new cards seem to have improved an already good deck, and ultimately despite getting some new tools, it’s probably the deck that has changed the least compared to Saviors of Uldum. I’m quite sure that it will take a while to come up with the best build, but looking at the early stats, no matter which synergies you go for – Highlander Hunter seems solid.
- 0Wisp1
- 2Acidic Swamp Ooze1
- 2Doomsayer1
- 2Sunfury Protector1
- 2Zephrys the Great1
- 3Earthen Ring Farseer1
- 3SN1P-SN4P1
- 3Scalerider1
- 4Bone Wraith1
- 4Dragonmaw Poacher1
- 4Spellbreaker1
- 4Twilight Drake1
- 5Barista Lynchen1
- 5Faceless Corruptor1
- 5Rotten Applebaum1
- 5Zilliax1
- 6Evasive Wyrm1
- 6Khartut Defender1
- 9Dragonqueen Alexstrasza1
- 12Mountain Giant1
And the third Highlander deck on this list is… Warlock? While Warlock is not one of the four classes with more Highlander support, after Dragonqueen Alexstrasza was released, it still has two solid cards to build the deck around. And to be perfectly clear – it’s the deck I’m least confident about, but it shows some signs of potential and damn, it’s just so fun to play that I had to include it. I think that it’s the closest thing we have to a viable Handlock build right now. Most of the Handlock lists I’ve seen or tried out so far were… pretty bad. They were all lacking something – maybe big threats, maybe survivability, it was just hard to balance them around all matchups. This Highlander build is very well-rounded, and Zephrys makes up for anything you’re missing at a given time. With how much you draw, it’s quite easy to find him every game too.
The new Dragon package is not enough to build a full deck around it, but it’s a nice addition. Nether Breath is just sick – it’s exactly what this deck needs. Just 2 mana for a premium 4 damage removal AND healing, not to mention that it can double up as a burn spell. Crazed Netherwing is also a great – Hellfire on a stick is something you definitely want in a deck like that. The only problem is that I found the synergies not always active on curve, sometimes you really needed that 4 damage from Breath or AoE damage from Netherwing but you didn’t have another Dragon. The deck is very low on Dragons to activate those, and while it draws a lot (which kind of makes up for that), you still sometimes end up with situations where you need a Dragon but don’t have it (especially against Aggro, where both of those are most useful but at the same time you don’t Life Tap as much).
Valdris Felgorge felt just like I expected it to feel – it’s solid because it’s a 4/4 that draws 4, not because it increases your hand size. So far in none of my matches it really mattered, because the outcome of them would be the same if I had a 10 max hand size. But there’s no reason to complain, because it’s basically a free extra effect and it MIGHT be useful sometimes.
Omega Agent + Barista Lynchen is also a finisher I like – I’ve already tried it out in Midrange Warlock last expansion, and it works just as well now against slower decks. You end up with 4x 4/5 on the board and then three more rounds of 3x 4/5’s. Sometimes you even snatch an extra Battlecry minion like Twilight Drake, making it even more interesting. And it’s one of those cases where 12 max cards in hand actually help, because I remember having some issues with hand size when attempting this combo before.
Overall, from what I’ve seen BoarControl already went through a few iterations of this build, and it already feels pretty good, but it’s definitely not finished yet. I didn’t have time to play every build enough to actually propose any meaningful changes, but I can’t wait for it to get better. As for its position in the meta… Tier 1 is most likely out of its league, I hope for T2, but I would be even happy with high T3 after the meta is stable, because this is my favorite kind of HS decks.
Treant Druid should be in there
I agree
Going with the stats and my experience so far, Treant Druid looks pretty average right now.
Warlock Handlock is the best deck imo, the new 4 damage spell with soulfire and malygos
is unbeatable right now, you heard it here first…
I feel like zalae’s deck is super consistent and doesn’t let you down ever. It’s super strong.