You Can Buy Full Battle Ready Decks for Hearthstone Twist (New Age), but Are They Worth It?

Are They Any Good? Which One Should You Pick?

Sadly, for the most part, they are not good. But before I elaborate on why – let’s first look at Dust values. The differences here aren’t massive – the difference between the one costing the least (Demon Hunter – 8460 Dust) and the most (Druid – 9120) is only 660 Dust. It’s clear that Blizzard tried to keep them all at roughly equal value. And while it might seem like a good thing at first, I think it’s the worst thing that could happen. The reason is that Blizzard instead of trying to build viable decks clearly tried to shove enough Epics/Legendaries to make those decks cost about the same, even if those cards weren’t necessary. Similarly, the decks include no Core Set cards to “maximize value for the player” even though devs themselves said that they would improve them. Sure, since Core Set cards are free, people can just add those… but how would an average player (who, mind you, is not a great deck builder) know which Core Cards they should use? How would they know what cards they need to replace?

If I had to offer some feedback, the best approach would be to just offer those decks at different price points instead of trying to make them all “equal in value” and cost the same. I really don’t get it. Questline Druid in particular is the most expensive deck here, yet it’s the most budget-friendly viable deck on Twist ladder. They could offer a 3.5k Dust version of Questline Druid (so a meta build) for let’s say $8 or 1200 Gold. Not only it would be cheaper, but also be more effective as an actual “battle ready” deck you can queue with straight up. On the other hand, if there’s a battle ready deck that requires even more than 3-4 Legendaries and would land at let’s say 12k Dust, they could put it at a higher price point instead.

Let’s look at some card choices in those decks. Starting with Questline Druid – in order to keep the Dust cost up, they shoved in Topior the Shrubbagazzor which makes zero sense in the deck. The deck only has two Nature spells – sure, you can discover a few more, but it still doesn’t make any sense. There’s also the issue of running Jerry Rig Carpenter with ZERO Choose One cards, but at least in this case they admitted that it’s a mistake and the card will get replaced with Umbral Owl (makes more sense). Overall, it’s a weird mash of cards that don’t necessarily make sense together. It’s not a good Questline deck and if you remove it, it won’t be a good non-Questline deck. Sure, you can easily turn it into a viable Questline Druid, but if you do that you just wasted a lot of money on useless cards. So you really shouldn’t buy it.

Similarly, Outcast Demon Hunter deck has Lady S'theno which was nerfed to 1 attack just 2 weeks ago. The only way to play the card right now is to buff her attack somehow, and this deck offers no ways to do so (and not that many S’theno synergies in general). On the other hand, it’s an Outcast deck… without Halveria Darkraven, an Outcast staple in Standard. Overall the deck is a weird mix of Aggro-oriented Wild build (but with unnecessary cards that don’t push your game plan) and a more Combo-oriented Standard build (but without the most important card – Halveria). Just pick one lane and stick with it. Again, I believe that it could be remade into a viable deck, but why should a player need to do that?

Questline Mage deck is pretty useless too. Sure, the Questline itself was unnerfed a while ago, but there’s just no way the deck can keep up with other Twist builds. By the time you finish your Questline and play the reward, you will be dead or at the very least on the brink of death if Solid Alibi saves you in time. There’s just no reason to play this deck when Mage has access to easy OTKs through Drakefire Amulet (Haleh, Matron Protectorate is the only Mage Dragon available in the format so you discover two copies 100% of time) or Mozaki, Master Duelist. Those can usually close the game 1-2 turns earlier than Questline Mage, which is incredibly important in a high power format like that. Because of that, there’s really no point in playing Questline Mage unless you find the deck particularly fun.

Libram Paladin actually looks like the first decent deck you could run without making a lot of card changes. However, one thing to keep in mind that Pure/Libram Paladin is not AS strong in the format as many people initially thought. Players complained before Twist release that “Pure Paladin will obviously be broken”, even asked for pre-emptive nerfs or bans. And it turned out that we have a bunch of way more broken decks, pushing Paladin into Tier 2. But at the very least you can make this deck playable after a few changes. The thing I would do is either push it in a more aggressive direction, or fully lean towards Control and add some more reactive tools. Right now it’s a kind of a slow Midrange deck and those simply don’t work well in Twist. But it’s not the worst out of the bunch.

Then we’ve got Weapon Rogue deck. At first glance, I thought that it might be a solid option. Many people had decent success with some variants of Weapon Rogue in Twist and this version runs a lot of the cards you need to play it. But then I realized that the deck has no Swinetusk Shank. What? It makes absolutely no sense. Sure, Self-Sharpening Sword is good, but it was usually played as a backup in case you don’t draw Shank or it gets destroyed. But the latter is not a problem in this format – without Neutrals, there’s virtually no weapon destruction. Shank is simply better, because you aren’t limited to just four attacks – you can keep swinging every turn. It’s important in a format where people run Taunts etc. that could block your way. The deck has some other questionable choices, but it’s salvageable. So I guess… it’s an okay option, but you still need to craft your main core win condition in order to actually play it. Why? Just why?

Finally, we have Big Warrior. The idea here is to stall the game until Turn 7, summon one of your big minions with Commencement while giving it extra Taunt + Divine Shield, and… win the game that way? Okay, I’ll be honest, I really can’t see how this deck is going to win games. Let’s start with the fact that it’s incredibly slow – your first actual proactive play happens on Turn 7. Even back when the deck was playable in Standard (which had much, MUCH lower power level than current Twist), it was very slow and awkward at times. In a format full of different kinds of combo decks that kill you ASAP, there’s no way that one big minion with Divine Shield on Turn 7 will be good enough. Minion choices are a bit weird. Sure, Rattlegore and Troublemaker were always staples. The original version also ran Mo'arg Forgefiend or Scrapyard Colossus, but those are Neutral so you can’t use them. Blizzard decided to add Remornia, Living Blade instead, but I don’t think that the card is great in this particular build. The card is actually playable in Standard, but only if you combine it with handbuffs. As 4/10, it’s neither a good removal nor a way to push a lot of face damage. Also, what’s funny is that it runs 2/3 of the Riff package – it skips Chorus Riff. And I get why – you don’t want to draw your big minions early, you want to summon them with Commencement for max value. But then you don’t want to play the other two Riffs, because the package is too weak if you don’t play it as a whole. This deck is really bad, if you want to play Big Warrior you should try out a Blackrock 'n' Roll variant instead (those are also on the meme-y side, but at least they can win some games).

As you can see, none of those decks really works straight out of the box. Some of them you can make viable by tinkering around (Druid, Paladin, Rogue), others just make no sense and you should avoid them at all cost. But let’s be honest – if you need to remove a bunch of Epics/Legendaries you paid for and craft some other cards to replace them with, are those really worth it at all?

Conclusion

As of right now, if you want to get into the Twist format, you probably shouldn’t buy any of those battle ready decks. While it saddens me to say so, a much better investment would be just crafting Druid Questline (Lost in the Park) and playing this deck instead. It’s the only expensive card required – you can build the rest of your deck with Commons & Rares only. Of course, you can also pay 3200 Gold or $20 for “battle ready” Questline Druid and replace most of the cards – but why would you do that? Questline Demon Hunter is also very affordable, but here on top of the Questline (Final Showdown) you also need two Epics (2x Felosophy). I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse that the two most broken decks in the format are also the most budget-friendly ones.

If you plan to buy one of those decks – don’t think in the categories of “buying a functional deck”, think of “buying all of the cards listed here which you can then maybe remake into a functional deck or use in Standard/Wild”. And if we look at them this way, they actually offer some interesting cards. Many of the Legendaries are playable in other decks, in other formats. And I guess that if you pay for a deck to play in a format that will rotate soon anyway, it’s better if those cards are playable in other formats too. However, this approach clearly goes against how those decks are called – they are definitely NOT “battle ready”.

In my opinion, the main focus should be making those decks a viable option to just buy, straight up queue with and have a solid experience. Those battle ready decks are probably targeted at a more casual playerbase, and those players won’t likely know how to fix them. In fact, they might not even understand that they’re bad and end up with a horrible Twist experience, losing every game after spending a lot of money/gold on a single deck. They don’t have to be the strongest meta decks, but they need to make at least some sense – sadly the first batch doesn’t. In my opinion, you should just avoid them unless you want to buy them as a way to target specific Legendaries you’re missing.