Scholomance Academy, the second expansion of Year of the Phoenix, has been out for around 24 hours already. The set did not come with a rotation, but between its quite high power level and dual class cards, it’s only natural that it completely shuffled the meta (at least the early one). 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 Scholomance Academy early meta 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. Also, keep in mind that there might be bias against builds that were already good before Scholomance, because players usually try to test new stuff first.
Guardian Animals Druid
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The early meta seems to be mostly dominated by one archetype – Guardian Animals Druid, which is kind of an extension on the Ashes of Outland’s Spell Druid (although it cut the main reason why the deck played almost no minions at all – Fungal Fortunes – so it can now be more minion-heavy). The build I’ve linked seems to be the most popular one floating around – sorry for not crediting it, but I simply don’t know who first created it, I’ve just seen it copied around everywhere (if you give me a source, I’ll gladly credit it).
The build is heavily based on Kael'thas Sunstrider and Guardian Animals shenanigans. Both of them are amazing Turn 7 plays – and sometimes even earlier than Turn 7, which is why the build seems to oppressive. Cheating out Kael’thas e.g. on Turn 4 with Coin + Lightning Bloom then following up with one of the big spells is just dirty and often wins the game on spot. Similarly, Guardian Animals on T3/T4 provide so much tempo that the opponent might have a super hard time coming back. Yes, the next turn is usually much weaker because of Overload, but in the grand scheme of things you still have a board, your opponent doesn’t, and you possibly drew some extra cards with Twilight Runner, so it’s worth it. Survival of the Fittest is another great “cheat out” target for Kael – while the build is not minion heavy, the few minions it has become so much scarier when they have +4/+4 (or even +8/+8). It can also be used as a massive finisher buff on a board created by Ysera, Unleashed.
Yes, it’s not the most consistent deck, and you will often just die in the early/mid game if you don’t hit the right cards, because you basically skip the first few turns. However, when it works, you’re nearly guaranteed to win the game, which makes it good despite consistency issues. Kael’thas in particular is the most ‘problematic’ card in the deck, since it can create massive swings out of nowhere. But it’s also the source of consistency issues, so yeah. That’s why some players have decided to cut Kael and the results weren’t bad so far.
It honestly reminds me of the early Ashes of Outland meta. Spell Druid builds with Kael’thas were some of the strongest ones during the first days. Yes, the card was nerfed from 6 to 7 mana, but a lot of players were cutting it even before that, saying that it creates nice Trolden clips, but the deck is better without it. Same thing now – in this Charon’s build, he decided to cut it and opted in for a small Dragon package (with Breath of Dreams) and went back to the old, trusty Exotic Mountseller. The deck is less of a “one trick pony” winning through blowout turns, and more of a consistent build with many ways to re-create strong board states. It plays more similarly to the Outland’s Spell Druid, just with the addition of Spirit Animals package.
Which approach will turn out to be superior? Hard to say, currently stats indicate that they are pretty similar, but it’s way too early to judge (early stats come from a very chaotic meta and have a low sample size, so we’ll probably know in a few days – unless the deck gets nerfed first, of course).
Pure Paladin
For me, Pure Paladin’s performance was probably the biggest surprise of the expansion so far. I kind of expected Guardian Animals Druid to be popular & strong early, because the combo was already explored heavily by streamers during the pre-release streams. Something like Aggro Rogue also doesn’t surprise me, because Secret Passage was widely rated to be one of the best cards in Scholomance. But Pure Paladin? A deck that was thought to be kind of a meme at first, then it was holding strong around Tier 3 in Ashes of Outland, and it suddenly jumped to be one of the best decks in Scholomance Academy’s early meta. What gives?
Well, the Pure pay-off cards (Lightforged) were always good. It’s just that in order to activate them, you needed to add a bunch of mediocre Paladin cards, so overall the results were not particularly impressive. Now that Paladin has gotten 14 more class cards to work with, it was easy to fill the whole deck with them while keeping the power level high enough. This build in particular plays TEN new cards. Yes, ten out of 14 available to Paladin in this expansion. It just shows how desperately it needed good class cards.
Right now the deck has all based covered for a Midrange build. It has solid early game (this particular build doesn’t run many 1-2 drops, but you can absolutely add some more if you feel like), nice mid game swings with Lightforged Zealot, Devout Pupil and High Abbess Alura, solid removal vs big minions (again, this build doesn’t run Consecration, but if you face more Aggro then you can add it), and then a mix of late game value (Lightforged Crusader, Lady Liadrin) and comeback mechanics against Aggro (Libram of Hope). For the first time it feels like a complete deck.
People have mostly focused on Pure build so far so it’s hard to say how Libram build (Paladin with Libram package, but also Neutral cards) compares.
Oh and by the way, the card I really like in this deck but is missing from this particular build is Blessing of Authority. Works like a charm with Alura – 11/14 on Turn 4 is quite good!
Aggro/Tempo Rogue
I couldn’t decide which build to put here because of lack of statistics, but since both feel pretty good, I’ve decided to feature both.
Aggro build is very straightforward. Your goal is to hit the face as hard as you can and kill opponent before you run out of cards. However, between Secret Passage and Cutting Class (and Greyheart Sage played by some builds), running out of cards is pretty difficult. You can play aggressively for the first X turns, then have refill after refill. Since the deck’s curve is really low, the chances are that after Secret Passage, you will be able to play at least 3 cards, making it quite insane. Self-Sharpening Sword also turned out to be really strong at times. While it sucks against weapon removal, no one is teching it yet, which means that you can deal 10 damage with it at the base level. However, realistically, between Deadly Poison, Vulpera Toxinblade and Doctor Krastinov, you often deal more. I had a game in which my opponent managed to hit me for over 20 damage with a single weapon and I couldn’t do much to stop it. However, because the deck is so straightforward, it has some clear weaknesses – weapon removal, Taunts, healing.
The other build – Tempo Rogue – is probably a bit more interesting. It curves higher and can’t rush the opponent down nearly to the same extent, but it also has much better mid-late game swings, which means that it can stay in the game for longer. Jandice Barov drops a lot of stats on the board, which is great if you’re ahead. Heistbaron Togwaggle provides the usual big tempo swing thanks to the Wondrous Wand. Headmaster Kel'Thuzad won’t get you as much value as let’s say in Priest, but dropping him and immediately clearing something with Backstab (T5), Brain Freeze (T6) or Eviscerate (T7) is a really good swing. And finally – Flik Skyshiv is just a generally good card, letting you clear a single big minion, a board of tokens with the same name, and also denies your opponent some value (works pretty well against Guardian Animals Druid, which run limited copies of their 5 mana Beasts, so clearing an extra one from hand / deck is very useful).
Overall, both decks feel quite nice, and I’m convinced that some fast Rogue deck will stay as a part of the meta – although it’s hard to say which one exactly and how much optimization is still left ahead of us.
Pain Zoo Warlock
“Pain” version of Zoo Warlock was already a thing before, first becoming viable with Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture back in Saviors of Uldum. Then Ashes of Outlands introduced Darkglare and the build got another tool. And now it’s working even better thanks to all the new cards. The goal is simple – you run a lot of cards that damage yourself, but also cards that take advantage of that. Since you take so much damage, playing a few heal cards in a form of Soul Fragments (Spirit Jailer, Soul Shear) is also quite good. Even if you don’t hit Soul Framgents, those cards are not that bad themselves – and if you do, on top of healing you also make Flesh Giant cheaper.
Darkglare is the deck’s biggest activator. With the amount of self-damage cards you run, you can sometimes play 10+ mana worth of stuff in the mid game thanks to all the refreshes. However, your main pay-off cards are Vulture & Giant. Vulture can easily flood the board with random 3-drops if not taken care of immediately, and that can be quite hard to clear in the mid game. Giant, on the other hand, is a single big threat, but you can easily drop him for just a couple of mana crystals – or even for free later in the game. It’s just so easy to get him down to 3-4 mana at which point it’s a really amazing card.
Overall, the deck will still need to go through a few iterations – it’s pretty hard to find the right balance between self-damage cards and pay-offs, and between self-damage cards and sources of healing. The truth is that against slower decks you don’t really need healing at all, but Aggro builds can take advantage of you taking so much damage and just kill you before your pay-off cards carry the game.
Big Warrior
Big Warrior got enough tools to look decent during the first days of the expansion. The biggest deal here is a new way to cheat out minion – Commencement. Before, the deck had to wait all the way until Turn 10 to drop Dimensional Ripper, and that’s obviously not feasible in most of the matchups. It’s much easier to survive until 7, and Commencement turns “slow” minions into sort of “faster” minions by giving them Taunt + Divine Shield. For example, Rattlegore is often impossible to drop from hand unless you’re playing in a very, very slow matchup. On the other hand, getting him on T7 with DS + Taunt is game-winning most of the time – your opponent can’t just ignore it, they have to deal with 9/9 with DS and taunt, and then you still have a lot of board presence for the next few turns.
Another great addition was Troublemaker – the two 3/3’s it summons are often instrumental for clearing minions on board and dealing damage. Getting him from Ripper on an empty board is 2x 6/8 + 4x 3/3 + 12 damage. Unanswered Troublemaker just wins games, similarly to how Priestess of Fury did early in Ashes of Outland. Athletic Studies is cool, because it lets you play small/mid-sized minions without actually putting them into your deck. Most of the Rush cards are okay, some of them are great, and thanks to Discover you can pick one that works well in a given matchup (and one you can play soon). Rush discount also lets you drop Kargath Bladefist on T3, and the Prime version is really nice minion to cheat out of your deck. And last, but not least – Reaper's Scythe gives the deck more mid game board control. Warrior can clear up to 4 minions what that one card, and just equipping it while having Spellburst still active is a great deterrent for opponents – they won’t likely flood the board for you to just smack and clear it, but if they start taking things slowly, that’s also great for you.
Some builds have also tested Ceremonial Maul, but it doesn’t seem that great so far – there aren’t enough mid game spells the deck wants to play after equipping Maul, and summoning a 1/1 with Sword and Board (for example) is pretty bad.
Overall, the deck looks quite threatening and works well in a variety of matchups – surprisingly including the Druid matchup (from my experience so far it’s quite even).
Tempo Mage
Sort of a honorable mention, because I haven’t got an opportunity to test it yet. Stats don’t show that Tempo Mage is an AMAZING deck yet, but I feel like it has potential. Spell Damage package works pretty nicely. Lab Partner in particular feels really good, no matter if you drop it on T1 or combo with some spell later (like with Cram Session – really good synergy). Firebrand clears early game boards quite well and comes with solid 3/4 stats. Sorcerer's Apprentice – just like always in this kind of decks – can build a lot of tempo by playing the 1 mana spells for free, letting you fit a lot of them into a single turn. Chenvaala creates really strong board swings – even managing to summon a single 5/5 on top of the 2/5 body around T3-T4 is really powerful. Later in the game, especially if you get lucky with Magic Trick or Evocation, you can sometimes get two 5/5’s in a single turn (while often freezing your opponent’s board). And – of course – Mozaki, Master Duelist adds a really interesting win condition – stacking Spell Damage and then hitting opponent with 10+ damage Arcane Missiles / Frostbolt.
Stats show that it’s the weakest deck of the bunch featured here – at least so far. But I believe that some Tempo Mage build might finally be viable this expansion, and if not it will be pretty damn close.
I test murloc shaman this expansion, the result surprise me.
I win against almost all gardian druid and have 3:1 ratio, how murloc shaman can be this good this expansion ?
Include Quest Cards in Tempo mage
I just played 10 games of this version of Tempo Mage and I won all of them so if you have the cards make it super fun deck
midrange warlock either lackey/soul
or Giants/soul is not listed and im sure its coming back
Not impressed by Tempo Priest Stonekeep ?
Honestly, so far not so much. It’s actually okay, just not great. But things will 100% chance during the next few days, meta is always super chaotic at launch.
Shaman nonexistent does not surprise me but… no Demon Hunter?! Is this Christmas?!
I have been using a totem shaman with a 3:1 win ratio.
DH is doing okay, it just doesn’t dominate the meta like some people have predicted. We’ll see in a couple of days, I’m pretty sure that Aggro/Tempo DH will be viable, but I don’t think that other archetypes like Control will be a thing for now.