Doom in the Tomb, the upcoming Halloween-themed event, releases early next week (October 8). One of its main features is re-introducing 23 Wild cards back to Standard temporarily (until next expansion). Given that majority of the cards we’re getting back were once staples, it should shake up the meta heavily.
Ever since the announcement, we sat down and made some theorycraft decks for you to enjoy. They can be a great starting point once the event is out, or you can use them as an inspiration for your own builds!
Of course, the ones you see below is not all – we’ll be updating it with new decks until Tuesday’s release. Enjoy!
Update #3: Added N’Zoth Highlander Mage.
Update #2: Added Highlander Paladin.
Update #1: Added Astral Druid, Deathrattle (N’Zoth) Hunter, Tempo Mage and Evolve Shaman!
Druid
- 0Moonfire1
- 1Untapped Potential1
- 1Worthy Expedition1
- 2Crystal Merchant1
- 2Wrath1
- 3BEEEES!!!1
- 3Druid of the Scythe1
- 3Ferocious Howl1
- 3Swipe1
- 3Wardruid Loti1
- 4Flobbidinous Floop1
- 4Juicy Psychmelon1
- 5Anubisath Defender1
- 5Elise the Enlightened1
- 5Nourish1
- 5Oasis Surger1
- 5Starfall1
- 6Hidden Oasis1
- 6Starfire1
- 7Dreampetal Florist1
- 10Kun the Forgotten King1
Spooky season is upon us and brings one of the most ambitious events in Hearthstone history; Doom in the Tomb. This event will see the return of 23 Wild cards to the Standard format (2 cards for each class and 5 neutrals), so the shakeup to the meta is expected to be sever. And since it’s spooky season, what better way to terrorize your opponent, than the looming threat of being annihilated by the god of magic himself? While this particular deck exists in the meta right now, the addition of a couple of returning cards, such as Ragnaros the Firelord, adds more threats to it, giving you more win conditions. With this list, you will be able to play like a normal Quest Druid deck, but you give up some of the mid-range threats, in order to play a Highlander deck, that allows you to include Elise the Enlightened and Zephrys the Great.
While you can certainly win through minion battle, or by taking advantage of you Ossirian Tear, after you complete the Untapped Potential, the real interesting part of the deck is all the different ways it can take advantage of Malygos with Flobbidinous Floop, Faceless Manipulator, Emperor Thaurissan and Jepetto Joybuzz. You can certainly opt to follow a very straightforward gameplan, using Juicy Psychmelon to draw all your late game (Malygos is the only 9-cost card, so it’s guaranteed to be drawn) and either use your minions, like Ragnaros the Firelord, to fight your oppoenent, or you can surprise him with several copies of Malygos and a Moonfire that will hit like a truck.
The most reliable way to pull of a Malygos win, is to get a tick of Emperor Thaurissan on Flobbidinous Floop and Faceless Manipulator, then use Elise the Enlightened while you’re holding both of them, discounted, along with Malygos and Moonfire. After spending a turn dropping the god of magic on the board, you follow it up with using 2xFlobbidinous Floop and 1xFaceless Manipulator for +15 spell damage total, then use your 2 Moonfires for 32 damage to the enemy.
But, this is the most bland, albeit reliable, way to pull off the combo. There are a number of more complicated ways you can do it, involving drawing Malygos or Kun the Forgotten King through Jepetto Joybuzz, that can net you over 50 damage to the opponent’s face, but they will need a significant amount of setup (and of course luck), which you may not have, so you will need to make a decision early on in the game about what route you will follow.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you can use the same kind of combo setups that Malygos requires for the returning Ragnaros. Although this does not guarantee lethal, it can often clear a small board of big minions, while threatening lethal for next turn, which means that the copies of Ragnaros have to be dealt with immediately, or you will just run away with the game after a couple of turns.
And as if those win conditions weren’t enough, you can just complete Untapped Potential and use your new Hero Power, Ossirian Tear, to out-tempo your opponent. Cards like Wardruid Loti, Oasis Surger and Hidden Oasis are truly powerful when used this way and can provide a lot of tempo and value, which can snowball to a win, if handled correctly.
- 1Biology Project2
- 2Wild Growth2
- 2Wrath2
- 3Swipe2
- 4Astral Communion2
- 4Juicy Psychmelon1
- 5Nourish1
- 7Gloop Sprayer1
- 7Overflow2
- 10Kun the Forgotten King1
Astral Druid is an old Druid archetype that took “ramp” concept to another level. Instead of slowly but surely ramping with your regular cards, it took a gamble and went all in on a single card – Astral Communion. Getting 10 Mana Crystals on Turn 4 is obviously game-winning, but it has a clear downside – discarding your entire hand. It means that you can’t run it in a regular deck, where the quality of topdecks is not nearly enough. That’s why the deck is packed with expensive, late game cards as well as a bunch of card draw. The ideal scenario is playing Biology Project on T1, then Astral Communion on T2, then topdecking something like Juicy Psychmelon or Overflow and flooding your opponent with big minions way before he can realistically answer all of them.
I’ve decided to incorporate N'Zoth, The Corruptor to the deck too. While the deck does not run A LOT of Deathrattle cards, keep in mind that each Khartut Defender counts as two. Once the first part dies and reborns, the second part is a separate minion. So it’s quite easy to bring the whole board back. Deranged Doctor is a kind of experiment – given that you will always be on the backfoot for the first few turns, an 8/8 that heals you is not a bad card to have, and it gets even better when you get it back for free with N’Zoth. In general, most of the big minions in the deck have some kind of defensive effect / immediate value, but are also big threats.
But why play Biology Project and Wild Growth on top of Astral Communion? Ideally, you get Communion on curve and then topdeck big stuff. But realistically, you won’t always draw it early, and it gets pretty useless past Turn 6-7 (because you don’t gain much, but you do discard a lot of cards). So if you don’t draw your Astral Communion, you still want to have a way to play all of those big cards – your regular ramp. Biology Project is more of an experiment – I’m not a big fan of the card, because while Wild Growth can be cycled in the late game, Biology Project will be a terrible topdeck after you Astral. On the other hand, if you don’t get Astral Communion, getting to high mana is VERY important with this deck – after all, the first minions you can drop cost 6 mana. On average, you will get much more value out of your mana than your opponent. It also lets you play Astral on T2, so without discarding a lot of cards.
All in all, it will most likely end up being a meme deck, but I was always a big fan of Ramp (or later called “Big”) Druid and I’m pretty sad that the archetype wasn’t available for a while already.
Hunter
- Format: dragon
- Player:
9,660
- 0Lock and Load2
- 1Arcane Shot2
- 1Secret Plan2
- 2Freezing Trap1
- 2Rapid Fire2
- 2Rat Trap1
- 3Animal Companion2
- 3Deadly Shot2
- 3Eaglehorn Bow2
- 3Kill Command2
- 3Master’s Call1
- 4Marked Shot2
- 4Wing Blast1
- 6Unleash the Beast2
- 8Call of the Wild2
- 10Zul’jin1
With Call of the Wild and Lock and Load coming back for the Doom in Tomb event, Hunter has yet another way to approach a fringe archetype based on running a myriad of spells and just a few minions: Malygos Hunter with Jepetto Joybuzz may have found the tools needed to increase its consistency in the early game.
Unsurprisingly, the only changes made to the current Standard lists involve the inclusion of the returning Hunter cards, with the idea that that Call of the Wild will allow you to push damage during the game way before you get to execute your combo. The sheer power level of Call of the Wild makes its inclusion a no-brainer (newer players may be surprised to learn that it used to only cost eight mana), which means the real question is figuring out which cards to cut.
We’ve approached this with the assumption that Lock and Load will be enough of a reload tool in the early game to warrant cutting some of the midrange tools from the deck. As such, we’ve opted to cut one Wing Blast and both Baited Arrows alongside Vereesa Windrunner, which has been a clunky inclusion to begin with – the latter also means that Master’s Call is guaranteed to draw you a combo piece without fail, granting you an extra copy of either Jepetto Joybuzz, Malygos or Alexstrasza if needed.
N'Zoth, The Corruptor is back for spooky season and he is looking to bring terror to the standard format! Being one of the most infuential cards in the history of the game, the god of death is not one to be ignored, since you can build your deck around some key Deathrattle effects, which you can summon again when you play him. Cards like Spider Bomb and Mechanical Whelp are a pain to deal with, while the also returning Sylvanas Windrunner is downright terrifying. Going above and beyond to include Deathrattle minions is not really needed, since those effects are powerful enough, that they can win you the game, in conjuction with Nine Lives and N'Zoth, The Corruptor.
The deck plays mostly like a normal midrange hunter deck, with the difference that it uses a couple of really powerful Deathrattle effects to control the board, Nine Lives to get more value and copies out of those powerful minions, then drops N'Zoth, The Corruptor as a win-condition, provided you have already forced your opponent to use most, if not all, of his board-clears and removals. The list includes two copies of Necromechanic that, although not necessarily needed, is a really good 4-drop on its own at 3/6, while also doubling your Deathrattles, which can be problematic for your opponent to deal with.
The deck’s early game is pretty standard, using staple Hunter tools like Springpaw, Explosive Trap and Animal Companion to transition to the mid-game, where Spider Bomb and Mechanical Whelp can take the lead and help you cement your presence on the board. Sylvanas Windrunner is another good tool at your disposal, but the real power comes with using Fireworks Tech and Nine Lives, as well as Necromechanic, to trigger some of those Deathrattle effects multiple times.
After forcing you opponent to find a way to deal with your Mechanical Whelps, while clearing his board with Spider Bombs, you transition to the late game, where you will look for a good time to drop N'Zoth, The Corruptor and let your board take care of bussiness. Even if you don’t win on the spot, the aftermath can leave your opponent without any answers for your Mechanical Dragons that your Mechanical Whelps will spawn, or any another threat you have left, so don’t despair right away.
The deck’s only real card draw is Tracking, which can accelarate the game and bring you closer to the cards you want to draw, since it essentially draws 3 cards from your deck (discarding 2 of them, but still). One thing to note is that you should be looking to pick Nine Lives out of Marked Shot‘s discover most of the time, unless you are in need of a specific answer to the game’s state in that moment.
Mage
- Format: dragon
- Player:
- 3,780
The return of Flamewaker and Babbling Book is a mouth-watering prospect for fans of the old aggressive Mage archetypes, and the added juice provided by Mana Cyclone-based combos will likely make this deck a terrifying one to face on ladder. Many of its resource generation and longevity-related tools are taken directly from the Conjurer Mage builds which terrorized the meta until its nerf, but with a much more burn-based gameplan behind it.
The basic outline of a Tempo Mage build is quite straightforward, but there are many different ways you can take your build. Ideally, you’d like to utilize both the spell-generating package and the secret-related synergies introduced in Saviors of Uldum, but it turns out it’s pretty tough to do both at the same time with just 30 card slots to work with, especially considering that you no longer have the turn one powerhouse of Mana Wyrm available to hit the ground running.
The featured build opts for a light Secret package with one Arcane Flakmage, two Kirin Tor Mages and two Cloud Princes but just the one Mirror Entity and two copies of Counterspell added, relying on the brutal card generation options (Babbling Book, Magic Trick and Mana Cyclone) to find the rest over the course of the game in order to be able to add enough one-mana spells to fuel Flamewaker and Mana Cyclone in other scenarios, plus to smooth out redraws with Stargazer Luna. Double Elemental Evocation is featured as a surprise damage enabler with Cloud Prince on the early turns.
Highlander Mage has seen its popularity crumble after the nerfs to Conjurer’s Calling and Luna’s Pocket Galaxy. However, it is still a decent deck for climbing, and replacing King Phaoris with N’Zoth, the Corruptor can help the archetype find a more steady footing for maintaining its health total without compromising on threats.
The main neutral Deathrattle minions – SN1P-SN4P, Rotten Applebaum, Cairne Bloodhoof, Khartut Defender, and Sylvanas Windrunner – form a good package for N’Zoth, and they are useful minions for Mage overall, helping Mage defend themselves, heal, generate some threats, and even steal some of the opponent’s good minions: Sylvanas Windrunner and Conjurer’s Calling is a scary late-game combo.
N’Zoth allows Mage to cut down the number of expensive spells needed to support Phaoris in favor of influential midgame minions, making the deck more proactive and more capable of getting on the board.
Mage is also one of the classes that can deny resurrects from the opponent thanks to Polymorph, giving them an edge in the upcoming Deathrattle showdowns.
Paladin
- Format: dragon
- Player:
- 6,380
The announcement of the return of Mysterious Challenger filled many veteran players’ heart with dread, remembering the scourge of Secret Paladin from the days of The Grand Tournament. Back then, the archetype served as an upgrade of the vanilla midrange builds, playing overstatted minions on curve through the entire game (remember Zombie Chow -> Shielded Minibot -> Muster for Battle -> Piloted Shredder -> Sludge Belcher -> Mysterious Challenger -> Dr. Boom -> Tirion Fordring?) with the occasional power spikes along the way. This time, you won’t have such a toolkit to build around, forcing a lower curve and a bigger emphasis on Secret synergies.
The featured build opts for a much more aggressive gameplan, with the hope that the Mysterious Challenger turns will serve as endgame bombs rather than middlegame tempo tilts. To make best use of the downcosted Crystology and some of the Secret synergies, two copies of Temple Berserker are featured alongside the Secretkeepers as draw targets. Brazen Zealots are included for a more consistent early game board presence plus snowball potential. Bellringer Sentry also serves as a way to make use of the Secret package (which, of course, includes Avenge) in the deck fairly early on.
There are, of course, a few cards you can play around with in the decklist. An interesting alternative to Blessing of Kings would be Prince Liam, but the poor past performances of Arch-Villain Rafaam in Warlock – a class which is capable of drawing two cards per turn – makes it fairly unlikely that it’s enough to turn the tide in a longer match once your initial aggression fizzled out. Truesilver Champion is also a logical choice, but since a 3-durability Mysterious Blade will likely still be around on turn 4, we’ve opted for the minion buff in the featured build. Desperate Measures might also prove to be overkill as only a select few cards synergize with actually having a secret in play. For curve considerations, History Buff is a viable alternative, having already seen play in fringe aggressive Paladin decks before the patch.
- Format: dragon
- Posted By:
- 16,140
Highlander Paladin got surprisingly popular on the ladder lately – and the popularity is backed up by some solid results. Zephrys the Great is carrying the deck, while Sir Finley of the Sands adds some extra value too, especially if you manage to get him early in the game. When talking about Paladin in the upcoming Doom in the Tomb event, most of players are looking towards Secret Paladin, since it got much more support (Avenge + Mysterious Challenger), but Highlander Paladin might be a dark horse here. While the deck does not use the new Paladin cards, it relies heavily on N'Zoth, The Corruptor, which might work really well in the current Paladin archetype.
When it comes to the curve, it’s a classic Midrange deck, a little faster than the ones we currently see on the ladder. That’s because it wants to draw out games for a bit longer to leverage the huge swing from N’Zoth. But which minion you can get back, exactly? Starting with small stuff – Mecharoo, Loot Hoarder, Harvest Golem, SN1P-SN4P and Replicating Menace. Those are not really powerful, but they will be a good filler on top of a few bigger minions. One of the strengths of the small Deathrattle Mechs is that even if the board gets cleared, you still get a bunch of small tokens back – technically even reviving those minions would be good enough of a board flood. But that’s obviously not all. Mechano-Egg, Khartut Defender, Mechanical Whelp, Sylvanas Windrunner and Tirion Fordring are the big stuff. Again, very powerful options that have amazing anti-AoE properties. When you drop a full board like that, your opponent HAS to play something like Brawl, which gets much weaker because he still has a second board (+a 5/3 weapon) to clear.
In theory, we might have too many small Deathrattle minions, especially with SN1P-SN4P counting as up to three. It might mean that N’Zoth will bring back them instead of the big guns. The issue, however is somewhat resolved by Magnetize – if you Magnetize SN1P-SN4P or Replicating Menace into something, you will no longer get them back from N’Zoth, since they count as a buff. So depending on your matchup, hand and situation you can decide to play them as minions, or Magnetize to remove them from the pool of Deathrattles. Those small Mechs, however, are the reason why I didn’t want to play Kangor's Endless Army. With so many 1/1 tokens from them, it will be very easy to miss and not get back the big Mechs you want to revive.
Of course, the deck can be made a bit faster or slower depending on the meta. Tech cards can also be adjusted. The only tech I’ve decided to add right now is Spellbreaker – I believe that Silence will be very strong in the upcoming meta, possibly to the point of adding another Silence card (such as Ironbeak Owl).
Priest
- Format: dragon
- Player:
- 8,540
The return of Sylvanas Windrunner and N'Zoth, The Corruptor actually marks the first time these two cards are present in a Standard environment for the first time in their history – the former supreme ruler of the Forsaken was pushed into the Hall of Fame just before Whispers of the Old Gods came out, which means their synergy is so strong it was quite literally forbidden knowledge until now for most Hearthstone players! With Lightbomb also returning, Priest has three different AoE cards to include in their deck, enabling a hyper-grindy gameplan with many Deathrattle synergies.
The featured build is partially based on the existing Quest Priest decks in Standard, albeit with a very different gameplan, aiming to re-summon a plethora of high-value Deathrattle minions to outvalue the opposition. One copy of Coffin Crasher is included for increased consistency. Though both Wretched Reclaimer and Psychopomp damage the minion pool of Mass Resurrection, we’ve deemed them worthy inclusions due to their mid-game swing potential.
Divine Hymn and Rotten Applebaum are included as anti-aggro tools, though the former can be replaced with more proactive options like Bone Wraith or Zilliax – however, we’ve preferred the spell to the minions in order to keep the resurrection pool as strong and consistent as possible. For the ultimate greed-lords out there, consider Seance, Vivid Nightmare or Archmage Vargoth to truly drive your opponents crazy!
Rogue
Quest Rogue gets some obvious boosts from the inclusion of Swashburgler and Shaku. Now there are more cards to complete the Quest that come in higher quality. This allows us to get our weapon online even earlier while also being able to more consistently activate burgle synergies: turn 1 Quest + Coin + Swashburlger into turn 2 Underbelly Fence comes to mind. The important part is just the increased speed and consistency of the deck
To make room for these cards, we would take the best traditional Quest Rogue list and drop out the worst cards: either Fan of Knives, Pilfer, and Bazaar Mugger. I favor cutting the fans because I want as much Burgle consistency in the deck as possible, which means we need to cut either a Pilfer or a Mugger. I lean towards cutting Mugger because Pilfer is a cheap card, allowing us to complete and equip the weapon on the same turn more readily. Just don’t go keeping Pilfer in your mulligan, as far too many players do (the stats on the card look worse than they are because too many players fail to get rid of it for better cards).
The potential downsides to this list are two-fold: first, if more players start playing Rogue, the Swash and Shaku don’t work with the synergies you need. Second, if many people start playing N’Zoth, Quest Rogue might end up failing to get under them and win quickly enough. This brings me to my second deck…
With Rogue getting new Burgle Synergies and cards like Emperor and N’Zoth returning to the meta, possibly slowing it down, a bursty version of Rogue might become stronger. This deck can push a lot of tempo and damage in the early game, then utilize cards like Sap to push past the slower new cards that many players might be drawn towards. In fact, with so many expensive cards returning (and Shaman getting a big boost in their evolve strategies), I see the value of Sap likely increasing a lot in the future meta.
So here’s a new Tempo/Burgle list that can take advantage of the greedier lists out there.
It functions in a similar way as many previous Tempo Rogue lists: get the board, go face, finish with burst. Tools like Vendetta and Sap can easily help you get that early damage in to make your burst count even better. The flex spots in the deck are the Tog/Cable Rat package if you’re looking for something to swap out, as they might be a bit too slow for what we’re trying to accomplish. Lifedrinkers may well be better.
With the return of N’Zoth and Sylvanas, Rogue may naturally want to take advantage of its Deathrattle synergy – like Anka and Necrium Blade – to get some damage done. There are two potential routes I see for making this work.
The first is a grindy style of Fatigue Rogue. The primary combo this deck operates off in N’Zoth and Togwaggle’s Scheme. Board after board of health-restoring taunts keeps you in the game as your opponent eventually runs out of ways of removing it. All you need is a single cost-reduction tick off of Emperor Thaurissan on either on your combo pieces and you can play both in the same turn.
The entire deck is built around either cycling towards this combo, staying alive, or playing Deathrattle minions to fuel it. We play Novice Engineers over Loot Hoarders because we don’t want our N’Zoth returning too many draw deathrattles when we could get heavier hitters.
This deck is likely going to require a great deal of refinement, but this is a good shell to start testing with.
Maybe you’re not the defensive type; maybe you’d prefer to put stats on board and kill the opponent. If so, a more tempo-based Deathrattle Rogue might be for you.
This deck offers the most stats Rogue can offer with Necrium Blade and Anka the Buried. It curves like a Midrange deck, offering some respectable early game, followed by large mid-game punches, and a few top-end big boys. With the curve this high, Togwaggle offers a strong potential win condition, as using a Wonderous Wand to draw three heavy hitters and reduce them to 0 mana can instantly swing a game and win it. Sylvanas specifically offers some scary synergy, potentially dropping onto the board with a Mind Control effect off a Necrium Blade on the same turn.
Shaman
- 0Mutate2
- 1Evolve2
- 3Electra Stormsurge1
- 3Zentimo1
- 9Mogu Fleshshaper2
- 9Shudderwock1
Shaman players rejoice, for Evolve is back and its unpredictability will strike fear into your opponents, provided you evolve your minions into something good! While Evolve does not have the likes of Saronite Chain Gang or Doppelgangster to take advantage of in the Standard format, it can still be a good way to snowball a token-based board into something more menacing, that your opponent will have trouble dealing with. Along with Evolve, Mutate can be an extra tool in this direction, especially when paired with Zentimo, to cast Mutate to 3 targets, instead of 1. The unpredictability of the mechanic makes it, in some instances, a nightmare to deal with, as long as you don’t allow your bad Evolves to tilt you into oblivion.
The deck is token-based, playing aggressively from the start, in order to establish a board presence, since that’s the deck’s whole premise; to win through superior board control. Lacking any sort of removal or AoE, it is really important to not fall behind too much on the board, although a good timed Electra Stormsurge + Evolve with a bunch of tokens can put you back in the game, often enough. Seeing as this is an aggressive token deck, Knife Juggler could not be missing from the Theorycraft, along with some other good early game options, such as Saronite Taskmaster and Mecharoo.
While the list does lack removal, Quicksand Elemental can act as a pseudo-removal, especially during the first couple of turns, allowing you to trade into the enemy board with minimal, if any, losses, thus establishing that much needed presence that the deck needs to operate. And of course, Mogu Fleshshaper is included to take advantage of the reduction it will inevitably receive, which can allow you to trade an enemy minion and then Evolve or Mutate him into an 8-drop much earlier than your opponent would be confortable with.
Zentimo and Electra Stormsurge are really interesting choices you can opt for, with the former giving you 1-2 extra casts of Mutate at once for 3 mana, while the latter can be used to double-cast Evolve, transforming your board to 2 mana higher, for a mere 4 mana. Some of the more interesting and effective targets for that kind of investment are your mid-game minions, like Hench-Clan Hag and Former Champ.
This theorycrafted list includes SN1P-SN4P, altough the mech options to Magnetize him to are limited to Microtech Controller, Explodinator and Hench-Clan Hag, mainly because of its Deathrattle, that can give you a board full of tokens to Evolve, but there could be better ways to fill that spot (along with a couple more).
Even if you are not able to snowball the board fast enough, keeping a copy of Evolve handy for late game can be crucial, since the list can include Shudderwock as a last resort, summoning a board full of tokens, ready to be transformed. Even though it will prob be a mid-game board, full of 2-6 cost minions (after you Evolve them), any lack of AoE can be devastating for the opponent, especially if you opt to include a copy or two of Bloodlust instead of SN1P-SN4P or Explodinator.
Warlock
I have a dream. My dream is to play Control Warlock again. I have attempted multiple ideas during Saviors of Uldum, and a build with King Phaoris and Expired Merchants has been the closest thing to being viable, I actually won around 50% of my games with it. In other words, it was still not good enough to climb with.
There were several games where I just could not get to a position where I could play King Phaoris safely and my health ran out. With the new Doom in the Tomb event bringing N’Zoth, the Corruptor back to Standard, this opens up a new, safer path to late-game power. N’Zoth can bring back Rotten Applebaums and Khartut Defenders, providing Taunt minions and healing. With a pair of Expired Merchants and a Soulwarden, the deck can play up to five copies of N’Zoth in a game without using too many card slots for the trick.
Sylvanas Windrunner is also coming back, and she can provide N’Zoth with a further power boost, not to mention that she can be reunited with her old friend Shadowflame to wipe out tiny minions and steal the big one.
Is this enough to bring Control Warlock back to the meta? To be honest, I’m skeptical. Other classes are also getting a major boost from the event. However, Control Warlock can now generate several powerful boards, and it also receives a ton of healing from them, so it can outlast a lot of pressure as long as it is not a one-turn kill.
Warrior
- Format: dragon
- Player:
- 7,800
With Bloodhoof Brave coming back to Standard for a short period of time, it might be time to revisit Warrior’s impressive collection of Taunt synergies. Though it doesn’t make much sense to disrupt the class’ control-based builds for this, a “taller” version of the existing aggressive decklists works surprisingly well as many of the current decks struggle against a swarm of large threats, something which this deck is capable of dishing out with ease.
Thanks to the already popularized synergies with Injured Tol'vir, even a Taunt-based tempo deck can get on the board early, and this build is much better-equipped to keep and leverage that lead than its current, more aggressive counterparts, relying on Into the Fray, Armagedillo and the late-game big boy Anubisath Warbringer to generate terrifyingly large boards. Even though Bloodhoof Brave may not seem like a big enough deal to push this deck into viable territory, we’ve already had some success with it on the ladder in its current form, partially due to the fact that the opponents tend to use their removal tools too aggressively, not expecting the follow-up. The inclusion of Double Hecklebot makes the feature build even more effective against combo decks due to their ability to disrupt their gameplan.
Even though you’re expected to have a board lead when playing this deck, two copies of Warpath are still included for a multitude of reasons. First, it still serves as a strong removal option in a pinch, and it’s one you can still use after you’ve got a few big minions on the board. It can also enable Battle Rage and Bloodsworn Mercenary as well in the right scenarios.
We’ve tested the deck with two copies of Livewire Lance as replacements of Bloodhoof Brave in the current Standard environment, and the weapon is a very viable alternative should you need one to fill the deck.
[…] in the Tomb event starts in a few hours. We’ve already prepared a bunch of theorycrafts, but once it goes live, we’ll start posting new […]
Doesn’t floop reset its mana cost after being discounted if you play another minion? i.e. if you play thaurissan and your floop costs 3 mana then play maly your floop will become a 4 cost maly
Come to think about it, I believe that they DID change minions that transform in hand to not retain any buffs / mana cost changes etc. But I’ll need to test it out since I haven’t played with Floop + mana discounts ever since Year of the Raven’s Malygos Druid.
Come to think of it, there are plenty of thaurrassian dependent combos that would now be possible. Do you think there are any that would be at all reliable now in current standard?…
I would not call it a combo… but now that i think about it, you can now double Shudderwock with quest Shaman without coin :facepalm:
All you have to do is include thaurissan and discount Shudder by one mana.
It is included in the highlander maly quest druid but I was wondering about it in maly hunter or if there is a combo Mage that has revived or sprouted… Big priest or warrior would both benefit from him but are not combos…
Great lists, thanks ! Just a small detail : in the Paladin list description, the wrong Rafaam is tagged as the card, you mean the standard 7-mana, and it is currently the wild 9-mana
Thank you, fixed it 🙂
Excelent. So, even tho Blizzard has came up with Deck Builder thingy,
I guess nothing can beat meta decks from HTD.
take that Blizzard.
but, no combo deck from Flamewaker Mage yet.
I guess I’ll just have to test one myself.
What Flamewaker Combo would you like to see? What’s your idea for the deck? 🙂
They brought back thaurassian so just need a fistful of cheap spells and 2 flamewalkers and reduce them for same turn for 32+ dmg
the idea of the combo is to have a lot of tiny spells on hand, and play 1 flamewaker, and 1 or 2 apprentice in turn 7th. and a way to refill those tiny spells with cyclone mage. (quest is nice too)
Just in case, this is what I thought.
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But the downside is, too many tiny spells often ends up with no minion on board. and sometimes leaves you with no cards to execute combos (even with freeze and secrets).
So, I would suggest to forget the idea, because I think, Mage deck is very challenging in this expansion. (aside from nerf and less synergy).
I probably wait until the next expansion. (Still waiting on Exodia Deck to be possible again).
Thanks.
Highlander Paly is so strong in current season, the addition of The Curator and a Dragon to the list could round-up its high-roll potential.
Erm, Flamewaker mage?
What about quest deathrattle paladin? This seems like it would be a strong deck that will crush control. Just think about 2/2 sylvanases and ragnaroses
Looks like nzoth is missing from some of the “nzoth” decks
Sorry, some cards were not displaying correctly for some reason. I’ve updated them and they should be okay right now.