The new Hearthstone Standard year and the new expansion, Whizbang’s Workshop, launch next week on Tuesday, March 19. Many Hearthstone content creators had an opportunity to play with the new cards yesterday in theorycrafting livestreams, and I managed to clock in seven hours of Whizbang gameplay myself.
So, what is the new expansion and the new Standard format like?
Note that the pre-release event only allowed you to play decks that included at least 10 cards from the new expansion, so it was not possible to gauge their power level against the likes of current Plague Death Knight or Sludge Warlock, decks that will survive the rotation mostly intact. Nonetheless, we can get some information about the upcoming meta from the event, as incomplete as it may be.
My main general impression is that Whizbang’s Workshop will be an interesting environment to build decks. While almost all of the cards of some classes support a specific archetype, there are many loose ends that may find a place somewhere, or end up going nowhere. There are tons of throwback effects to the entire 10-year history of Hearthstone, and many opportunities to make your decks rhyme with the past without fully repeating it.
Let’s take a closer look, class by class!
Death Knight
Death Knight has an abundance of options in the new meta. Plague Death Knight remains largely intact and Rainbow Death Knight gets some serious support in the form of Rainbow Seamstress and The Headless Horseman. These two meta decks could not be seen in the event, as they are largely complete already and only get some additional support.
That is not to say that Death Knight looked weak in the event, quite the contrary! Lesser Spinel Spellstone, Amateur Puppeteer, and Darkthorn Quilter form the core of a scary handbuff deck, variations of which were played by multiple players, such as Nohandsgamer.
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
11,100
- 1Body Bagger2
- 1Lesser Spinel Spellstone2
- 2Shambling Zombietank2
- 3Acolyte of Death1
- 3Chillfallen Baron2
- 3Crop Rotation2
- 4Darkthorn Quilter2
- 4Maw and Paw1
- 4Nerubian Swarmguard2
- 5Amateur Puppeteer2
- 5Corpse Bride2
- 6Dr. Stitchensew1
- 6The Headless Horseman1
- 8The Primus1
- 10Climactic Necrotic Explosion1
- 25Reska, the Pit Boss1
This board on turn 5 will buff every Undead minion in hand by +8/+8 when they die. I have a bad feeling about this.
Demon Hunter
The Demon Hunter set is largely built around Magtheridon, Unreleased. You have Umpire's Grasp from the new set and Raging Felscreamer from Core to discount it and there is Red Card to make it Dormant again, if needed. However, you’d need more than one to win games. Now, Blind Box and Window Shopper can both Discover extra copies, but you have no way to copy the actual card from your deck, it is always just a Discover from a pool of Demons.
I both won and lost a game where multiple Magtheridons made all the difference, but I also failed to find any when playing the archetype, so it did not seem consistent enough. There is a Magtheridon deck in Splendiferous Whizbang by the way, so you will have a chance to try it out if you manage to get your hands on that.
It is turn 7. I have two Magtheridons on the board, and two more in hand. A perfectly normal day for a Demon Hunter.
Druid
The Druid package for Whizbang’s Workshop gives you two possible ways to go. Almost the entire package is dedicated to spell damage synergies, and I had the pleasure to get OTK’d by Spell Damage Druid on turn 8. It was one of three different classes that were able to burst me down from high Health. Fine, I was playing a Wheel of DEATH!!! Warlock, so I had it coming, but still. Here is that first culprit:
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
- 4,840
Spell Damage Druid looked potentially viable. It will be challenged harder on the live ladder by aggressive decks, but it can clear some boards with buffed-up Swipe and still have enough Spell Damage left to go for the throat a little later.
The other approach you can take with Druid is to use Sky Mother Aviana and some card draw to overwhelm the opponent with cheap Legendary cards. This approach seemed weaker and I did not see a list that I would have liked yet. That said, the Legendary cards did win some games, so it is not a hopeless win condition by any means.
Hunter
I like the new Hunter set a lot. The set is diverse enough to give you two main approaches, either to hit face in the grandest of Hunter traditions, or to take things a little slower, perhaps as Highlander Hunter, and use King Plush at the end. Whizbang has a King Plush deck for you to try out, and for the Face approach, here is an example from Sidisi:
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
- 5,320
I played a slightly different version myself, and I loved it. It was one of my favorite decks in the event. Patchwork Pals gives you all animal companions as 2-cost cards in your hand, and you can finally summon just the right one at any moment. If your tokens are not answered, Leokk is ready to take the stage, and Messenger Buzzard can buff your Huffer while in hand. R.C. Rampage is a wonderful way to fill the board – ideally used when there are already three or four minions on your side of the board by the way – and the return of Kill Command really takes you back to an earlier era of Hunter.
Painted Canvasaur cannot be underestimated in a token deck either, it is basically a dirt-cheap Enhance-o Mechano. The set is full of these references to old cards in a slightly different way.
A buffed Huffer to the face for lethal on turn 5. The way Hunter is meant to be played.
Mage
The main Mage support in the new set is for No-minion Mage. And that support is totally bonkers. I expect Mage to be nerfed, to be honest. I know, making such a judgment after the event where you cannot even build your deck completely freely is questionable at best, but Mage felt stronger than almost anything else I met.
Spot the Difference is actually really good and Manufacturing Error is just a license to OTK. Yes, I got OTK’d by Mage too, the second of three classes to pull it off during the event. Ramses played a lot of combo decks during the event, and this is his take on Mage:
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
- 6,220
Paladin
I did not meet a lot of Paladins during the event, but I do not consider the Paladin set to be weak at all. I played a few games with Paladin myself, and Tigress Plushy, in particular, is a crazy card. Combine it with some auras and it clears major threats while healing you and giving you a 1-cost 1/1 copy of itself in the process. I expect the new Paladin cards to be absorbed into the existing Paladin decks, while largely retaining the classic Paladin playstyle: the board is what makes a Paladin dangerous, and if they have it, you are in danger.
Here is an example of what a new Paladin Handbuff archetype could look like:
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
- 8,520
The Zilliax in this list summons a copy of itself and costs one less mana for each minion.
Tigress Plushy looks adorable, but it is also dangerous, as the above sample of a turn 7 lethal showcases.
Priest
If I had to name two candidates for early nerfs based on this event alone, they would be Mage and Priest. I saw multiple variations of Overheal Priest, some more aggressive, some more combo-oriented, but they were all scary. Mana, overheals everywhere, effects going off, and even some good old Shadowreaper Anduin vibes from Reno, Lone Ranger (in a duplicate deck, of course) in combination with Raza the Resealed and Papercraft Angel. I did not see it get quite to OTK-levels, but that should be possible too. Although, who needs to OTK when you also have Timewinder Zarimi. The Priest set is off the charts this time.
Here is Ramses’ take on Overheal Priest:
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
- 9,660
Rogue
Remember how I mentioned that I got OTK’d by three different classes? The third one was Rogue, and it was in a way I did not see coming. Primarily with Deadly Poison. You see, Sonya Waterdancer gives you 0-cost copies of 1-cost cards that you play. So, when you play Valeera's Gift, you get another that costs zero. And when you use the Gift to Discover a Deadly Poison, you can play that for another Deadly Poison that costs zero. Overall, two copies of Valeera's Gift can turn into eight copies of Deadly Poison for a total of six mana.
4 mana for Sonya and 6 mana for the rest of the combo sounds expensive, but remember about another new cards – Sandbox Scoundrel – that can activate all sorts of combos.
Yeah, Rogue will have its shenanigans in the new expansion too.
Shaman
Shaman gets two interesting and potentially powerful Legendary cards in the form of Hagatha the Fabled and Shudderblock, but compared to the damage many classes can deliver straight from hand, they are not that impressive. Generally, you need a board to make good use of them, and late-game board plays are not really a thing in the game right now.
There is something to be said about Nature Shaman and Discovering damage spells from the small, post-rotation spell pool, but I am not convinced it has the necessary consistency either without Bioluminescence.
Warlock
Sludge Warlock will continue to the new expansion, but there are at least three new ideas on the table as well.
First and foremost, there’s Handlock. Giants are back in the Core set, and Handlock gets Table Flip and also Endgame for its Dark Alley Pact. This was my favorite deck in the event, and one that I look forward to refining before the expansion goes live and on the first day of the new expansion.
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-120
- Posted By:
- 10,320
Warlock can also build around big Demons – but not Sargeras, the Destroyer – with Game Master Nemsy. This approach can even be combined into Handlock, and may prove to be a superior approach compared to including Sargeras in the deck.
Finally, Warlock gets a game-ending card in Wheel of DEATH!!!. I managed to win one game with it in theorycrafting, but it seemed too slow even in the weaker event meta, so I do not predict success for the card in live. It will be an interesting deck-building challenge though.
Warrior
Warrior’s new set is almost completely focused on Taunt Mechs. The current Warrior decks will live on after the rotation, and may pick up a bit of something from the new set, but mostly we’re looking at a new Taunt Warrior archetype or a Control Warrior deck that uses the package of Testing Dummy, Boom Wrench, and Inventor Boom.
What About Splendiferous Whizbang?
There are 11 decks available through Splendiferous Whizbang. Just create a deck with Whizbang alone in it and queue a game, and you will get one of them randomly. Sadly, Splendiferous Whizbang is not a free card, but it is one of the most fun Legendary cards you can acquire.
In this event, some of the Whizbang decks were actually competitive. They break the usual rules in various ways, like a Warlock self-deck-destruction deck that starts with only 20 cards in it, and a Highlander Paladin that has Highlander cards from multiple classes.
I expect them to fall in performance as decks get refined, but playing Whizbang decks on day 1 of the new expansion should be perfectly possible!
We’ll have a separate post listing all of the Splendiferous Whizbang decks soon!
Old Guardian
Ville "Old Guardian" Kilkku is a writer and video creator focused on analytic, educational Hearthstone, and building innovative Standard format decks. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OldGuardian Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/old_guardian
Hello OLD GUARDIAN! Could you please make a post about the free decks for the new and returning players?