The launch of United in Stormwind has been unique in the history of Hearthstone. On the first day, people were playing all kinds of things, as usual. However, on the second day, the most common sight on the ladder was a game between two decks that used hardly any minions. Furthermore, anyone who had to play a minion often made an effort to kill it off immediately to not give the opponent a chance to target it with their spells. Despite all this, games were typically over in fewer than ten turns. It was truly a sight to behold, and something extraordinary for a game typically known for its board battles between minions.
Yet, no king rules forever. At the time I’m writing this, a few days into United in Stormwind expansion, the game has returned to some semblance of normalcy. Very fast-paced normalcy, perhaps, but at least we are seeing minions on the board again, so that’s good, right? Well, maybe. We might see minions, but we do not see a whole lot of board battles, especially back-and-forth ones. For the most part, if you’re slower, you’re out.
How did we get here? What are these meta-defining decks? Is this good for the game?
Stage One: Board Is for the Weak
The most popular deck in the early meta has been Quest Mage built around the No Minion Mage core and with Ignite ensuring endless damage.
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Unless you can overwhelm them, Quest Mage punishes you for playing minions because many of their Frost spells can only be played if there are minions on the board. Without minions, the Questline progress is slower, and you have more time to kill the Mage. Not activating their Ice Barrier means that they cannot play another one, further making the Questline slower to progress. Ultimately, the Mage will have to fish for Primordial Studies to get minions of their own that they can kill with Frost spells to get to their win condition.
If minions are bad for you, just play a deck that plays no minions until you have the kill! That’s how Miracle Garrote Rogue came to be, and it farmed Quest Mages for a while:
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the archetype loses to a lot of other things, but a game between Quest Mage and Miracle Garrote Rogue is a sight to behold, something so far from your daily Hearthstone that it is simply stunning.
But wait, there’s more! How about some Quest Warlock?
Just damage yourself, damage yourself some more, OK you probably want to play a Darkglare or two to fly through your Questline, and you have to play your ultimate Quest reward Blightborn Tamsin, but after that, the game is just about over anyway.
And to round off our set of decks that are happy to play without a board, we have Quest Druid:
OK, Quest Druid has an alternative win condition on the board with Glowfly Swarm and Arbor Up, but it is also perfectly happy to just play attack buffs and finish the whole game by hitting your face with their Hero. Some versions can also Solar Eclipse their Cenarion Ward, but that might be a little too slow for the current meta.
That was the first stage of United in Stormwind meta, and it was something Hearthstone had never seen before. However, new strategies are constantly evolving in Hearthstone, and we have already left this stage behind. Quest Mage and Quest Druid remain playable decks that prey on any sign of weakness or slowness, but the big players are something else already.
Stage Two: Board Goes Face
While Quest decks jam their Questline out on turn one, the superior strategies use the first couple of turns to go face and either finish their opponents off without a board or kill them so quickly that they cannot respond to the board anyway.
Imagine not playing Face Hunter:
Play some early minions, hit face, finish off with spells, next! This brand new and exciting strategy is one of the strongest strategies around at the moment.
A slightly different variation of the same theme is to do the same, except with a Doomhammer included:
Another fine strategy that beats the board-deniers with speed.
Finally, we have the variation that laughs at your board clears because they are too slow to stop Battleground Battlemaster and Conviction (Rank 2):
Some versions of the deck also include Cariel Roame to discount Conviction (Rank 2) to zero mana so that you can have that lethal on turn five if you have any minions on the board.
These aggro decks are the best decks in the game at the moment: slower decks get punished by Mages, but aggro can punish people for including Questlines in their decks. Paladin, in particular, is becoming the new meta tyrant: it can and does end games by turn six, but it may also include Taunt minions and healing that help it against other aggro decks.
Is There More to the Game Than This?
There is, in fact, one more option. The strongest of the Forged in the Barrens midrange decks, Rush Warrior, Deathrattle Demon Hunter, and Elemental Shaman, have survived to the new era. Barely. They are sometimes fast enough to beat Quest Mage, and they are sometimes strong enough to defend against the current aggro decks.
However, they are barely good enough, and they are all there is to this new meta outside of Questlines and aggro, at least so far.
Why Is the Game Called Solitaire Now?
Hearthstone includes multiple design decisions that make proactive strategies good:
- You gain mana automatically each turn, so you never have to worry about having resources to play your cards.
- The attacker chooses targets, so they can ignore minions and hit face instead.
- You cannot play cards during your opponent’s turn.
These decisions were made to make the game faster and smoother than the competition. You are never starved for resources, which is one way for a game to be a non-game when one player cannot even play their cards. You do not have to constantly check with your opponent whether they want to do something in response to your actions. You play your stuff, they play theirs, and you don’t even have to pay attention when it’s not your turn. These design decisions make the game flow smoothly and provide a good user experience.
However, those same decisions also need to be compensated for in card design to avoid the state of solitaire: ignoring everything your opponent does and just focusing on your own plan with no actions taken to counter your opponent’s moves.
At its worst, the play experience against a Quest Mage is that they remove your minions for a few turns, conveniently advancing their Questline while they do so, and then start to unload their damage spell repertoire towards your face, and it’s game over. Face Hunters and other aggro decks relentlessly hit face, ignore everything you do, and simply try to be faster than you are. Handbuff Paladin makes a couple of big minions and if you cannot remove them immediately, they end the game on turn six with attack buffs and Windfury.
The feeling of playing solitaire comes from the power level of some aggressive strategies, where they do not care about what the opponent does and can finish the game quickly with no opportunities for counterplay. This is undesirable because it removes the interaction between players from the game: why play a multiplayer game if your opponent’s actions do not matter? Did you beat your opponent or just win a card draw contest?
Will Something Be Done About the Solitaire Meta?
Iksar recently responded to several questions on Twitter, indicating the team’s direction regarding the meta.
First of all, balance patches are coming: “We’re higher on from-hand-only gameplay than we’d like to be. Some of that will be addressed naturally over time, people are playing some pretty bad decks at a pretty high rate, which never lasts. Part of it will be addressed via balance patches.”
Second, slow control decks are not coming back anytime soon: “I think the style of deck that is less fun than any other style is a deck that slowly grinds away all your resources as a win condition with no way of actually dealing damage to you. Control decks should have ways to close games outside of relying on decks to empty … The thing that blocks control decks in an unappealing way are combo decks that complete their combo so early and consistently that a control deck is unlikely to ever close out a game with threats before the combo deck closes out their own strategy.”
Board battles have been core to Hearthstone for the most part of the game’s existence, and they seem to be what the developers also desire for the game. Control has been dead and buried for some months now, and if a control deck would have to try to race a combo deck with minion pressure or out-draw a combo deck to reach its win condition first to be acceptable, they are not coming back.
In other words, if you’re unhappy about getting killed out of nowhere with no chance to contest it, the developers agree, that needs to change. We should get more details on their plans sometime next week, and I would not be surprised if Mage’s ability to play ten cards in a turn and Paladin’s ability to instantly win the game if they manage to stick two minions on the board for a turn were touched in some way.
On the other hand, if you’re hoping for significantly longer Hearthstone games, that’s not going to happen. Fast-paced action with a fair share of board battles is the target state for the game.
Whether removing control as an archetype is a good direction is too large of a subject to fully examine here. However, if you’re a fan of midrange decks and not just aggro, there is a good chance that the next balance patch will nudge the game in a direction you like.
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
Well, a good time to let the game then. It was great, reaching legend each season and enjoying control decks. At least, for me, these changes (and the increasing dependence on rng every single expansion), directed the game to the “non-interactive” environment that the initial developers tried so hard (in their words) to avoid. Good luck to all of you that still enjoy the game, see you in a new game :).
And in the End, we’ll eventually realize Evolve Shaman is the best archetype ever.
– No Control
– No Aggro
– No Combo
– Rarely makes the opponent feel they are (far) behind.
Secret and Big Decks also meet the criteria in my opinion – if not too much Aggro or Control inside them.
I don’t know about you, but getting high rolled by an Evolve deck feels pretty terrible.
“Why play a multiplayer game if your opponent’s actions do not matter? Did you beat your opponent or just win a card draw contest?”
That right there is what is becoming in increasing issue with hearthstone in last few expansions.
Very well written article.
Totally agree, this game has less and less skill involved, it feels like playing casino.
As ZachO explained in the Vicious Syndicate podcast, all of these “solitaire” strategies (the first four decks) are falling off hard. People were trying stuff in the early days, and they worked against unrefined strategies, but they aren’t going to define the game going forward.
It’s true that you can’t play an attrition strategy with no win condition now (as in Control Priest or Control Warrior) but that’s what everyone was complaining about a month ago!
Yes, things are very Aggro now but aggro always does well at the beginning of a meta. Let’s see whether people adjust. The real issue, it seems to me, is with Battleground Battlemaster. That card is insane. It’s like the Zephrys win condition of giving a minion windfury, except you can do it to two minions at once. Windfury hasn’t been problematic in Shaman, but when you give Paladin and Rogue access to windfury, that’s when you can have issues!
Seconded. If anything, I’d say that Mage has not been doing all that great following the nerfs after Forged in the Barrens’ initial meta, with Face Hunter being the main counter for it as far as I remember – and those weren’t any more interactive.
I agree with you on the last bit. Battlemaster feels like it’s just one budget Wild Highlander deck away from being Tier 1.
Lol all these people claiming decks that are interacting with your board are solitaire while somehow aggro face decks that ignore your board have always been around and aren’t called solitaire even though they fit the description more.
To be honest, both are uninterective, solitaire decks, which is why I hate both.
“On the other hand, if you’re hoping for significantly longer Hearthstone games, that’s not going to happen. Fast-paced action with a fair share of board battles is the target state for the game.”
(I’m sorry for typing another one of my long diatribes on the state of priest, but I care deeply about this class and have so many thoughts about it.)
So the people screaming for Priest to be removed are actually getting their wish.
I’m only half exaggerating here. I absolutely see where all this is coming from: Galakrond/Sethekk Veilweaver/Random Nonsense Priest was one of the most mind-numbingly boring decks I’ve EVER played against. Yet if this is the direction Team 5 wants for the game (fast, board-based decks where even slower strategies have proactive win conditions), based on the power level of cards made to support midrange and tempo-based priest decks in the past, I very seriously believe that unless something changes, Priest will be left in the dust permanently. The last seriously viable midrange priest deck was Spiteful Priest, which saw meta play back in K&C and some fringe play in Rastakhans (possibly so fringe that I was the only one who managed to climb to Rank 5 with it, the first time I’ve ever done so). Its power in K&C was based on incredibly powerful resource and “answer/threat” minions like Duskbreaker and Drakonid Operative. These both had the “holding a dragon” condition, but they were aggressively costed and could come down on curve. Ever since then I’ve hoped for the return of a proactive, board-based Priest midrange decks and done what I could to use what was released to hit that objective. Yet it feels increasingly like Team 5 is scared of letting Priest have that level of power again. Here’s some of my thoughts on some the midrange-style cards priest has gotten since then (these are the ones I remember fighting for, hoping they’d be good, and being disappointed):
Natalie Seline
Why is she an 8-drop? She’s the epitome of midrange minion: answer an opponent’s threat and provide your own at the same time. Yet being stuck so incredibly high on the curve makes her far worse as a single-target removal, no matter her power. Other unconditional removal minions fell almost exclusively around the 6-mana point: Vilespine Slayer (combo would typically mean a 1-mana investment increase), Kel’idan the Breaker, Flik Skyshiv, SI:7 Assassin (its cost reduction ability makes it more squishy, but the deckbuilding restriction helps offset that). If Natalie Seline followed the same formula and was a 6-mana 6/1 instead of 8, I believe she would be far more used and far more powerful.
Aeon Reaver
Of course, Priest DID get a 6-mana removal minion, and yet it also only saw fringe play. But pay attention to the differences between it and Natalie Seline. A single-target lightbomb is a powerful effect, yes, but it is nowhere near as consistent as unconditional destruction. Aeon Reaver’s design and its effect’s power level is more along the lines of Lilypad Lurker, yet Lurker boasts Drakonid Operative-level stats and mana cost, while Reaver was made a 6-mana 4/4. Why? Why not make it a 5-cost? Why not give it better stats? It was so close to being good but these small differences caused an enormous discrepancy in viability.
Chronobreaker
I can almost guarantee Team 5 wanted to recapture some of the power of Duskbreaker while also not making it as meta defining as the original. I got into a huge fight with various people when it released arguing how Duskbreaker was a multi-archetype allstar, while Chrono was solidly a midrange tool. Yet while its effect was powerful, a deathrattle board clear that lacked taunt was utterly inconsequential, especially with such a pitiful statline. It could have been given taunt, it could have been more aggressively statted so opponents would feel more pressure to kill it and have to choose whether to (a choice dynamic midrange loves), but because it was such a weak, ignorable 5-cost minion, Chronobreaker was left in the dust.
Cleric of Scales
My only real quarrel with this card was that it should have been a 1/2. Discovering from deck instead of generating cards was fine, but as Cleric of An’She has since shown, it’s fine to more aggressively stat spell-drawing one drops that have an activation condition.
Twilight Deceptor
This one makes me more angry because, with United in Stormwind, Team 5 spent far more time investing in tempo and board-based priest decks, yet still there’s a huge discrepancy between the power of the stuff they gave priest vs cards they gave other classes that do similar things in the SAME SET. Were it in any other class, Twilight Deceptor’s activation condition would probably not be that difficult to achieve, but in priest, asking that they deal damage to someone is a fairly significant ask. Now let’s look at other classes’ minions that do the same thing: the ones that come to mind are Knight of Anointment and Harbor Scamp. Neither of the ones that come to mind are as well-statted as deceptor, but the stats are not the point here. Card draw is possibly the most powerful thing you can do in HS, and Deceptor once again falls behind, and Paladin and Warrior were given minions that do it without ANY condition, let alone one that is difficult to fulfill on curve like Deceptor. In a board-based priest deck you would hope that Twilight Deceptor would be a powerful turn 2 play, but unless you want to be playing River Crocolisk, it’s nowhere near as powerful as you’d hope.
I do believe that HS devs want Priest to have board-based and even aggro/tempo options, yet consistently they have failed to deliver powerful enough tools for those shells. The ones I listed above are ones that I thought were/are NEARLY there, but just miss the mark. There have been so many others that are much worse. Does anyone even remember Zarek, Master Cloner? Or Lady in White? I understand Team 5 wanting to pull away from infinite generation Bore You to Death control gameplay, but unless they actually give priest tools for more aggressive archetypes that can compete with other classes, Priest wont be able to rise to the occasion. There have been some new ones that give me hope for the class. Xyrella, Serena Bloodfeather, Void Shard, Brittlebone Destroyer, Darkbishop Benedictus, and even Seek Guidance (it asks you to curve out, and rewards you with card draw for doing so. There’s at least SOME midrange potential in that, and it provides its own late-game win condition if you cant fight it back), but we need a critical mass of powerful midrange cards, and I dont think we’re there yet. I really hope the mini-set and the last expansion of Year of the Gryphon have the tools we need, because I love Priest, and I get sad whenever people scream how much they hate the class and want it to be deleted because it feels like I’m the only one who believes Priest can and should be a lot different than it is now.
(oof, sorry for the essay. If it’s too long for this comment section I can copy and paste it to reddit or something. Wouldn’t want all my typing to go to waste)
I completely agree with you. Midrange dragon priest was one of the most fun I had playing hearthstone.
Love those kind of interactive decks where resource management and play skill actually matter.
As for control, the old school control is fine, or even current control with quest line could be fine (or any finisher in general). Problem were random generations when the opponents randomly had answer for any situation.
They are obviously pushing priest in more tempo, midrange directions, but in order to do so, cards they get have to be comparable in power level to other classes.
Exactly! This is the singularly biggest reason that Seek Guidance is my favorite card from Stormwind. It could work in midrange shells because it asks you to curve out, but it also provides a powerful *proactive* strategy for Control Priest, and opens up patterns of play that are fun and complex. Do you defend against the opponent, or do you advance your own gameplan? Do you have a midrange tool that can do both? how many reactive things do you stick in if you’re in a slower matchup where you need to finish the questline as soon as possible? it’s the EXACT kind of play pattern and deckbuilding dynamic Iksar and the team seem to be promoting and I’m here for it, but I worry it won’t ever be as good as it could be unless there’s more competitively-powered tools for priest.
I’m very sad at the lack of control. Grinding the game out and actually playing cards was the best. Control vs control was the peak of hearthstone. I guess the aggro players got what they wanted
As a control Warlock player from day one (literally), I couldn’t agree more!