Into the Emerald Dream expansion and the new Standard year are here! The new Hearthstone expansion launched yesterday, and the wild ride of the early days meta has started. In this article, I look into what has happened during the first day, what are the best decks right now, and where the meta is headed.
Armor Demon Hunter
The definitive deck of the first day has been Armor Demon Hunter. This comes as no surprise, given how the deck was strong in both the pre-release theorycrafting event and the pre-release Brawliseum. In the full Standard format, the deck is even more well-rounded than in the Brawliseum.
The deck is built around Arkonite Defense Crystal, which gets resurrected in two copies by Ravenous Felhunter, which in turn gets resurrected in two copies by Ferocious Felbat. This gives the Demon Hunter lots of armor and a huge Starship.
The Starship can be launched with The Exodar for a potential OTK or even more armor, or it can be launched earlier and resurrected (50% chance) with Ferocious Felbat. Kil'jaeden means that the deck will never run out of cards and can use its vast armor supply to survive until it overruns its opponents with buffed-up random Demons. The portal can even give the deck more copies of Ferocious Felbat, which gets really crazy.
Compared to the pre-release Brawliseum, the deck now has access to Tuskpiercer for a cheap way to tutor Deathrattle minions and Carnivorous Cubicle and Return Policy to create even more copies of them.
This is the current top-performing list of the archetype:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
10,080
Mulligan for Arkonite Defense Crystal, Tuskpiercer, and Grim Harvest and start looking for your Deathrattle set.
Armor Demon Hunter has made the first day a strange one. Usually, aggro decks prey upon unrefined slow decks at the start of an expansion, but this time it is the aggro decks that need to be refined to be able to compete against the stalling power of Armor Demon Hunter. That said, there are already signs that some aggro decks may be able to rise up to the challenge.
The situation reminds me of the early days of Witchwood, when Taunt Druid was shutting down the meta for the first week. Then, counters emerged, and Taunt Druid did not look quite as scary anymore. Even so, Taunt Druid was the deck that defined the meta requirements, and Armor Demon Hunter is the deck that now defines what you need to be able to contest in Into the Emerald Dream.
Discover Hunter, Zerg Hunter, and Imbue Hunter
The main challenger to Armor Demon Hunter is Hunter. But the best ladder deck is not Imbue Hunter. While Imbue Hunter can win games in a hilarious manner when it gets to buff King Plush enough, it lacks consistency and may need some more refinement.
There are two Hunter decks that are performing superbly on the ladder. The more popular one is Discover Hunter, of which this is the best-performing list so far:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 10,440
In the mulligan, you are mainly looking for Parrot Sanctuary, Spawning Pool, and Exarch Naielle. This gets your locations and Discoveries going, and will help you get to Seaside Giants, which are your main win condition: just overwhelm your opponent with Giants early enough.
Nightmare Lord Xavius is the only new card in the deck, and it is not mandatory, either. You can drop in a Mixologist, for example, as a replacement.
As far as refinement goes, Hunter is a good example. Discover Hunter beats Armor Demon Hunter by overwhelming it before it can stabilize. What if you just made an even faster Hunter deck that can overrun Demon Hunter more consistently?
Turns out that dropping the Discovers and going all in on Zerg is an even more effective way to beat Demon Hunters!
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 6,360
Sideboard
Mulligan for Spawning Pool, Extraterrestrial Egg (and Terrorscale Stalker if you have an Egg in hand), Zergling, and the only new card in the deck, Amphibian's Spirit.
While there is only one new card in the deck, the Spirit is an important buff that enables your onslaught with additional damage, effective trades against Taunt minions, and protection from attempts to clear the board. Zerg Hunter is potentially the best deck in the game right now, at least until it becomes more popular and creates space for counters to be played: its possible counters currently fall prey to Armor Demon Hunter.
As for Hunter with new cards, this is as good as it gets for Imbue Hunter so far:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 8,040
- 1Fetch!2
- 1Rangari Scout2
- 1Tracking2
- 1Wound Prey2
- 2Exotic Houndmaster2
- 3Spirit Bond2
- 4Umbraclaw2
- 9King Plush1
Imbue Hunter is a riot when it works. You buff up King Plush with Imbue cards, and then the King will go face and win the game. Optionally, you can bounce it with Youthful Brewmaster to go again. And again. And why not again.
You need two things for that plan to work. First, you have to Imbue your Hero Power multiple times. Hard mulligan for your Imbue cards, you MUST find them. Then, you want to find your King Plush and make it the only Beast in your hand. The deck runs only a few Beasts for a reason. You have a plan, and extra Beasts would just get in the way.
Imbue Hunter is also strong against Armor Demon Hunter, but it has more weaknesses than the faster Hunter decks.
BBU Leech Death Knight
With Hunter countering Demon Hunter, you may want to look into ways to fight against Hunter decks. Death Knight is one of the main alternatives for that. Leech Death Knight is strong archetype, but it is somewhat unfavored against Demon Hunters, and has some other weaknesses as well, such as Protoss Mage. Nonetheless, it is one of the better decks on the ladder, and one of the strongest archetypes against Hunter.
Leech Death Knight comes in two varieties: the Legendary edition, and the Starship edition.
If you have new cards, and you know it, the Legendary edition might be for you:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 18,000
Sideboard
Mulligan for early-game cards, like Morbid Swarm, Creature of Madness, Dreadhound Handler, and Chillfallen Baron. Just get out there and start generating some resources and drawing cards.
The Leech package is your main source of power: Infested Breath, Sanguine Infestation, and Hideous Husk will literally steal life for you. They can destroy minions and also reduce the maximum Health of your opponent. They suck life from underneath armor and Divine Shields, so you can do some fancy plays where things die even with their protections in place. Any Leeches you have on the board are major threats, as you may drop a Hideous Husk to enhance them at any time.
Speaking of Hideous Husk, it is even better when Discovered with Nightmare Lord Xavius. How about two copies of it at once? Or Reborn with full Health? It can become very difficult to remove, and yet remove it your opponent must.
The various Legendary cards add a lot of mid-to-late-game power. Shaladrassil is bonkers when corrupted, so you really want to play one of the other high-cost cards first while holding it.
Death Knight can also be played with a somewhat smaller card collection with the Starship edition:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 11,280
With this deck, you still have the Leech package, but it is just an alternative win condition alongside the Starship. Mulligan for Soulbound Spire, Brittlebone Buccaneer, and Morbid Swarm and start building your Starship.
Nightmare Lord Xavius is optional, although I like it a lot in this deck because there are so many good targets for it to Discover.
Protoss Imbue Mage
One of the strongest decks against Death Knight is Protoss Imbue Mage. It is also strong against Imbue Hunters, but struggles against Armor Demon Hunter and the faster Hunter variants. It is doing fairly well in the ladder right now, but its matchup spread among the top decks is on the weaker side. The strong Death Knight matchup is an advantage, at least.
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 10,140
As with all Imbue decks, you MUST find your Imbue cards. Mage has the most expensive class Imbue card with Wisprider, and that one is too slow to mulligan for, unless you happen to open with other Imbue cards in your hand too. So, you’re looking for Bitterbloom Knight and Spirit Gatherer.
If you get a good Imbue start, you can start working towards your main win conditions, Colossus and Aessina. You win with Protoss or you win with Imbue, one or the other.
Protoss Priest
When looking for aggressive decks that can go under Armor Demon Hunter, Hunter is the main candidate. However, there is another class that also has a playable aggro deck. That class is Priest.
It is a little crazy that the most competitive Priest deck is an aggro deck, even more so that it is an aggro deck in an expansion where Priest got an infinite value-generation engine with the Imbue effect providing them with cheap Priest cards every turn. But in a war of infinite resources, Priest cards are unable to keep up, even in combination with Kil'jaeden. So, aggro it is.
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 7,180
Mulligan for Trusty Fishing Rod, Brain Masseuse, Overzealous Healer, and Sentry and hit the floor running. Pressure followed by Artanis and possibly Mothership at the end is your plan.
Location Warlock
Yet another spawn of trying to get a big swing turn early enough is Location Warlock. The first versions of the deck started out with the Dark Gift theme and included the new Warlock Legendary card Wallow, the Wretched. While Wallow has performed well, the support package leaves something to be desired. This is what the Wallow version looks like:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 9,360
When examining how the deck wins games, the main theme is location, location, location. Add a Rotheart Dryad and draw your Seaside Giant, and that’s how a game is won. Taking this logic to its next step, we can cut the Gift package and just support the Zerg even more instead. This is the next step in this evolution:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 9,360
This looks like a promising approach, and I hope to see more results from it soon. It does prey more on the decks that are countering Armor Demon Hunter than it does on the Demon Hunter itself though: it is actually unfavored against Demon Hunter.
Other Decks in the Race
The above decks are the best-performing ones on the ladder right now. There are also some other decks that have managed to stick around for the first day and not crash after the first hours. These decks do not have enough statistics yet to really see where they’re headed. They’re listed here from best to worst, as far as I can tell based on limited information.
- Format: wild
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 15,540
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 7,980
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 8,760
- Format: wild
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 14,280
Sideboard
Conclusions
The early Into the Emerald Dream meta has been quite narrow. Armor Demon Hunter dominated the first hours, beating Leech Death Knight in the early race to dominance. Various Hunter decks have been able to challenge Demon Hunter, but are in turn weak against Death Knight. That is the main early trio.
There are other decks that can challenge individual top decks: Protoss Mage, Protoss Priest, and Location Warlock, in particular. None of them have so far managed to get good enough of a matchup spread to be a top contender, although the refinement of Location Warlock looks promising.
Then there are some decks that we just don’t know enough about. Nebula Shaman maybe has something going for it. Protoss Rogue, Imbue Druid, and Taunt Warrior look less promising. Paladin looks weak.
Despite the nerfs to StarCraft cards, they still play a prominent role in the meta. The Demon Hunter and Death Knight packages from Into the Emerald Dream have landed well, but others less so. Imbue is playable in multiple classes, but not all Imbue classes look viable either. Not to mention packages like Dragon Warrior and whatever Rogue was supposed to be.
That said, it is still early, and we have already seen the meta shift and look for answers to the top contenders. There is an interesting week ahead!
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
