Into the Emerald Dream expansion will launch with the Standard rotation next week, on Tuesday 25 March. However, new cards and a new meta are already available in the form of the pre-release Brawliseum.
This is actually a completely unique meta that will not be available anywhere else because it is a mix of 2024 and 2025 cards: the legal card sets are the 2024 Core set, 2024 Event set, The Great Dark Beyond without the Starcraft mini-set, and the new Into the Emerald Dream.
Note that Into the Emerald Dream cards are not easily accessible: you can open your pre-order packs and you win Emerald Dream packs as rewards from participating in the Brawliseum, but you cannot yet buy packs with gold, nor can you craft Emerald Dream cards. Standard Packs do not give you any Emerald Dream cards either, you need to wait until the expansion is live for that.
Your first Brawliseum entry is free, and subsequent entries cost 2 Tavern Tickets, 300 Gold, or 400 Runestones. A Brawliseum run lasts until you reach 6 wins or 3 losses. The rewards are OK. On a pure value basis, you will roughly break even with an average performance, with some caveats. The more you win, the more Emerald Dream packs you get and the higher share of Emerald Dream cards you get. If The Great Dark Beyond has nothing of interest to you, getting a pack of The Great Dark Beyond alongside your Emerald Dream packs might not be too attractive. The reward level is better than in Arena or Heroic Brawliseum at least.
Into the Emerald Dream Pre-Release Brawl Meta
So far, the strongest classes in the Brawl have been Death Knight and Demon Hunter. Both have multiple excellent options, the strongest of which use some Emerald Dream cards, but others are competitive even with no new cards. Death Knight can even be played with Core cards only, although the power level of that deck is lower than the full-cost decks.
Death Knight and Demon Hunter are followed by some of the strongest stand-alone packages from The Great Dark Beyond, Draenei Warrior and Libram Paladin. These archetypes did not mesh well enough with other cards available in Standard, but the Brawliseum meta allows them to succeed on their own. The various Imbue archetypes from Into the Emerald Dream are also playable, but only if you manage to open enough Epic and Legendary cards to build them.
Many Death Knights!
Death Knight has performed remarkably well in the Brawl, and I often face multiple Death Knights in my final games of a run.
There are two main approaches you can take to building Death Knight: you can either play with two Unholy runes and one Blood rune, or with two Blood runes and one Unholy rune. Double Unholy gives you access to Assimilating Blight, which is remarkably consistent in discovering more Starship pieces. Double Blood, in turn, opens up Corpse Explosion and Soulstealer for a more control-style experience. If you manage to open the Leech package, it also gives you access to Sanguine Infestation.
Here is an example of the double Unholy, single Blood Starship Death Knight deck:
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Player:
11,400
And here is a double Blood, single Unholy Control Leech list:
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 14,040
I also played a BBU Starship/Leech deck to 6 wins myself, so you can mix and match these approaches.
Armor Starship Demon Hunter
Armor Starship Demon Hunter was dominant in the theorycrafting event, and it gets many of its good cards also for the pre-release Brawl.
The deck is built around three cards: Arkonite Defense Crystal gives you armor and starts to build your Starship. After one of those has died, Ravenous Felhunter will be able to resurrect two copies of it. After a Ravenous Felhunter has died, Ferocious Felbat will be able to resurrect two copies of the Felhunter, each of which will resurrect two copies of the Defense Crystal. This will build you a huge Starship, and give you a lot of armor and many Taunt minions.
Beyond these three, there are several ways for you to fill the gaps. For example, here is one successful list from the Brawliseum:
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 9,360
I made it to six wins with this archetype myself as well using a somewhat different build. One card that I really like in the deck is Kil'jaeden because you can launch your Starship for armor and go for a very long game where your demons will overwhelm the opponent. Ferocious Felbat can also come from the portal, and after your Starship has died, Felbat can also resurrect two copies of that.
It takes time to fully refine a list, but if I were to go into a new Brawliseum with this archetype now, I would use something like this:
- Format: wild
- Posted By:
- 8,760
Aggro Demon Hunter (no new cards)
Amidst all of these slow games, Demon Hunter showcases some potential for aggro to succeed, even without any new cards!
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 6,600
This deck reminds me of the Pirate Starship Demon Hunter decks. Pirates have been replaced by the generally weaker Crewmates in this format, but with some proper buffs, they can deliver the final punch you need to break through.
Draenei Aggro Warrior (no new cards)
Another potential aggro deck that uses no new cards is Draenei Warrior. It is a straightforward deck built on The Great Dark Beyond Draenei package. This package initially looked promising in The Great Dark Beyond theorycrafting four months ago, but it was never able to succeed in Standard, as its overall power level was just too low. I prefer the Demon Hunter for aggro, but this can be an option if you have the cards and like to play with Warrior.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 6,120
Libram Paladin (no new cards)
Another option to go with if you have no new cards is Libram Paladin. The Librams work well as a package, and the lower power level of the Brawliseum fits them well. You also have some nice additions from the 2024 Core set, which will no longer be available in Standard when Emerald Dream launches. This deck will only be playable in this specific format!
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 8,520
The Other Imbue Decks
The Imbue mechanic can win games for any class that has access to it. For the Brawliseum, the main problem is that the Imbue package is highly synergistic and fairly small. You will need every Imbue card for a class to be able to play their Imbue archetype.
None of these decks are as strong as Death Knight or Demon Hunter, but if you managed to open exactly the right cards, they can be fun to try.
Druid technically only needs one Imbue card, Hamuul Runetotem. Everything else is more or less optional, although Grove Shaper and Malorne the Waywatcher are particularly good in Druid.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 9,600
Dragon Paladin can get its portal package fairly easily because the Imbue cards themselves are Rares (Aegis of Light) and Commons (Goldpetal Drake and the Neutral Imbue cards Bitterbloom Knight and Flutterwing Guardian).
However, simply shuffling Portals into your deck is not enough, you will not win many games with them. You need a way to tutor for them, and often you also need something more to finish the game. I have only been able to succeed with Paladin with the full set of Dragonscale Armaments, Dreamwarden, Malorne the Waywatcher, and Ursol. The big Legendary cards are often the difference between winning the game or falling short. Ursol can be used together with Renewing Flames, Shaladrassil is an optional addition.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 12,480
Hunter is a fun Imbue deck as you can build some incredibly strong Beasts. It can be quite aggressive at times, and I have more difficulty determining which expensive cards it absolutely needs. Ideally, you want Verdant Dreamsaber, Malorne the Waywatcher, and Goldrinn. If I were to pick the most important of those, it would be Goldrinn. I have won so many times because Goldrinn just gave me a lethal the opponent did not expect.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 8,160
Mage is one of the weaker Imbue decks, although summoning armies of Wisps and dealing random damage everywhere is also a lot of fun. You will need the pair of Spirit Gatherers to be able to play this archetype. Losing some of the top-end can be acceptable: Malorne the Waywatcher, in particular, is difficult to activate in Mage anyway.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Player:
- 15,300
Imbue Priest generates infinite random resources, and the Imbue cards themselves are Commons and Rares, so the archetype is quite accessible. The tricky part can be turning those infinite resources into a winning plan. This list has a heavy Draenei focus, but I’ve also seen lists that try to go for very long games with Kil'jaeden.
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 12,240
Budget Core-Only UUU Death Knight
If you’re really out of cards, it is also possible to participate in the Brawliseum with Core set cards only. The best class for this is Death Knight. You can build an Unholy Death Knight that just keeps fighting for the board, and if it ever gets full control, victory is just a Grave Strength away. Brawliseum is for everyone!
- Format: pegasus
- Season: season-132
- Posted By:
- 5,220
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
