Melon Madness: How a Single Card has Warped Wild

Something of a meme during the reveal season, Star Aligner was often a consideration for Druid OTKs when paired with North Sea Kraken. Many wrote off the combo due to the number of cards required, the clunky damage breakpoints, uncertainty about the mechanics, and presence of better options.

As soon as players started to include an eight-mana minion with seven health, however, it quickly became clear that, with the help of Juicy Psychmelon, Star Aligner Druid was the real deal. Like Togwaggle Druid, Psychmelon draws enough of the combo pieces to go off. Unlike Togwaggle Druid, however, Star Aligner Druid’s combo turn typically ends the game on the spot. Juicy Psychmelon is so powerful in this deck that it is able to eschew Ultimate Infestation entirely.

Warping Wild’s Metagame

With the potency of Combo Druid archetypes skyrocketing in power after the introduction of a single new card, players quickly began flocking to Malfurion shortly after Boomsday. The quick rise had many players calling for immediate nerfs to reduce the strength of Druid.

Now that the meta has settled a bit, it seems that Combo Druid decks aren’t as egregiously broken as they appeared at the start of the expansion. Both variants are certainly beatable, and many of the best decks from The Witchwood Wild meta maintain strong matchups against such slow-developing Druid decks.

Still, both Combo Druid decks remain powerful and popular decks in the format. More importantly, the manner in which it wins necessitates specific answers. Even the threat of facing Druid on ladder warps the Wild metagame around the archetype.

Teching for Druid

Slower decks are beginning to realize how damaging hand disruption is for Combo Druids. As a Neutral option, Dirty Rat is pretty much a requirement for any deck that doesn’t win through early game pressure.

Similarly, Deathlords can rip combo pieces into play but suffers from the speed at which it does so. Too often, Druids can ignore this eight-health minion long enough to play Juicy Psychmelon, eliminating the risk of disruption.

Warlock has some class-specific combo disruption in Gnomeferatu and the newly-released Demonic Project. The former is a bit too unreliable, but the latter allows Reno Warlocks to offset the restriction of a single copy of Dirty Rat with a second hand-disruption tool.

Regardless of the tool used, Wild Control decks are required to dedicate card slots to Druid given the prevalence of the class on the ladder.

Killing Them Quickly

Alternatively, many players are finding greater success by queuing up aggressive decks on the Wild ladder. True, Druids have ridiculous defensive tools and seemingly endless amounts of armor generation, but forcing them into a reactive gameplan often prevents them from pursuing their own win condition.

As a result, the popularity of Odd Rogue, Odd Paladin, and (especially) Even Shaman has returned nearly to where it was before the new expansion, helping keep the win rate of Druid at a reasonable place. Likewise, a return of swashbuckling Warriors may be in order to combat the high concentration of Druids near the top of the ladder.

A Familiar Wild Landscape

Clearly, even with Juicy Psychmelon, Combo Druid is beatable but that’s not the problem with class at the moment. With such a high population of a class capable of pulling off a game-winning combo as early as turn four or five, the Wild metagame ends up being extremely polarized.

Players are forced to choose between decks that decks that win before Druid can combo and decks that grind out the Druid after disrupting the combo. Anything in the middle just can’t be considered reliable enough for high ranks. Being forced to give so much attention on a single deck or archetype limits variety in a format that, for many, class and deck diversity was a major draw.

Overall, the current Wild landscape nearly resembles the reign of a five-mana Naga Sea Witch. Similar to the current meta, Wild players were forced to either score an early kill or have an answer to a board full of Giants by turn five. It’s not so much that either deck, Giantslock or Combo Druid, has an oppressively high win rate; it’s more about the polarized gameplay that the decks impose on the Wild ladder.

Solving this Psychedelic Problem

If Juicy Psychmelon is such a problem, then clearly a solution is required. Many suggestions have come up within the community to reduce the dominance of this new four-mana Epic spell. Let’s take a look at some of the more likely scenarios!

Breaking Up the Aviana and Kun Romance

If left untouched, Aviana and Kun the Forgotten King will always be a difficult balancing act for Blizzard in Wild. The pair enables so many game-ending combos that perhaps a change is in order. Frequently, the suggestion is to increase the cost of Aviana to ten mana, forcing players to run Innervate in order to achieve the extra turn’s worth of one-mana minions. Critically, this also disrupts the ability for Juicy Psychmelon to draw all combo pieces at once.

This would certainly reduce the effectiveness of both Juicy Psychmelon and Druid OTKs, in general. Still, the Aviana and Kun combination has a long history in Hearthstone, including a brief stint in the Standard format, and at least offers a unique and interesting win condition. Sure, the nerf wouldn’t ruin the combo-potential for Druids completely but, prior to Boomsday, the pair wasn’t necessarily oppressive.

Reduce Druid’s Defenses

Another course of action may be to reduce the efficacy of some of Druid’s defensive tools. Part of the problem is how much time Malfurion can buy simply by ignoring boards and tanking up. Much of the Druid removal is flexible enough to fit the needs of nearly any situation and the class’s armor gain is outrageous. Likewise, with a full board, even an already-nerfed Spreading Plague can essentially heal Druids for 35.

While limiting the some of the class’s survival doesn’t directly impact Juicy Psychmelon, if the Druid is dead, he or she certainly can’t make use of the combo cards drawn to hand. Cutting down some of these tools can go a long way in reducing the strength of Combo Druid’s potent shell.

Increase the Mana Cost

A common change to Hearthstone cards, especially Spells, involves increasing their cost. Unfortunately, with so much mana ramp available in Druid, a card’s cost often feels irrelevant. As such, this change is unlikely to have much impact on the card’s inclusion in Druid decks. Compared to Sprint, drawing four cards with Psychmelon is already a bargain. Even increasing the cost to six, a 50% increase, would still make Branching Paths playable on the same turn, allowing the Druid to buy an extra turn before the combo is played.

Reduce Druid’s Ramp

Part of the issue with Combo Druids is that, with Juicy Psychmelon, as soon as the Druid hits ten mana, the combo is not only possible but likely. This problem is exasperated by the sheer number of ramp spells available to the class, especially in Wild, giving Druid the chance to get to ten mana ridiculously fast.

Mana Ramp is a critical part of Druid’s identity but will remain a problem to balance around as new high-cost cards with powerful effects are introduced. But what can be done about such a key component of Druid’s livelihood?

Nourish is a good starting point in this regard. Not only does the card generate two mana crystals, but it cycles deeper into the Druid’s deck when ramp is unnecessary. The flexibility of this card makes it, along with a handful of others, an automatic inclusion in any slow Druid deck.

Why Was Six Afraid of Seven?

Finally, Psychmelon’s strength can be reduced simply by reducing the number of cards drawn. Rather than dismantling the Aviana and Kun duo, eliminating the 10-Cost card that’s drawn from Juicy Psychmelon prevents a full combo from being drawn and has a similar effect. If only 7, 8, and 9-Cost cards are drawn, combo turns become far less consistent.

With Biology Project or Innervate, the King Togwaggle and Azalina Soulthief combo can still be pulled off, but draw order once against becomes relevant in both this and Kun-enabled combos.

Ending the Madness

Regardless of how, until something is done about Juicy Psychmelon (or the Combo decks it enables), the Wild metagame will continue to be warped around this lone Hearthstone card.