The Boomsday Project – second expansion of Year of the Raven – was released last Tuesday. It looks like the meta is more or less stabilizing for now, but it doesn’t mean that a new deck won’t come out to upset the current balance of power. A big part of the innovation comes up a few weeks into the expansion, because some decks require much more playtesting & optimization than others.
Check out our Best Boomsday Project Decks for Every Class!
Also check out previous Standout Deck Compilations from Day 3 & Day 1!
Just like every new expansion, remember that the early meta is always very chaotic and it might look completely different in a few days. Decks are chosen based on my ladder experience (playing in Legend), watching the steamers & pros, talking with other high ranked players and early statistics from sites like HSReplay.net or Vicious Syndicate.
General Thoughts
The meta is dominated by two types of decks – fast Aggro/Tempo and Combo. Classic Midrange and Control decks are nearly non-existent. Midrange decks get out-tempo’d by Aggro builds, and they aren’t as good as Aggro vs Combo decks (since your game plan is usually to rush those down). The closest we have to Midrange right now are Deathrattle decks like Hunter or Rogue, but even them aren’t “true” Midrange – they are less about playing strong minions on the curve and more about having tempo swing turns by triggering the Deathrattles and cheating big minions out. On the other hand, the only popular Control deck left in the meta is Control Warlock, thanks to the Demonic Project (and to a certain extent Gnomeferatu / Rin, the First Disciple if you manage to hit some vital pieces).
There isn’t much innovation when compared to Witchwood yet, but I hope that we’ll get there. Despite Witchwood being a rather low impact expansion, it came with a rotation, which basically forced more innovation. Right now, the formula for new decks is usually “take the old list, slap Giggling Inventor and 2-3 more new cards, call it a day”. Completely new archetypes based on Boomsday cards aren’t really a thing. Or rather, we HAVE some new archetypes, but they’re mostly off-meta/meme decks – Mecha'thun builds are the closest ones to actually working, and maybe some of them actually will after some optimization, but right now the stats don’t look too good. Pure Mech decks don’t seem to work well – some Mech cards are incorporated into already existing decks, but I wouldn’t call them “Mech” builds – they are mostly played as a standalone minions, not for their tags/Mech synergies. The closest we have to a true Mech deck right now is Odd Mech Paladin, but if we look at the stats, the most popular list with Kangor's Endless Army is also one of the lowest win rate ones – it’s better to just add a few Mechs such as Glow-Tron, Mecharoo and Wargear (or even not add Mechs at all, a big part of the highest win rate decks don’t run any) instead of going all-in on this tribe. APM Priest was heavily discussed during the first few days, but there’s not much talk about it right now – the deck has lots of potential, but it has some of the most unbelievably bad matchups against Aggro, making it a sub-optimal ladder choice. Then we have some completely off-meta stuff like Pogo-Hopper Rogue etc. but those are so niche that it’s hard to say much about them.
According to HSReplay.net stats, we don’t have many impactful Boomsday Project cards. In fact, only a single one is off the charts when it comes to popularity, and it’s probably not difficult to guess which one it is. Giggling Inventor has completely dominated the meta, so much that lots of decks have teched in Blood Knight or Mossy Horror to fight against it. At the time I’m writing this, if we look at the stats from the last 3 days, the card is in 33.9% of the decks on the ladder. However, if we look only at the competitive ranks – Legend-5, the card is in 40.4% of the decks. Legend only – 47.4%. Legend only, last 1 day – 48.9%, which looks like the card’s popularity is still growing and it might surpass 50% of the decks soon. It has Corridor Creeper levels of representation. If we take a look at the other popular Boomsday cards (Legend-5, last 3 days), only two of them have more than 10% popularity – Demonic Project (#31, 12.4%) and Zilliax (#33, 11.5%). Demonic Project is answer to the omnipresent Combo decks, while Zilliax is probably the best Mech card we’ve got, as it has pretty high, immediate impact, which makes it pretty solid in any deck running Mechs.
Overall, I’m not very happy with Boomsday Project so far (from the gameplay perspective, because I love the theme), but I think that it’s too early to judge it yet. It’s definitely not the final version of the meta, not to mention that a balance patch should come out in the middle of the expansion – if you opened any extra Giggling Inventors, especially Golden, you should definitely hold onto them. Blizzard has been nailing the last few balance patches, and the post-patch meta is always way more diverse and interesting than the pre-patch one.
Standout Decks
These decks are only example lists – click the link at the bottom of each description for more builds!
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Most of the Token Druid decks I’ve faced so far in Boomsday were basically the Witchwood versions with Giggling Inventor, and sometimes Floop's Glorious Gloop slapped in. I’ve decided to feature this one, because it’s slightly different. While it doesn’t run more new cards (in fact, it doesn’t even run Gloop), it has cut the Oaken Summons + Violet Teacher package completely and decided to run Naturalize and Power of the Wild instead. It’s funny how a card, which was widely considered to be one of the worst in the game (Naturalize) is now a Druid staple, present in most of the builds. The game is heavily about tempo swings, and Naturalize is one of the best swing cards in the game. And in lots of matchups, forcing your opponent to draw is not a downside. On the contrary, if you play against slow deck holding onto lots of cards, it usually either won’t matter at all, or you might even burn 1-2 cards, possibly an important combo piece.
Power of the Wild, on the other hand, was cut from the deck to fit the Giggling Inventors in. Was it the right decision? Hard to say. On the one hand, it’s another “combo piece” with a rather low impact until the late game. On the other hand, it was a great way to make Wispering Woods work even without Soul of the Forest in some cases (e.g. against Zoo that might run Despicable Dreadlord, or make your Spreading Plague way stronger (sometimes Plague + 2x PotW to make a board full of 3/7’s was the winning play).
At the same time, Oaken Summons + Violet Teacher combo was pretty powerful too. Summons + Coin + Spellstone often won me some games vs aggressive decks. Violet Teacher was also another way to flood the board vs slow decks. So in the end it’s hard to say which version is better. If you prefer the classic Violet Teacher one, you can run the same list that was played since the beginning of this expansion.
Check out more deck lists from this archetype: Token Druid
Since I wanted to talk about BOTH Malygos and Togwaggle Druid, I think that this will be the perfect deck to do it in one go.
At the start of this expansion, we had two Combo Druid decks trying to get the #1 Druid deck title. Looking at the stats right now, it’s pretty clear which one was the winner. While Togwaggle / Mill Druid is still a thing, and it can be played, it seem that Malygos Druid simply works better. That’s probably because Warlock is by far the most popular class right now, and Malygos build simply works better against Warlocks than the Mill build, for a bunch of reasons. Warlocks tend to take lots of self-damage through the game, which means that you can set up the Malygos combo quite easily – often you don’t even have to deal any damage yourself. You can sometimes come up with a lethal out of nowhere, a lethal they can’t prevent. Then, Demonic Project is an incredibly common tech card, played by lots of Even, Control and Cube Warlock builds. While the card can technically counter both of the decks, it’s much better vs Togwaggle. Malygos Druid runs more minions, so it can play around it by keeping them in the hand. And it only has a single vital piece that can’t be hit – Malygos, in case of Togwaggle, hitting either Togwaggle or Azalina is really bad. And then, Togwaggle version plays Dreampetal Florist, which is a clear “I have a combo piece in my hand” tell – you just use Demonic Project then and the game is basically over.
Probably for that reason, some Togwaggle lists have started running Twig too, but I feel like Malygos is still a stronger contender in the Warlock matchup, which is probably why it has a higher win rate. Which, of course, might no longer be the case when the meta changes.
But that’s only when talking about standalone decks. This specific build runs BOTH Malygos and Togwaggle. I honestly can’t say how strong it is compared to the versions running only a single one
Check out more deck lists from those archetypes: Malygos Druid & Togwaggle Druid
Deathrattle Hunter was “discovered” quite late into The Witchood was a variation on the Recruit Hunter. It has cut the heavy late game and decided to go for more mid game tempo swings instead with Devilsaur Egg. And it was most likely the right direction, as the faster version became more popular and had a higher win rate.
Right now, we have two Deathrattle Hunter builds. The ones with Kathrena Winterwisp and thus some big Beasts to Recruit, and the ones without, opting to cut the package in favor of Mechanical Whelp and Fireworks Tech. While the latter are more popular, it seems that the first ones have a higher win rate.
This list is a like a mix of Witchwood’s Deathrattle AND Recruit Hunter, with Spider Bomb added as another powerful Deathrattle. The deck still has a quite powerful mid game swings with Egg + triggers, but it has also a better late game scaling. The deck has so many threats that it’s already incredibly hard to deal with all of them, and then Hunter can just slam Deathstalker Rexxar and discover more.
Spider Bomb is one of the two new cards, and it’s a pretty amazing board control tool. If we disregard the synergies, it’s like a slower Deadly Shot with a small body, not very good. But in this case, the fact that the effect is attached to the Deathrattle makes it better, as you can trigger it multiple times. A simple play like Bomb + Play Dead can remove a big threat and make your opponent’s next turn awkward. If he wanted to drop another big threat or Taunt, he can no longer do it, because he needs to deal with Spider Bomb first. Oh, and of course, the deck also runs Giggling Inventor, but that’s almost a given in the current meta.
Overall, both builds (but especially the Mechanical Whelp ones) are getting popular lately. I find the Mechanical Whelp build more fun, but stats are clearly in favor of this one, so make your pick.
Check out more deck lists from this archetype: Deathrattle Hunter
Mage is not doing very well right now, but Tempo Mage is trying to keep up with the new meta. The deck has lost so many cards with Year of the Raven rotation, but it has somehow stayed in the meta. Well, the current meta is great and terrible for Tempo Mage at the same time, depending on which side of matchups you end up facing. Tempo Mage was always bad against board-oriented, aggressive decks such as Odd Paladin, Odd Rogue or Zoo Warlock. On the other hand, it punished slow, combo/control decks that couldn’t keep up with all the burn. And right now, the meta is basically one or the other.
And so, Tempo Mage is doing really well against, for example, Control Warlock, Mecha’thun decks, Combo Priest, Quest & Kingsbane Rogue or Big Spell Mage. On the other hand, it loses to Odd Rogue, Odd Paladin, Zoo Warlock and such. Surprisingly, Druid matchups are quite even – despite Druids having ungodly amounts of Armor gain, they still usually spend the first few turns Hero Powering/Ramping, making early snowball possible for Tempo Mage.
As for the new cards, three of them see most play in Tempo Mage – Shooting Star, Stargazer Luna and Cosmic Anomaly. Shooting Star is a bit like a board control version of Arcane Missiles, but it has way better synergy with Spell Damage. Luna is just a great cycle card – since the deck has a really low curve, in the mid/late game, you might end up drawing a few cards in a single turn, not to mention that the 4 health might be a bit difficult to kill on T3, so even playing her on the curve might give you some value. And finally, Cosmic Anomaly – +2 Spell Damage is a very powerful effect, it can be combo’d with Shooting Star for 3 damage to 3 minions (really powerful tempo play), and then it adds a lot of face burn to the build. It wasn’t enough to make Spell Damage Mage a viable archetype, but it is a nice addition to Tempo Mage.
Another interesting, although not new card choice is Mana Addict. 2 mana 1/3 is really slow, but it can be consistently buffed to 5/3 or even 7/3 with this deck. The card seems pretty good vs slow decks, as it’s a must-kill, but since the buff only stays for your turn, it’s pretty bad vs Aggro decks.
Check out more deck lists from this archetype: Tempo Mage
Despite not changing all that much, Odd Rogue looks like the #1 Aggro deck in the latest expansion. It works quite well against both fast and slow decks. In Aggro matchups, the 2/2 Hero Power is incredibly useful early/mid game board control tool, while cards such as SI:7 Agent, Fungalmancer or Vilespine Slayer can swing tempo in Rogue’s favor. In slow matchups, the deck’s snowbally nature makes it very explosive. Unanswered Hench-Clan Thug (or Vicious Fledgling in the lists that run it) can grow out of control very quickly, leaving any minions on the board is dangerous because of Cold Blood and Fungalmancer, while Vilespine Slayer is even better than against Aggro – clearing a big minion while putting a 3/4 body on the board might completely negate your opponent’s turn while advancing your board.
Odd Rogue has both strong chip damage with Hero Power, and strong burst finisher with a mix of Deadly Poison, Cold Blood, Southsea Deckhand, SI:7 Agent, Fungalmancer and of course Leeroy Jenkins.
When it comes to the new cards, two of them are seeing common play – Giggling Inventor (obviously) and Myra's Unstable Element. The second one is interesting, because one of the Odd Rogue issues was running out of steam quite quickly, and once you did, not only lots of your cards became weaker (e.g. combo cards), but once you lost the steam, you lost the tempo, which often lead to losing entire match. Myra’s gives you a massive mid/late game refill – while it puts you into fatigue, realistically you still should have at least 4-5 more turns to kill your opponent before fatigue really kicks in (4 turns into fatigue is “only” 10 damage).
Interesting new tech card present in most of the Odd Rogue lists is Blood Knight. It’s a perfect answer to Giggling Inventor in a deck like that (and we know how popular Inventor is) – not only it clears two Divine Shields, which makes getting through it much more easy, but it also puts a 3 mana 9/9 on the board – it’s like a big Edwin VanCleef that you don’t even have to combo. But, even against the decks that don’t run Inventor, builds running Blood Knight also play 2x Argent Squire and 2x Inventor themselves, and most of the time they will gladly trade bubbles on 1/1’s or 1/2’s for +3/+3 on a 3-drop.
Check out more deck lists from this archetype: Odd Rogue
(IIRC, this list was created by Sipiwi94 and taken to #24 Legend, and then Furyhunter took it to #4 Legend, but #1 Legend by Uberer is most latest / highest score)
Come on, this has to be some sort of cruel joke. The card was nerfed twice, both of the nerfs were severe, and yet players are still having success with it in high Legend. And it’s coming back again and again. Just imagine how strong it would be in its initial form right now.
But why did the deck come back again? Well, there are two reasons. First is obviously the meta. While Quest Rogue is terrible against Aggro, it works amazingly well against slower decks, which can’t push enough damage to kill Rogue before Crystal Core. And so, it preys on the decks like Control Warlock, Mill Druid, Shudderwock Shaman or even Deathrattle Hunter.
However, the Aggro matchups are more winnable then they were before this expansion, thanks to Giggling Inventor. It’s a Neutral Wall, which buys Rogue some extra time to finish the Quest. Not to mention that after you finish the Quest, it creates three 4/4 bodies, two of which are Taunts with Divine Shield – Aggro decks have a very hard time passing through them.
Some builds also run Lab Recruiter, which makes the deck even more crazy in slow matchups. Unless a Control deck combos you down, it basically can’t win the game, because you have access to infinite resources. Once you play Valeera the Hollow, when you are closing into fatigue, you just play Giggling Inventor, Lab Recruiter it and then Lab Recruiter your Lab Recruiter. You can now go infinite and play lots and lots of 4/4’s each turn – your opponent will run out of answers very quickly.
At this point, if they want to get rid of this card, they probably have to rework it completely.
P.S. Another unbelievable deck that is gaining some popularity lately is Kingsbane Rogue. A few players have taken it to high Legend ranks in the last three days, and I’d say that it’s generally similar to Quest Rouge when it comes to the matchups, although less extreme. It’s bad against fast decks and good against slow decks, but overall Quest Rogue seems to have a higher win rate. Still, if you want to check out Kingsbane deck too, I’ll link it below.
Check out more deck lists from those archetypes: Quest Rogue & Kingsbane Rogue
Control Warlock is still strong (I’ll link deck lists at the bottom), I believe that it’s even stronger than Cube right now, but since I featured it last time, this time I wanted to talk about something else – Cube Warlock. It was one of the most popular and strongest decks through the second half of Kobolds & Catacombs, as well as the first half of The Witchwood, which means that it dominated the meta for roughly 4 months. And then it was nerfed. Putting Possessed Lackey at 6 mana and reducing the healing from Dark Pact (8 -> 4) didn’t seem THAT punishing, but slowing the deck down AND reducing its healing capabilities was enough to nearly push it out of the meta.
It seems to be making a slight comeback now, with basically a single new card – Giggling Inventor. Yeah… Some decks tech in two other new cards –Demonic Project, which gives the deck an edge against some Combo decks, as well as Ectomancy, which I personally don’t like, because it feels like a win-more card. You need to already have a quite strong Demon board to make it useful – copying a single big Demon is not worth it, because you could just run Faceless Manipulator instead (cheaper and more flexible).
Other than that, the play style is exactly the same how it was last expansion. You want to get your big Demons or Giants out, copy them with Faceless or Cube, put lots of pressure on the opponent and then possibly win with a big Bloodreaver Gul'dan swing if necessary. So nothing new here – it just works pretty well in the current meta.
Check out more deck lists from those archetypes: Cube Warlock & Control Warlock
Even Warlock is still strong. I’d say that it’s the strongest Warlock archetype right now. Last time, I featured a tech-heavy list from SteveD which I had some success on the Legend ladder with too. This time I’m featuring a different version from Hoej, without cards like Demonic Project or Sacrificial Pact. This version has less potential to counter whatever your opponent is doing, but is more consistent across the board – there were matchups in which you didn’t want to draw those tech cards, and they were dead in your hand. Instead, he runs for example 2x Acidic Swamp Ooze, which in the worst case scenario are still 2 mana 3/2’s that can be dropped on the board to get some extra presence.
What’s notable is that this version runs no cards from the latest expansion. I guess that lots of you won’t like it because of that. After all, it’s fun to play with new cards, especially right after the expansion is out. Don’t worry, the other version is still viable – I just wanted to feature a less tech-heavy version this time.
Check out more deck lists from this archetype: Even Warlock
- 1Flame Imp2
- 1Kobold Librarian2
- 1Soul Infusion2
- 1Soulfire2
- 1The Soularium1
- 1Voidwalker2
- 5Doomguard1
And last, but not least, Zoo Warlock. It has dominated the ladder on first day of the expansion, and it’s still one of the most popular decks on the ladder (or possibly even THE most popular deck). There hasn’t been much innovation from the first day, but different players prefer different new cards. For example, this list runs The Soularium and Soul Infusion, but it does not run Doubling Imp, which is present in the RDU’s version (still most popular on the ladder). Some lists also run Giggling Inventor, although it’s surprisingly not very popular choice in Zoo, unlike in many other meta decks. Instead, this build runs a way to counter Giggling – Blood Knight, just like Odd Rogue. Dealing with Divine Shields while putting 3 mana 9/9 onto the board is massive.
The Keleseth Heal Zoo Warlock shell is pretty much set in stone as the best version (stats indicate that non-Keleseth or non-Heal versions are worse), but there are still quite a lot of different versions being played around. Right now, two biggest choices (besides the new cards I’ve listed above) are Leeroy Jenkins vs Doomguard and Despicable Dreadlord vs no Dreadlord. I’ve probably seen at least ten different successful versions of the deck already, so in the end those choices aren’t THAT important – it heavily depends on the exact meta you face, but I feel like most of the builds are viable right now.
Check out more deck lists from this archetype: Zoo Warlock
Throwing it out there.. I think Goblin Bomb Hunter is getting really slept on this meta. Regular Recruit/Deathrattle Hunter is no doubt stronger, as is Spell Hunter, which is probably why it’s being ignored as people ride out most of their experimental phase in the first few weeks messing about with the combo decks etc, but I still think it could be strong enough to be a tier 2/3 deck. I’ve messed around with it a bit, running eggs and Terrorscale Stalkers, play deads, dropping DK Rexxar (which sounds mad but trust) running 1 missile launcher etc, and I swear it’s better than people think! It’s capable of snowballing so much face damage, and the bombs/eggs make board clears really awkward for your opponent. It’s a tonne of fun.
U nailed it, these are indeed the decks and the cards… Best builds of every deck… Most of the Hybrid druid decks run the twig too but It’s probably fine without…
Shot in the dark, but given what we know about expansions being developed and completed about 2 expansions ahead of schedule (Brode said during KFT’s development that Witchwood work was basically finished at that point), the cards printed this expansion were probably designed under the assumption that Malygos was being rotated to Wild, and plans changed after the point of no return.
What I dislike is introducing cards that support combo decks without neutral cards to break it like Dirty Rat. Malygos should be moved to the hall of fame.
Combo decks have a place in HS – there needs to be cards like Malygos to nuke the turtle decks; sitting behind an endless wall of taunts until victory is a perfectly viable way to win… boring, but viable – look at Hadronox or Quest Warrior.
There don’t *need* to be neutral combo-breakers (that’s a double-edged sword anyway)… if you look at something like MTG, Black has most of the cards that screw with your opponent’s deck/hand, cards that wreck combos – if you’re not playing Black, you don’t readily get that option (granted MTG has instants – so Blue can break combos with counterspells).
HS is similar in that if you want to screw with your opponent’s hand, you play Warlock – other classes have their own options to deal with Combo decks; a megatonne of armour or just rushing your opponent down for instance… even a well timed Counterspell/Explosive Runes can buy you a turn (especially in Wild – Druids can’t play Aviana while there’s a Mage secret on the board).
I always thought Dirty Rat was slightly broken – what was supposed to be a drawback to justify the extremely low mana cost, actually turned out to be the main reason to run it. When it was at it’s most prevalent I’d actually mulligan for Angry Rag.
Nice insight!
There’s a new article about combo decks:. https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/is-a-combo-meta-good-for-the-game
You should read the response of SquireCast who also refers to MtG.
Your mtg comparison isn’t quite fair, since we can’t play Druid/Warrior decks in hs like we can play Black/Blue decks in mtg. Class restrictions are *way* stronger than color pie restrictions
That’s true – especially if you consider you can mix any colour with Blue or Black to gain access to combo breakers. That *is* a restriction, just nowhere near as strong as a restriction as “play Warlock”.
Maybe re-using the MSG “clan” mechanic so that specific combo-breaker cards could be used by *some* classes but not all – I think Kabal (Priest, Mage, Warlock) might be a good candidate.
Dirty Rat was just too powerful IMO, it could fairly reliably destroy any combo deck pretty much all on its own which ensured there were basically no viable combo decks as the Rat was everywhere.