Standout Witchwood Meta Decks After 12 Days

At first, Odd Paladin was dominating the meta, but as the time goes by, it looks like Even version is the stronger one. While this version of Hero Power is slightly worse, the deck can still keep most of its powerful cards, such as Call to Arms and Sunkeeper Tarim.

A card that I didn’t like at first, but loved it more and more as I’ve played this deck is Avenging Wrath. Basically, most of the decks on the ladder are either token decks (where an additional board clear is useful) or decks you play the beatdown role against – and extra reach is useful against those. And the best thing is that they often can’t play around it. You put them in the range while you have some sort of board? If they clear the board – you kill them with Avenging Wrath. If they heal/taunt up, you still have your board and you can set them up in the same position against next turn. Of course, it doesn’t always work, but I won so many games vs Cube Warlock or Big Spell Mage just like that.

What more can I say… I don’t have good news for people who hate to play against Paladins. The best and most optimal list definitely hasn’t been found yet – players are experimenting with all sorts of cards. Two drops choice (like Amani Berserker in this specific list – I mean, come on, that’s something I haven’t seen in Constructed since Beta), whether you run The Glass Knight or not, how “Midrange” you want to go and how many expensive cards you want to include (The Lich King and Silver Sword are most common, but I’ve seen Tirion Fordring, Bonemare and such), do you want to run Sea Giants or not…  Just looking at HSReplay, there are like 20 different lists that are viable.

“Well, at least Paladins won’t run out of Control, because we have Cube Warlock to keep them in check…” or so I’ve heard… But I have another bad news for you. This list has positive win rate against Cube Warlock (slightly positive, it’s not a Cube counter, but still). It actually has almost no bad matchups – only Control Priest and Big Spell Mage are “bad” (if you can call 40-45% really “bad”) when it comes to common ladder matchups.

People were talking about Warlock overlords before Witchwood… But it looks like you need to replace Warlock with Paladin. Call to Arms nerf incoming? Anyone?

I won’t talk abut the whole thing again, but Even Paladin is so good that you can make a Spiteful Summoner list and still get to high Legend with it. Burr0 hit #7 Legend using this deck. Yeah. Enjoy!

Murloc Paladin is right behind the Even Paladin when it comes to its strength. I actually only started playing against them recently – earlier into the expansion it was all about Odd & Even Paladins, but now other decks are starting to pop out. When you think about it – Murloc Paladin didn’t lose THAT much in the rotation. Yes, having to replace two strong Murloc 1-drops (Vilefin Inquisitor and Grimscale Chum) definitely hurt the deck, but it’s nothing a good old Call to Arms couldn’t make up for.

Most importantly, powerhouse Murloc synergies from Un’Goro – Rockpool Hunter and Gentle Megasaur are still there. The deck can snowball like there is no tomorrow, the only thing that suffered slightly it’s the consistency of early game Murloc chain.

The only new card played in Murloc Paladin is actually Nightmare Amalgam. Technically, it’s a 3 mana 3/4 Murloc… and since people don’t run any hate cards, it’s not too risky to play it. Remember that Amalgam is affected by all kinds of them – anti-Pirate, anti-Murloc, anti-Dragon, anti-Beast (come back Hemet…). It’s not a particularly powerful card – it’s basically just a 3 mana 3/4 Murloc… but that’s a good enough curve filler, and the 3/4 stats line up very well against most of the popular 1-3 mana minions.

All in all, Murloc Paladin is still one of the best Aggro decks on the ladder, even though it’s not as popular as the other Paladin archetypes… yet.

Odd Paladin looked like it’s going to be the king of an expansion, but its win rate is falling down and down. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still a good deck. But instead of being a top deck, it’s like a high Tier 2, maybe even low Tier 1. At least for now, but right not it’s trending downwards.

Why, you might ask? I think that its win rate was heavily bloated by the surprise factor. I mean, come on, for the first few days people didn’t really know what to expect from those decks and how to play against them. They were running all sorts of crazy cards people have never seen on the ladder, as well as flooding the board all the time. Once people adjusted their decks, play style and learned how Odd Paladin can capitalize on having a big board, matchup is now easier. Plus there are less experimental decks to prey on.

But it’s still a Paladin, and even without Call to Arms and such, Paladins are just in a great shape right now.

Cube Warlock is… Cube Warlock. I’ve already talked about the deck multiple times, so I will keep it short.

The deck is strong, and it will remain strong – why wouldn’t it? It’s already pretty much figured out – it will stay high, up in Tier 1, unless meta would change DRAMATICALLY.

It’s a deck that has wrapped the whole meta around it. When you build a new deck, there are two main questions you have to ask yourself. First – will it survive against Paladins? And second – will it beat Cube Warlock? Nearly every deck is teched to beat Cube Warlock, and it doesn’t stop the deck itself from being one of the strongest lists in the meta. Imagine what would happen if everyone would just ignore it.

To be fair, I really like the deck, so I don’t mind it that much, but I really do think that they should do something about it (and Paladins while we’re at it) and nerf it slightly.

Early in the expansion, there was a big battle between Spiteful Priest and Spiteful Druid. Which one is stronger? Early meta was leaning towards the Priest, but as the time went by, Priest went lower and lower in the rankings, while Spiteful Druid stayed as one of the top decks.

I’ve already mentioned it during the last compilation, but the ability to ALWAYS roll a 10-drop with a Spiteful Summoner is really big. 2/5 to get an 8/8, 1/5 to get a 7/14 and 2/5 to get a 12/12 (one of which is Tyrantus – a card that often seals the game, since it’s REALLY hard to remove).

Another advantage is Greedy Sprite. It might not seem like much, but being able to drop Spiteful one turn earlier is a big deal. T6 Spiteful is often more than your opponent can handle, T5 can be instant concede.

The only real issue I have with this deck is that, unlike Priest, it only runs two spells. It is not very uncommon to draw both copies quite early, making your Spiteful Summoners and Grand Archivist quite useless. Funnily enough, I won some games like that too just with the minion pressure + two UI refills, so it’s not like Spiteful is the deck’s only win condition.

The scourge is back, some might say. Quest Rogue was one of the most disliked decks before it was nerfed back during the Journey to Un’Goro. While it never had a very high win rate, the polarizing matchups were making it unbearable to play against with some decks. Playing a slow, Control deck vs Quest Rogue could be an instant concede, because you were just wasting your time… and the bad thing is that it looks a bit similarly right now. When I play e.g. Big Spell Mage vs Rogue, I just concede as soon as I realize it’s Quest Rogue. And I’m not joking here, I really don’t think that the 10% or something chance to win is worth my time. The deck (pre-nerf version) was also absolutely dominating a slower tournament meta where you could just ban the Aggro deck opponent has and prey on their slow builds. It turned out that most of the pros couldn’t be bothered by it and just banned it right away.

After the deck was nerfed, people have tried to revive it multiple times. There were some semi-successful builds back in Knights of the Frozen Throne or Kobolds & Catacombs, but nothing that would bring the deck back to its former glory. Until now.

Honestly, it’s not really The Witchwood that has brought back this deck. Heck, Gadgetzan Ferryman, a card that was absolutely key in that deck has just rotated out. It’s the current meta that works for the Quest Rogue. The overall power level has gone down a bit, plus the meta actually looks slower. There aren’t many decks that can completely rush you. Yes, the deck is still bad against Paladin, or let’s say against Odd Face Hunter, but it has lots of good matchups, making it as polarizing as it was before.

It would be hilarious if Blizzard decided to nerf The Caverns Below from playing 5 to playing 6 minions. But for now, if you were missing this deck, it’s a great time to play it again. I had a really good run with it in Legend, even though I didn’t play the deck much back when it was popular and I don’t play much Rogue in general (because it’s the most difficult class in Hearthstone and I’m too lazy to master it).

But Quest Rogue is not the only good Rogue deck on the current ladder. Unlike Quest version, this one was made possible by the new cards – Baku the Mooneater in particular. I didn’t think that an on-demand 2 mana 2-2 weapon would be so good, but it is.

Odd Rogue is like a more aggressive version of the Tempo Rogue. It’s still not as all-in Face deck as Face Hunter, but it’s very aggressive. The deck’s main advantage is actually its Hero Power, which can be used both as a board control and reach tool. Against fast decks, you can use it to deal with all kinds of small minions, while against slower deck, you use it to push 2 damage per turn. It’s a bit like the regular Hunter Hero Power – it’s a great reach tool, and while weapon is slightly weaker (it can’t go through the Taunts, for example), the fact that you get two charges per use makes it so much more mana efficient. Instead of being 2 mana for 2 damage, it’s 1 mana for 2 damage on average. Since you can replay it every second turn and still attack with it, you gain 2 extra mana on every other turn to develop the board instead of playing Hero Power again.

And well, the deck has real snowball potential. It has so many ways to seal the game as soon as Turn 3-4. For example, Cold Blood on Argent Squire vs a slow deck that has no removal to deal with it, Hench-Clan Thug against basically anything, or a big Edwin VanCleef on T3/T4 (works really well with Coin). This specific build even runs Vicious Fledgling, which can be protected with Hero Power quite nicely and it’s another snowball card. The deck suffers quite a lot from being behind on the board, but thanks to its Hero Power it rarely falls behind.

It’s an interesting approach to the Rogue class, and one of my favorite Aggro decks in the game.

This is Theo’s build, which was featured last week two, only a small thing has changed – Skulking Geist instead of Harrison Jones. As much as the weapon hate is important in this meta, I think that Skulking is much better. There are so many strong 1 mana spells on the ladder right now, so I really like this tech.

The deck itself is quite similar to its Kobolds & Catacombs version. It’s basically a Control deck with a combo finisher. Against Aggro, you win most of the matchups by simply clearing all their stuff over and over and over again, then sticking a minion or two and going face.

On the other hand, in slow matchups, you play the Control game for most of the time, trying to keep up with your opponent, and then turning the tide around by a sudden burst from Mind Blasts – sometimes up to FOUR of them. Yeah, picking Mind Blast from Shadow Visions is often the right move in slow matchups, as you can absolutely surprise your opponent with the amount of burst you can do. You should be able to deal some chip damage with minions OR Shadowreaper Anduin‘s Hero Power OR set up your opponent to 15 with Alexstrasza and then blow his mind.

It’s a really cool deck and I enjoy playing it a lot. While it’s not the same full value/steal all of your opponent’s stuff Kobolds & Catacombs Control Priest, it’s understandable that without Netherspite Historian and Drakonid Operative, the value is no longer there and the deck has to play differently to work in this meta.

Tempo Mage is another deck that just can’t seem to die. I was almost sure that it will no longer be playable after so many tools will rotate out. I mean, most of the Secret package is just gone – Kabal Lackey, Medivh's Valet and Kabal Crystal Runner rotated out. Ice Block rotated out and there is no new, good Secret to take its place. Firelands Portal – rotated out. But Tempo Mage found its way.

There are actually two common ways to play it. One is basically abandoning the board past the first few turns and going all-in on burn damage – it wants to deal some early damage with the minions and then burn the hell of the opponent (and hopefully draw Aluneth after running out of steam).

Another way the deck can be played is Vex Crow approach. Instead of abandoning the board and focusing on the burn, Vex Crow can be dropped on the board with a bunch of cheap spells to flood it really nicely. In case your opponent has no way to clear it and it sticks – well, I’m not a big fan of Vex Crow, because the card just feels bad when you’re not starting on the Coin, but this approach is probably the more common one. I mean, the dream scenario is absolutely disgusting – just imagine Vex Crow + Coin + Kirin Tor Mage + Counterspell on T6. 4/3, 3/3, two random 2-drops, Counterspell in play for your opponent’s board clear and then a board refill with Vex Crow next turn again. That’s nearly an instant win, but it doesn’t happen too often.

If you run the Vex Crow version, you can also run Archmage Antonidas if you’re putting lots of cheap spells into your deck anyway. Antonidas is an amazing win condition in slow matchups – generating two Fireballs is not that hard and it’s so much extra reach.

Play it if you want to counter all of those pesky Quest Rogues. Tempo Mage is probably the worst matchup for Rogue.

Before The Witchwood, lots of players were wondering – can slow Mage decks survive without Ice Block? As it appears, they can. Big Spell Mage is not a Tier 1 deck, it’s more like a low Tier 2, but it’s still a viable choice, even without Ice Block.

It’s been one of my favorite decks in the last few days, I’ve been playing it A LOT. And when it comes to no Ice Block, it’s actually not that bad. Actually, the first few turns are the worst ones – in most of the fast matchups, if you survive the first 4-5 turns, you should be on a good way to win the game. You have SO MANY board clears – it’s one of the only decks that can answer all of the board floods and still not run out of resources. Then, if you manage to survive until Turn 9, Frost Lich Jaina is absolutely disgusting against Aggro. If they don’t kill you right away, the game is basically over.

I’ve been experimenting with Alexstrasza too, but I actually feel that without Ice Block the card is not really great. Most of my losses against Aggro were quick deaths, where Alex wouldn’t save me at all, and if I survive that long, I usually don’t need the heal, as I’m at a reasonable life total anyway. Of course, my experience is limited, but I prefer a version focusing on the early/mid game minions instead – this is the most vulnerable period.

Overall, a really cool deck, it’s one of the only “Control” decks in a while that REALLY feels like a Control deck – you control the board for the majority of the game and then you slowly outvalue your opponent with infinite Water Elementals. No crazy combos, no reviving a full board of 5/7 Chargers and 3/9 Taunts, just a good, old-fashioned grindy game plan. The only other deck like that right now is probably Odd Control Warrior, but even that deck doesn’t capture that feeling as well as this one.

If you travel 10 years into the future and ask Hearthstone players “is Zoo Warlock viable?” you just know that the answer be “what are you smoking, the deck has been viable for the last 15 years”.

I wanted to keep that line for Miracle Rogue, but there is like 99.97% chance that Gadgetzan Auctioneer will get Hall of Fame’d before 2028… So yeah.

Anyway, Zoo Warlock! The Witchwood didn’t really improve the deck by a lot, to be honest. Duskbat is just about the only new card commonly seen in Zoo lists, with Glinda Crowskin and Mad Hatter making an appearance here and there. Duskbat is pretty cool, actually, it can snowball nicely if you can combo it with Kobold Librarian or Flame Imp on T4, and it’s a nice card to tap into later in the game.

It’s hard to call Zoo “powerful” right now, but I feel like it’s keeping itself somewhere in the bottom of Tier 2 / top of Tier 3, mostly thanks to the solid Paladin matchups. It’s around 50/50 vs Even & Murloc Paladin, and wins the Odd matchup by a mile thanks to the Sea Giant tech and Despicable Dreadlord.

I was actually hoping that since they don’t want to push any powerful Control Warlock tools (because Cube might abuse them), they would print some more Zoo support… but instead, they went for that “if your Hero was damaged this turn” synergy, which isn’t really bad and fits Warlock thematically, but the card quality is just too low to build a deck around it. Still, if you like Zoo, you should still be able to climb with it quite nicely.

Secret Paladin might actually be up there in top decks with other Paladin decks, but it’s just hard to say because of a lower sample size – if more people play it, we might have four Paladin meta decks.

Secret Paladin, instead of focusing on the Even/Odd cards, runs all of the strongest Paladin cards. It’s an Aggro Paladin with some Secret synergy added in. Bellringer Sentry is a card that “activated” this deck – it’s not as good as Mysterious Challenger used to be, but it’s still cool. 4 mana 3/4 that play two Secrets in total can be very powerful. The deck also runs Secretkeeper – a card that fits Paladin most, since Secrets cost only 1 mana here. Normally, you don’t want to play them from your hand, but with Secretkeeper on the board they give an extra +1/+1 on top of their regular effect, being a nice snowball tool.

Another new card in this list is Prince Liam. To be honest, the card is a bit meme’y, but it’s hard to deny that later in the game you’d generally rather have a random Legendary than a one of the 1 mana cards. If you roll some good Legendaries, it might let you stand against a slower deck without running out of steam so quickly. Prince Liam into a Divine Favor refill can lead to some crazy mid/late game scenarios. I’m not completely sold on this card, but hey, at least it’s fun!

This is one of those builds that I’m absolutely surprised about. It’s still hard to call it a meta deck, since it’s not very popular, but it’s actually the strongest Shaman deck right now. Neither the play rate nor the win rate is something impressive (it’s like a Tier 3 deck that doesn’t see lots of play), but it has some potential – enough potential for a few players to hit high Legend ranks with it.

The idea behind the deck is to utilize the cheaper Hero Power to flood the board with Totems. While the deck can’t run Bloodlust (because it’s Odd), cards like Flametongue Totem or Dire Wolf Alpha still heavily benefit from that. Not to mention that having a bunch of totems is not that having a bunch of totems will always keep your opponent busy, doesn’t matter if you have those synergies or not, he will try to clear them.

Murkspark Eel is the Shaman’s Even synergy card and it’s really good. 2 mana 2/3 + 2 damage Battlecry would see play in basically every Constructed deck.

However, the card that I won most of the games with was actually a Corpsetaker. The card taking ALL of the possible effects is really powerful. It’s hard to remove thanks to the Divine Shield, it’s good against Aggro thanks to the Taunt + Lifesteal, and great vs Control thanks to the Windfury (unless you draw Al'Akir the Windlord before it) – just place a Flametongue next to it and push for 10 damage per turn.

Even/Odd decks are always a way to see some of the oldschool cards back in the meta. In this case, Stormforged Axe and Argent Commander, which haven’t seen play in a long while (Defender of Argus wasn’t very popular during the last few expansion either).

All in all, it’s not a deck that will break the meta, but it might be the best choice for Shaman players right now, until the class (hopefully) gets some great cards in the upcoming expansions.

Look, Control Warlock is not really a bad deck, but it looks like an off-meta build compared to the Cube version. Not only it’s much less popular (and I’m talking 5-6 times less popular), but Control builds have a lower win rate across the board than the Cube builds. So where’s the incentive to play it?

Basically, there are two advantages of the Control Warlock over the Cube version. First – since you don’t run Doomguards, you always roll a Voidlord from Possessed Lackey – which is good in some matchups. Then again, that upside is also a downside against a lot of the decks on the ladder…

The other advantage is the amount of tech slots available. Since Control doesn’t have to run e.g. Doomguards, Cubes, Prince Taldaram, Faceless Manipulator, Spiritsinger Umbra or even Mountain Giants (although those are often teched in anyway), it can play some other cards instead. For example, Gnomeferatu to burn some cards, Rin, the First Disciple to burn even more, Twisting Nether and/or Siphon Soul etc.

Warlock’s power level is so high that people are still playing Control Warlock to high Legend. If Cube wasn’t a thing, it would be a pretty popular meta deck. But as it looks right now, it’s not really THAT different from Cube, and Cube just looks better.

I always have problem with Miracle Rogue. On the one hand, I see that someone is ALWAYS taking the deck to high ranks. You know, people like MrYagut or Gyong, who are absolutely dedicated to the deck (or well, Rogue class in general). Then I look at the stats and see that Miracle is somewhere down in Tier 3. So how should I judge it?

Like I’ve mentioned before, I really feel that Rogue is the hardest class in Hearthstone, and Miracle Rogue is the best example. If you give some Tier 1 Paladin build to an average player who has never seen the deck before, he will still rock through the ranks and win lots of games. But if you do the same thing with Miracle – he will have a 30% win rate or something. On the other hand, give Miracle Rogue to one of the most dedicated players, who have been mastering it every expansion for YEARS now, then the outcome will be a Top 10 Legend climb or something.

However, when looking at the entire meta, I have to judge the deck’s general performance, not how well individual players are piloting it. And while Miracle is not doing THAT poorly, it’s definitely not a great deck if we look at the entire meta. It performs like always – it generally wins against greedier, slower decks and struggles against Aggro, especially hyper-Aggro/burn/face decks.

I feel like the main issue is that Team 5 card designers are wary of this deck and just try to not print too good cards that would fit into it. I mean, just compare Tomb Pillager to the new WANTED! and see what I mean. Right now, the only new card that commonly sees play in Miracle is Hench-Clan Thug, and it’s just an auto-include into every Rogue deck, not just Miracle in particular. On the one hand, I’m glad that they’re doing that, because I know how dominating Miracle Rogue can be with the right cards. On the other hand, are they going to do it forever, or finally target the problem itself – powerful Classic shell, including Auctioneer? If they did something about it, they could finally print more strong and interesting Rogue cards without worrying that they will be abused by Miracle.

Anyway, I apologize for this divagation. I’ll say what I always say when it comes to this deck – if you want to dedicate weeks or even months to master Miracle Rogue, you can start doing it right now – the deck is in a similar state to how it was over the last Standard year and I don’t think that it’s going to change unless Blizzard changes their philosophy. But if you don’t want to commit to this deck, you should probably look for something different.

Quest Warrior was first created in Un’Goro, alongside the other Quest decks. Funnily enough, if you’re a new-ish player, you might not know that Taunt theme in Warrior was a sort of obsession for Hearthstone card designers for a while before Un’Goro, starting with the infamous Bolster from The Grand Tournament. This theme turned into a meme, because it was so forced and absolutely not working. Then, they’ve decided to push it once and for all with Fire Plume's Heart. And funnily enough, this kind of Quest Warrior had little to do with the old thing they were pushing – instead of playing Taunt synergies or anything, the deck just tried to finish the Quest as fast as possible – Taunts/Taunt synergies weren’t the reason to use this deck, playing Taunts was just a means to an end – your shiny, new Hero Power.

After its initial surge in popularity, the deck was lying dormant for the two expansions, to finally resurge in The Witchwood. At first, players were going for the Odd Build of Quest Warrior – but after a few days, it turned out that sacrificing all of those tools was just not worth in this specific build. I mean, if your goal is to replace your Hero Power as quickly as possible anyway, the upgraded Hero Power lost a bit of its value. Not to mention that having to sacrifice cards such as Warpath, Blood Razor and for this deck in particular, Primordial Drake is not good in this Paladin-infested meta.

The non-Baku version does a better job – it uses a mix of the defense and removals to fight off against Aggro, and tries to rush the Quest as soon as possible vs slower decks, where it doesn’t really care about replacing the Armor Up Hero Power. The deck still hasn’t got an impressive win rate, but it’s definitely playable.

And this is something for the fans of oldschool, pre-Standard Control Warrior decks with Justicar Trueheart. While it’s not the same, it captures some of that feeling of very reactive game plan and amassing dozens of Armor. And if you hit a mirror (rare, but it happens), well, prepare for a 20+ minutes game – and I’m not even joking. “Fun” fact – my longest game ever (at least since I’ve started using Deck Tracker) was a Control Warrior mirror back in the day – 34 minutes.

Upgraded Hero Power is really good in the Warrior class. Not only it doubles its strength, but it’s one of the only Hero Powers that you can always use and it will never really be wasted. For example, Priest can also heal for 4, but if he’s at full health already and has no minions to heal – well, that Hero Power is useless. Warrior can always Tank Up. And oh, tank up he does. As much as you don’t get to crazy amounts of Armor vs Aggro, I had some games where I had 30+ Armor and could still go, but I sadly had to play the Reckless Flurry and get rid of all of that (to answer Bloodreaver Gul'dan).

If you like Control decks, or Control Warrior in particular, then you have found the right deck. It’s hard to say how well will it do later in the meta, but right now it does okay. It’s not super impressive, but if you will play around with it for a while, you should be able to climb quite easily.

Like I’ve mentioned before, this one really surprised me. A deck that was looking to stay in the meta, a deck that I really did think will be one of the decks to beat in The Witchwood, is now pushed out of the meta. It has  a Tier 3 win rate and it’s just getting worse. Looking at the stats, there is basically no reason to play it over Spiteful Druid.

The main problem is Paladin’s popularity. Paladins just overwhelm Spiteful Priest on the board, and with Duskbreaker being he only board clear (some builds do run Primordial Drake, but T8 is often too late), it’s really hard to come back once you fall behind. Big Spiteful turns can also be destroyed by Sunkeeper Tarim against anything else than Odd Paladin. And Odd Paladin doesn’t even need Tarim – he just ignores the big guys with a board full of Dudes and such, forcing Priest to trade anyway.

Matchups against other aggressive decks such as Odd Hunter or Odd Rogue aren’t any better – the deck in its current form is just too slow, and while it wins most of the slow matchups (including the matchup vs Spiteful Druid, actually), if you want to play it, you have to pray to not meet any optimized Aggro decks.

Another deck that looked very promising early in the expansion, but fell behind quite quickly is Odd Face Hunter. Hyper-aggressive decks like that prey on the unoptimized deck lists, but as it turns out, rushing the face and ignoring everything is not necessarily the best strategy.

Most of the decks on the ladder are pretty bad matchups – starting with all the Paladins, going through the Druids (both Spiteful and Taunt), all kinds of Warriors etc. It doesn’t mean that Face Hunter is completely useless – it can be used as a counter deck vs some matchups. For example, it’s one of the best Cube Warlock counters, it also works very well against Quest Rogue and Big Spell Mage. Which means that in a very specific meta, like a tournament meta, it might actually be a good counter-pick.

For what it’s worth, it’s also performing better at the lower ranks – but that was always the case with Hunter class in general.

Barnes and Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound combo was the backbone of this deck in Kobolds & Catacombs – the main reason why it worked in the first place. So much that the other “spell only” synergies were cut – To My Side! was never played and Rhok'delar was cut from many lists too. Right now, you simply have to play both of them, from the lack of better options.

On the other hand, besides that combo, the deck didn’t lose much – Cat Trick was the only other card commonly played in this list that has rotated out. To be honest, I really like this archetype and I was hoping that Blizzard will push it a bit more with some new synergy. Right now, Spell Hunter is just about average. Most importantly, it has good matchups against Paladins, but on the other hand, it struggles a bit vs Cube Warlock (Y’Shaarj on T4 was the thing that won this matchup oh so often).

One thing worth mentioning is that Deathstalker Rexxar works much better right now, after the rotation and with the new Witchwood Beasts included. I didn’t like the card before, it just felt too slow – but right now, we’ve got both cheap sources of Rush (Vicious Scalehide and Hunting Mastiff) AND cheap sources of Lifesteal (Swamp Leech and Scalehide), making the Hunter Hero much faster and more defensive. While the value was always there, your options were often too clunky.

The most important thing is that Spell Hunter is not dead. It might even get stronger throughout the year – even if they don’t print any specific Spell Hunter synergy, every strong Hunter spell is a big buff to the deck.

Wispering Woods was meant to push a slow, “Hand Druid” deck, but it seems like it has found its home somewhere else – in Token Druid. The deck is not very popular yet – the only pro playing it I’ve seen was Thijs, but I actually met it on the ladder two or three times, and it got me curious. After playtesting it for a bit, I’ve decided to feature it, because it’s pretty cool, even though it’s not the best deck ever.

Your basic game plan is to play Wispering Woods + Soul of the Forest combo, making a sticky board, where one clear is not enough. Then, next turn, if your opponent didn’t clear anything, or cleared only the first part, you play Savage Roar and/or Branching Paths for a huge burst turn.

Against Aggro decks, Spreading Plague can also be combo’d with either Soul of the Forest or Branching Paths, or if it sticks even with a Savage Roar.

While we’re at it, when you summon a big board, you can also drop a Sea Giant for free just for a good measure. Even if the board gets cleared, it will probably stick.

Is this deck good? Not really. Is it fun to play? Yeah, I had lots of fun!

Taunt Druid was a huge hit a few days after the expansion. If for some reason you’ve missed it, the deck’s basic game plan is to play multiple Taunts throughout the game, then drop Hadronox and immediately pop it with Naturalize for a board full of Taunts. And then, since Hadronox is the only Beast in your deck, you can revive it for just 3 mana with Witching Hour AND immediately Carnivorous Cube it for a board full of Taunts + Cube holding two more copies.

Generally, the deck is insanely powerful once it gets to that point. And I mean it – it can beat most of the meta decks. Aggro just doesn’t stand a chance, and Control decks usually don’t have enough board clears to deal with 5+ huge board floods.

However, the deck has a lot of downsides. For example, while it counters the all-in Aggro decks such as Face Hunter, it’s bad against Paladins. Why? Because a bunch of Taunts is not enough to stop them. Since you can’t run Spreading Plague (the 1/5 Taunts are Beasts), one of your anti-flood tools is gone too. Paladin decks just snowball the board too had for you to handle, and you’re finished before you can even drop Hadronox.

On the other hand, the deck has some good matchup vs Control decks, but… when it got popular, slow decks have started to run Skulking Geist to counter it. If Druid couldn’t pop the Hadronox immediately, the 3/7 was vulnerable to any kind of transform effect (Polymorph, Hex), Mind Control or even Silence – while the last one didn’t prevent Druid from reviving it, it still gave Control deck more time to finish off the Druid.

It’s still a cool deck, really fun to play, but it’s just not as effective as it was right away. Once again, surprise factor played a huge role – players just didn’t know how to play against it first, and once it became more popular, its win rate has started to drop.

This one is like a bonus deck. J4CKIECHAN, our meme master, used it to hit Legend this season, then climbed some more from the dumpster.

It’s an interesting approach to Shudderwock decks, and the way I thought Shudderwock builds would look like in the first place. Instead of going for the OTK, you just play a Control deck with a bunch of powerful Battlecries that Shudderwock will simply repeat. Between Shudderwock giving himself Taunt + Divine Shield, copying himself, drawing a bunch of cards, using a random Kalimos, Primal Lord effect, stealing some minions with MCT’s Battlecry, getting another Prince Keleseth buff, or another Elise the Trailblazer Un’Goro pack shuffled… Basically, it’s not a true combo finisher, but a card that does A LOT and can really win the game by itself.

Then, there is also Hagatha the Witch. Since the deck is minion-heavy, Hagatha can get LOTS of value in the late game – so much that you often end up with a full hand and have to figure out which spells you can throw away to not overdraw.

It’s a very fringe deck – I’ve met it only once in Legend and there aren’t many detailed stats about it, so it’s hard to say where EXACTLY it places, but given that Jackie took it to Legend, it means that it somewhat works. You probably need to try it yourself.