We are still a couple of weeks away from Voyage to the Sunken City and the Standard rotation that is guaranteed to upheave the meta. In the meanwhile, we have our first taste of the new expansion in the form of Blademaster Okani that was given to everyone for free upon logging in to the game after the expansion announcement.
While some freebies are not too strong in actual play, Blademaster Okani can walk the walk! In the first couple of days, there were a whole bunch of decks that attempted to benefit from our new Ankoan ally. While he is not a card that goes into every deck, he has been surprisingly strong and there are several archetypes that have been improved by the addition of the Blademaster.
Okani Aggro Shadow Priest
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The deck that has benefited the most from Blademaster Okani is Aggro Shadow Priest, where it has taken on the role previously held by the pre-nerf Mindrender Illucia.
The role Illucia played was to prevent the opponent from responding to your board, and the nerfed Illucia could not do that at all. Aggro Shadow Priest is strong but fragile, as it desperately needs its minions to deal damage. Blademaster Okani fulfills Illucia’s old role by preventing the opponent from playing a spell or a minion and thus protecting the board and allowing Aggro Shadow Priest to deal lethal damage.
Blademaster Okani is one of the best cards in Aggro Shadow Priest at the moment and has brought new strength to the archetype.
Okani Face Hunter
Blademaster Okani plays a similar role in Face Hunter as it does in Aggro Shadow Priest.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Face Hunter is no longer the fire-and-forget deck of the early Wolfrider days. Instead, it relies on its minions in the early turns of the game, and buffs them up with Doggie Biscuit and Ramming Mount to make them survive for multiple turns. Ramming Mount even encourages Face Hunter to take some carefully calculated trades! (Only when doing so results in more overall damage to the face over the next few turns.)
Blademaster Okani further improves the survivability of Face Hunter’s early board and is an above-average card in the deck. Face Hunter has more tools for direct damage than Aggro Shadow Priest, so Okani is not as much of a game-changer, but it is a strong contributor to the current style of Face Hunter.
Okani Buff Paladin
Buff Paladin is also happy to use Blademaster Okani to protect its big minions from board clears (Control Warrior) or to disrupt its opponents from ramping up or playing some of the only minions in their decks (Ramp Druid, Quest Hunter).
While Okani is far from a superstar in this archetype, the results are undeniable: with sample sizes close to 10,000 games, the Blademaster Okani list is performing at 0.7% above the non-Okani competition. When looking at the performance of decks with such sample sizes, even this seemingly small edge is a statistically significant improvement to the archetype.
Okani Burn Shaman
Blademaster Okani also sees play in the top meta archetype, Burn Shaman. This is the best Okani deck you can play: not because Okani is a huge improvement in the deck, but because the deck itself is so incredibly strong right now.
In particular, Okani is strong against Warriors, enabling Shaman to weave in just enough damage to find victory. Sometimes, anyway, as the matchup remains unfavored for the Shaman.
However, compared to Instructor Fireheart, Primal Dungeoneer, or even Rustrot Viper, it is not obvious that Blademaster Okani is an improvement to the archetype overall. It is better than Diligent Notetaker, but there is some heavy competition for its slot in the deck list.
Okani Quest Hand Warlock
Blademaster Okani has also made an appearance in Questline Warlock. In this case, Sezoklo piloted the deck with moderate success in high Legend. Thijs also played the same deck the following day, and actually had better results although a hundred ranks lower.
Questline Warlock is facing a lot of pressure from the current meta decks and Okani is too little to really make it mainstream.
Other attempts to use Okani
The five decks above are the playable Okani decks on the ladder right now, and Questline Warlock is a bit of a stretch, so maybe there are really just four good climbing decks with Okani in them.
On the first days of the patch, there were several other attempts to use the card, the most notable being Quest Priest:
While Okani is able to do a lot of good work in Quest Priest – the archetype really wants good four-drops and Okani is a perfect proactive four-drop to strengthen their selection – the archetype is overall not strong enough. After some initial success with Okani because people had no experience playing against it yet, Okani Quest Priest has fallen back to obscurity.
Okani has also seen meaningful levels of play in Quest Rogue, Big Spell Mage, Beast Druid, and Evolve Shaman, but its success in each of those archetypes proved to be short-lived. They all have better options available to them.
How good is Blademaster Okani?
Overall, Blademaster Okani is a good card. Compared to the free Legendary cards from the past expansions, it is clearly stronger than Shadow Hunter Vol'jin (Forged in the Barrens) and Flightmaster Dungar (United in Stormwind). Fractured in Alterac Valley had some of the best free Legendary cards, but Okani is also stronger than Vanndar Stormpike. Drek'Thar is such a definitive card that there is no way to compete against that one. Nonetheless, Blademaster Okani is one of the strongest free Legendary cards we have received recently.
Okani does not define an archetype. It is a support card that can fit into multiple archetypes, but its main use has been in aggro decks to prevent their board from getting cleared in the early mid-game. The more board-centric your aggro deck, the stronger Okani’s contribution. It is a top-tier card in Aggro Shadow Priest.
As we move towards midrange decks, Okani gradually becomes weaker, but we luckily have a lot of data that clearly shows that Okani still deserves a spot in Buff Paladin. We can also see that Beast Druid is a step too far: that deck is better served by its strong swing turns and it does not have the board presence to protect Okani until at a point where Okani is no longer useful to it anyway.
Okani is the first card that can completely counter minions. Catching a Kazakusan is always sweet, but this aspect of the card has not been fully explored yet. With the upcoming Colossal minions, Okani may find some more suitable targets.
Therefore, Blademaster Okani is a nice addition to the game. It is still going to be a long two weeks until the brand new rotation meta. I hope these decks with an Okani-twist make the wait a little more bearable!
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
