The Best Early Meta Decks from Into the Emerald Dream

Update: It’s been almost a week since the expansion’s launch and things are slowing down, so this post will no longer be updated. I will, of course, keep posting new decks every day. You can find them in their usual categories – Standard & Wild.

Welcome to Into the Emerald Dream expansion decks roundup – in this post, we will feature the best-performing early meta builds from pro players & streamers. We’ll try to add decks for all 11 classes, but it’s hard to say whether every single class will be viable around launch. This post will be updated every few hours over the early expansion period (roughly the first week). If you’re looking for something more specific, we will have two “best decks” compilations – the first one after 24 hours, and the second one a week after launch. So if you want something to base your early crafting decisions on, that would be your best choice (it’s still not a guarantee that those decks will remain viable, but it’s better than nothing).

Into the Emerald Dream is the first expansion of Year of the Raptor (2025). The expansion should come with a massive meta shift, since it also coincides with a Standard rotation. All 2023 expansions (Festival of Legends, TITANS, Showdown in the Badlands) + their mini-sets are rotating out to Wild and will no longer be playable. Between that and Core Set rotation, over 600 cards are leaving Standard, which should shift the balance a lot. First set of the year usually has the lowest meta power level too, so some slightly weaker strategies that wouldn’t work in a 6-expansion meta might be viable now.

If you weren’t with us during the reveal season, you can learn more about the expansion and see all the new cards in our Into the Emerald Dream expansion guide.

Into the Emerald Dream Deck Lists

Once the expansion launches, we give streamers some time to open packs and create the decks, then start posting. During the first couple of days, we aren’t very picky – we have no win rate statistics so early into the set, so we can’t sift through the bad decks. Around Day 3, we generally tend to stop posting everything and focus on better decks or decks that achieved high Legend placements. As meta forms, decks become more refined and it’s getting clear which builds are good and which aren’t.

If this isn’t your first expansion then this should be obvious, but be very careful about crafting anything right after it launches. A deck can be popular and look powerful on day 1 or 2 and then quickly disappear (alongside your hard-earned Dust). This has happened multiple times in the past, and most likely will happen to at least one or two decks this expansion too. If you are a budget player, we recommend holding off for at least a few days (and preferably until the first balance patch, but we understand that it’s a tough ask) before committing to crafting anything. Spending Dust on hyped Legendaries on Day 1 is a very common mistake, and can leave you without the means to craft the actual meta Legendaries after everything settles.

Table of Contents

• Death Knight
• Demon Hunter
• Druid
• Hunter
• Mage
• Paladin
• Priest
• Rogue
• Shaman
• Warlock
• Warrior

Death Knight

Day 1