Very fun deck and not bad at all. I played pretty much with the same list few days ago (with Sky gen’ral Kragg instead of Glinda) and had moderate success with it and a ton of fun. It is interesting to see streamers and pro players come up with similar deck ideas. First Gallon, now Hunterace.. And we all know Hunterace is one of the best deckbuilders.

To be honest, it seems to me that shaman is severely underrated at the moment. Murloc and overload shaman are both more than capable of going against any of the meta decks. There might even be some kind of Galakrond or quest versions out there.

This article just proves my point of not trusting the statistics blindly. Sides like HSreplay and the community were certain that Embiggen druid is nothing but an off meta deck. I (and few others) on the other hand have been warning about the decks strengths for few weeks before Galakrond’s awakening came out. The list with Evasive drakonid is literally only 3 cards different to what I played with quite a lot of success at the time.
I am certain that a number of decks still await to be recognized by the community.

That’s the list I had quite some success with:
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I had no problems beating druids and hunters with this list. Rogues can be a problem tough, but they are beatable.
I feel like new Manasaber card would be nice addition since it curves nicely into 6 mana dragons. Probably instead of Psychopomps (since they can wiff with 1 mana minions) or Sandhoofs (if there are no face hunters)

I am on the contrary. I love deck building process and I always try to come up with some improvements over meta or with counters to meta.
So far, I tried Manasaber (in embiggen druid), The Amazing Reno (in highlander mage) and Grand Lackey Erkh (in lackey dragon handlock). So far it seems all cards at least somehow improve the deck, with Manasaber being the most impressive. Playing it on 4 mana means that you can play your 6 mana dragons on 5. In addition 4+6 = 10, which completes the sidequest instantaneously.

It feels like there are quite few decks left to be discovered in this meta. From viability and versatility standpoint, we are in a very solid meta. A lot of decks are at least somewhat viable in at least upper tier 3 territory. Almost every class has a very decent option. The only problem is fun aspect of the meta. There is way too much randomness involved and there is too much aggro going on for my taste (I really dislike uninteractive decks with low skill level, where players decisions don’t matter). But that is just my opinion.

I am just patiently waiting for players to realise just how good Escaped Manasaber is in Embiggen druid.
There are quite few very solid cards in this last wing that fit perfectly into already existing decks.

Or extra lackeys which are all ideally 4/4 at that point. Handlock version with lackeys is probably better anyway.

I have to politely disagree on Galakrond. Every single decklist on HSreplay is just plain crap. For some reason, playable versions are not even listed there. It didn’t even show the control Galakrond priest that Old Guardian played before Galakrond’s Awakening was released. Based on his and my personal experience the deck was not bad at all. The same story was with Embiggen druid. The deck was already good before Galakrond’s Awakening, which I kept saying for a while. However, HSreplay was showing rather poor stats so the community didn’t pay much attention to it. A closer look tough showed that best performing decks were quite strong.
It’s true that in the current meta control or combo (Leeroy) Galakrond priest decks perform very poorly, but I am talking about midrange decks where Galakrond is not main win condition. An addition of Aeon reaver and Cleric of scales in particular is what makes the deck more consistent. I played 24 games with my midrange dragon Galakrond priest this week and have a record of 15/24, which results in 62,5% winrate. Sure, it is a low sample size, but saying it is bad is not true at all.

Arguably, rogue’s hero power doesn’t offer any immediate board or tempo either.
On the side note, priest Galakrond is far from bad, people are just playing wrong lists.

I know they are and that the stats aren’t always correct. They often take into account unoptimized decks etc. Embiggen druid itself was already a formidable deck before Galakrond’s awakening, despite HSreplay showing it as below 50% winrate. However a close look showed that it’s best performing decks (but with low sample size) were around 55% winrate.
However, based on my personal experience, those counter decks are quite correct. To beat Embiggen druid, you have to either rush them down with super aggresive decks (murlocs, mechs, zoo, pure paladin), play heavy control decks with tons of removal (res priest) or play combo deck with fast draw and stalling options (holy wrath). There are other counters as well, but I won’t spoil my secret anti-meta weapon 🙂

Of course, if druid hits 2 out of his 3 main cards in the mulligan (Embiggen, Breath or Strength), druid can win against anything, regardless how unfavourite it is. This is one of the biggest reasons for druid hate: it’s too linear and mostly depends on the mulligan.

According to HSreplay statistics, decks that have upper hand (slight or big) against Embiggen druid are:
-token druid
-highlander dragon hunter
-holy wrath paladin
-murloc paladin
-pure paladin
-mech paladin
-res priest
-murloc shaman
-zoo
-galakrond zoo

I completely agree with that assessment. Embiggen druid was quite strong already and I have been saying that for quite few weeks. I was successfully playing the deck quite a lot before it became mainstream. Heck I even climbed to legend with it before Galakronds awakening. Lately however, I played maybe 2 or 3 games because I am always the kind of player who tries to counter the meta and not join the netdecking crowds.
The decklists (on HSreplay for instance) where just wrong. Vicious scalehide for instance has no business in a tempo deck like this. There is no denial that Winged Guardian is a very good card and fits perfectly to the deck (my estimate is that it improves winrate for up to 0,5%). It is however by no means deck defining or even mandatory card.
For the record, I believe some other decks are underestimated by the community as well.

That was very interesting and well constructed article. I agree with everything that was said, however I would like to point out two additional aspects to the topic.
1. Players skill and decks difficulty: Different decks have different difficulty when it comes to playing and even mastering them. Decks that are easier to play will often be more popular and will on average have higher winrate. One such deck in the current meta for instance is Embiggen druid. Mulliganing is straight forward (always same 3 cards) and when you play it, you try to ramp, curve out and play for tempo. On the other hand, there were often cases in the past when a certain deck was far more successful in legend ranks than in any lower rank. Despite those decks being strong (perheaps even stronger than popular ones), they had lower winrate overall. In the hands of a proper, skillful player however, those decks were a force to be reckoned with.
2. Streamers influence: When it comes to popularity of any specific deck, there is no doubt that streamers have a huge influence. It always happens that once certain streamers play some specific decks, they will start appearing quite a lot in next few days. This doesn’t mean the decks are strong (neither that they are not), but it will drastically improve it’s playrate. In addition, the meta usually propagates from legend towards lower ranks and that is again thanks to streamers and third party sites with game statistics (HSreplay, Viscious Syndicate, etc.). Streamers influence has one extra important feature. It is possible (in fact I am certain of it) that there are still some other undiscovered or underrated strong decks out there, but they will never become popular until streamers start using them. The same was in every expansion so far when certain strong decks started seeing competitive play only towards the end of expansion. The same even happened much more recently in a shape of Embiggen druid. It was a very strong, but for some reason underrated deck before Winged Guardian was released, but since the HSreplay and other sites had completely wrong lists (Viscious scalehides, seriously?) they seemed worse on the outside. From the decks mentioned by Iksar, I believe that in particular Quest hunter, Mech paladin and Combo priest are indeed underrated.

Hunter is actually in a pretty decent spot right now with highlander and quest variants. They don’t have any new cards from this week tough so I guess that is the reason for them being left out. If you want decklists, check decks from 1st week.

Thanks, good old hearthstone rng 🙂
I was really curious since I never had such luck when opening packs and I heard of quite few other players hitting 4 legendaries as well.

That was the best deal I have done with blizzard ever. For 20$ I got 4 legenaries and a few epics. It seems like legendary opening rate is higher… Or I just got insanely lucky for the first time ever.

That new toy is not the reason for success of Embiggen druid. Switch Winged Guardian for Evasive Drakonid and the results will not be much worse. Players are finally realizing what I have been saying for a while. Embiggen druid is a force to be reckoned with. It is not fun to play against all those Evasive big minions at all and it is not even the strongest version of the deck. In addition, it is very easy deck to pilot so netdeckers have an easy time with it. You always mulligan for 3 cards and play on curve.
The only real counter is Resurrect priest, with Galakrond warlock being second as a soft counter. On the side note (not official data), I don’t have much problems with highlander control warrior, but you have to be smart when using your resources. As for the techs, Dragonmaw poachers are great. They are however, frankly terrible in matchups where there are no dragons.

It is always the same old story. Once players stop experimenting and start netdecking, the meta losses it’s versatility, becomes stale and thus less fun to play in. In the end, we end up doing our daily quests and waiting for shake ups and/or new content.

On several occasions, it happened that new cards that haven’t been released yet were discovered or created via random effects (Dragonqueen giving new hunter and priest dragons, Sky raider giving Sky Gen’rall Kragg etc.). Is that expected behaviour or a bug?

Sometimes I have problems opening ‘source’ link on phone.
It makes perfect sense tough. Winged Guardian feels really strong in this deck and the deck itself seems to be performing quite well. Not to mention it is also quite fun.

This list has 2 cards missing. My guess is it’s a pair of Winged Guardians, since I played a similar list yesterday with them included and it worked really well.