I don’t think that re-casts will count. They didn’t count last time IIRC. But I’ll probably watch re-casts anyway, so we’ll see :p

Times are really bad for EU, but I guess that the event should go well into EU afternoon after it starts at 3 AM. Still might not be enough time to get 6 hours in total, but what can we do?

Final card is Madame Lazul, sorry about that!

I never dismiss cards just based on statistics, but in this case – come on – no matter how difficult the deck is, if it’s good, it won’t have a 40% win rate. Decks like Patron Warrior or Miracle Rogue often had win rate lower than their true power (because players who didn’t know how to play them lowered that), but they still registered an average of 50-52% at their peaks.

If we look at the win rate in Legend only, which should include people who know more about the deck on average, it’s still only 43% for Archaeology. Which is better, but still far from great. Mecha’thun also has only 45.5% win rate, and the win rate is actually bumped by Mecha’thun Warrior (which is a significantly better deck than Mecha’thun Warlock). “People playing suboptimal list” is also a bad argument, because same can be said about any other deck. No deck has been optimized yet, and even if some were, a lot of people aren’t actively looking for the best deck every day and just play whatever they played on the first few days.

Sure, a few people had solid runs with Mecha’thun Warlock during the first days of the expansion, but it doesn’t make it a great deck. The only good matchup is Control Warrior, and while popular, it’s still only 10-15% of the meta. Most of the other matchups are bad, with faster decks being the worst offenders. Murloc Paladin, Zoo or any kind of Hunter just destroy it. It is just not doing well and again – I’m not “dismissing it like that”. I always do a lot of research before calling the deck bad, and RIGHT NOW Quest Warlock (Mecha’thun or not) is just bad. Things can still change once the meta stabilizes, but currently those are the facts. And I honestly don’t think that it’s going to change, because compared to other Quests, Warlock’s looks really bad. It’s probably the hardest one to finish, and the pay-off isn’t spectacular unless you high-roll (making the deck even less consistent).

It might take another expansion and a few more strong Battlecry cards to really make the Quest worth it. The deck is not bad by any means, but when I play it I just feel like it could be so much better with some really powerful Battlecry payoff. Lackeys are great way to finish the Quest and they are amazing with upgraded Hero Power in the mid game, but they fall off quite quickly in the late game.

Like the old Brann + Dirty Rat + Mind Control Tech combos 🙂 Those were pretty fun! It might be an option if you build it as a Control deck, but most of Battlecry Shamans are more of a Midrange decks and the combo is a little bit too slow (9 mana) and risky (in case you pull out some important minion like Antondias and you don’t snatch it).

Yeah, the win rate I’ve posted was from R10 – Legend. And it got even worse since I’ve posted it – right now it’s at 40.8%. Warlock’s Quest has the worst win rate – 2% lower than the second worst Quest right now (which is, surprisingly, Hack the System with ~43% – I thought that Mage’s will be second worst, but it’s pretty close at ~44% :p).

It might still be playable at lower ranks (like most of decks), but I really can’t put it on a list of best ladder decks.

That’s true, but +2/+4 with Taunt and 2x 3/2 for 4 mana is a pretty good card after you’ve finished Quest. And let’s be honest, majority of time you will have something to play first anyway. After playing over 20 games with the deck (with Loa in the main list instead of Questing Explorer) I ran into situation you’re describing only once (and I just played Nourish instead and dropped Mark next turn :p)

I’d probably play 2x Mark of the Loa as a budget option, but the deck will lose a lot of late game punch if you replace both of those. Should still be viable, you might just lose some slower matches because you didn’t have a way to finish out the game.

You have a list of card replacements at the bottom. Mark of the Loa is a solid replacement.

We’ll have a guide up for the deck very soon!

It really isn’t.

https://i.imgur.com/zX0g8F7.png

Actually, Cyclone Mage is reporting quite weak win rates for now. But the sample size when I was compiling the early tier list wasn’t big enough to even put it on there (I would have to just guess and I don’t want to do that).

I will update it once again after the meta is more stable (probably a ~week from now) and we’ll see then.

Attention: this post will no longer be updated. If you want to stay up with new decks at all times, visit this page: https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/deck-category/style/ladder/ (new decks we add always show up there)

I knew that Reno’s effect is strong, but it wasn’t enough to carry the deck. However, Zephrys turned out to be absolutely amazing. It’s on a similar level to the OG Reno – weaker vs Aggro decks, but stronger vs decks against which you don’t need healing that much. And with both of them combined, Highlander Mage turned out to be viable. At least right now, because there’s still a lot that can happen.

Brawl might be a good candidate, but I’d really like them to nerf Dr. Boom too. The problem is that a simple mana cost nerf probably wouldn’t cut it in his case. Even at 10 mana people would still probably run it (just like they run Elysiana just for the Control mirrors). While it would require some playtesting, I was thinking about removing the part about Mechs having Rush (since it’s a BIG part of the card’s power) and adding some minor Battlecry effect instead. E.g. “Summon two 1/1 Boom Bots” to reference the first Dr. Boom.

The thing is that all of the current interactions had to be programmed manually. If you add hand recognition to that, it would get way too complicated.

They would need to use some sort of neural network / machine learning so it could learn the cards itself, but that’s not an easy task either.

As for the hand issue, most of the time it can be easily resolved. Just play the card from your hand first. If Zephrys sees lethal, he will give it to you 100% of time. For example, if opponent is at 16 health and you have a 4/4 on board and Blessing of Kings + Zephrys in hand, play BoK first so you buff it to 8/8 and then Zephrys will give you Windfury 100% of time (assuming no Taunts). If you play Zephrys first, he probably will give you other stuff, because he doesn’t see lethal.

Thanks, you’re right, fixed it.

That’s very true, Zephrys lethals can be scary and are super consistent. The problem is that Aggro decks doesn’t want to build a singleton deck because of consistency issue.

I’ve actually seen someone running Tempo Rogue with Zephrys, but it was a regular build. Zephrys was there as just a 3/2 in the early game and then potential lethal in the late game, especially after Myra’s. Is it the right approach? Not sure, but it’s definitely interesting to see him being used in a regular, aggressive deck.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bug. It probably did recognize that opponent has a weapon, but it was a 0/3 weapon – so basically useless. But since it doesn’t see card effects, it didn’t know that it isn’t played to attack with.

They just added Doomsayer as the only exception, but it didn’t recognize ANY card effect until now.

I wouldn’t craft anything yet, the meta will change very quickly and decks that are good now might not be good in a week, after it stabilizes. Rewards aren’t worth potentially wasting a lot of Dust on cards that you won’t play soon.

Not to mention that since most of players are running unoptimized decks, you can still get a nice score just using the cards you’ve opened (or even playing a full meta deck from last expansion).

Nah, that was a pretty average reward. Sometimes you’d get a little less Gold and some Dust or a Golden Common/Rare instead. But I’d say that it was neither lucky or unlucky.