The past month has been an interesting time, with a
meta changing when Galakrond Awakening Cards were eliminated by
room.
It was a good time for that too, with the meta having
stumbled upon a strange place with a lot of binary matches the last time we
talked about it.
Although some still exist (especially with the top
two decks), the meta is a little more balanced currently, without as much
rock paper scissors feel it.
Hunter and Paladin really won with this set. The old one
got two new powerful cards (Crawing Felwing and Rotnest rake) for the already pretty
solid Dragon Hunter deck, and the latter got ... technically nothing but the
possibility to completely trample Dragon Hunter on the ladder, because it works
none of the new Paladin cards.
But it gets ahead of us. Take a quick
look at the 19 currently viable bridges and their overall bridge archetype, and the
best classes in order.
1.) Hunter
Top decks: Dragon Hunter (mid-range T1), Highlander Hunter (mid-range)
T2), Quest Hunter (token aggro T2), Face Hunter (complete aggro T2), Secret Highlander
Hunter (mid-range T2).
As we can see Hunter still has a very good midrange
focus, although most midrange turntables bring hard and fast pain as well, although
fall just before aggro.
Hunter's current strengths are board control and tempo,
make huge turns to come from behind and win, or get one already
advantageous edge condition.
Most of these decks are good at destroying high boards, but can
trip if you go wide.
2.) Paladin
Top decks: Mech Paladin (aggro T1), Pure Paladin (Midrange
T2).
Mech Paladin alone carries Paladin
right now, with Pure Paladin having enough bad matches against important decks
(pretty much all types of Rogue, the most aggressive Hunter decks, Embiggen
Druid, etc.).
Mech Paladin, however, creates wide sticky planks that are
a complete nightmare for decks like Dragon Hunter and Embiggen Druid to deal with,
and as a result favored equal confrontations against almost all the bridges of the
game, except for the most popular Warrior variants, which he struggles against.
Paladin's strengths include wide, hard-to-pull boards and the ability to snowball from the turn
1 (dropping Galvanizer on turn 2 is likely to be an automatic death sentence
for your opponent).
3.) Druid
Top decks: Token Druid (token aggro T2), Embiggen Druid
(mid-range T2), Quest Druid (mid-range T2).
Don't be fooled by the druid who takes location number 3
winrates here: Druid is by far the class to beat, and Embiggen Druid in
particular.
Embiggen Druid as an archetype was basically created as a
serious bridge by the new extension, and has crazy high roll potential. It's the
bridge that currently maintains a large number of bridges down and simultaneously
strengthen others; The success of Mech Paladin and Dragon Hunter are strongly linked
in the way they beat Embiggen Druid.
Druid's overall strength at this time is power
create board states that are difficult or impossible for people to manage,
either in the repeated flooding of enemies (Token Druid) or the creation of ever
greater threats (Quest and Embiggen Druid).
4.) Thief
Top decks: Galakrond Rogue (midrange tempo T2), Malygos
Rogue (combo OTK T2).
Although normally listed as two separate decks, I see little
appreciable difference between the regular and Highlander variants of
Galakrond Snape; they have roughly identical matches and the same key cards.
These are the decks that just kind of methodically plod
along, with decent success rates against just about anything: if you're looking for
consistency, Rogue is your class right now.
Their strength lies mainly in the great tempo games,
especially early and mid-game. The Malygos deck is obviously the strangest
man here (and throughout the meta), being a pretty standard control until
the end of the game and then win "kind of deck.
5.) Warrior
Top decks: Galakrond Warrior (aggro T2), Highlander Warrior
(T2 control).
Warrior is in an interesting place, showing duality
of man in a way. Galakrond Warrior is ruthlessly aggressive, with an absurd
amount of quick damage and even an OTK combo under the right circumstances.
Highlander Warrior is essentially the controlling warrior of the
latest extensions with some tweaks to account for having only one of the
all.
These two decks, despite their polar opposing playing styles,
show the greatest strength of Warrior: Warrior has very strong cards with
flexible multimodal play for each of them.
6.) Priest
Upper deck: Resurrect Priest (T2 control).
There are currently two variations of Risen Priest: Quest
and non-Quest.
The two decklists are largely identical, with a few minor changes.
The only difference is that a few matches that were essentially coin throws are now the
face flip, but still close to a 50/50 match.
Priest's strength lies in the endless picking up of big minions
currently; this is your only viable option to play Priest in the stream
meta.
7.) Mage
Upper deck: Highlander Mage (mid-range leaning control T2).
The mage is in a tough spot right now, with a bridge on the verge
to fall into level 3 status. It is the main saving grace, it is against
Priest, Warlock and Druid… but most often loses against Embiggen Druid.
The Mage is currently a slot machine, relying heavily on
randomly generated cards and effects with things like Dragonqueen Alextraza,
Puzzle Box of Yogg Saron, Power of Creation, and hopefully similar effects
cheat big effects early. This deck is entirely feast or famine, and its
the strength lies in the fact that the RNG is always very slightly on its side, with certain effects
being inherently large enough when handing that almost any outcome is favorable
at certain stages of the game.
8.) Warlock
Upper deck: Galakrond Zoo Warlock.
Warlock is in a weird position. Despite being so low on this
list, it actually has favorable matches with a lot of decks. Unfortunately
where he stumbles is at a key point: he loses just about every hunter
imaginable variant.
Its strength lies in the flooding and polishing of the boards,
unassailable power base over time. Unfortunately, hunters usually don't care
about it, because they can smorc their way to victory without having to worry about a
ton about challenging the advice or alternatively clear and inflicting damage at the same
time. It doesn't matter whether the wizard can consistently kill his heir in
turn 6 if their opponent can kill them instead on turn 5.
9.) Shaman
Upper Deck: No viable decks.
Shaman's best deck right now is Tier 4; unfortunately Quest
Galakrond Shaman is not what he used to be.
Shaman currently has bad matches against almost all decks
in-game, save most Priest decks and other shamans, and as such they are basically
off in the current meta.
Their strengths lie in creating great swing turns… unfortunately
a little too late for him to tip the game over.
Overall the meta is relatively diverse, although the fact that
a class has been so completely pushed out of the meta is a disturbing sign
for the future.
In general, if you want to win, playing a tempo game is a really good idea right now, as the meta is pretty fast overall, and starting from behind is a clear killer. Find a way to make a deck that can sway big and stabilize in the middle stages (and not lose early in the game of course) and most of it will be fine. The few control decks that exist preys on this type of deck, but don't have as much of an impact as the decks you'll encounter more often.
