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The Best Decks for the Lost City of Un’Goro Pre-Release Tavern Brawl

By: Old Guardian - - Updated:

Update: Aegis of Light, Goldpetal Drake and Ursol have been banned from the Brawl. If your current deck contains those cards, you have to retire it. You’ll get rewards for your current run and 2 Tavern Tickets as a refund. (Source)

The first opportunity to play with the new Lost City of Un’Goro cards is here! While the expansion will fully launch next week, on July 8, you can already use the cards in the pre-release Tavern Brawl, and even earn some more new packs as rewards.

There are a couple of important things you need to know about the pre-release Brawl.

First, you have limited ways to get access to the new cards until the expansion launches next week:

  • You cannot craft the new cards
  • You cannot buy the new packs with gold
  • You do not get the new cards from Standard Packs

This means that you are limited to the pre-order packs, Twitch drop packs, and rewards from the pre-release Brawl itself.

Second, the card pool in the pre-release Brawl is unique, and consists of these cards:

While sets from 2024 will be part of the Standard format when the expansion arrives, they are not part of the pre-release Brawl.

Finally, while your first run is free, any subsequent Brawl runs cost two Tavern Tickets or 300 gold each. On average, you will get slightly fewer new cards and value from playing the pre-release Brawl than you would get from spending your gold on packs upon expansion launch. Each run ends at either 6 wins or 3 losses.

  • 0 wins: 1 Lost City pack, 1 Emerald Dream pack
  • 1 win: 2 Lost City packs
  • 2 wins: 2 Lost City packs, 1 Lost City Common card
  • 3 wins: 2 Lost City packs, 1 Emerald Dream pack, 1 Lost City Common card
  • 4 wins: 3 Lost City packs, 1 Lost City Common card
  • 5 wins: 3 Lost City packs, 1 Emerald Dream pack, 1 Lost City Rare card, 1 Lost City Common card
  • 6 wins: 4 Lost City packs, 1 Lost City Rare card, 1 Lost City Common card

You will earn over 300 gold worth of rewards at 3 wins, with an average reward per run of 281 gold (94% of the investment).

But what about the meta itself? If you have already played the Brawl at all, you have not been able to avoid Paladins.

Paladin Dominance

Editor’s Note: Given the bans to key Imbue Paladin cards, Murloc Paladin is now most likely the strongest deck in the Brawl. But we’ll have to wait some time for the new meta to settle. All in all, you should run into way fewer Paladins right now.

Paladin is the dominant class in the pre-release Brawl. Furthermore, Paladin with no new cards is great in the event. If you do not have the pre-order and you want to succeed in the Brawl, you want to play Imbue Paladin:

Imbue Paladin – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

This is the best-performing list after the first day, and it is just scary to face. While most ladder decks and even theorycrafting event decks lost important parts without the cards from 2023, Imbue Paladin is full, complete, and incredibly powerful. It is arguably even the best deck in the entire event, although there is one challenger that I think is even stronger. That challenger is also Paladin.

Quest Paladin was the dominant force in the theorycrafting event, and there are enough Murlocs to make it a powerhouse in the pre-release Brawl as well. Of course, you need to open Dive the Golakka Depths in order to play with the deck, but if you’re able to find that, you’re good to go.

Quest Paladin – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

Quest Paladin and Imbue Paladin are close in performance, and it looks like Quest Paladin holds a slight edge. Anecdotally, in my own games with the deck, it felt stronger than Imbue Paladin. The Murloc swarm is never-ending and they keep growing bigger and bigger.

Menagerie Death Knight

The main early challenger to Paladin’s domination is Menagerie Death Knight. The deck is aggressive and able to go under the Paladin and beat up the Imbue list before the inevitable dragon army arrives. At least some of the time. The deck has roughly a 50% win rate against Paladin, which means that getting to six wins will still be a major challenge.

BFF Menagerie Death Knight – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

Dragon Warrior

Warrior has also risen as one of the potential challengers to Paladin, even though it looks weaker than Death Knight for now. The key to making Warrior work in the Brawl is the Dragon package. You can use the new Quest in the deck as well, but if you don’t have it, you can also try with a more tempo-oriented Dragon list with Ysondre to beat the Paladins before they get their full value engine rolling.

The more expensive version that uses the Quest and the new Elise looks like this:

Quest Dragon Paladin – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

If you do not have the new cards, here is a more tempo-focused build from Reddit user Jimmyjohnjones1:

Jimmyjohnjones1 Tempo Dragon Warrior – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

The Other Classes

Things look pretty bleak after day one, to be honest. People are looking for answers to Paladin, and there have been occasional victories here and there, but nothing that has been able to win consistently so far. Death Knight and Warrior have achieved the most consistent results. Beyond them, here are some of the more promising candidates that have yet to prove themselves, but that look like they have some potential.

Going under the Paladin seems to be one of the more promising approaches. JAlexander has attempted to achieve this with an Aggro Rogue deck, with which he achieved multiple 6-win runs.

JAlexander Aggro Rogue – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

Another similar attempt is with Quest Token Druid: take over the board and win the game before Paladin can get the dragon engine rolling. Unfortunately, it looks like Druid cannot win consistently enough, even though it has some good snowball opportunities.

Quest Token Druid – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

Finally, Priest shows some promise. It has tools to clear the board repeatedly, and can contest the value Paladin is able to create.

Quest Equilibrium Priest – 6-2 (Zeddy) – Un’Goro Pre-Release Brawl

Deck Import

All in all, the early Pre-Release Brawl meta has been a slight disappointment. Paladin is just so good. Maybe some viable counters can be found in the coming days, and there are some individual glimmers of hope in both going under the Paladin with aggro decks and outlasting it with control, but nothing has been a clear success so far.

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

Check out Old Guardian on Twitter or on their Website!

Leave a Reply

2 Comments

  1. Kknene
    July 3, 2025 at 7:11 AM

    Dragon tempo warrior works great for me! I didnt have almost any card from the new expansion and have to replace some cards. Still i won 4 out of 5 game against murloc paladin (the new plague of this brawl).

  2. Aderikk
    July 2, 2025 at 3:15 PM

    Imbue pally should be close to dead after new bans