Top Standard & Wild Legend Decks – The Great Dark Beyond (Week 12) – January 2025

Before I start, I want to say that issues with deck codes are sadly still present. Any deck with Zilliax Deluxe 3000 (and let’s be real, that’s a lot of decks) won’t have its code working. The issue turned out to be more difficult to solve and the dev bandwidth I have access to is very limited. Believe me when I say it that I try to solve it as quickly as possible but it might take some more time. As a workaround, I always try to post a working deck code whenever I can. This post will be no different – for every deck running Zilliax, I will paste a working deck code BELOW the deck itself. Use it instead of the usual deck code box. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Welcome to the first post-mini-set weekly Legend decks roundup. We will have fewer decks than usual because the mini-set dropped on Tuesday and I only started posting new stuff on Wednesday, but we should be back in full swing next week.

Heroes of StarCraft was always an experimental thing. It was hard to predict how the Hearthstone community would react to a crossover set. And it turns out that… the reaction has been quite positive so far! The fact that it has been an incredibly impactful mini-set probably helps. Usually when a mini-set drops we see maybe

Of course, the balance isn’t perfect, and it’s clear that Protoss got the short end of the stick. None of the Protoss classes are really great. While Protoss Mage shows some potential and is genuinely fun, it just so happens to have bad matchups into many popular meta decks. Protoss Priest is also… okay-ish, as in you can win some games with it if you’re a good player and try hard enough. Protoss Rogue is interesting, and actually better than expected (but mostly because people’s expectations were incredibly low). Players are experimenting with different buidls and there MIGHT be something there but it’s not likely to become a meta deck without some serious balance changes. And finally, Protoss Druid is… non-existent. There’s really no reason to play Protoss Druid over Dungar Druid. The payoff just isn’t there.

Zerg are by far the best, mostly thanks to Death Knight. It’s still early, but Infestor is probably on Blizzard’s watchlist right now. What’s great about Zerg, however, is that not only DK is viable. Zerg Warlock and Zerg Hunter both see quite a lot of play and, interestingly enough, make great use of Seaside Giant due to the number of locations they play. I never expected the card to see play, but it’s actually great if you can drop it in the mid game for 0 mana. Zerg DH is the only Zerg deck that’s very underwhelming. It’s overly reliant on Spawning Pool, because both of its 4-drops (Lurker and Mutalisk) really need that Rush to work properly. You often end up with a clunky hand with both of your 4-drops and no way to use them properly.

And finally, Terrans are carried hard by Shaman. Terran Shaman is one of the best decks in the game right now – it has a great mix of tempo, control tools, value, and good finishers (Siege Tanks, Shudderblock + Jim Raynor). It’s really well-rounded deck with no real counters. It has a few 40/60 matchups but even those are winnable. Then we have Terran Warrior, which is… okay I guess. As is usually the case, there’s a subset of players who really like Control Warrior and they will play it even if it’s not great. Right now it’s a Tier 3 deck and at the same time it’s the third most popular deck in the game. And I honestly get it, I have a lot of fun with it, I just wish it was a bit better. There’s also Terran Paladin, but… it hasn’t been doing great. It’s down in Tier 3-4 with Protoss classes.

But there’s still an elephant in the room I need to address. While new mini-set decks are very popular and perform well overall, the two meta kings right now are… Dungar Druid and Weapon Rogue. While they got zero new tools (some Druid builds run Artanis without any Protoss cards, but it’s definitely not necessary), they just so happen to have good matchups into many of the new decks.

Still, given that about 2/3 of the current meta are new mini-set decks, I have to say that… Heroes of StarCraft did a better job at shaking up the meta than some expansions (including The Great Dark Beyond itself, which was quite underwhelming). Of course, some of it has to do with the fact that people want to try out new stuff + the event Quests require them to play faction cards. But it’s still an incredibly impressive number.

The mini-set has a much more limited impact on the Wild format (as usual). It’s mostly about tight, build-around packages with power levels balanced around Standard. Some players are trying them out but they probably won’t be particularly impactful in the long term. Maybe a new card or two will end up seeing play but I don’t think that we’ll see many full Zerg/Terran/Protoss Wild decks.

Oh, and Twist is still going. I know you might have forgotten, and so did the rest of the players. I would like to post some decks but literally no one is sharing them (probably because no one is playing it). It’s quite sad to be honest, but coming back with Wonders repeat after going dark for multiple months was a terrible decision.

If we follow a regular schedule, the next stop should be a balance update in early February (assuming it’s necessary, but I’d say that we could probably use one) and then Patch 31.6 and expansion announcement in mid-late February. Probably a new esports announcement somewhere along the way too… I’m really surprised we still haven’t heard anything about it. All we know so far is that it hasn’t been canceled.

Below is a full list of the Legend decks from last week, sorted by the highest placement.

If you want to see all of the current top meta decks, go to our Hearthstone Meta Tier List post!

Hearthstone Standard Legend Decks of the Week

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Hearthstone Wild Legend Decks of the Week

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Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

2 Comments

  1. Tailsfromvienna
    February 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM

    “It’s still early, but Infestor is probably on Blizzard’s watchlist right now”

    The whole deck is focussed on finding Infestor (or creating Larvae that may eventually turn into Infestor), then trying to trigger its deathrattle as often as possible. Giving it reborn by Viper or Brittlebone, Death Growl (placed between two zerglings) or Yelling Yodeler, all is geared towards this one card.

    The effect is super powerful, because it applies _after_ the 1 health set by reborn, and also _after_ effects like Horn of the Windlord, so even just two triggers make your minions very hard to kill.

    I can imagine that the effect will be nerfed like the one of Zilliax’s Pylon Module, so +1/+0 instead of +1/+1. This would seriously weaken the deck, so other decks would also need to be nerfed slightly, just to keep the balance.

  2. Vincent
    January 27, 2025 at 1:13 AM

    This miniset is the best in years. The cards are iconic. I love it.