Top Standard, Wild & Twist Legend Decks - TITANS + Fall of Ulduar (Week 10) - October 2023

By Stonekeep - October 8, 2023

Fall of Ulduar has been out for almost 2 weeks now and I can safely say it right now - the mini-set had the biggest impact on the meta out of all of the mini-sets so far. Or maybe let's put it another way - Yogg-Saron, Unleashed is one of the strongest card released in the last few expansions. I won't go as far as "the strongest", but it's up there. At the time I'm writing this, the card is present in 54% of decks in Legend. The number was at 51% yesterday, so it's still growing. That obviously puts it it at #1 spot in terms of popularity. But it's not just Legend thing that doesn't affect the rest of the ladder. Going down to Diamond, it keeps a strong 41% play rate (#1) and even in Bronze-Gold it's at 35% play rate (#1). Those aren't official stats, of course, but HSReplay has a big enough sample size to be pretty on point.

Yogg is just crazy good. More and more people realize that they can put him into their decks. Sure, at first he only saw play in decks that were basically fully made of spells. It makes sense, right? You need to cast a lot of spells to discount him. But as it turns out, it's not that hard to cast a lot of spells nowadays. Most of the decks can do it - even if the main build doesn't run that many of them, there are some extra tricks to make it work (like Hunter's 3 in 1 spells such as Bunch of Bananas or cards that draw/generate more spells like Nerubian Vizier). Many decks can make him cost 0 mana very, very quickly - and then he's just a 0 mana 7/5 giving you Mind Control or a better Mass Hysteria. Or a lot of 1/1's (Chaotic Tendrils) that most of the time give you a lot of extra value. You might say that his statline is not important because he almost never gets to live until his second turn - but that's exactly why his stats matter too. He NEEDS to get removed, because even though he doesn't get to attack the turn after you play him, he gets to do something even better (use one of the other abilities). And so, your opponent needs to deal with that 7/5 body even more than if he was just a normal 7/5 that can attack.

I'm rarely 100% sure about a nerf, but this one is basically guaranteed. The next balance update will hit Yogg. We just had an emergency hotfix earlier this week banning The Jailer from Standard and Wild. And did it help? Sure, it made Druid a bit worse (not by A LOT, mind you), but Druid is only the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The current meta is completely wrapped by Yogg. You either need to play a deck that runs it or a deck that's good against it. And it just turns out that Druid is the best class at utilizing Yogg. The deck's presence in lower ranks is not that big of a deal (probably because it's a bit tricky to pilot), in high Legend every second match is against Druid. And I'm not exaggerating - watch any high Legend streamer and see for yourself. Something needs to be done about it, and I hope that it will be done quickly. Luckily, if you aren't in high Legend, Yogg Druid is not a burning problem, but I'm afraid that it might trickle down there soon - it's already becoming the most popular deck in Diamond.

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