Cool update! Don’t think I’ll be disenchanting much, I already have 30k arcane dust saved up, but I still enjoy the theorycrafting exercise.

I do disagree on exactly one card, though. High Priestess Jeklik. After the Year of the Dragon rotation, I think a 4 mana, 3/4 Taunt + Lifesteal minion is borderline good enough to play on its own merits on a slow deck, especially for a class like Warlock that doesn’t have great healing tools (RIP spellstone). If you add ANY amount of support for her discard ability, like wanting to run Shriek on your deck, then I think Jeklik will definitely see play.

So… why doesn’t she see play now? According to hsreplay, Zoo decks account for 74% of all Warlock decks. Ouch. No one’s playing Control Warlock right now, it’s a weak archetype, and even if you enjoy playing it, you might not own Jeklik. I think she’ll see play with future expansions, though.

Haha, you’re reading too much into my comment. I’m not an ungrateful, negative nancy who takes Hearthstone for granted and just complains about everything.

I think these new features are a good thing, and I’m glad they’re being added to the game, even if they’re not for me. These are good news for sure, there’s nothing to complain about. I just think that it’s odd that they chose to announce these new features now, when we might not get to play with them until December.

This announcement from Blizzard reads pretty awkward. Even if you’re interested in these new features (I’m not), it’s hard to get hyped about them when the only frame of reference for their release date is “sometime 2019”.

Makes me wonder why they chose to preview it so far ahead of time instead of announcing it a week or two before it launches.

Great guide, I might give this deck a try!

One thing looked really bizarre to me, though: How exactly is spending 8 mana on Forbidden Words a great counter to an early Mountain Giant?

You play recurring villain, have it die, then play Da Undatakah. Undatakah gets recurring villain’s deathrattle, dies and comes back… once, because the resummoned Undatakah doesn’t play its Battlecry and so doesn’t have any deathrattles.

Then, you wonder what the hell you were thinking when you decided to craft Undatakah. Works every time.

Looking back at Priest’s basic and classic set, it was pretty well suited to a classic value-oriented, control playstyle. Cheap card draw, value generation that didn’t pull you closer to fatigue in Thoughtsteal, and a bunch of cards that wanted to 2-for-1 your opponent, like Shadow Madness and Mind Control (removes an enemy minion & develops one of your own). Even Priest’s Hero Power seemed designed for value, its only advantage over Armor Up being that you could heal your minions to get more and better value trades with them.

The problem is that there’s been a ton of value power creep since then. The very concept of dealing with 2 of your opponents’ cards with just one of your own becomes a little suspect when the game is full of cards like EVIL Miscreant, Omega Assembly, Book of Specters and Crystalsong Portal that refill your hand very cheaply and efficiently. For the most part, I think that this has been a good thing for Hearthstone, as completely running out of steam because you have no cards in hand isn’t a lot of fun- remember Blizzard pushing no-cards topdeck Hunter, with cards like Brave Archer, Quick Shot and Core Rager? We’re a long ways from those days.

Priest’s classic set was strong in value but weak in tempo, and as value has cheapened that tempo weakness becomes all the more painful. By contrast, Rogue’s classic set was weak in value but strong in tempo, and with the value power creep, triggering Rogue cards’ combo mechanic becomes easier than ever, Edwin Van Cleef becomes even stronger, and Rogue gets a tier 1 deck with 21/30 cards from the Basic & Classic sets.

Great update, thanks for keeping us up to date with the still-evolving meta!

Just one question: What happened to Miracle Priest? Priest has the lowest winrate on hsreplay, but having zero good meta decks is pretty sad.

Ok, I figured out what’s going on. Nefarian used to be heavily favored, but the brawl has been tweaked since its original debut:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/3a6e3g/rag_vs_nef_actual_statistics/

If it’s been tweaked, then I imagine it’s a lot closer to even nowadays.

If it’s the exact same brawl from the past, then Nefarian has the stronger early game (due to starting with 4 mana crystals), and Ragnaros has the stronger late game (better Hero Power).

Overall, Nefarian is heavily favored, he wins 60-70% of the games in my experience, and Ragnaros’ key card to come back from Nefarian’s huge early board advantage is Living Bomb.

I think the delay is fine. Spacing out the releases sucks now, but Year of the Dragon is plenty of fresh content anyway. Better to space out the releases and give the game a second wind later on, than to have a flood of content right as the expansion releases and then nothing for 4 months.

Not having the 15 packs from the single player mode is a problem, to be sure. But I’m having plenty of fun with Play mode, still. I can wait a couple more weeks for the Solo Adventure.

That’s fair, but you can still interact with it. Mage can freeze this board to buy an extra turn (but good luck sticking a Doomsayer when 20% of the Priest’s deck consists of 0-mana spells that can answer Doomsayer). This deals 42 damage per turn at most, so Warrior can clear a board over 2 turns with Warpath if they have some armor stacked up. You can try to clear or stall until your damage and the fatigue kills the priest, or in a few cases, just fully clear all 3 boards. Unlike the old Mecha’thun Druid, Priest can’t gain 30 armor while drawing its entire deck, which makes any damage you land early on more relevant as Priest has to deal with Fatigue damage later on.

It feels a lot less oppressive to play against than just “Destroy the enemy hero”, and it’s easier to balance by releasing more AoE in future sets. All in all, it feels like a much healthier approach to combo decks for the game.

The first time I played against this deck on ladder, I just cleared the three Nomi boards with double Twisting Nether into Infernal Shadowflame. I really like that, unlike Mecha’thun, you get to interact with this deck’s main win condition.

When you get a Legendary card from a card pack, you are guaranteed to get a Legendary that you did not already own from that set (unless you already own every single legendary from that set). This is what they are referring to when they say duplicate protection.

I imagine they were asked if they were thinking of extending the same protection to Epic cards, e.g. make it so that when you get an Epic card, you’re guaranteed to get an epic card that you don’t already own 2 copies of. And the answer was, no. Duplicate protection is only for Legendaries.

Agreed, the combination of Control Warrior’s armor gain, value generation and the power of its defensive cards can make it feel futile to try and kill them over a long game.

When I play Control Warlock vs. Control Warrior, play Jaraxxus on turn 9, and 10 infernals and 10 turns later I’m losing the value battle because he keeps getting Omega Devastators and Dyn-o-Matics from his Omega Assemblies and Dr. Boom hero power, it feels a bit too much.

Long, grindy games can be a lot of fun every now and then, but the defensive nature of cards like Dyn-o-Matic and Omega Devastator, plus the relative absence of powerful lategame threats, makes it so that Control Warrior’s most reliable win condition is fatigue damage- that, and their opponents conceding, knowing they’re not winning the attrition battle.

History tells us that aggro decks get figured out the fastest, and thus tend to dominate in the first few weeks of an expansion. I fully expect the meta to slow down as slower decks get figured out and refined.

The squirrels this card gives you are 1 mana, 1/1 beasts.

Now that I know what this card does, I can finally review it!

2/1 stats are good for a 1-mana minion, but it’s usually not enough by itself to see play. Adding a fair amount of value on top makes all the difference here, as Fire Fly amply demonstrated.

Considering this is also a great fit for Token Druid, I expect this card to see a lot of use in competitive play. 5/5

I think Spellbook Binder is good like Underbelly Fence is good in Thief Rogue. On curve, they’re just good bodies you can put on the board. Unlike other 2-drops, however, you’re still happy if you draw Spellbook Binder or Underbelly Fence on turn 4 or 5, because their additional power makes up for the awkwardness of playing 2-mana cards in later turns.

In the case of Arcane Watcher, it’s better to play a spell damage minion on the turn after you play the Watcher, otherwise your opponent gets two turns to kill your Spell Damage minion before you get a chance to attack with the Watcher.

Grumble’s rotating out, can’t play it in Standard anymore

Resummoning Archmage Vargoth with Mass Resurrection is so good though, you get another free Mass Resurrection spell right away!

“This enable Tempo Mage to push early minion damage, something that will be even more important compared to old iterations of the list.”

I agree with this assessment; tempo mage needs early minion damage, and Mana Wyrm played a powerhouse role here before its nerf.

Now, however… what kind of early game minion damage are you pushing? This list has no 1-mana minions, nor are there any good ones to include. Then for 2-drops, are you pushing early damage with… the 1/3 Dart Frog? The 2/2 Mana Cyclone? Spellzerker and Sorcerer’s Apprentice have good bodies, but hardly what I’d call worthy of an early game beatdown. None of this is meant as criticism of your list; I’m more concerned with whether the archetype is viable.

Since you need strong bodies on the board, I’d try to build this with more spell damage and spell damage synergy. Minions like Arcane Watcher and Spellbook Binder are very powerful with spell damage. To enable them, Thalnos is great in this archetype anyway, and maybe I’d add Spellshifter too.