Hearthstone’s next expansion, The Lost City of Un’Goro, is coming on July 8th, and streamers once again had the opportunity to play with the new cards in advance. I was also invited for some six hours of Hearthstone with the new cards, and in this post, I will try to recap the event and what felt strong and fun.
The theorycrafting event meta is not a full match to the live meta, because each deck had to include 10 cards from the new expansion. That said, it does give a fairly good idea of what new archetypes may be strong, even though they did not meet the full power of the current decks, or archetypes that can be enhanced by just a couple of new cards.
Before Lost City arrives in full, there will also be a Pre-Release Tavern Brawl from July 1st to July 8th, and the lessons learned from the theorycrafting event are also applicable there. The Pre-Release Tavern Brawl will feature a limited card pool from the Core Set, the Event Set, Into the Emerald Dream, Embers of the World Tree Mini-set, and The Lost City of Un’Goro. Furthermore, Creature of Madness and Hamuul Runetotem are banned, and some cards to support the Hunter, Priest, Rogue, and Warlock quests are added. All of this puts more emphasis on the new set.
Quests are definitely the main feature of The Lost City of Un’Goro, and they featured preeminently in the event. Some Quests are downright scary, especially Paladin.
Get Ready for Quest Murloc Paladin
The talk of the town is undoubtedly Murloc Paladin. This aggro deck is just so hard to beat. Dive the Golakka Depths provides immense value: for every 5 Murlocs you summon, it will give any future Murlocs you summon +1/+1. In the mid-game, you’ll be in a position where the Deathrattle of a Tyrannogill will summon a bunch of 6/5 Murlocs (+4/+4) with bonus effects. It’s just a swarm that never ends, and every time Paladin rebuilds the board, it is bigger than the previous one.
Many players brought some variant of Murloc Paladin, and there are enough Murlocs in the Standard format that there is some room for deck-building, even though a rudimentary version of the archetype just builds itself. This is Warshack’s initial take on the deck:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-135
- Posted By:
9,600
Beyond Murloc Paladin, nothing wowed me in quite the same way, although according to YouTube, many other classes are completely broken too (although they might not actually be). Let’s explore what we have available.
Quest Death Knight
The Lost City of Un’Goro Death Knight set revolves around corpses with the ultimate payoff card being Tyrax, Bone Terror from Reanimate the Terror.
While Tyrax is potentially infinite value, I was much more scared of another pair of cards that were included in Quest Death Knight by FunkiMonki: Scrapbooking Student and Elise the Navigator. The Student can make copies of Tyrax, and it can also make copies of Elise’s custom location, which can be incredibly powerful. I also met a Warlock using this same powerful location idea by adding Summoner Darkmarrow and using multiple big Elise locations for a 40-damage combo from their Deathrattle effects. I do not know if Elise will be competitive in the live meta because combos with a 10-cost Location are slow, but she also has some pretty good 5-cost Locations available for a faster pace. This Student + Elise combination is available to any class, so I expect to see some experimentation to see where it fits the best.
This is FunkiMonki’s Quest Death Knight deck:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-135
- Posted By:
- 13,680
Sideboard
Demon Hunter – The Power of 2
I’m not fully convinced by Quest Demon Hunter, but I did find Unleash the Colossus fun to play with. Your main goal is to deal exactly 2 damage as often as possible. After you complete the Quest and play the Quest reward, each time you deal 2 damage, you deal an additional 2 damage. And let me tell you, that damage stacks up quickly.
For example, I was able to set up a Gorishi Wasp to take damage multiple times, which gave me several copies of Gorishi Stinger (which you can also get from Infestation). Sending those 1-cost spells that dealt 4 damage after the Quest reward straight to the dome was an experience that felt like Demon Hunter: fast, lots of cards, some tricks. Then again, the yardstick is Murloc Paladin, and competing with that is still tough. Nonetheless, Quest Demon Hunter was one of the more fun experiences I had in the event.
Demon Hunter is also one of the potential combo decks in Lost City: Entomologist Toru can store your big minions in cheap jars, and all you need is a bit of area damage to break them, and you can set up some crazy things. I met double Illidari Inquisitor with double Briarspawn Drake, all coming at me on the same turn. The setup time may be too long though: as a Warrior, I already had too much armor to be killed by the time the Demon Hunter pulled off the combo. Nonetheless, Toru is one of the most potent combo enablers in the new set.
Quest Token Druid
I was not particularly impressed by Druid, and so far I’m uncertain whether the Druid Quest will be the new way to play the class or if it will stick with older styles. You need to fill your board on three turns to complete the Druid Quest, so you will be playing a token deck, but you are also sacrificing a card from your opening hand to accommodate the Quest.
I actually think you will not always play the Quest on turn 1 to get your board started, but it will still make it harder for you to get all the pieces to really swarm. If your opponent is focused on preventing a full board, it will be difficult to make progress, so Druid compares unfavorably to Paladin, who can just keep building board after board, and quest progress comes with no additional effort.
Druid does have some sweet tools like Skyscreamer Eggs and Hatchery Helper, so if it ever goes undisturbed, it can just blow the opponent away.
Here’s KrisOFive’s take on the archetype:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-135
- Posted By:
- 7,200
Sideboard
Quest Mage
Personally, my best deck in the event was Quest Mage. The deck is kind of crazy. You just Discover things to complete The Forbidden Sequence, and after you play The Origin Stone, your power just goes through the roof. Playing Discover cards when you have the Stone active is incredibly fun: you often have to think which effects you don’t want to happen and pick the worst card so that you get the good effects for free. Also note that the Stone does not play Battlecry effects, so you often want to pick those into your hand as well.
This is what I built for Mage:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-135
- Posted By:
- 9,120
Lots of early Discover cards help you advance the Quest, and the real fun begins when the Quest is complete and you get to play things like Treacherous Tormentor (summon two Legendary minions with Dark Gifts and get one into your hand), Relic of Kings (play two big spells and get one into your hand), and Malorne the Waywatcher (summon two Wild Gods and get one into your hand).
You just feel like you have endless resources and thanks to Discovering stuff all the time, you often have answers to whatever predicament your opponent is able to present. Just a tremendously fun deck to play, and a frustrating one to face.
Priest
Quest Priest looked confusing to me, but maybe someone will be able to build it properly when the expansion arrives. The card I would have most wanted to play with is Archaios, because I think it could be phenomenal in an Aggro Priest deck, but the event rules did not enable building one properly, so I was unable to test it.
Others chose to build around Wilted Shadow, which gives Priest some combo potential: get a pair of Wilted Shadows on the board with Rest in Peace and use cheap healing spells on your opponent to kill them with Shadow attacks.
Clark HELLSCREAM played with the archetype with a list like this:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-135
- Posted By:
- 6,640
Quest Rogue
I met a couple of Rogues, but the class looks like it needs some more refinement. Lie in Wait has potential, because your new Hero Power draws two cards that did not start in your deck for just one mana, which means that Rogue can shuffle things into the deck and retrieve them quickly and have loads of resources. How those can be strong and consistent enough is still an open question.
The Return of Control Warrior
After some expansions supporting more aggressive archetypes, The Lost City of Un’Goro adds a good chunk of Control Warrior support again. I guess you can be aggressive with it at times, because I managed to lose one game to a turn 3 Chemical Spill (powered by Trail Mix) that summoned an Ultragigasaur. Then again, I also won against the same deck when the big beast did not arrive quite as early, so the consistency of that plan is questionable.
Myself, I played a pure Control Warrior with Enter the Lost City. The Quest is enough of a win condition all by itself. After you have survived 10 turns, you get a Quest reward that gives you two of the original Un’Goro quest rewards to your hand and shuffles the rest into your deck. I won one game with Carnassa’s Raptors that cost 0 (Barnabus) and had 5/5 stats (Crystal Core), filled the board, and were followed by an extra turn from Time Warp. The things you can do with all of the Quest rewards are quite bonkers.
This is the deck I played with a 4-2 record:
- Format: raptor
- Season: season-135
- Posted By:
- 9,360
I’m not sure if the deck has enough survivability for the real ladder, but it definitely felt like good old Control Warrior.
Hunter, Shaman, and Warlock
I did not find anything interesting for Hunter and Shaman yet. Their Quests seemed very lackluster. The same applies to Warlock to an extent because comparing Escape the Underfel to Murloc Paladin does not bode well for the Warlock. Maybe an Elise location combo will be the Warlock way in Lost City.
The Pet
Oh, everyone in theorycrafting had access to the upcoming King Krush pet. I’m a little torn on that one. It is really well done and a lot of fun, at least for a while. You can feed it and play tug of war with it (I did not find a way to win). But it is locked behind a gacha mechanic where you are realistically looking at spending $160 for it (which will guarantee it). Yeah, that’s a lot, at least for me. It is not for everyone, and you should know whether you’re part of the target market that can afford to and wants to spend $160 on a cosmetic like that.
Just don’t go rolling and hoping to get it unless you are prepared for the full price right from the start. It is easy to get sucked into it and spend money on just one more roll. But don’t. Either go in knowing you are willing to spend the full price, or don’t go in at all. But hey, 1 out of 1000 players will get a pet for free with the first roll, and you can always do that one.
It Feels Like Un’Goro
I had a good time with multiple classes, and the new expansion has some of that old Journey to Un’Goro feel to it. Well played with the nostalgia, Blizzard, well played.
The first public opportunity to play with the new cards is coming soon with the Pre-Release Tavern Brawl, but do note that you need to have a preorder to get a good collection for it, because you cannot craft the cards or buy packs yet. You get some new cards as rewards, but attempts after the first one cost Tavern Tickets. For the full launch, there is still a week and a half of waiting.
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
