We are only one week into the qualifying season for Masters Tour Arlington and the Hearthstone metagame is already going to change drastically tomorrow witht he addition of 23 cards from wild sets. Next week we will produce a complete meta report with the usual data analysis, but for now, let’s just take a look at the winning lineups. Four of the players who have earned their seat in Arlington have also accepted to share insights into how they have approached the Conquest Best Of 3 format.

For a good overall view of the Conquest metagame, we recommend taking a look at 샹하이‘s famous infografics.







Overall deck archetype popularity (graphic by WickedGood):

Winning Lineups:

I just bring the lineup I’m most comfortable with. Combo Priest is insane, Druid is decent, and I played a lot of Holy Wrath Paladin (climb from 2000 to 50 Legend) so I just bring it. This lineup is pretty weak to Control Warrior so the ban strategy is Control warrior > Combo Priest (because of its power level) > others. This lineup is good against Quest Shaman and lots of people bring it in the first few qualifiers. kuonet

My strategy is to target Quest Shaman and Combo Priest, and ban Control Warrior > Hunters > Druids in that order. Playing those 3 decks (warrior, hunter, druid) doesn’t make sense, because those decks accomplish different goals, so I always ended with 1 clear ban (and no problem winning with HW Paladin, which is ok vs Priest and Quest Shaman) and good match ups if they have Quest Shaman or Priest. Any antipriest aggroish lineup is also good for me since Hunter and Warrior are very good vs those as well. People believe that Midrange Hunter is unfavorite vs Priest, but I stongly disagree, got about 350 games with Midrange Hunter on ladder (mostly in Legend) and since i updated my version with Hench Steeds (2/1 Rush guys) i am 28-15 vs Priest, I think i won every game vs Priest with Hunter in tournament as wel. I think people mulligan really bad with that Hunter. 1 drops into Hyena, or Timberwolf into Rushes helps a lot early and you almost never lose mid late as a Hunter vs Priest, And it destroys Shamans with proper mulligan as well 57-12 vs them, it feels like deck is built to destroy Shaman, new weapon, Hyena and early minions help you win board and keep pushing damage while clearing and not overextending. Also played some removals like Brawl, Execute and Warpaths in Zephrys Warrior to help vs Shaman and Priest, deck felt really strong. And HW Paladin was nice because it is good vs those main two decks as well, as I said people never play Hunter, Warrior and Druid in the same lineup because it is counter intuitive. sirvilgaudas

From the start I wanted to figure out a lineup that performed well against popular lineups, so I collected the lineups of everyone in previous cups who made Top 8 and then compared those lineups to ladder stats from HSReplay. It became very apparent that Highlander Warrior and Aggro Overload Shaman (specifically the Jambre version) performed quite well against that field, due mainly to favorable matchups vs Combo Priest and Quest Druid. The 3rd deck was harder, but eventually I figured out that Highlander Paladin had pretty solid matchups across the board. The specific lists were all netdecked. I used the standard Jambre Shaman list. I copied Fr0zen’s Paladin list because he’s smart and hit day 1 legend with it, so why not? I was going to use my own list for Highlander Warrior since I was one of the early advocates for that archetype, but I saw a list that Navi00t played in an earlier cup and liked it, so I decided to try it out for myself. Game plans are pretty simple. For both Highlander decks, you want to curve out well. The more you know about what Zephrys will give you in different situations, the better you’ll do with those decks. I struggled with the Shaman at first, but once I figured out that it was a combo deck rather than an aggro deck, I performed much better. Control Warrior is an auto-ban, and you’ll usually want to ban Highlander Warrior as well. Outside of those decks, the bans become trickier as there aren’t a lot of massive unfavorables for the lineup. I usually ended up banning Quest Shaman, Rogue, or Zoo Warlock. The lineup’s primary targets are Combo Priest and Quest Druid, so leave those up. Against Combo Priest, clear their board aggressively and ignore their life total at first. Once you’re faced with an empty board, then push damage and try to kill them before they can reload with Bwonsamdi. Against Quest Druid, mulligan for a good curve and push face as aggressively as you can. The longer the game goes, the more it favors the Druid, so you want to finish them off early before they can build any momentum. insom

My lineup targets Combo Priest and usually i ban Control Warrior or the most control deck from my oponent. All my decks are super good against Priest so after picks and bans i choose the best deck against the second deck (if my oponent has Priest). Actually that was my first quali with this line, but after studing the 8 first top8 I saw how Priest was popular and how Aggro Warrior was good against it, so I changed Zoo for Warrior. leandroleal