A Month in The Wild - Week One: N'Zoth Reno Shaman

June sees the start of the first official Wild tournament for Hearthstone. We dive headlong into the format in the first of a weekly series to see what it has in store for us.

June is a marquee month for the Wild format. After a year and a bit of playing second fiddle to Standard, Wild is finally getting its own solo. Yes, Blizzard’s announcement might have been poorly timed but getting an official tournament is a big step up for a format that has lacked incentive. Sure, you can play it for fun, but if you wanted to compete at a high level, Standard has always been the way to go.



Will one tournament change that? Probably not, but it shows that Blizzard are willing to give the format a shot and, if this one goes well, I can’t see any reason there won’t be more in future.



So with Wild getting a little bit more attention, I wanted to find an interesting way to whet people’s appetites for the format. I came up with A Month in The Wild. For the length of June, I will play as much Wild as I possibly can. Each week I will report back about what I found out, how my deck performed and any interesting tidbits that crop up. This is not an article about grinding for legend (although I will be playing to win, of course - no silly decks), it’s a series of articles about what goes on in Wild. What decks are good and what interesting interactions crop up that we don’t have in Standard. It’s about learning.



Each week I’ll put up a poll to decide which deck I’ll be playing for the following seven days. Feel free to suggest ideas in the comments, but like I said, I won’t be playing silly or gimmicky decks.



Starting Out



I started yesterday with Reno N’Zoth Shaman for two reasons. One: I prefer playing control decks most of the time. Two: Shaman is my least played class, so it gives me the most to learn.



I played a handful of Wild games in May, so I started at rank 20. After 12 games on the first day, one thing struck me above all else: the sheer variety of decks. I literally did not play against the same deck twice in all of those 12 games. Now, at rank 20, that does mean that several of the decks were less than optimal. When one of my opponents coined out a Hobgoblin on turn two I was eyeing up a Hex in my hand, worrying that I’d have to waste it on a 2/3. My opponent then proceeded to play two Argent Squires and nothing else that synergised at all with the Goblin. He seemed to be some sort of Aggro Druid, based on the rest of his cards, and I won handily with all my AoE removal.



The thing is, at least so far, the apparent randomness of what people are playing can make it pretty tough to play around the right thing. Sure, if my opponent casts a Ship’s Cannon on turn two I can be fairly certain that I’m about to get my face caved in but what if he plays that card that gives C’Thun taunt? I’m not even going to google the name because it’s so bad and the deck was horrible, but do you play around Brawl there? I did, and he never had it. Heck, judging by the cards in his deck he might not even own copies of Brawl.

The Deck

So about the deck itself. N’Zoth is just a great card in Wild if you’re still alive on turn 10. I’m not sure my deathrattle package is optimal, though. With so few Jade tools, Aya is only fine most of the time, rarely exciting. Obviously she’s great with Spirit Echo but there have already been times where I’ve cast N’Zoth needing taunts to stay alive and I really wished I’d got a Sludge Belcher back instead of her. If Aya goes, Jade Lightning seems like an obvious cut too, probably for Lava Burst or Lightning Bolt as more efficient removal. I’m really not sure, though, as Aya can put a lot of pressure on a deck like Reno Warlock.

Jeweled Scarab is probably not worth a slot either and should be replaced by a better anti-aggro card. I love me some sweet value, and golden Farsight looks amazing, but a two-mana 1/1 is just too far below the curve and there are too many bad cards to discover in Wild. Beyond that I’ve been pretty happy with the deck list in its current state. I feel like I might want something to shore me up against Pirates if they’re as much of a problem as I think they’re going to be, but at these low ranks the current deck has performed great.

My losses have been against extreme decks at either end of the scale. I got destroyed by Pirate Warrior and ground out by Reno Lock and Reno Mage, with my fourth loss coming against Miracle Rogue. I definitely should have won the Warlock game, though, I just played around Twisting Nether for too long when I could have just forced it with N’Zoth and still gotten value. Live and learn, eh? On the plus side, I've been eating midrange decks for breakfast.



It’s fair to say that Wild is living up to its name, so far. I assume that once I go up the ranks things will start to settle down into a sensible meta game but, honestly, I’m having plenty of fun Hexing Megafins and Devolving cloaked Azure Drakes. In fact, I’m having so much fun with this deck I almost don’t want to make a poll about what to play next. But I figure it will make a pretty boring series of articles if I just write about the same thing every week, so vote below on what you want me to play next week. In the meantime, look at the golden Volcano go. Oh, baby.

QUICKPOLL What deck should I play next week? Recruit Paladin

Thank you for voting! Freeze Mage

Thank you for voting!