By ecoutepasca and mjdigit

Do not dust your extra copies of Waggle Pick, Raiding Party and Dread Corsair yet! The metagame is much more balanced than it was in the days before Rise Of Shadows, but it’s largely dominated by Rogue, with Warrior being the main counter-strategy.

Speaking of Warrior, we still use the same criteria as last week (Blastmaster Boom = Bomb Warrior), but there are in fact three different decks bundled under “Control Warrior”. Some of them use a Dragon package and some don’t. And among those without Dragons, some players use Mecha’Thun in one of their decks. It is hard, so early into the season, to split these archetypes, considering that Dragon or no Dragon, the main win condition is the same, and considering that if Mecha’Thun shows up in the tertiary, it looks like a Control lineup with ballsy side, but the same lineup labelled the other way around (Mecha’Thun in primary) is percieved as a Combo strategy. Hopefully we will have smarter algorythms to adress these questions as soon as next week, as we are working with Steve “WickedGood” Lubitz of Off Curve, a Python programmer and metagame geek.

Token Druid has suffered hard this week from other classes teching mercilessly agaisnt it. Now that the the arhetype is declining in popularity, maybe the Wild Pyromancers, Rabble Bouncers, Mind Control Techs, Tunnel Blasters, Baron Geddons, Warpaths and Fans of Knives will be cut, and Malfurion will come back.

The lineups of the World Championship have been released this week, and Killinallday’s Nomi Priest was a big surprise to a lot of players. DrJikinki was the first to take it to a specialist format tournament with notable success. So here’s what you all want to know: we did the math and Nomi Priest is not a meme, it’s actually a very good deck (when piloted by an outstanding player).

Tier List:

Tier 1:

Myracle Rogue

Bomb Warrior

Control Warrior

Tier 2:

Vendetta Rogue

Bomb Hunter

Nomi Priest

Tier 3:

Midrange Hunter

Hand Mage

Oblivitron Hunter

Tier 4:

Token Druid

Lucentbark Druid

Mech Paladin

Featured decks:

Here are some of the most interesting decks of the week, with links to YAYtear’s website where you can visualize the sideboards and copy the deckcodes.

Special thanks to the generous players who have written insights and tips about their decks.

My first list is versatile and rather anti control with cards like Hench Clan Thug and Sap. However it runs Fans of Knives to deal with Druid and Zoo. List 2 is ther for the mirror with the 2 weapon breakers and 2 Lifedrinkers to win the race. List 3 targets Warrior, the main plan being to generate muliple Toggwaggles. dizdemon

Ooze OP vs Rogue oliech

The secondary deck is for Mech decks and Mage, the tertiary for Warrior mirror (one Saboteur to not lose to Mecha’Thun side deck), first list for basically every other deck. Card draw (post Archivist) and Devastator is really good in the mirror to outtempo and kill your opponent. moyen

Secondary deck is for Zoo / Token Druid / agressive Mech Hunter. I wanted 3rd aoe card and Mossy looked like the best choice, it clears Forest’s Aid, Magic Carpet and Goblin Bombs and 2/7 body trades well with all tokens.

Tertiary is for Control Warrior / Big Mage / Control Shaman. The plan for the most part is 2x Toggwaggle into Wands and otk with Leeroys (42 dmg). Plan B is just to shuffle Togg and play it every turn alongside Crown. Evil Rat and Sprint to speed up the process.

Since you need to save 1 Prep for combo second Sprint looked clunky. Cards like Nomi, Myra’s and 2nd Scheme looked like overkill in this version. sevel

I saw DrJikinki get multiple Top 8s with Nomi Priest, so I decided to give it a shot. I found the deck to be very interesting and extremely powerful. I ended up getting two top 8s in a row. The primary list is basically just Killinallday’s worlds list, but I chose to cut a Mass Hysteria for a Divine Hymn, because often I’d find Hysteria dead in hand.

The primary list is meant for rogue and basically anything that isn’t Warrior that runs weapons.

The secondary list is for Warrior. In my first run, I ran the Test Subject Vivid Nightmare package, which is supposed to generate infinite Seances. However, it’s a 4 card combo that felt really clunky and slow, so I decided to change it up. I removed Hysteria completely because it was a liability against Unseen Saboteur, which Warriors would tech. Alex makes it easier to close out games against Warrior, and the 2nd Hymn is useful against Bomb Warrior, or when you’re in fatigue. Tertiary list I didn’t put much thought into, just cut Ooze for some card so I can queue it against non weapon decks. In hindsight I would tech the tertiary for a matchup I struggle against, such as Conjurers Calling Mage. guiyze

I must admit that Tertiary deck was something i copied from another Qualifier. My main strategy was “let’s hope i will get matched with Warriors” since over 50% of decklists are Warriors or Rogues. Midrange Hunter is terrible against Tempo Rogue and this is the main reason we are not seeing him as much on ladder right now. When i saw Wing Blast and Grizzly in 3rd deck i thought it’s teched for Rogues, so i had to tech Secondary Deck for Warriors. It was very simple (this might not be optimal since you still can switch 2 cards). I wanted to play second Highmane, Rhino and Dire Frenzy, because we need to have more threats than they have answers. With Master’s Call we can draw better than Warriors (3 mana draw 3 cards is insane refill tool), so at some point they run out of cards in hand.



I ended up playing against 2 Hunters (1 Mech, 1 Midrange), 2 Rogues (3 if you count round 8), 1 Paladin and 5 Warriors if i am counting it correctly. Even though i thought Tertiary Deck was suited for Rouges, I didn’t have enough confidence to play it, so i sticked with Primary one (i should have tested 3rd deck, or teched it myself against Rouges, that was my mistake). So in all matchups i either sticked with primary deck(it was better in mirror match, better vs Paladin, better vs Mech Hunter), or switched to Secondary one when i faced Warriors.



It was easy to outvalue Warriors. There is no much to say. You play your cards (you have to be restrained with Tracking sometimes), try to get Dire Frenzy on something great like Huffer, Rhino or Highmane. Also renember that Zul’jin is going to give you another copy of Unleash the Beast (because of Twinspell mechanic), so count your cards in hand or you might end up burning/wasting something.



Vs Rogues you just have to be lucky. I won’t lie to you. I got very lucky (for example i got Deadly Shot from Shimmerfly in the same game my opp made huge Edwin). It’s very hard to win, so sometimes you have to make very risky plays and hope they don’t have something. moluk

I chose to use Conjurer Mage in my qualifier run because I feel like it’s the one deck that can beat both Rogue and Warrior right now. Many people have been running the Dragon version, which I feel is more lacking against Rogue because of the lack of flexibility when it comes to removal options, if you take the deck for a spin you’ll be surprised with how much Wild Pyro does with the bananas. The primary list is obviously built to beat Rogues, with minimal greed options since you just want to stabilise and think about taking over board during the later parts of the game. I think most of the choices in the list speak for themselves, while Jungle Panther is there mainly to deal with Hench Clan Thug and for the occasional highroll where the stealth helps you ensure a Khadgar + Conjurer’s combo on Turn 5. 2x Power of Creation over 1x Power of Creation + 1x Antonidas even though there’s bananas simply because Power of Creation has more instant impact on its own. Giggling Inventor is also surprisingly difficult for Rogues to handle with the lack of Fan in most lists, and the fact that it is a 7-drop makes it threatening with Conjurer’s. The secondary list is geared towards beating Warriors and slower decks, which is also the reason why I think there’s no need for Dragons. The greed options here are simply enough to overrun Warriors. The tertiary list is there for Zoo and Token Druid, not much to be said here. However, if you want to try playing Conjurer Mage for the qualifiers now, I think the tertiary should be running 2x Ironbeak Owls, 2x Spellbreakers and 1x E.M.P. to deal with the rise of Mech Hunters out there. sequinox

This deck was first created by Dog, it’s surprisingly strong in a meta dominated by Warriors and where Rogues don’t play Sap too much. Up until now I’m 100% vs Warrior and I have a decent win rate against everything except Mage where it’s close to 0%. Globally strong vs Control and Aggro but weak vs Midrange. My sideboards weren’t optimal at the time, but the BGH was targeting Van Cleef and Giants. abeycultivé

I’m surprised there’s so little preople playing Mech Paladin. It is, similar to Mech Hunter, a great counter vs all Warriors because of the high value you get from Eggs + Kangors Army. I’ve seen other people play Midrange versions of Mech Pala with Secrets, but this Version i think is better because having removal and heal is really strong vs for example Rogues and Token Druids. Also the Equality+Pyromancer Board clear wins a lot of games vs Conjurer Mages, thats why i also added Shrink Ray. The secondary list has an additional Shrink Ray and more value and card draw to be better against Mages and slow decks, mostly Warrior. The tertiary is the complete opposite, where you cut some value cards Like Undatakah, which is often useless vs Aggro decks. The tertiary is better vs Aggro decks like Rogue and Token Druid because i added another Scalehide and Blessing of might to have some more early removal whilst also having more healing options. The worst matchup for the deck is probably Tempo Rogue with double Sap or Shaman with double Hex. But recently most players have cut Sap either ones or twice which makes the Rogue matchup A LOT better. And nobody really plays Shaman, thats why it feels like Mech Paladin is Tier 1 right now, but the Meta might change. The second worst matchup after Rogues with sap is probably Mech Hunter, because they can remove big minions pretty easily. burr0