General thread for theorycraft and comment since I haven't really seen many. Here are some of mine. Some aren't anything special, so I added notes to for new card additions. Some are pretty new and fun, containing a lot of new cards.
Here are some of the decks I plan to take to ladder on day 1.
Very standard stuff here. Troublemaker is probably a less clunky endgame than Galakrond. But there's less armor gain, so perhaps Coerce becomes a more attractive option over Shield Slam. If you want more new cards, you can add Hoard Pillager and Cutting Class over the Grom/Sword and Board package.
Here's one that's a little more fun. It was not a good deck, but it was legend capable in AoO. Now, it received increased redundancy in basically all of the areas that matter - Coerce, Commencement, and Reaper's Scythe. It even added an extra-sticky, big-dumb-idiot in Rattlegore. The curve here is not for the faint of heart. But the whole damn deck is spot removal, AOE, and ways to cheat your dummies. Might not be good, but certainly could be fun.
This is one of the decks I'm most excited to try out. It feels to me like this is the way they wanted Demon Hunter to play, but without being as insanely broken as it was at release. Life gain and hitting face. I know Skull of Gul'dan has some anti-synergy with Soul Fragments, but you still need card draw, and I don't think you are actually shuffling in enough Soul Fragments to matter. But since Skull is technically worse here, and Shardshatter is so powerful, I cut Altruis. Ideally, with additional burn from Lapidary, it should be fine.
Guardian Animals and Twilight Runner are some of the most interesting cards in the set. Druid received an absolutely insane amount of Ramp this set, so the deck looks to exploit it in a way that is more interesting than the boring Fungal Fortune decks. I do not like Survival of the Fittest, but I felt like I needed one more reasonable Kael'thas payoff. Plus it's better than Gift of the Wild. Ideally, you are receiving enough draws off of Runner to not need the second Overflow, which I always felt was slightly clunky in the Spell Druid list anyway.
Good, ol' Handlock is back...maybe...It is largely a deck that builds itself, so I'm not sure how much there is to explain. I did, however, struggle to decide how to approach the endgame. The Galakrond package is too big. Soul Fragments mess with the Quest/Malygos finisher (which was already relying on RNG). So I settled on Demonic Studies + Jaraxxus. With Demonic Studies, you can play Jaraxxus and hero power in the same turn (Also works with Tour Guide). And since the nerf to SacPact, Zeph is no longer an auto-loss.
This is a deck I'm very interested in, although I am sure it will be worse than Highlander Hunter. That said, it should absolutely crush Warrior. Scholomance finally provided Deathrattle Hunter with a deathrattle beast that was worth playing in Bloated Python. It's a low-to-the-ground deck that looks to get ahead with sticky minions and stay ahead. The beast package is limited as to maximize Ingenuity. Houndmaster and Nine Lives are probably a good flex spots if you need to add something like Deadly Shot or Hunter's Mark to deal with big walls.
This is obviously a direction Blizzard wants us to take, although I'm not sure if we will get there. There was some tension between running the original Injured package over the dormant one. However, without the Cleric payoff, I decided to go with the Dormant package which proved to be successful against Demon Hunter last format. The curve is low but impactful and the health is high, so you should be able to fight for board for a time. I'm just not sure if it'll get to an endgame Inner Fire with only Reader and Sphere as your draw options. Hopefully, the card generation of Sethekk and Renew can help carry that load.
Lots of people will be trying out Spell Damage Mage, but few of them will be improving on a Rise of Shadows/Saviors of Uldum-era deck that they've already played for hundreds of games, to moderate success. And thus most of them won't make the deck aggressive enough.
Likewise, a lot of people in Scholomance will be trying out Aggro Stealth Rogue, but generally they won't be building on the moderate success they've already had of playing that style in the Ashes of Outland era. And they probably won't come up with the Plague of Madness x2 + Acidic Swamp Ooze x2 + Harrison Jones package unless they copy my idea.
The deck's greatest weakness to date was not enough card draw, even though I was going as far as to include two lackluster copies of Fan of Knives for more draw. Hopefully, Secret Passage x2 and Voracious Reader will fix that. Also, Wasteland Assassin x2 was a bit slow compared to the rest of the deck, so hopefully replacing them with Sneaky Delinquent and Infiltrator Lilian is a very positive change.
A midrange Warrior deck based around making a win condition out of Gorehowl. I'm sure the idea still needs some refinement (e.g. 2nd Gorehowl? more taunts for Into the Fray?), but I'm looking forward to playing it.
People have pretty much decided that Warlock is either a tempo deck, a control deck, or a combo deck. I reject that it can't do the Midrange thing as well.
This deck is all about making your health total bounce up and down like crazy on your turns, then playing cards that take advantage of that self-damage or healing.
This next one isn't my creation, just one that you may have seen on Hearthpwn given its number of upvotes.
But it is very reminiscent of a deck I played (with a very low winrate) in the very early days of Demon Hunter's existence, and therefore I want to try out this Pen Flinger-based improvement and see if it can actually win games!
Again, lots of people will try out the Spell Damage Shaman archetype. But I might be the only one crazy enough to try to build Miracle Shaman based on Gadgetzan Auctioneers. :)
There are so many cards I wanted to put in this deck that for a while I was planning on it being a Highlander deck (with Zephrys the Great but not Dragonqueen Alexstrasza). However, at this point I'm thinking that Voracious Reader and Magic Carpet in particular are too crucial to the deck to be 1-ofs, and that Highlander inconsistency is too high a price to pay for Zeph's power and general originality.
I have a slightly different take on Ramp Beast Druid, fortunately the only card I'm missing after the pre-opening is one Survival of the Fittest, I really feel like this deck (or new archetype in general) has the potential to be really powerful and I love the combos with Kael'thas Sunstrider and Ysiel Windsinger
Hi! And here are some of my theorycrafts :) I decided to share with only "interesting ones", not the "usual ones". But if you want to check out "usual", you can find them on my page ofcourse ;D
Still trying to find the right balance, as to not muddle up Alura's potential spell poll too much, but this is how far I've gotten so far. Gonna need some trial and error on this, in a live setting.
Cut the secret package for some of the new spells. Will see if it is gonna work, but I think it is better. The secrets tend to be very predictable to play around, but might end up adding some again later. Will see in due time.
Still trying to find the right balance, as to not muddle up Alura's potential spell poll too much, but this is how far I've gotten so far. Gonna need some trial and error on this, in a live setting.
Cut the secret package for some of the new spells. Will see if it is gonna work, but I think it is better. The secrets tend to be very predictable to play around, but might end up adding some again later. Will see in due time.
Frostbolt is a lot better than Brain Freeze Frostbolt doesn't have to combo, it goes face unlike brain freeze, it still freezes the enemy and does 3 damage and only cost 1 more mana.
and I think the paladin deck could use 2 more 1 drops as you might want to save First Day of School to trigger the spellburst of Goody Two-Shields sometimes
The only 1 drop option is the murloc though, and I want to see if they can be avoided. I find them far too slow and clunky, as well as easily removed, before they really do anything.
The only 1 drop option is the murloc though, and I want to see if they can be avoided. I find them far too slow and clunky, as well as easily removed, before they really do anything.
I feel like this could be a fun one to play with in ladder on day one. Potentially catch people unaware with the low cost minions turning into 4/4’s. If the neverset doesn’t work I’ll probably drop for soul jailer and a sense demons to pull more of them out of the deck for use with feloscopy.
then I went all in on death rattle - I have seen some similar builds to the ones listed here.. but none using the side quest. If that slows me down I may swap for eggs for another beast.
A bit of accountability here. Out of the seven theorycrafts I posted, most of them, unsurprisingly, have done poorly—10% for the zoo priest and the Pen Flinger DH that wasn't really mine anyway—up to 45% for Aggro Spell Damage Burn Mage, not too bad.
But The Assassins has been performing great! I've added to the Deck title and description, check it out.
Playmaker Krastinov Warrior is a deck I'm been playing around with last night and today just for fun. A guide is included feel free to show your support if you like the idea of the deck and also any ideas on how to improve it.
General thread for theorycraft and comment since I haven't really seen many. Here are some of mine. Some aren't anything special, so I added notes to for new card additions. Some are pretty new and fun, containing a lot of new cards.
Here are some of the decks I plan to take to ladder on day 1.
Bomb Warrior
Very standard stuff here. Troublemaker is probably a less clunky endgame than Galakrond. But there's less armor gain, so perhaps Coerce becomes a more attractive option over Shield Slam. If you want more new cards, you can add Hoard Pillager and Cutting Class over the Grom/Sword and Board package.
Big Warrior
Here's one that's a little more fun. It was not a good deck, but it was legend capable in AoO. Now, it received increased redundancy in basically all of the areas that matter - Coerce, Commencement, and Reaper's Scythe. It even added an extra-sticky, big-dumb-idiot in Rattlegore. The curve here is not for the faint of heart. But the whole damn deck is spot removal, AOE, and ways to cheat your dummies. Might not be good, but certainly could be fun.
Soul Fragment Demon Hunter
This is one of the decks I'm most excited to try out. It feels to me like this is the way they wanted Demon Hunter to play, but without being as insanely broken as it was at release. Life gain and hitting face. I know Skull of Gul'dan has some anti-synergy with Soul Fragments, but you still need card draw, and I don't think you are actually shuffling in enough Soul Fragments to matter. But since Skull is technically worse here, and Shardshatter is so powerful, I cut Altruis. Ideally, with additional burn from Lapidary, it should be fine.
Ramp Beast Druid
Guardian Animals and Twilight Runner are some of the most interesting cards in the set. Druid received an absolutely insane amount of Ramp this set, so the deck looks to exploit it in a way that is more interesting than the boring Fungal Fortune decks. I do not like Survival of the Fittest, but I felt like I needed one more reasonable Kael'thas payoff. Plus it's better than Gift of the Wild. Ideally, you are receiving enough draws off of Runner to not need the second Overflow, which I always felt was slightly clunky in the Spell Druid list anyway.
Soul Fragment Handlock
Good, ol' Handlock is back...maybe...It is largely a deck that builds itself, so I'm not sure how much there is to explain. I did, however, struggle to decide how to approach the endgame. The Galakrond package is too big. Soul Fragments mess with the Quest/Malygos finisher (which was already relying on RNG). So I settled on Demonic Studies + Jaraxxus. With Demonic Studies, you can play Jaraxxus and hero power in the same turn (Also works with Tour Guide). And since the nerf to SacPact, Zeph is no longer an auto-loss.
Midrange Deathrattle Hunter
This is a deck I'm very interested in, although I am sure it will be worse than Highlander Hunter. That said, it should absolutely crush Warrior. Scholomance finally provided Deathrattle Hunter with a deathrattle beast that was worth playing in Bloated Python. It's a low-to-the-ground deck that looks to get ahead with sticky minions and stay ahead. The beast package is limited as to maximize Ingenuity. Houndmaster and Nine Lives are probably a good flex spots if you need to add something like Deadly Shot or Hunter's Mark to deal with big walls.
Buff Priest
This is obviously a direction Blizzard wants us to take, although I'm not sure if we will get there. There was some tension between running the original Injured package over the dormant one. However, without the Cleric payoff, I decided to go with the Dormant package which proved to be successful against Demon Hunter last format. The curve is low but impactful and the health is high, so you should be able to fight for board for a time. I'm just not sure if it'll get to an endgame Inner Fire with only Reader and Sphere as your draw options. Hopefully, the card generation of Sethekk and Renew can help carry that load.
Oh, so I'm not the only one who feels like people aren't theorycrafting enough this time around?
Here's some of mine.
Lots of people will be trying out Spell Damage Mage, but few of them will be improving on a Rise of Shadows/Saviors of Uldum-era deck that they've already played for hundreds of games, to moderate success. And thus most of them won't make the deck aggressive enough.
Likewise, a lot of people in Scholomance will be trying out Aggro Stealth Rogue, but generally they won't be building on the moderate success they've already had of playing that style in the Ashes of Outland era. And they probably won't come up with the Plague of Madness x2 + Acidic Swamp Ooze x2 + Harrison Jones package unless they copy my idea.
The deck's greatest weakness to date was not enough card draw, even though I was going as far as to include two lackluster copies of Fan of Knives for more draw. Hopefully, Secret Passage x2 and Voracious Reader will fix that. Also, Wasteland Assassin x2 was a bit slow compared to the rest of the deck, so hopefully replacing them with Sneaky Delinquent and Infiltrator Lilian is a very positive change.
A midrange Warrior deck based around making a win condition out of Gorehowl. I'm sure the idea still needs some refinement (e.g. 2nd Gorehowl? more taunts for Into the Fray?), but I'm looking forward to playing it.
People have pretty much decided that Warlock is either a tempo deck, a control deck, or a combo deck. I reject that it can't do the Midrange thing as well.
This deck is all about making your health total bounce up and down like crazy on your turns, then playing cards that take advantage of that self-damage or healing.
This next one isn't my creation, just one that you may have seen on Hearthpwn given its number of upvotes.
But it is very reminiscent of a deck I played (with a very low winrate) in the very early days of Demon Hunter's existence, and therefore I want to try out this Pen Flinger-based improvement and see if it can actually win games!
Again, lots of people will try out the Spell Damage Shaman archetype. But I might be the only one crazy enough to try to build Miracle Shaman based on Gadgetzan Auctioneers. :)
Finally (for now), the most far-out and least refined of these decks: Zoo Priest, based on Disciplinarian Gandling and Magic Carpet.
There are so many cards I wanted to put in this deck that for a while I was planning on it being a Highlander deck (with Zephrys the Great but not Dragonqueen Alexstrasza). However, at this point I'm thinking that Voracious Reader and Magic Carpet in particular are too crucial to the deck to be 1-ofs, and that Highlander inconsistency is too high a price to pay for Zeph's power and general originality.
Keymaster Alabaster come faster
Wish I was a cool kid and made a deck with Pen Flinger.. does Wolfrider count as cool?
SotF screams Charge shenanigans, at least to me. Ppl are desencouraged from playing combo this season, but that aint stopping me from trying!
Tempo Mage seems fun and legit, hoping to get one of their legendaries in packs at least.
Very interesting post, love to see what others have planned.
I have a slightly different take on Ramp Beast Druid, fortunately the only card I'm missing after the pre-opening is one Survival of the Fittest, I really feel like this deck (or new archetype in general) has the potential to be really powerful and I love the combos with Kael'thas Sunstrider and Ysiel Windsinger
Hi! And here are some of my theorycrafts :) I decided to share with only "interesting ones", not the "usual ones". But if you want to check out "usual", you can find them on my page ofcourse ;D
Yes, this deck is already a theorycraft of everyone's on hearthpwn, but still, one of my first.
Now this is the interesting one! Elekk reminds me a little of Dead Man's Hand, so I decided to do something like this.
Some kind of interesting combo-wombos here :D
And less interesting, but still a wombo.
Personally, have several I wanna try, but first and foremost, Pure Buff Paladin, and an updated No Minion Mage.
Still trying to find the right balance, as to not muddle up Alura's potential spell poll too much, but this is how far I've gotten so far. Gonna need some trial and error on this, in a live setting.
Cut the secret package for some of the new spells. Will see if it is gonna work, but I think it is better. The secrets tend to be very predictable to play around, but might end up adding some again later. Will see in due time.
Frostbolt is a lot better than Brain Freeze Frostbolt doesn't have to combo, it goes face unlike brain freeze, it still freezes the enemy and does 3 damage and only cost 1 more mana.
and I think the paladin deck could use 2 more 1 drops as you might want to save First Day of School to trigger the spellburst of Goody Two-Shields sometimes
Keymaster Alabaster come faster
The only 1 drop option is the murloc though, and I want to see if they can be avoided. I find them far too slow and clunky, as well as easily removed, before they really do anything.
Agreed. I wouldn't listen to his advice on this.
I’ve got 2 I’m working on right now that feel like they could be fun, and potentially competitive.
I feel like this could be a fun one to play with in ladder on day one. Potentially catch people unaware with the low cost minions turning into 4/4’s. If the neverset doesn’t work I’ll probably drop for soul jailer and a sense demons to pull more of them out of the deck for use with feloscopy.
then I went all in on death rattle - I have seen some similar builds to the ones listed here.. but none using the side quest. If that slows me down I may swap for eggs for another beast.
I'm hoping with some of the new cards printed I can make my King Phaoris deck a little more consistent with Lorekeeper Polkelt.
General guide included.
A bit of accountability here. Out of the seven theorycrafts I posted, most of them, unsurprisingly, have done poorly—10% for the zoo priest and the Pen Flinger DH that wasn't really mine anyway—up to 45% for Aggro Spell Damage Burn Mage, not too bad.
But The Assassins has been performing great! I've added to the Deck title and description, check it out.
Playmaker Krastinov Warrior is a deck I'm been playing around with last night and today just for fun. A guide is included feel free to show your support if you like the idea of the deck and also any ideas on how to improve it.
Gibberling Druid, but more midrange-y: