Hearthpwn

Article by Jotto

Hello everyone, this is Jotto and welcome to the 16th MLG/ManaGrind tournament review. This week, we saw the return of Mage control with Warrior peeking through the sea of Shamans and Druids.

In the European tournament, we had a top four dominated by Shaman and Druid once again, however, we did see a Mage giant deck make it into the top ranks for the first time since the quite significant nerf they received two patches ago to freeze spells and Pyroblast. We also saw a Warrior deck make it as a secondary deck for the runner up for the European tournament.

The North American tournament also had a very narrow top four with Shaman and Druid make up most of the top four. The only other deck that made it was a Warrior legendary deck in second place.

So this week, we had a situation where six of the eight decks were all focused on the mid-range play style, including the ability to kill someone in a large burst from a minimum of 14 damage in the case of Force of Nature and Savage Roar.

The Warrior deck was also something we have seen many times before and continues to be a very strong tier 2-1.5 deck that can do well if presented with the right situations. It still lacks the consistency of Shaman mid-range or Druid beat down.

So that leaves us with the last deck, and what a deck it was...

(Note: You can watch a video version of Jotto's review here)

Analysis

There are many interesting things about the deck I will be talking about today, the first thing is that this deck, dubbed “Frozen Giants” has dominated previous the metagame, so badly that it cause many people to give up on playing non Mage decks, and yet after the nerfs it fizzled away, with that being said it was still powerful enough to make a top four.

Frozen Giants starts out with its early drawing power in Bloodmage Thalnos and Loot Hoarder for minions while also utilizing the double Arcane Intellect to dig further into it for the important win conditions that it needs to succeed.

Speaking of win conditions, the deck plays a grand total of seven ways to kill your opponent out of nowhere. Let’s start with the minions; the deck plays four giants in double Mountain Giant and double Molten Giant. Mountain Giant allows you to take advantage of the Frozen Giants slow tempo and draw power in the early turns in order to set up for late game, getting an 8/8 on the board on turn six or sooner can be game changing, especially since they might use a hard removal spell on it such as Hex which they will need for later in the game.

Molten Giant works well with Ice Block, allowing you to attack for 16 damage freely which preventing yourself from dying to burst damage from a card like Leeroy Jenkins, furthermore as the drop later in the game your opponent has probably used up most of their resources and will have trouble dealing with the giants before dying from them.

The last minion based win condition in it is Alexstrasza which will usually target your opponent while following it up with an attack and a burn spell to win the game from 30 life in two turns, because this kill time is so fast healing decks have trouble reacting and as such are not a pure counter to this particular type of Mage.

On top of all this the deck plays two Pyroblast and two Fireball making up a grand total of 32 points of damage, enough to burn through almost any deck, combined with Alexstrasza a Pyroblast will deal 18 damage after the health reduction meaning almost guaranteed lethal baring armor.

However, win conditions don’t matter if you can’t protect yourself, which is why the deck plays a slew of control spells. Primarily the freeze engine takes control here with double Blizzard, Cone of Cold and Frost Nova. This allows it to stall out while the giants do the bulk of the damage, furthermore it even plays a Doomsayer as a Doomsayer into a freeze spell is a very difficult to stop board wipe.

Lastly, Frozen Giants plays two Flamestrikes as a last resort against aggro and midrange decks while using two Polymorphs to deal with large win conditions and big taunt minions.

In conclusion, while the meta game seems to be growing slightly stale, being largely dominated by Shaman mid-range decks and Druid beat down, there are still a few other decks making small splashes, Warrior in particular gets a fairly consistent placing every weekend and this week we even had a Mage!

Thank you all for reading and I’ll see you next week!

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the meta game seems to be growing slightly stale, being largely dominated by Shaman mid-range decks and Druid beat down, there are still a few other decks making small splashes, Warrior in particular gets a fairly consistent placing every weekend and this week we even had a Mage!

Thank you all for reading and I’ll see you next week!

MG_Jotto
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 Article by Jotto, Edited by Homebrewed, Formatted by Whale_Cancer