Hearthpwn

Updated: 7th of September. Any major changes to the previous version of this guide will have a * in front of it.

Hello Hearthpwn users! Are you wanting to play Duels but having trouble getting started? Well here, we have a very in depth analysis of everything in the game. This guide will help you with ideas regarding how to start building your own Duels decks; including potential starting builds, strongest treasures, and combos to look out for when drafting! We’ll start by ranking the neutral treasures on a scale of 1-5 followed by an explanation for the reasoning behind the ranks. Then we’ll get into what makes specific classes/heroes powerful. This is all based on my [RaptorWithWings] personal experience, but I’ll do my best to give the greatest possible advice!

Many things that don’t stand out won’t be mentioned, as talking about every single one of them would make this guide way too needlessly long. Several will be grouped up as the reason for their level of usefulness maybe be similar, and some are effectively negligible and don’t really need its own separate explanation as to why it’s as good/bad as it is.

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Passive Treasure Rankings

Passive Ranking System

Tier 1 - God Tier Passives that are valuable in any deck that support it.

Tier 2 - Great Passives in general that can definitely help you throughout your run.

Tier 3 - Passives that have the potential to make a huge impact, but is heavily reliant on the game-state.

Tier 4 - Niche Passives that are either drastically underpowered or a little too specific to recommend unless you built your entire deck around it.

Tier 5 - Passives that are so inconsistent with their value, they can actively harm you. 

 First Passive Ranks

Tier 1: Any treasure that can consistently generate additional resources for free is amazing and stands out above even some of the 2nd Passives, and Open the Doorways is probably the best one. Rocket Backpacks giving any of your minions Rush once per turn can make even the slowest of minions into a reactive play. It also has extra interactions with other things, especially treasure that summon copies of your minions. Mysterious Tome is arguably one of the best purely generic primary passives. Even if you don’t high roll getting the good Secrets, it still throws off your opponent’s first few turns as it forces them to either risk triggering one of them or make suboptimal moves trying to play around every possible Secret. Sticky Fingers is also a great pick if you’re regularly generating cards, which most Duels decks tend to do.

Tier 2: Among the 1st Passives that provide discounts, the ones that effortlessly generate damage or stats are excellent picks. Recycling won’t create tempo, but can build defenses that allow you to survive heavy aggro when you need a little extra time to catch up when you’re behind. It works best in decks that summon several minions. The impact of Book of Wonders varies wildly, but has the ability to outshine a lot of the other primary passives. This is only really a treasure for people who are willing to run its risks for bigger effects than most other options.

As far as Primary Treasures go, Cannibalism and From the Swamp are both great options, mostly for strategies that involve maintaining a wide board like token decks. Out of all the school specific Spell Damage, Kindling Flame benefits its particular school the most. Almost all Fire spells deal damage and can abuse this passive very effectively in a deck that revolves around Fire.

Even though it’s a small bonus that doesn’t seem to persist beyond your first turn, unconditional free card draw from Small Backpacks is extremely valuable; especially when you have game changers in your deck you want to dig for as early as possible. Seafloor Gateway can achieve the same thing in Mech Mage, and Paladins can handbuff all those extra Mechs you get from even more burst stats to Magnetize onto your minions. 

* Grommash’s Armguards is a passive discount to weapons, which is fine and all. But the important part of this is being able to tutor a weapon to your hand for free! This is usually best when paired with starting Treasures like Royal Greatsword or Ironweave Bloodletter. Being able to play them a turn early is even better. Bitter Cold, Kindling Flame, and Natural Force are all directly weaker versions of Robe of the Apprentice. However, since they’re Spell School specific, they’ll be more likely to be offered when using decks that can support them. While still being limited, they’re more consistent than the passive that grants +1 Spell Damage across all spells.

Tier 3: Crystal Gem may provide a meaningful bonus, but if it whiffs because of a bad opening hand you end up with one less passive than your opponent the rest of the game. Any Weapons can give you constant value from Pillage the Fallen. You get the most value out of it when you break a 4 or 5-cost weapon, as they have some of the best possibilities to randomly equip.

Staff of Pain was okay on its own and is prone to backfiring. But now it can contribute to the all-powerful Questline The Demon Seed, and it does a VERY good job at rushing the Quest progress and abusing the effect afterwards. Staff of Pain is also pretty good in Priest’s new Shadow/Aggro archetype. Stormwind finally gave Demon Hunters some pretty good incentive to run Fel spells. Wither the Weak adds on some extra power to the typically cheap Fel spells, making them an above average tempo play. Pillage the Fallen has nearly the same amount of value, with only a minor change that gives it a slight Attack buff. It’s likely that this was done to make low-rolling a zero Attack weapon less of a problem, as there were no innate problems with the passive.

The effect of Freeze Solid involves a damage buff as opposed to instant destruction of minions. The most important aspect of this is the fact that it works against the enemy hero as well. This gives any Freeze Mage builds an actual win condition instead of more board control it doesn’t really need. Firekeeper’s Idol is a relatively low-impact passive (as 1/2 minions with no effects don’t do much), but it provides an extra resource in your hand as well. It gives you just a little bit extra to play, and also triggers the effects of “If you played an Elemental last turn” card without having to cram a ton of Elementals into your deck to keep their effects live. You can’t necessarily build a deck around Inspiring Presence. But if you happened to be running roughly 5 or more, it’s a fantastic way to get your expensive cards out earlier or make combos easier to use.

Optimized Polarity doesn't generate much advantage as there are very limited minions and not all that impactful unless manage to handbuff them. But free resources is still good. Beckoning Bicorn is actually still good with Pirates. It’s just that they aren’t necessarily top tier in duels. Pirates currently don’t have any secondary passives they can consistently abuse. Mending Pools is a decent way to keep certain decks from burning you down without having to run much healing in Nature decks.

The Floor is Lava has a home in Enrage Warrior since that the archetype has a decent amount of support for it. Cadaver Collector is pure resources for Death Knights. It can let you get more of the bonus effects from cards that need corpses, or stack up on them for the corpse related Secondary Treasures.Dragonblood can slowly stack stats and snowball your tempo with each of your Dragons that die. However, this is a very slow effect and most Dragons don't really need the extra stats. There is a fun little Scales of Onyxia gimmick, but right now there aren't a lot of Dragon decks out there making it into the late runs.

* Arcane Flux and Divine Illumination are fantastic value generators for their respective spell schools. However, they don’t really change the board state. This holds them back a bit from passives that consistently do so, despite it being tons of card advantage. Staking A Claim is pretty good at bolstering an aggressive board as long as you have ways to Discover while you have one.

Tier 4: While some of the passives that interact with certain spell types have amazing effects, many of them are severely underwhelming. The Mana Discounting Treasures have too minor of an effect to really make the most of it. One treasure with a superior counterpart is Robes of Shrinking; the better one being Rhonin's Scrying Orb. You not only have to top deck the spell on your current turn to even use the discount, you have to have enough Mana to play it and you may not even want to use it on that turn. Hold the Line's Attack boost is decent, but you can’t actually take advantage of it yourself. Your opponent has the initiative to respond to the extra Attack however they want. The most this passive can do is make specifically your minions less convenient to trade into.

In decks that love Divine Shields like Handbuff Paladin, Righteous Reserves grants a lot of them for free. In a deck built with Divine Shields solely in mind, this treasure can snowball fast! The Health gained from Invigorating Light is too minor. The only way to maximize its effect is to run Holy spells in mass, which cuts out minions that you’d want to buff in the first place. Natural Force lacks the proper spells to take advantage of it. There are few Nature spells that deal damage and even fewer that are good. Most legendary minions only work within a certain kind of deck, especially class ones. Ring of Phaseshifting will oftentimes just generate stuff your deck can barely benefit from.

Among the passives that were supposed to work with the Sunken City themes, the Treasures they gave them are lackluster. Edge of Dredge and Forgotten Depths aren’t bad on paper, but it requires you to run a few Dredge cards, and most classes only have access to 1 good one. Even if you take the lackluster neutral Dredge cards, if you don’t get one of the two passives, then you just have a couple mediocre minions in your deck. Coil Casting is intended to give you more triggers for the shared effects of Nagas that want you to play spells while holding them. However, decks that want to do so typically run good ways to accomplish this on their own. Plus the spell you get is from ANY class, so the odds of it synergizing with your deck are slim at best. Blood Shields at the very least gives you more health to block aggro and room to heal off too much damage. It’s not overly useful, but thankfully it’s GAINING Health so you don’t have to be damaged to receive the benefits.

Tier 5: Arctic Armor is just worse than Recycling. It’s much easier for your minions to die than to run enough Freeze spells to gain a worthwhile amount of Armor. The effect is too niche and underwhelming to be picked over other passives even in a Freeze deck. The Floor is Lava is a double edged sword. Even when effectively casting Inner Rage on everything you play results in a net increase in stats, Health is generally more valuable than Attack. This is especially true in a game mode that has a lot more removal on average.

Unholy Gift has proven to be completely lackluster in most cases and is rarely what wins someone the game. As strong as Death Knight cards are in a vacuum, cards in Duels decks want to be as synergistic as possible. Plus, most of the possible cards either require a certain game state to be useful or are just worse than most treasures. Despite removing the damage taken from the previous iteration of All Shall Serve, it turns out to be a pretty bad passive. Warlocks already have good card advantage even without passives or treasures, so there’s no need for involuntary cards draw.

Second Passive Ranks

Tier 1: Battle Totem, Double Time, and Totem of the Dead passively double the value of some of your cards and are a few of the most powerful treasures. Robe of the Magi gives a massive boost to all damaging spells, making even the weakest of them extremely efficient. Mantle of Ignition is basically a permanent Zentimo effect and is extremely potent in any class. It can benefit your own board, like with Paladin’s Blessing of Authority or abuse targeted removal like with Shaman’s Stormstrike. The potential for getting TRIPLE value out of a spell is just too good to pass up.

The Bronze Signet doubles the full value of every minion you draw, but this is done in the form of card advantage as opposed to extra tempo or high impact. Getting twice as many minions is fantastic, but there is no added efficiency to playing them like other doubling passives. This is a great pick, but only if most of the minions in your deck are good. If you drafted sub-parr cards, you’ll either end up with too many weak minions or have to lose tempo by playing them to free up hand space.

Cloak of Emerald Dreams is arguably the best of the new card generating passives. All of the Dream cards are good. The spells are the better than the minions and are amazing when you just get a bunch of them for free. Even Laughing Sister and Emerald Drake are still decent since you don’t have to spend a ton of mana to dump them out of your hand and actually are above average minions for their cost.

Mummy Magic and Special Delivery also function similarly as a doubling effect, except by generating a 1-Health version of the minion instead of duplicating its effect. The +2/+2 aura effect of Greedy Gains makes a massive difference and can let you snowball aggressively even on the earliest turns. While some minions become less efficient to play, the swings you get by working around the cost increase makes a huge difference. Plenty of spells summon minions that get the buff without the downside, and Hero Powers that do so are extremely difficult for most decks to deal with. Duels decks are filled with removal, and Brittle Bones turns that into even more advantage!

* Mummy Magic is still the go-to Deathrattle Treasure after round 3, but now it’s far less abusable since only one of your minions can get Reborn instead of basically all of them. But this won’t stop it from being really strong, especially if you’re in a position where you’re playing one Deathrattle minion per turn anyways.

Tier 2: Avenging Armaments is good for the same reason only Paladin specific. When you have legendary minions with effects that benefit exponentially by being duplicated like Aegwynn, the Guardian or Rattlegore, then Disks of Legend can be a huge game-changer; even though it does nothing else when you're not playing legendary minions. Flame Waves gives all of your Fire spells the added value of two free Arcane Explosion, which is an amazing passive board clear. Realistically, Mages are the only ones who can pull this off. But with 2 damage AOE attached to a ton of your spells makes it very difficult for your opponent to establish a board.

Khadgar's Scrying Orb serves as an extremely efficient discount towards your spells, which is almost always usable. Stargazing can be amazing, and your Hero Power determines exactly how useful this treasure is. In fact, the only reason this passive is ranked in the middle is because not all Hero Powers can use it as well as others. Having Roguish Maneuvers and Bruising cost less and become repeatable doesn't really make them any better, but the same bonuses can make Death Games and From Golden Light become win conditions on their own. The Alterac Valley hero cards are insanely strong too. Things like Arcane Burst and Summon Pet can wreak total havoc when it's repeatable.

With Totem of the Dead being an Ultra Rare passive and completely banned in Hunter, Mummy Magic is the next best thing. Not only that, it’s also abusable in Priest since they’re so good at cloning their minions and multiplies the value of Xyrella, the Devout. Scepter of Summoning is a good discount treasure so long as you have enough expensive minions to use it with but still have cards that keep you in the game until you reach the turn you can start playing them. Vanndar especially abuses this with Battle Tactics.

As with the rest of the Dragon Treasures, Dragonbone Ritual and Draconic Dream perform extremely well in Dragon-exclusive decks. Their delayed value as opposed to the passives with much faster if not instant value holds them back though. Gaining cheap copies of your minions with Shadowcasting 101 is definitely useful. However, this value entirely relies on the effects your minions have since their stats aren’t going to make much of an impact. Luckily, most minions fit this category. Paladin’s (and to an extent Priests) have a decent amount of Holy spell support. Iron Roots and Spreading Saplings work really well with what Druids are capable of right now, especially when a lot of spells that support aggressive strategies like token Druid are Nature.

Meek Mastery is fairly limited in its uses outside of all-neutral Drek’thar (or Vanndar on rare occasions) builds since most decks run class cards. But if you have extra efficient ways to generate or summon neutral minions, this can definitely be a powerful option. Sometimes it can work in ways you’d never expect. Since Volatile Skeletons are technically neutral, your Skeletons get the buffs even when they’re summoned by Mage cards. Cookie's Ladle gives Murlocs the fuel it needs to keep up the pressure without having to rely on normal card draw for it.

Both Cold Feet Pact and Ghouls Rush In are free minions, but the former has much greater snowball potential if you hold onto your corpses for a long time while the ladder is better for decks that would rather keep spending its corpses for their bonuses. Battle Stance gives you access to constant damage for the entire game. Sure it has all of the drawbacks of attacking with your hero, but your opponent is forced to play around it every single turn. Elixir of Vigor has shown to be surprisingly useful. While recycling cheap minions can be detrimental, but even they can still be useful. Resource generators are good examples. You can also pile up on you deck’s strongest minions like Jace Darkweaver, Captain Galvangar, or Alexandros Mograine. While Idols of Elune is just a weaker version of Double Time, getting twice the value out of a spell is extremely good. Spell-heavy decks tend to do a lot of Discovering, and Orb of Revelation gives them mass discounts to their hand when it has several of their spells that aren’t already cheap. Spreading Saplings and Iron Roots push for aggressive Nature spell strategies with its free minions and stat buffs.

Tier 3: All Together Now has gone through several nerfs, but still remains a solid pick since it discounts one of the most prevalent and useful types of minions in the game. Passively obtaining discounted copies of enemy minions sounds amazing, but Eerie Stone isn't perfect. Most people build their decks centered around their treasures. Their minions are extremely synergistic and rarely will you get the same value from playing them as they did. Killing minions with Shadow spells just gives you more things to play without losing tempo on playing the removal.

Being able to draw a card off of any Battlecry with Rally the Troops is valuable, but its discountability is somewhat limited. It comes down to free card advantage that will sometimes make it cost less. Hagatha's Embrace is still one of the slower secondary passives, but doubling the handbuff value makes it a decent competitor for the secondary passive slot. Corrupted Felstone finally provides a sizable handbuff that might be worth considering. However, it’s relatively difficult to build a deck with a balance of Fel spells and minions that scale well with big stats. It also has limited ability to snowball due to Demon Hunter’s lack of minions that directly scale with being handbuffed. Legendary Loot can give you amazing early advantage if you get your hands on the right weapon, like Woecleaver or Twig of the World Tree.

Expedited Burial makes high impact Deathrattles easier to combo with and can be played far earlier. However, since the minion is losing its stats as a price for its cost reduction, you won’t be gaining much board presence. One of the best ways to use this is alongside minions whose Deathrattles summon bigger things. The effect of Imp-credible Trousers isn’t horrible, but there’s a couple things wrong with it. It doesn’t generate any advantage immediately upon activation, and you can’t control when you get the payoff. A pair of free 3/3s per Fel spell is great, but the way in which you get it is pretty slow for what you need to be able to do to keep up in a Duels game.

Polymorphing is one of the best forms of removal. Unstable Magic can totally shut down some decks, like ones centered around Deathrattles. The main thing holding this back is having a deck with enough Arcane spells to have it be offered as a draft option and to fully abuse it. Aside from passives, there is no Arcane specific support. But if you manage to build a deck that can make this work, it’s certainly worth it.

Ring of Refreshment is a generally weaker version of Stargazing, but is still useful in the same ways. However, there are special cases where this can be more effective; like if you have plenty of cheap spells or if your Hero Power is Sleight of Hand. Ring of Haste and Sunstrider's Crown are probably the most swingy passive amongst the other Tier 3 ones. However, they share a couple problems in common that may make them hard to use. They both encourage you to play two cheap minions/spells then follow it up with a big one that acts as a giant mana cheat. However, you need to have both the two cheap cards in your hand as well something big and worth the effort to turbo out. A lot of decks can’t afford to run too many cheap cards and/or don’t really have anything that really needs to be cheated out. Basically, you have to plan around being able to make the most of these “third costs (1)” effects. But the decks that wanna cheat out big things already have ways to do that, like Clumsy Courier and Kael'thas Sinstrider. While the potential is still there, it’s just hard to make the most of it when there’s not a lot of decks that just happens to be able to use it to its fullest extent.

Free triggers on your Deathrattles is a strong effect, but Deathly Death! insists that you have more than one out at once and that they both don’t die simultaneously. This makes it hard for this passive to reliably help you. Guardian Light definitely has potential, giving you minions for using spell school that doesn’t usually provide much tempo if any. The main problem is the fact that the better Holy spells are generally not very expensive, so you tend to only get a few small minions. And sometimes you run Stonehearth Vindicator to draw one and play right away, which doesn’t give you a minion at all. Emerald Goggles offers a sizable discount to all types of cards, but if something gets stuck in the left side of your hand, the passive stops being valuable for a while.

Location, Location, Location! is fairly unique amongst passives. Not every deck can make use of their class’s location. However, not all of them are specific in their uses either. While Warlocks and Demon Hunter need Imps and Relics to use their’s at all, Paladins and Priests can use their’s very generically. The Mage and Rogue locations always generate free stats, but they perform extra well if you brought the right starting deck. 

* Glacial Downpour gives Frost decks a fairly consistent source of minions, either making up for the tempo they usually cause you to sacrifice or add even more to what's generally otherwise removal. Starving gives beast decks (typically Hunter) consistent draw power and small buffs, both of which they'll gladly take.

Tier 4: The only real way to maximize Band of Bees's usefulness is to run several 1-2 cost minions, which makes the overall deck pretty weak when taking into account all the removal in Duels. The only real way to abuse an effect like this is through minions that deal damage with effects like Wild Pyromancer and Knife Juggler. But if you really want to do that, you’re better off just starting with Vile Concoction as your Hero Power and make room for a better passive.

Endurance Training is good at cheating in Taunt heavy decks, but having the cost minimum makes it relatively debatable on whether or not it's worth taking over other passives. While Unlocked Potential has the possibility of decreasing you minions’ Attack, you’ll most likely be offered it as an option if most or all of your minions would gain Attack. But even in the most optimal deck, it’s not much compared to the other secondary passives. Gaining Attack just doesn’t matter that much in Duels unless you’re also gaining Health to make it harder to remove.

Mages and Shamans with several ways to Freeze minions can get some decent milage out of Moora… I mean Ring of Black Ice. The value is entirely dependent on the minions generated. But a lot of Freezing cards hit several things at once, so you’ll at least get a bunch of stuff to play if you happen to be low on cards. However, this can muddy up your hand with mediocre to useless minions that you have to spend mana on to get out.

Flames of the Kirin Tor lacks the consistency as to what kind of spell you’re getting. Sure it’s good at giving you spells from a school that typically doesn’t generate more stuff, but there isn’t enough Fire support to make this a sustainable strategy without something crazy like drafting 5 extra copies of Grand Magus Antonidas. 

Tier 5: Manastorm may be an Ultra Rare, but doesn’t give you direct advantage. The only thing it really does is accelerate the game, which you can mulligan for accordingly. After that, you don’t really have anything else to gain from that. Just like Unholy Gift, Runic Helm supplies you with lots of non-synergistic cards, only this time they fill up your hand directly. You’ll usually end up burning far more important cards when your hand is full of stuff that’s really hard to empty out due to how expensive they are. Additional mana is always great, but Mulch Madness’s condition is too strict to use. You need specifically neutral minions, have them survive until your next turn, AND kill them off to get just one temporary mana crystal.

Active Treasure Rankings

Active Ranking System

Tier 1 - Treasures that can win you the game on their own!

Tier 2 - Extremely useful treasures that can turn the game around when used at the right time.

Tier 3 - Helpful treasures which can capitalize on your current advantage or bring you back when you’re behind.

Tier 4 - Lackluster effects that won’t be super game-changing very often.

Tier 5 - Treasures that can easily backfire unless you have nothing to lose.

Active Treasure Ranks

Tier 1: The best of the active treasures are the ones that can effortlessly and efficiently destroy multiple enemy minions by itself. Staff of Scales and Wand of Disintegration do this better than all the others since they can kill several minions at once regardless of their Health. They can also handle Deathrattles that summon more stuff really well. Book of the Dead is usually a much cheaper option and even deals sizable damage to face. The only downside is that since a few things have to die to be efficient, it isn’t something you can reliably use to catch up on turn 5 like the previous two. Hyperblaster can kill anything across multiple turns, which will make your opponent hesitate when they would otherwise play a highly statted minion. Crusty the Crustacean is both a single target kill AND a big beatstick afterwards. As a legendary minion, you can even get an extra copy of the buffed crab with Disks of Legend.

Banana Split provides massive tempo even when used on a medium sized minion. When you choose a target that scales extremely well with more copies, then it can be the big swing that wins you the game if your opponent can’t deal with it. Royal Gift is an excellent finisher. With 2 minions on the board, it can be a Blessing of Kings. With even more, it can become a cheap unavoidable source of 14 damage! Wax Rager is the stickiest minion alive and can slowly deal 5 damage a turn endlessly if your opponent doesn't have a way to specifically get rid of it. Hunter’s Insight and Bag of Coins are fantastic staples amongst the normal treasures. They aren’t flashy, but mana discounting is everything in Hearthstone.

Tier 2: Vampiric Fangs can provide big Heal to classes the otherwise lack it and struggle against decks based around Magnetic Mines and Mind Tether, while functioning as targeted removal. Just like Vampiric Fangs, Necrotic Poison is super cheap targeted removal that doesn't lose much tempo when played. Late game, Grimmer Patron can combo with buffs to create a massive self-duplicating minion. Early game (even without buffs), he can snowball by creating more copies of himself than the opponent can handle. It’s very versatile and strongly incentivized your opponent to get rid of them all asap. The Exorcisor is fantastic at a way to deal with removing problem minion effects, buffs, or just general damage. Loyal Henchman and Clockwork Assistant are no more than slowly scaling cheap beatsticks, but they can get pretty big late game/run. 

Worshipper is another great staple. At its worst, it’s a well-statted minion that deals respectable damage. But if your opponent can’t get rid of it, you can start accumulating some really nifty board control and face damage.Party Portal at first looks like it’s supposed to be used to summon a big minion after you play an expensive spell. While you can do that, it’s more often used right before a chain of smaller spells to build up a board without needing to play any minions. It sometimes forces the opponent to either deal with the board or focus the portal to prevent even more minions from being summoned.

Tier 3: Out of all the three-stage treasures, Surly Mob is probably the best. In its final form, it's a cheaper Wand of Disintegration! If you can keep at least a few minions board, you can multiple the value of Gentleman's Top Hat by trading up and juggling the +2/+2 buff between your minions. It's especially abusable with Deathrattle triggering effects. Loyal Sidekick is a simple large taunt minion, that is pretty much always a tempo play, but doesn't usually do more that block some damage and maybe attack once or twice. There aren’t too many ways to capitalize on Bubba’s Battlecry, but it’s still a decent way to deal with a medium sized threat or clear a couple small minions without losing tempo. As great as all the keywords are that Gnomish Army Knife stacks onto a minion, its cost makes it hard to combo with. But when an opportunity to use it on the perfect minion presents itself, it can certainly turn the game around.

Pure Cold is a usable finisher that can also spare you a turn of damage from weapon heavy decks like those with Pillage the Fallen. Princess is a pretty good Deathrattle support Treasure, but its lack of instant impact makes it a little slow for Duels unless you can make use of it right away like if you have Rocket Backpacks or brought Death Games. Overpowered can duplicate anything, even other Treasures! It’s main limitation is in its Mana cost that prevents you from abusing it too much.

Phaoris' Blade can build up massive amounts of damage over time and can easily finish off your opponent at a certain point. It’s just rather difficult to ramp up that kind of damage. Several decks lack notable healing and most minions in Duels come with decent Attack, so a lot of them can’t afford to take so many minion hits. Those that can do much better with this snowballing weapon. Another weapon that warrants certain deck building is Jaws. Most decks have at least a couple Deathrattle minions, so you can reasonably expect this to become a 3/5. But when you or your opponent are running a large number Deathrattles, it can become a high durability behemoth of a weapon. The effect of Sow the Seeds by itself is Prince Keleseth without a deck restriction. This is a really powerful card, but it’s a bit slow in Duels where there are frequent powerful swing turns as opposed to accumulative payoff. 

Spyglass can snag a useful card for a mana efficient price a reliable amount of the time. Mindpocalypse benefits both players, which is a fair trade off since it’s a free spell that draws 2 and gives you a full Mana Crystal. The way this helps you though is you have the chance to play those extra cards and spend that additional mana first. Milling your opponent is also a niche way to use it if the opportunity arises.Dreamgrove Ring gives you the chance to load up your board with big and scary threats, but it robs you of the ability to do much else. There’s certainly a high probability that you’ll get more than your mana’s worth of minions on the board. But in Duels, if all you’re doing is summoning really big stuff, you’re gonna wanna do it much earlier than turn 9. Tiny Thimble is a regular Rush minion with vanilla stats, but gives you a Regular-Size Thimble, which is just a better Darius Crowley. A lot of Treasures are just a little better than existing collectable cards, but this one is a little better than most of those since it’s 2 minions in one, the Deathrattle can be taken advantage of, and the 2nd minion itself is above average and on curve with the first. Blood Moon has huge potential for a comeback when low on Health. But when you're in that position, it's hard to establish a big enough board to take advantage of the Lifesteal.

Wish looks like the ultimate comeback card, and in some ways it is. A full heal and board reload is an outstanding effect for a Treasure. The only thing holding it back is the cost. A lot of Duels decks are capable of securing the win before you get to turn 10. That’s pretty much it. It’s great at what it does and would probably be too strong if it were any cheaper. There’s just a lot of Treasures that may not do as much, but can be played a lot earlier and can keep you from falling behind in the first place. The Stone of Jordan comes with the standard 3-mana draw 2 effect, but also gives you a bit of extra damage and might provide even move if your draws are lucky.

* Supercharge insists that you have several minions already on board, which isn’t a huge problem for token decks. In fact, being a zero cost spell makes it a huge tempo boost for decks that already love doing that.

The remaining actives are nothing more than slightly improved versions of existing collectable cards. They’re fine and everything, but they lack anything special that lets them be more than just a little better than the average card.

Tier 4: Golden Kobold replaces all of the cards in your hand, which you don’t always want since you’ll typically be holding onto other Treasures for later. Fortunately, Hero Powers like Frost Shards and Bring on Recruits can just add stuff to your hand for the sole purpose of turning the minions into something much more useful. Most legendary minions have stats that will at least match the Mana you pay for Astral Portal. It’s still very hard to gauge your options the turn you plan to play it since the possible stats range from Chameleos to Deathwing.

Greedy Pickaxe ramps up mana only if you draw it early game. It's a tempo loss the turn you play it and even becomes a bad weapon after you already have 10 Mana. Archmage Staff is a free mage spell every turn, so long as you don’t equip any other weapons or attack with your hero. That’s pretty limiting in some classes. Just like before, the unmentioned Treasures have simple effects whose impact is barely any better than an ordinary Hearthstone card. Cards that give all of your minions a buff encourages token strategies. However, those deck would much rather spend such a large amount of mana on buffing what they have and push for game instead of giving them a Deathrattle with no immediate impact with Canopic Jars.

Beastly Beauty is a decent treasure in its own right, but at best it’s a (5) 8/8 that deals 2 damage to a minion. Not only that, it needs to hit something with 5 or less Attack and 2 or less Health to kill it and survive. It’s relatively better than a normal card, but lackluster compared to treasures. The main problem Embers of Ragnaros faces is its cost. Ideally you want all the fireballs to hit face, or sometimes take out a big minion you can’t otherwise get rid of. Most decks this late in the game usually end their turn with multiple minions or destroyed all of yours. Since Embers of Ragnaros is gonna be all you’re able to play most of the time, it’s really hard to make it work the way you want it to. Holy Book appears pretty good at first. Single target removal plus a 10/10 sounds amazing on one card. It’s just not enough to have it take up most of your turn. And there aren’t a lot of minions where having a giant copy of it is super good either. With how common removal is in Duels, they’ll oftentimes have an efficient way to deal with your 10/10 and just recover from the one minion they lost.

Coin Pouch, Creepy Curio, and Old Militia Horn all have really weak effects for their cost, and require you to play their upgraded versions to be considered worthwhile. The third version of these cards are the only ones really worth being called treasures. More often than not, you won’t even get to the point of drawing the second one. They’re just too slow and make you use two worse versions before you actually get the good effect. Overpowered is a rather misleading name for this treasure. At (3) mana, it’s pretty difficult to make impactful combos. Usually the best thing to duplicate in Duels is the treasure you got from the second pool. But since Overpowered IS one of them, that’s not an option.

While some decks can take full advantage of Princess’s effect, it’s just a really slow play. Following it up with Death Games is probably the best use for it. But those kinds of decks mostly summon vanilla minions with decent stats. So if you’re behind, not even its best combo does much to help. Having an endless treasure generator is good. Having to pay so much mana each time you use it is awful. The massive cost of Black Soulstone offsets the efficiency that makes treasures good in the first place. You don’t get to Discover the Diablo treasure either. You’ll spend most of your turn just getting the treasure, and still might not even be able to play it.

Tier 5: Amalgamate is an inefficient way to get a big minion on the board. It’s effectively turning all of your minions into one big target, which is easier to get rid of than a wide board. Deathcharger is just not big enough to justify a detrimental Deathrattle even with Charge. Puzzle Box sounds good at first glance. The problem is that the optimal time to use it is when your board is big and your opponent's is empty. But if that's the case you're already in a pretty good spot and don't really need it. It also doesn't help at all if you're behind. It's strictly a Win-More card, which aren't very good on their own. Chaos Theory can also backfire, but a perfectly timed one is actually capable of bailing you out of a situation. Even though you’re screwing with your opponent’s hand, you still have to be lucky to not have everything set you back even further. Butch starts out far too small to be particularly useful. You’d have to build a very Beast heavy deck to make it not useless. Even if you did, it’d likely just get in one attack then die on your opponent’s turn.

+ =

Tier GG: Quel'Delar is a treasure on a whole other level. It’s so strong it requires you to draft 2 specific treasures to even gain access to it. Once you have both the Blade and Hilt of Quel'Delar in your deck, they fuse and become the almighty Quel'Delar. It shreds through enemies like nothing else, dealing 16 total damage to minions. If all attacks hit face, you just dealt 32 damage to your opponent with one card.

This weapon also has some hidden secrets to it. The most important one is that it’s guaranteed to be in your hand by turn 1! If your deck is resilient enough to defeat an opponent with such a magnificent blade in their deck, you’ll receive one for yourself! I can’t say whether or not you should attempt to forge Quel'Delar (although it’s best to start early). It requires 2 treasures that might not even appear in the same run and each piece individually has roughly a 7% chance to appear. But since the payoff is so huge that it can get you 12 wins on its own, it might actually be worth trying to do if you accept the challenge! Or just crush someone who has it and take theirs; whichever works.

Class/Hero Strategies

Here we will list more specific strategies for each class and hero with their Hero Power, Treasure, and starting deck options. We even have deck lists that all have gotten at least 8 wins each!

Scarlet Leafdancer and Sai Shadestorm

Since both heroes are for the same class and have Hero Powers and Treasures that benefit Death Knight decks in non-specific ways, we’re merging them into one section. The only separate topics between the two will be the Hero Powers and starting Treasures, but everything else will mostly apply to both.

Scarlet Leafdancer Overview

Blood Parasite is probably to best Hero Power out of her three. Summoning a decent minion on Hero Power is viable on its own, but it also gives Death Knights an extra corpse to work with. Hematology has potential, but it spends corpses like crazy. A lot of Death Knight’s better cards either need those corpses, or don’t make more of them, so it’s challenging to make this Hero Power super impactful. Scourging sounds like a good value generator at first, but all of the bad minions that were retroactively changed to be classified as Undead makes the Discover choices below average a lot of the time.

Scourge Strike and Greatsword of the Ebon Blade are probably the more recommended choices for most decks in general. They’re just generically useful, which is not a bad thing as it doesn’t require you to build your deck around it while still being extremely strong. Runed Soulblade is a good weapon in its own right, but your opponent can play around it and waste its durability and potential. Ironweave Bloodletter is just healing, which is underwhelming in most scenarios but can keep you alive long enough against aggro to get your combos if you’re spending a ton of corpses. Crimson and Contagion Concoction are fairly situational.

Major Note: As of this guide’s update, Runed Soulblade seems to give Reborn to anything that's summoned, not just played (at least sometimes it does). This will likely be patched later, but this currently opens up the possibility to resurrect the same minion 5 separate times.

Sai Shadestorm Overview

Ghoul Blitz is a reliable source of 2 damage, which is always good on a Hero Power. You’ll also be getting a corpse each time you do! Gathering Storm accomplishes that too, but exchanges the minion aspect and 1 corpse for card draw, which is just as viable but for different strategies. Even though Lichborne Might effectively functions as +3 Attack to one of your minions and kills it, it has actually found success in Deathrattle heavy Death Knight decks, largely thanks to Mummy Magic.

Glaciaxe is definitely the go-to starting Treasure for Sai Shadestorm. It’s fairly good letting you distribute damage multiple times in a controlled way, and leaves you with 1/1s with reborn for board presence and extra corpses.

Gluth can make your existing board extremely sticky, but this functions more like a win-more card if anything. Inexorable Ghoul is a simple minion that’s just annoying for your opponent, but by no means bad. Remembrance of Ice and Gluth-sicle can be reasonably usable board reloads, though the former wants you to use your spells to kill instead of going face like Frost Death Knights tend to do and the ladder requires specific deckbuilding or luck to be a big swing. Unholy Embrace is a little too expensive (both in terms of mana and corpses) and makes it hard to use in Duels.

Potential Combos

• Pure Cold is a fairly common Treasure, and Lady Deathwhisper can duplicate it for extra burst damage.
• Alexandros Mograine, the usual win condition of Blood Death Knights, can excessively stack their effects with a handful of Treasures like Elixir of Vigor and Shadowcasting 101.
• Healing your hero with Heavy Armor, is annoying for the opponent, but adding the obtaining of maximum health from Vampiric Blood makes you nearly unkillable for multiple turns.
• Enrage is typically pretty subpar for a Treasure, but it's insane burst damage when you use it with the back half of Glaciaxe.

• * Plagues are insane in late runs, especially since you can continuously draft more cards that create them.

Starting Deck Suggestions

Since starting decks in Duels are 15 cards, there aren’t a ton of options for the class yet, and almost all of their cards are free for everyone. Death Knight’s most established archetypes are centered around investing all three deck Runes into one Rune type, and all three are viable in Duels. They’re not too hard to build, but we still want to a specific build for each Rune type. The Blood and Frost deck examples will resemble the builds a lot of players have been seen using. Unholy makes very few appearances, but we have a [RaptorWithWings] original deck that is the only Death Knight deck to reach 12 wins in testing.

Hero Power: Blood Parasite

Starting Treasure: Scourge Strike

Hero Power: Ghoul Blitz

Starting Treasure: Glaciaxe

Hero Power: Ghoul Blitz

Starting Treasure: Glaciaxe

Darius Crowley

Hero Overview

Major Note: As of this guide’s update, Crowley’s Cannon doesn’t know how to handle board placement when Locations are in play. All that was discovered through testing was that when a Location is to the left one of your cannons, it will act as though there were two spaces taken up. This is no doubt just a bug yet to be patched. It’s hard to test this to find a pattern when the Warrior Location is hard to run itself to place on the right and the opponent doesn’t always play one themselves. Until this is resolved, if anyone has noticed a pattern with the cannon’s interactions with enemy Locations, please leave your findings in the comments and we’ll update it.

Darius Crowley’s Hero Power is unique amongst the other heroes. All three deal damage, just in different ways. Fire! wants to keep killing minions to reset itself while Fire at Thee! is consistently twice that damage. Fire Away! is probably the most popular choice for the AOE Attack buff with the cannon damage acting as just a small bonus.

Safe Harbor is definitely the top pick. It works as a very cheap Mind Control except you lose the buffs but can use the Battlecry. You can even recycle the value of your own minions if you want to. Seabreaker Goliath is merely a beatstick that takes a while to discount. Its stats are enormous for sure, but it’s very vulnerable to removal. All other Treasures try to capitalize on cannon damage, with Grizzled Reinforcement and Draconic Munitions being the better ones since they last all game.

Starting Deck Suggestions 

• Rush decks are fairly viable in Duels thanks to Special Delivery, and Fire Away! lets all those minions deal even more damage.
• If you aren’t using your cannon very often, then Rokara the Valorous is a good replacement.

Potential Combos

As mentioned before, Seabreaker Goliath is simply a vanilla minion, granted one of the biggest there is. However, combining it with Charge (Plus Battleground Battlemaster for potentially a near OTK) is significant burst damage worthy of considering.

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Fire Away!

Starting Treasure: Safe Harbor

Creator Notes: This is a Rush Warrior deck. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Reno Jackson

Hero Overview

Rogues and Mages have always had an affinity for good cheap spells, and this combo of classes definitely embodies it. Aside from Reno's Crafty Lasso, all of the other starting Treasures synergize with spells the two classes are good at using. Both classes even have Secrets that work towards Sr. Tomb Diver’s Battlecry. All of Reno’s Hero Powers consist of some form of damage, so pick the one that best suits the play style you’re going for.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Plenty of things benefit from "Relicologist", but the best combos are with AOE damage or Cram Session.
• Ignite is banned, but Reno's Magical Torch acts as an even BETTER one. With enough card draw, it can deal enough face damage to win you the game as you build up massive damage with it.
• Rogues have new Secret support, and for Reno that means so do Mages. You have the option of running more Secrets that curve better so you can play Sr. Tomb Diver or cast the Mage ones far more efficiently with things like Private Eye or Sparkjoy Cheat.
• * With both Mages and Rogues having successful Mech archetypes, combining the best cards from both makes for a versatile threat at all stages.

Potential Combos

Rogue was a safe class to put Swiftscale Trickster in because of the class’s general lack of majorly impactful high cost spells. However, Reno has the special attribute of being part Mage that allows him to play this minion and follow it up with something insane like Drakefire Amulet or Rune of the Archmage as early as turn 4!

Example Starting Deck

Gone Fishin', Secret Passage,  Wand Thief, Ancient Mysteries, Anonymous Informant, Arcanologist, Double Cross, Kidnap, Sticky Situation, Counterspell, Explosive Runes, Ghastly Gravedigger, Spellbender, Commander Sivara, Jandice Barov

Hero Power: Arcane Craftiness

Starting Treasure: Sr. Tomb Diver

Creator Notes: I chose to take the Sr. Tomb Diver route for Secret Reno. What this deck lacks in viability it makes up for in absolute chaotic fun after getting the Treasure finding Hero Power!

Sir Finley 

Hero Overview

Finley has some fairly versatile Hero Power that aren’t necessarily tied to a specific game plan, but they are particularly more useful in certain ones. New "Recruits" is a great tool in general that functions really well in any tribe-centric strategy such as Murlocs or Mechs. Bubble Blower helps complete Corrupt the Waters without having to use too many of the Battlecries in your deck that presumably have higher value on average than ones you just Discover. Basically any minion wouldn’t mind a Power Up!. However, the best way to use this is with big minions; which Handbuff Paladins tend to get a lot of. Karl the Lost and Sr. Scout are fantastic starting Treasure picks that don’t need to be in a specific deck to perform well. Scales of Justice is also a great tool for dealing with a troublesome enemy board. If you aren’t super reliant on keeping powerful minions on the board (or better yet using a Murloc deck), it’s a great comeback card that also reloads your whole hand!

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Truesilver Lance is also a powerful Treasure that has potentially infinite value, especially if you use it alongside Finley’s Overload Hero Powers.
• Giving a handbuffed minion Windfury with Power Up! is great, but the Divine Shield it comes with also helps the cards that want your minions to lose Divine Shield like Prismatic Jewel Kit and Highlord Fordragon.

Potential Combos

If you manage to keep Highlord Fordragon on board before you use Karl the Lost’s effect or vice versa, you can potentially pile on an absurd amount of stats onto you hand’s minions.

Example Starting Deck

Corrupt the Waters, Amalgam of the Deep, Battle Vicar, Manafeeder Panthara, Seafloor Savior, Sleetbreaker, Alliance Bannerman, Brilliant Macaw, Instructor Fireheart, Venomous Scorpid, Blademaster Okani, Crud Caretaker, Theotar, the Mad Duke, Hammer of the Naaru, Mutanus the Devourer

Hero Power: Bubble Blower

Starting Treasure: Scales of Justice

Creator Notes: Battle Totem is an Ultra Rare Treasure, but Corrupt the Waters is the next best thing. Bubble Blower really helps push the Quest forward and can provide even more Battlecries to double when it’s finished.

Elise Starseeker

Hero Overview

Druidic Teaching is a very potent draw engine. It’s good for any archetype that’s control oriented, which applies to most decks people choose to run as Elise. Elise's Might isn’t a half bad generic tool and Starseeker is just a source of free damage if your deck is primarily spells. As control is the most common game plan for Elise decks, Addarah is naturally the most picked starting Treasure since it comes with one of the strongest types of removal in the game. Academic Research provides quite a large mana ramp if drawn early enough. For aggressive strategies, Elise's Machete is a fantastic choice as it provides plenty of damage and Rush stats all in one reasonably priced weapon!

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Spells the play tons of spells to trigger Starseeker consistently act as fantastic enablers for the slower and more powerful Naga effects like Priestess Valishj, Handmaiden, and Queen Azshara.
• Druid’s ability to draw and generate cards and Druidic Teaching makes Seek Guidance notably easier to complete.
• Priests already had good ways to play with Deathrattles, and Castle Nathria gave Druids ways to push that strategy even further!

• Both Priests and Druids have cards to support an Undead archetype, and Elise has the option to use the best of both.

Potential Combos

As a half Druid half Priest, Elise can easily play Nature, Arcane, Holy, AND Shadow spells. This can make Multicaster‘s Battlecry ridiculously powerful!

Example Starting Deck

Aquatic Form, Lingering Zombie, Murmy, Psychic Conjurer, Wither, Amalgam of the Deep, Mind Eater, Nerubian Flyer, Haunting Nightmare, Nerubian Vizier, Shadowed Spirit, Grave Digging, High Cultist Baseleph, Arbor Up, Elder Nadox

Hero Power: Starseeker

Starting Treasure: Elise's Machete

Creator Notes: Build similarly to Token Druid, but has a different kind of support. It may not have as much Nature abuse, it does take advantage of cards Druids would love to use but can’t like Palm Reading and Priestess Valishj.

Brann Bronzebeard

Hero Overview

Brann’s most notable Hero Power is Dino Tracking, which almost any deck would love to have. It greatly improves the consistency in your deck. There is another successful archetype though that uses Spread Shot; that being Questline Hunter. The final reward will let you chip away at enemy health even when you’re using the Hero Power as minion removal. Ol' Faithful and Titan-Forged Grapnel are excellent removal tools, where the former is extremely aggressive and the ladder being great for control. If you feel that you don’t need the removal, Sr. Excavator can be an amazing draw option for minion heavy decks or Brann's Saddle if many of them are Beasts.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Minions like Mankrik and Ambassador Faelin put other cards in your deck as their whole effect. Dino Tracking can target those cards to gain their value sooner than normal.
• Defend the Dwarven District is even stronger as Brann given how many damaging spells Warriors have on top of what Hunters use.

Potential Combos

The first reward from Raid the Docks pulls a weapon out of your deck, which can give you guaranteed access to Ol' Faithful if you have no other weapons!

Example Starting Deck

Defend the Dwarven District, Barbed Nets, Slam, Tracking, Bash, Furious Howl, Man the Cannons, Minefield, Warpath, Aimed Shot, Dragonbane Shot, Shellshot, Flanking Strike, Marked Shot, Barak Kodobane, 

Hero Power: Spread Shot

Starting Treasure: Brann's Epic Egg

Creator Notes: Now that Witchwood cards are available for starting decks, Warpath is a fantastic way to both progress the Questline and refresh the Hero Power.

Drek’Thar and Vanndar have wildly different strategies between their Hero Powers and treasures because of their whole gimmick of being accessible to 5 classes. Instead of giving an example deck list for each class, we’ll highlight some of the stronger combos that the treasures can have with starting cards.

Drek'thar

Hero Overview

Warmaster's Frenzy is mostly just synergistic with Warrior, but it thankfully has Warrior as its starting allied class. The strategies are pretty straight forward; take advantage of self-damage effects. The other four classes are good at using Harness the Elements, as most of them are typically spell-heavy. War Commands can work in any of kind of deck that can make great use of the cheap neutral minions drawn.

Class Synergies

• Warrior - As mentioned before, Warmaster’s Frenzy is very well-suited for Warriors. It’s a pretty control oriented Hero Power, so it allow you to stack up effects like Armorsmith and keep gaining attack from killing weak enemy minions.
• Shaman - Just like any other powerful spell at Shaman’s disposal, Diligent Notetaker is great at replicating the value to be played later. But now that Elemental Chaos exists, there’s an amazing signature treasure for copying as well! Nature combos are also even easier when you draw and discount their spells with Harness the Elements.
• Warlock - Despite not being known for running lots of spells, even Warlocks can use Harness the Elements to gain the value of their Fel Rifts from Pact of the Lich or Seeds of Destruction.
• Mage - It should be no surprise how well Mages can use Harness the Elements. Stacking cheap spells can build up Magister Unchained to be a serious draw engine.
• Druid - The earliest value gained from Gift of the Heart instantly sets you at full mana. This treasure encourages you to run Wildheart Guff and the big cards it supports so you can gain this insane ramp at later points in the game too! 

• Pure Neutral - With how many options you’re cutting out when you eliminate class cards, you can afford to lean into gaining constant value from War Commands while For the Horde! backs you up with whatever you may otherwise lack from your initial deck.

   

Vanndar

Hero Overview

Promote! is a nifty generic Hero Power that most decks are capable of using on some level. Paladins can make the most of this with how many minions they have that like their buffs. Send in the Scout is also a possible option. It has great synergy with Thief Rogue, but can also function in a couple types of Deathrattle decks. Battle Tactics reigns as one of the strongest of the newer Hero Powers. Not only is this super mana efficient, it’s lets you play huge minions so much earlier than they’re supposed to. Since it only benefits big neutral minions, it can ultimately work in any deck that can maintain control while they snowball their advantage.

Class Synergies

• Paladin - Forge in Light creates a huge setup for Handbuff strategies, and uniquely provides Divine Shield as part of that handbuff. Things that summon copies of themselves or have Rush gain drastic advantage from this.
• Rogue -  The SI:7 Scouts summoned by Send in the Scout really helps Thief Rogue’s game plan of adding and using other class’s cards. Having a reliable way of generating  those cards without having to run them in your deck is extremely convenient.
• Hunter - Stalker's Supplies by itself is a below average treasure that only adds actually great cards to your deck, but nothing else. The way you actually WANT to use this is alongside things that cast Secrets straight out of your deck like Mad Scientist and Inconspicuous Rider. This way you’re using what’s already an efficient way of casting Secrets, with those Secrets being extremely good.
• Demon Hunter - Rending Ambush benefits the same type of decks that would like to use Proving Grounds , except they attack enemy minions instead of each other! You can cheat out your big demons for cheap, hit a couple minions, and get their effects on the board for one big turn.
• Priest - Devout Blessings is a pretty straightforward treasure that reloads your hand with Deathrattles. Any deck that already takes advantage of Xyrella, the Devout will have a very effective hand reload up their sleeve.

• Pure Neutral - With Battle Tactics being such a good Hero Power, it’s pretty easy to just build a deck that only wants to use large neutral minions while For the Alliance! supplements the lack of most other tools sacrificed to build such a deck.

Demon Hunter

Hero Overview

Currently, the most used Hero Power for Demon Hunters at the moment has been Illidari Strike. With Wyrm Bolt and Bring on Recruits being so prevalent, people often use it as a card-free way to handle them. It’s almost always used alongside Gift of the Legion as a repeatable way to gain Attack; usually working as a substitute for the other 2 Hero Powers. Infernal Strike is still good enough to use, but it has become a little harder to regularly take damage from attacking minions to build up a meaningful number of Second Slices. Mo'arg Outcast remains an extremely strong treasure. It just takes some work to get the cards where you want in your hand.

* Outlanderhas changed functionality entirely. Now instead of an inconsistent attack gain effect, you can resupply your hand with Fel spells when you cast your typically cheap Outcast spells even if you don’t get the Outcast bonus. It can be pretty handy if you’re regularly playing a ton of cards each turn.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Soul Fragments have direct synergy with each other, consistent bucket support, and do well alongside Battlecry related treasures.
• Death Synergy (like Wrathscale Naga and Nethrandamus) adds to Illidari Strike and Gift of the Legion value.
• Demon Hunter’s Deathrattle cards might be awkward in early rounds with so many deck thinners and so few cards, but there are enough buckets and treasures you can draft to make the deck much more consistent.
• Jace Darkweaver and a few other minions made running a few Fel spells actually not too bad of a choice.
• There's enough Big Demon support to allow this archetype to hold its own in Duels.

• Fel spell decks that manage to draft Corrupted Felstone give a massive boost to Coilskar Commander!

• Illidari Strike can proc the effects of Infuse cards by itself.

• Relics are hard to use in the beginning since you can only take one of each, but you can draft more and even get a Relic Vault from Location, Location, Location!

• * Outlander in addition to Demon Hunter's Outcast package allows those types of  decks to keep gaining fuel after cycling through a lot of their cards.

Potential Combos

The fact that Illidari Strike summons Rush minions usually doesn’t matter unless the first kills the target and you still have your second one to attack something else. But this opens up unique interactions with rare Rush synergies, most notably Potion of Sparking. When it comes to the super rare treasures, Demon Hunters can easily make extra use of Stargazing. It can not only turn Infernal Strike into 2 free damage, but also give you an extra Second Slice when you kill a minion!

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Infernal Strike

Starting Treasure: Mo'arg Outcast

Creator Notes: Corrupted Felstone turns Lady S'theno and Coilskar Commander into absolute monsters! Even if you don’t get it, the other Fel Treasure is good as well.

Druid

Hero Overview

All of Omu’s Hero Powers have their place in the meta. Nature's Gifts is a good generic choice that can also give certain spells like Swipe massive value. Harvest Time! helps token strategies and is also a potential removal tool for big threats. Invigorating Bloom is often used with several expensive, high impact cards. Warden's Insight is a popular Starting Treasure because of its flexibility between two good effects. Awakened Ancient is also worth taking as a defensive hand reload. Marvelous Mycelium is good at generating some high quality good cards.

* Moonbeast is way better as a stand alone Treasure since it can at minimum generate both eclipses. If it lives, it's great for spell spamming.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• The Survival of the Fittest/Carnival Clown combo is much more effective when you can reduce the cost with Invigorating Bloom.
• Guardian Animals and 5-cost Beasts get a lot of support in drafts.
• There is also a fair amount of spell-based Tokens cards that can work with spell-based treasures for maximum aggression.
• Nature's Gifts can complete Lost in the Park at a decent rate without having to pack a whole bunch of Attack gaining cards.
• Beast-based Token strategies have enough cards to construct a starting deck now.
• Topior the Shrubbagazzor makes already good Nature Treasures drastically more potent.

• * There’s a lot of good Choose One support, and a lot of those and the Choose One spells themselves happen to be Nature. It’s easy to take advantage of that with the good passives Nature spells can get.

Potential Combos

• With all the AOE buffs that Druids have, Double Time can be extra deadly with no risk of backfire since random targets aren’t a factor.
• Any cost reducing Treasure helps Druids a lot due to how much they excel with Mana Cheating.
• Jerry Rig Carpenter can give you both versions of Warden's Insight.

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Harvest Time!

Starting Treasure: Warden's Insight

Creator Notes: This is just purely Token Druid taking advantage of the free tempo made by Nature Treasures.

Hunter

Hero Overview

With all the available cards Hunters have access to in Duels, Deathrattles are definitely the go-to archetype. Death Games is the ultimate Deathrattle Hero Power and can capitalize on quite a few minions. Bonecrusher and Deathstrider also fit perfectly into that kind of game plan, with the former being great with big minions and the latter preferring cheap ones to combo with. Some people opt for Savage Secrets to gain the card advantage Hunters generally lack, only there aren’t really any treasures that can abuse Secrets as well as Deathrattles.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Death Games can trigger any Deathrattle. Since the target is random though, you’ll have to be aware of what goes in your deck. You don’t want a weak or detrimental Deathrattle to intercept the trigger from a powerful one.
• Secrets get decent bucket support. They’re also a great secondary archetype for a deck so you don’t have to be entirely reliant on one type of bucket.
• A deck centered around Deathrattles that summon a lot of extra minions is both accessible and supported with buckets.

• Survival Training can actually use the rewards of Defend the Dwarven District and is even more effective than the base Hunter Hero Power.

Potential Combos

• Be on the lookout for Teron Gorefiend. With Deathrattle triggers, he’s a minion that summons minions that summon minions. If your opponent can’t deal with it, he can repeatedly summon minions that summon minions.

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Death Games

Starting Treasure: Deathstrider

Creator Notes: Deathrattles themselves are good enough to carry Hunters with Death Games. But since so many of them summon, it’s now viable to include some of the better Infuse cards.

Mage

Hero Overview

Wyrm Bolt and Frost Shards are similar in popularity because they're direct upgrades from Mage's normal Hero Power. Since Duels games can go on for so long, the most common Treasure is Infinite Arcane. This can also specifically shutdown bomb Warriors most of the time. Elemental Learning is also a fantastic card for Mana-efficient resources. Occasionally Embercaster can be a game changer, but it needs to be combo’d with just the right card. It’s still very good, the previous two are just easier to use.

* Wand of Dueling is a net total of 1-mana 5 damage. With Mozaki’s damaging Hero Powers, it makes for an annoying early/mid game source of small board swings.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• The 2 popular Mage Hero Powers can easily be abused with Hero Power related cards, most notably Wildfire and Reckless Apprentice.
• There is so much spell support you can draft that a healthy mix of card generation and damage can make a lot of things work.
• Arcane spells specifically have better treasures associated with them than others, so it’s worth the investment.
• Mages have plenty of good Elemental buckets, as well as a Hero Power that can consistently supply them for you should you happen to run out of Elemental-last-turn triggers.
• Fire spells have support now, and Flame Waves is so good, it can actually be work trying to get a hold of by having a majority if not entirety of you spells be Fire.
• Skeleton Mage is helped out by Treasures like Location, Location, Location!, Brittle Bones, and any of the Frost Passives.
• Mage finally has actual Arcane support it can start a run with to use alongside the Arcane related Passives.

• People are using Secret Studies now to draw out secrets that satisfy the conditions for Sorcerer's Gambit.

Potential Combos

• While it’s usually hard to save a treasure to combo with a specific card is hard in Duels, you can reliably have Open the Waygate  right at the start of the game. If you get three copies of Book of the Dead with Embercaster (or Time Warp if you’re extra lucky), that’s a win condition on its own!

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Wyrm Bolt

Starting Treasure: Ember Caster

Paladin

Hero Overview

Currently, the top Paladin Duels decks revolve around Humble Blessings. The next best is centered around legendary minions and use From Golden Light and Royal Greatsword to gain massive advantage. Humble Blessings can use Bring on Recruits or Modest Aspirations.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Running Secrets with Sword of the Fallen and Mad Scientist can help you thin out your deck and dig for Humble Blessings.
• The 3 most used starting cards that take full advantage of Humble Blessings are Onyxia the Broodmother, Derailed Coaster, and Day at the Faire (or anything that summons several Silver Hand Recruits).
• The 3 most used starting cards that take full advantage of Royal Greatsword are Kel'Thuzad, Ragnaros the Firelord, and Turalyon, the Tenured.
• There are already good treasures to support Divine Shield strategies. If you draft Avenging Armaments while you’re running the new handbuff cards, you can put big numbers on minions in both you hand and board with little extra effort.
• Recent Silver Hand support allows Rise to the Occasion to perform much better than before.
• Paladin’s Mech package work extremely well with the Divine Shield Treasures.
• Avenging Armaments and Righteous Reserves are powerhouses with all the Divine Shield support Paladins have.

Potential Combos

• Humble Blessings can do very well in a deck built around it, but its power skyrockets if you also have From the Swamp to summon a 3/3 for every enemy that dies!
• Avenging Armaments after playing Lothraxion the Redeemed will make every Silver Hand Recruit you summon a much bigger nuisance for your opponent.

• If you get X-21 Repairbot out before any other minions, you can continuously stack Magnetic mechs onto it, and resurrect it with From Golden Light as many times as you want until you play other minions or it gets Silenced, Transformed, or Bounced.

Example Starting Deck 

Hero Power: From Golden Light

Starting Treasure: Favored Racer

Creator Notes: The fact that most of the minions are mechs is mostly for the internal support it has. This is aiming to heavily capitalize on Avenging Armaments.

Priest

Hero Overview

Illucia has a Hero Power for both aggro and control decks, and both are quite good. Decks that pick Shadow Mend usually run C'Thun, the Shattered as something they’re trying to build into throughout the game. Mind Tether can easily chip away at your opponent’s Health by using spells that also generate more spells like Palm Reading and Shadow Visions. Both decks usually pick Shadow Word: Void as their Starting Treasure. It’s a cheap selective removal that creates an annoying board your opponent has to deal with. Scion of the Deep gives you the option of cheating out a big spell relatively early, and can steal games in the right opening hand.

* Shadow Word: Void remains fairly good single-target removal while developing a board that slowly chips away at enemy health if they don’t deal with it. Fractured Spirits can potentially be used to duplicate your own minions, but ideally is best for stealing the effects of one from your opponent while silencing away most of its usefulness.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Both popular decks run Spell focused strategies, many featuring Lyra the Sunshard as a spell engine.
• Xyrella is great with Shadow Mend as well as any other Healing you pick up along the way.
• Healing is recommended for Mind Tether users so you can outlast other aggro deck or mirror matches.
• Holy spells don’t have much support in Priest at the moment, but they do largely take the forms of healing and removal. Running Mind Tether and managing to snag Divine Illumination as your first passive can give you the resource cycling and control you need to gun down the opponent with your Hero Power.
• Shadow Priest support really helps the Mind Tether game plan.
• Xyrella, the Devout lets Deathrattle strategies become even stronger than they already are in Duels.
• Dragon decks are extremely good in Duels with Kazakusan. Just remember that you may have to draft non-dragons at some point.

Potential Combos

Shadow Visions loves abusing Treasures, whether it’s Discovering a Treasure in your deck, or combining with the many Treasures that has to do with Discover, Shadow, and spells in general.

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Mind Tether

Starting Treasure: Shadow Word: Void

Creator Notes: Basically everything is removal or gives you more stuff. With Mind Tether that’s pretty much all you need to win.

Rogue

Hero Overview

The Rogue Hero Powers all seem to encourage decks with the ability to activate combo effects. Many choose Connections to gain combo triggers and extra resources. Roguish Maneuvers is also a good source of damage and gives you something to use your weapon cards with. Ace in the Hole works well in both decks, but sometimes weapon rogues will take Deadly Weapons 101 instead for the damage spike.

* Vile Concoction can give Rogue’s generally weak minions some actual threat potential, while also slowly building up high value Concoctions.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Rogues haven’t had many minions that are big on their own, so try to add minions whose real value is in their effects. Swashburglar and Wand Thief are great for cheap card generation.
• Weapon Synergy should only be in decks with Roguish Maneuvers, or you could get stuck with cards you can’t play if you don’t have any weapons drafted.
• Kingsbane can make the huge weapon buff from Deadly Weapons 101 permanent.
• Beckoning Bicorn is the perfect Treasure to make Pirate Rogues work at any stage of a Duels Run.
• * Mech Rogue is a deck that’s string enough by itself without needing to rely on a passive.

Potential Combos 

• Rally the Troops is amazing in any class, but is a little bit special for Rogues. This passive can fatigue some decks if a game goes on too long, but Rogue uniquely have the power to shuffle more stuff into their deck to keep cranking out value from it. Also, Rogue lacks an iconic spell type and several minion mechanics. It's exempt from a lot of the 2nd passives, so they’ll actually be offered this Treasure more often than other classes!

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Roguish Maneuvers

Starting Treasure: Ace in the Hole

Creator Notes: Pirates are usable, but not as abusable since it lacks a Secondary Passive to maximize value on. That being said, it isn’t reliant on a specific Treasure to be useful either. It’s independently good and can simply pick whichever Treasure best suits what you have at that point.

Shaman

Hero Overview

Fireheart’s Hero Powers vary quite a bit in what they do. Stormcatcher is the most used one due to how much Mana you can save with it, especially with Chaos Storm. Ferocious Flurry is a strong generic choice that can turbo out the effects and damage of weapons like Tempest's Fury. This leaves Totemic Power rarely used, but it still a nifty choice for decks that would like to summon a decent minion on a Hero Power.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Most Overload cards are worth taking alongside Stormcatcher, but don’t forget to also throw in some ways to keep up card advantage to combat decks resilient enough to outlast the Overload cheating.
• Shamans have so many AOE Spells to take advantage of, so those combined with good Spell Damage minions can keep the opponent’s board under control while you set up yours.
• Running only Nature spells and Elementals has proven to be really good thanks to Primal Dungeoneer. This can also work in Duels since plenty of buckets can offer more support for it. Sure more spell-based treasures aren’t Nature, and the Dungeoneer doesn’t get the bonus effect if it gets drawn. But that means you just tutored out your treasure, which is usually more valuable than just getting the extra Elemental.
• Command the Elements is extremely easy to complete when Stormcatcher can ignore all the Overload.
• There are a couple decent Frost-based treasures that can push Freeze Shaman plays further.
• Totems have just enough support now to function fairly well in Duels, especially with The Stonewright and Totemic Power being able to summon Totem Giant.
• There are a couple decent Frost-based treasures that can push Freeze Shaman plays further.
• Nature decks get fantastic passives in Duels, so using those spells and possibly Overload related cards can be a great start.

Potential Combos

• Diligent Notetaker is perfect to duplicate spell Treasures.

Example Starting Deck 

Hero Power: Totemic Power

Starting Treasure: Payload Totem Specialist

Creator Notes: This is built with the better Totems and support for it (mostly like an Even Shaman). It also includes a few cheap Overload cards to have Totemic Power have its good effect active a fair amount of the time.

Warlock

Hero Overview

Warlocks have access to Dark Arts, a massive cycling engine commonly used to search out C'Thun, the Shattered pieces. You can also run cards with effects when discarded to even gain even more advantage. Soulcial Studies gives your Soul Fragment generators additional tempo. They run as many as possible to maximize the effect and draft every Soulciologist Malicia as possible. Demon Blood is occasionally seen with decks that run a ton of Demons to surprise their opponent with a sudden big, cheap minion.

* Gift of the Old Gods has the standard rate of card draw, but this allows you to play the strong versions of Corrupt cards on curve!

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Dark Arts loves discard synergy.
• Whether or not you use Soulcial Studies, Soul Fragments are a solid choice for starting decks. They have direct synergy with each other, consistent bucket support, and do well alongside Battlecry related Treasures.
• For Soulcial Studies users, when you run out of Soul Fragment generators and no longer need the Hero Power, you can swap to Lord Jaraxxus and begin the assault of 6/6s.
• Since you can pick what you discard with Dark Arts, it's safe to run tech cards like Harrison Jones. If you don't need him, you can just get rid of him to draw something you actually want.
• Demon Blood got buffed and Imps are a force to be reckoned with.
• * Sargeras, the Destroyer stands out over all the other Titans. Since Duels games tend to be longer than normal ones, the portal he opens can slowly out-value your opponent.

Potential Combos

• Demonizer and sometime Killmox, the Banished One can be duplicated with Felosophy.
• Killmox is technically a Legendary minion, so you can get an extra copy from Disks of Legend.

• Staff of Pain can really push the progress and value of The Demon Seed.

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Dark Arts

Starting Treasure: Killmox, the Banished One

Warrior

Hero Overview

All of the Warrior Hero Powers are offensive and defensive capabilities in their own right. Magnetic Mines is the most used and serves as its deck’s win condition given that they maintain Armor long enough; all of which take Scrapmetal Demolitionist to further this strategy. Bruising is usually used with Rush and Charge minions to have them attack twice, especially Brewster, the Brutal. No Guts, No Glory is simply flexible between damage and defense that can trigger on-damage effects like Auto-Armaments or Frenzy minions.

Starting Deck Suggestions

• Magnetic Mines insist on constantly having Armor, so almost any card that consistently provides it is worth taking.
• C'Thun, the Shattered is a decent choice to give yourself something to wait for if you want to play defensively.
• Ringmaster Whatley has encouraged a Menagerie style deck for warriors and does so pretty well. With Kresh, Lord of Turtling and Mutanus the Devourer, there are now enough good minions with types to have N'Zoth, God of the Deep fill the whole board without having to find mediocre alternatives.

• Outside of massive early-game swings, Duels have a tendency to last longer than normal games. The infinite value from The Juggernaut after completing Raid the Docks can stand out more than in normal Hearthstone games.

Potential Combos

• If you have Bruising, Lord Barov can almost always clear the board on his own.
• Little known fact, if you play Grommash Hellscream and use Bruising to have it attack something and get damaged, it still gets to keep its Charge attack to go face with.
• Out of all the Starting Treasures that scale throughout the run, Scrapmetal Demolitionist is probably the most deadly. It’s an easy source of several bombs, but Battle Totem can load up a huge chunk of your opponent’s deck with bombs while also giving you a pretty good amount of Armor.

Example Starting Deck

Hero Power: Magnetic Mines

Starting Treasure: Scrapmetal Demolitionist

Conclusion

I hope this extensive guide helps you rake in those wins! Is there something you think I missed or have a strategy you'd like to share? Lets us know in the comments so everyone can build off of each other's experiences!