Masters Tour Las Vegas starts in just a few days on June 14. Spectators and players alike shouldn’t expect to see a meta much like Grandmasters. If anyone has been taking a look at the decks winning in the Masters Qualifiers, they’ll notice the meta is quite different. Here are some of the decks with the highest potential to win in Las Vegas.
Bomb Warrior and Shark Rogue both have the most competitors making top eights and qualifying in Masters Qualifiers. These two decks are also two of the most played decks in Grandmasters. It would be expected for most of the field to be bringing one of these two decks at Masters Tour Las Vegas.
Cyclone Mage is an archetype that is very popular in Grandmasters but has been struggling overall with a less than 50 percent win rate in the league. However, in Masters Qualifiers, the deck is less popular but has performed greatly when it has had the opportunity. Do expect to see a lot of this RNG-heavy deck.
Midrange Hunter is the fourth most popular deck in the Grandmasters league. However, it is much more popular in Masters Qualifiers than Cyclone Mage. It doesn’t seem to be nearly as good either, sporting just a 47 percent win rate across its last 600 games in Masters Qualifiers. It’s hard to say if it will be more popular than Cyclone Mage come the end of this week.
There’s actually one more deck that is also more popular than Cyclone Mage in Masters Qualifiers. That deck is Mech or Bomb Hunter. The win rate discrepancy is way higher between Grandmasters and Masters Qualifiers as well. In Grandmasters, it has just a 20 percent win rate, while it has a 54 percent win rate in Masters Qualifiers across its last 440 games. Maybe at the highest level of play its not as good, but it will likely be all over the place in Vegas.
Because of the rise of popularity of other Tempo Rogues, the original has been renamed to Raiding Party Rogue. This deck runs all of the same card inclusions as before it was nerfed. This puts it in a unique position, obviously a worse deck, many still believe it to be the best deck.
The difference is the navigation of the first four turns. EVIL Miscreant becomes much more important without the ability to play a free Raiding Party. If the Rogue can properly set up a swing turn with Waggle Pick plus a couple of Dread Corsairs, they typically win the game.
A deck that hasn’t seen much play in Grandmasters but might be just plainly good is Holy Wrath Paladin. It has a 56 percent win rate in Grandmasters and a 67 percent win rate in Masters Qualifiers top eights. The win rate drops to 48 percent in Swiss rounds, but this is likely due to the deck’s difficulty.
Holy Wrath Paladin is probably the most difficult deck to pilot in the meta right now. It requires careful knowledge of the break points for damage and proper usage of removal. Knowing the right times to stall the game with Time Out before committing to a clear can be crucial. However, if it reaches it and executes its game plan, nothing can really beat it. It can even sideboard against Warrior with the Da Undatakah package.
Outright Control Warrior has also seen good success in Qualifiers. All of the Grandmasters seem to think that Bomb Warrior is just a better version of the deck, but sometimes Bomb Warrior doesn’t have enough defensive options and has to rely on Bomb draws.
As spectators, we are all really hoping for a “meta breaker” deck to take Masters Tour Las Vegas by storm. There have been a handful of oddball decks in Masters Qualifiers that have helped propel players to qualifying spots.
One of those decks was Midrange Shaman. It is sort of an amalgamation of everything that is good in Shaman right now. It has the Thunderhead Overload Package, the Battlecry Shudderwock Package, and the value generation from Hagatha the Witch. This deck helped two different players win Qualifiers.
Another deck that has potential is Pogo Rogue. This deck was actually spotlighted in the Grandmasters league. It sat right around fifty percent but its strengths against slow acting decks was easily emphasized.
Mech Paladin is a new deck that has seen a fair amount of play in Masters Qualifiers but very little in Grandmasters. This deck seems it may have some polarizing match ups but might be a decent mix in the field.
Murloc Shaman is certainly a deck that could see some action in Las Vegas. It hasn’t been brought once in Grandmasters but is a fairly popular deck choice in Masters Qualifiers. It does require some high rolling to win, but it seems like every deck needs to do that in some capacity right now.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via their official website.
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