We are three days into the Rastakhan meta, and some cards seem pretty good after a few thousand games played with them. Hunter is being grossly overplayed to start, and has some of the early card winners in Rastakhan’s Rumble.
Everybody Loves Hunter
Hunter is far and away the most played class to start off the expansion. Whether it’s the excitement of playing the new Hero card Zul’jin, or that Hunter decks are generally pretty cheap in dust cost, it has also been rather successful.
Secret Hunter is sitting above a 60 percent winrate on the ladder and the new cards have helped out a lot with that cause. Bloodscalp Strategist is a three mana 2/4, that while you have a weapon equipped will discover a spell. With both Candleshot and Eaglehorn Bow in the Secret Hunter deck, this condition is often easily met. Hunter spells are often hit or miss, but due to the lack of draw in Hunter the card is good.
Masked Contender is the spiritual successor to Mad Scientist. This three mana 2/4 will play a secret from your deck if you already control a secret. Arguably a better card than Mad Scientist since the effect is immediate; a deck full of secrets should have no problem playing this card.
Then, we have the competitive dominating Deathrattle Hunter enjoying the addition of Oondasta. In a deck full of a few large beasts, the Overkill effect on Oondasta is guaranteed to pull something good. This combined with seven Rush damage, and Deathrattle Hunter has another strong way to close out games.
Odd Mage and OTK Paladin
Odd Mage is a deck a lot of pros say is missing something. Despite that, the deck still enjoys a 60 plus percent win rate. This charge is being led by the Mage’s Loa, Jan’alai, the Dragonhawk. It turns out that summoning Ragnaros is still just a really good play.
Pyromaniac is another really strong card, as it allows the mage to draw cards without having to completely sacrifice tempo by playing something like Arcane Intellect. Daring Fire Eater allows Mage to quickly fulfill the Jan’alai requirement of eight damage by letting the next Hero power do four damage.
OTK Paladin has seen some major upgrades to the deck. Its survivability is almost unmatched by any other deck and stalling out for the combo is made much easier. High Priest Thekal converting all but one health to armor allows Paladin to efficiently use its giant library of healing cards. Combine this with Crystalsmith Kangor and the healing is doubly effective.
Time Out! allows the Paladin to stall out the game for much longer than it should, and Shirvallah, the Tiger is a huge burst of heal combined with a removal tool. It’s really hard to simply kill the deck with aggro. Even large board states can be cleared with Equality.
Dragons and Pirates
Odd Dragon Warrior is a good tempo control deck. They have gotten Smolderthorn Lancer, an odd cost Execute that has been missing from Warrior since the nerf to Execute. Dragonmaw Scorcher is a Dragon with a whirlwind effect that activates Executes and is a good AOE card.
Emberscale Drake is a beefed up Shieldmaiden that’s just good in any kind of Warrior deck, especially to 
activate Shield Slam with tempo. Crowd Roaster was a questionable card going into the expansion with its low four health stat line, but has performed really well as one of the highest win rate cards in Odd Warrior.
Many thought all of the Pirate cards in Rogue would resurrect some kind of Aggro Pirate Rogue, but it has actually resurrected another Rogue archetype. Kingsbane Rogue has highly benefited from the new cards, and synergizes excellently with Pirates.
The card Raiding Party alone has heightened the deck’s power greatly. Before you only had two ways of drawing Kingsbane out of the deck with Cavern Shinyfinder. Raiding Party bumps that number up to four. Walk the Plank could also be included as it is simply a one mana cheaper Assassinate.
Kingsbane Rogue was actually a powerhouse at the highest levels of play at the end of the last expansion because it ate slow decks alive. Now it has been buffed to compete with the early game of other decks, allowing it to even beat out Odd Paladin.
See all of the cards for Rastakhan’s Rumble here.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via their official website.
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