Hearthstone: Rise of Shadows Day One Meta

The newest Hearthstone expansion, Rise of Shadows, was released today. The meta is quite wild as everyone is attempting to make archetypes out of the new cards, and won’t settle down for a while. Let’s take a dive into the Rise of Shadows day one meta.

Most Popular Decks

Far and away the most popular deck on day one of the new expansion has been Bomb Warrior. The deck aims to shuffle as many bombs into the opponent’s deck as possible and kill them with the explosions. The deck has decent tempo and tries to hit face so that the bombs can hopefully kill them off. The bombs serve as the deck’s only win condition outside of some lucky Dr. Boom, Made Genius plays.

The second most popular deck is Myracle Rogue, comprised of the same skeleton from the last meta. The new inclusions are EVIL Miscreant, Waggle Pick and Heistbaron Togwaggle. The deck has performed amazingly well so far, and the Miscreants are great for tempo. This could be because this deck is built upon a tier two deck from the last meta, and it might grow weaker when other decks become refined.

The third most popular deck right now is Murloc Shaman. This deck is very straightforward, as is typical of a Murloc archetype. You play Murlocs very aggressively, you go face, and sometimes you lost because you can’t snowball hard enough. Underbelly Angler has been crucial to the success of this deck, as it continues to give you cards to play when the deck lacks card draw. The deck hopes to stick a Soul of the Murloc board to set up Bloodlust lethal.

Hunter Remains Relevant

With the destruction of Midrange Hunter and Deathrattle Hunter thanks to the rotation, Hunter still has some good new decks. It’s one of three classes that still have a Hero card, and those cards happen to be very good. If you can build a deck around a Hero card, it will be good more often than not.

The first deck is Mech Hunter. Magnetic is a very powerful mechanic as it allows you to play extra damage, effectively acting like Charge. Mechanical Whelp synergizes very well with Magnetic and is great off of Nine Lives. Ursatron gives a draw to a class that lacks it and Zul’Jin always can put Hunter into a winning position.

The other Hunter archetype is Malygos Hunter. The deck has finally found a way to be created thanks in part to Vareesa Windrunner and Jepetto Joybuzz. Alexstrasza plus Malygos will be two cards seen together until one day they finally see the Hall of Fame. If Jepetto manages to hit the Malygos, the game is pretty much over. Hunters can use four Rapid Fires, two Arcane Shots, and two Kill Commands to push a ridiculous amount of damage.

Other Interesting Decks

Probably the biggest surprise on day one is how weak Secret Paladin is. The deck simply lacks Divine Favor and runs out of steam way too quickly to win games. While it’s early turns are good, it just doesn’t win past turn five or so without a massive snowballing triggering of secrets. If the opponent can properly navigate the secrets and early minions, the Paladin just doesn’t have the burst to finish the game.

Combo/Resurrect Priest are trying to stick around in some capacity. Catrina Muerte and Batterhead are two new cards that work well with this idea. Priest has maintained a degree of support for creating large health minions. Since this is the case, Divine Spirit and Inner Fire or Topsy Turvy create a huge amount of burst damage.

Another interestingly strong day one deck is a type of Control Mage. Going Alexstraza into spell damage plus burst is a combo that will always exist, but this deck has a couple new interesting inclusions. Kalecgos and Khadgar have proven to be pretty strong out of the gates and Hex Lord Malacrass is now seeing some play. Astromancer is just a fantastic card for tempo, generating huge stats for only seven mana.

These early days of the expansion should simply be enjoyed for what they are. The archetypes from day one hardly ever stick around because slower decks are simply optimized at a slower rate. When they do hit that point, aggro archetypes tend to fade rather quickly.

Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via their official website.

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