After completing the comprehensive The Great Dark Beyond preview, it’s time for theory-crafting! We encourage you to read the card preview as it is likely to shed light on many of our decisions regarding deck building.
Our first Data Reaper Report for The Great Dark Beyond is scheduled for Thursday, November 14th! We will note that should there be balance changes within the first few days of the expansion, the Data Reaper Report could be delayed. We will provide an update in such a case on our Twitter.
We remind you that you can help us perform our analysis by contributing your Hearthstone game data. This can be done using Firestone, which provides us with all its user data (with an option to opt out). Alternatively, you can contribute data through our Hearthstone Deck Tracker plugin. Installing the plugin is very easy and will only take a couple of minutes of your time. We appreciate and thank all our contributors for keeping this project going. We remind our existing plug-in contributors to check on their plug-in and make sure that it is still active. Sometimes, with big patches, the plug-in deactivates inadvertently.
Remember that while we have extensively worked to produce the featured decks, they are still untested, and nothing can replace the post-launch refinement that is backed up by real-time game experience and data.
If you have a limited collection, we highly recommend that you DO NOT make big crafting investments on any theory-crafted deck. Wait at least a few days to see what strategies end up being strong and fun before making a significant commitment.
Launching starship in 3… 2… 1…
This build incorporates a starship package in the Rainbow DK archetype. We’ve opted for the priority pieces, while leaving out Dimensional Core, as the Death Knight starship doesn’t infinitely scale through Soulbound Spire (which caps at 10).
Our key mana slot is 6, where we have two very powerful plays that can help us stabilize or blow out the opponent. Maladaar is supported by a heavy top end, all of which are strong when cheated out by the legendary: The Exodar, The Primus, Zilliax, Yogg. Note that Maladaar upgrades Climactic Necrotic Explosion before it gets cast, so even a turn 6 CNE is feasible. The other turn 6 play is Airlock Breach, which is a massive stabilizer that should prove to be one of the strongest cards in the set. The build has good corpse generation in the early game, helping us execute these plays consistently. We like Maw and Paw as a setup card for our turn 6 plays. If single target removal becomes more important (for example, starships end up being very strong), the deck can accommodate Suffocates.
The key Starship play happens on turn 9, where we can launch a starship and trigger it with Yelling Yodeler. This summons a big board while likely gaining us a ton of armor. Yodeler can do some serious work with Reska too, once we hit the later stages of the game.
Admittedly, Guiding Figure isn’t as consistent in this deck. You should play the card as a 2 mana 3/2 without hesitation if you have mana to spend. Supporting it requires inserting too many inconsistent cards into the deck. Occasionally, you’ll trigger it with Snake Oil.
Starship Blood-Ctrl Death Knight
Alternatively, we could skip Reska and CNE for more removal in a double Blood build. Soulstealer should be a strong card to cheat out with Maladaar in faster matchups, where it could be a life saver. We believe that Airlock Breach and Maladaar make it impossible for Blood-Ctrl Death Knight to opt for Vampiric Blood in a triple Blood build. These cards are just too good to skip.
8 Hands Blood-Ctrl Death Knight
We’re not too high on the idea of running 8 Hands in a starship deck. It could work, but it feels strange to run a win condition that deletes our other win condition. It potentially possesses some diminishing returns.
However, we’re interested in the idea of an 8 Hands deck with specific support to leverage the card. Blood-Ctrl Death Knight has an insane top end, so 8 Hands isn’t just a potentially disruptive card for the opponent, but it can act as our “Hemet”, a draw curator, which helps us continuously draw haymakers.
The lower end of the build is meant to support playing 8 Hands as soon as possible. Besides Maladaar, we have Cattle Rustler, which draws and discounts 8 Hands. We also run a Greedy Partner package.
The game plan is to play 8 Hands, continuously deplete the opponent’s resources with our big drops and grind them down with the Headless Horseman and Kil’jaeden. The Headless Horseman should be a strong card in this deck post-8 Hands, as we should find the head quickly after. Ideally, we play Kil’jaeden last, after finding our big stabilization cards. Think of it as a stronger form of Elysiana.
Remember that 8 Hands’ deck destruction effect will discount The Ceaseless Expanse!
Reno Death Knight could be a very appealing option thanks to Maladaar, as a turn 6 Reno sounds absolutely disgusting to play against.
The following Reno Rainbow DK build upgrades on the strongest current version of the archetype. Besides Breach, Expanse, as well as Maladaar, we like Eredar Brute in Reno decks, since their defensive toolkit is less consistent. ETC sounds mandatory to get the second copy of Airlock Breach, or if the game went late and Kil’jaeden starts to make sense.
This is probably our most ambitious, janky attempt for the class, which tries to make Wakener of Souls work. The card should be an insane target for Maladaar, but only if we’ve managed to play a big deathrattle minion first. This requires us to skip on early game, small deathrattle minions, while running Travel Security. The ideal game plan is to cheat out Travel Security with Greedy Partner, then play Maladaar/Wakener/Stitched Giant. Troubled Mechanic can help us find Maladaar more consistently, something we think this deck should be desperate for.
We still have the Rainbow late game, so Reska becomes a possible Wakener target later.
We think the Starship package in Demon Hunter is a great fit for the board flooding pirate tribe, as it provides a Bloodlust-esque finisher to the deck, as well as great card draw. Warp Drive’s discount ability may not work perfectly with Patches, but we don’t care. One of Pirate DH’s biggest weakness currently is the absence of good card draw. Warp Drive gives it card draw that doesn’t sacrifice initiative.
The rest of the build is straightforward. We took out the six worst cards in the deck to make way for the starship package.
Starship Crewmate Demon Hunter
We’ll be somewhat surprised if Crewmate DH becomes a genuinely strong deck, but if it does, we suspect it will need to run a very low curve that’s centered on the Draenei tribe. A lower curve means that we’re more likely to set up adjoined Crewmates. The lower curve also works favorably with the Starship package, which encourages us to flood the board aggressively. Draenei synergies strengthen generated Crewmates, as they are all Draenei.
Crimson Commander should be a mandatory card for the deck, as it buffs Crewmates in hand into 6/6’s. We like the idea of running Through Fel & Flames, as it’s a 0-mana card that’s easy to get out of our hand, while it also activates Felfused Battery.
Xor’toth might be too slow for either Crewmate or Pirate DH, but you can experiment with it for fun. A copy of Through Fel & Flames, or Burning Heart in Pirate DH, are what we would cut to make space for it.
We mostly see Kil’jaeden as a fatigue canceller in attrition decks, but some classes might be capable of leveraging it as a real win condition. Demon Hunter’s ability to tutor and discount it with Umpire’s Grasp, playing it consistently on turn 5, is an interesting idea that’s worth exploring.
Drawing one demon a turn post-Kil’jaeden isn’t good enough, so the deck is filled to the brim with card draw that should help fill our hand with threats after Turn 5. Try to save your card draw for after KJ. A turn 3 Sigil of Time isn’t what you want to do in most matchups.
The rest of the deck is just removal to help us survive and stall the game. Space Pirate can help us play Grasp a turn early. Remember that the second Grasp will draw us a demon after we played KJ!
A starship deck is an exciting proposition for a class that can ramp to 16 mana. We did face difficulties fitting everything we wanted into a Starship Druid. We opted to run a smaller Starship package with only Starlight Reactor and Arkonite Defense Crystal as starship pieces. Druid’s starship doesn’t scale its ability with its size, so maximizing the package isn’t required. Sha’tari Cloakfield isn’t essential in our pop-off turns.
The ”classic” pop-off turn for this deck is to play Reactor/Distress Signal/Cosmic Phenomenon, which requires 8 mana. A starship deck stacked with two Reactors enables insane swing turns. Final Frontier seems like a greedy card, but it should be fun to play, while possessing late game potential thanks to New Heights, one that’s worth experimenting with. Exarch Othaar can give us a lot of gas for Reactor turns too.
We’re very high on Starlight Reactor because it’s the one starship piece that could be a feasible cornerstone card outside of the context of a starship. If we can think of it as a “miracle deck enabler”, we could utilize it as a win condition for a more spell-centric deck. This makes Arkonite Revelation stronger too.
But this deck isn’t solely centered on Starlight Reactor. This deck is built around The Ceaseless Expanse. We run 3 minions in the deck, which means Pendant of Earth should always find us Expanse and heal us to full! It can also tutor us Reactor, which is valuable by itself and makes our Arcane pop-off turns more consistent.
Our ability to ramp, draw and play a chain of cards every turn, while summoning a lot of bodies in play, should discount The Ceaseless Expanse very quickly. How fun would it be to end games with The Ceaseless Expanse and Shattered Reflections! Yes, we are building the Ancient One, but better! Destroy the board, summon two 15/15’s and shuffle another Ceaseless Expanse into our deck to do it all over again, if necessary.
In case going all in on The Ceaseless Expanse doesn’t work, we could drop Shattered Reflections for the normal Titans/Zilliax top end. But that’s nowhere near as fun, surely.
Dungar Druid gets a couple of interesting targets for Dungar and Thunderbringer. Stargrazer can provide a lot of damage and stability, while offering a resurrection target for Hydration Station. Splitting Spacerock puts a lot of pressure on slower decks with its incredible stickiness.
Arkonite Defense Crystal could be a smart inclusion in a deck that runs Oaken Summons, as we can resurrect a double stacked starship with Hydration Station later.
Owlonius Druid gets a couple of amazing cards to complement its game plan. Ethereal Oracle is the perfect fit for it, offering draw, damage and survivability in one package. Arkonite Revelation seems mandatory too.
We think the introduction of Ethereal Oracle makes Chia Drake a bit redundant, especially if we’re going for an Owlonius win condition. Owlonius/Cover Artist should allow us to kill the most resilient, armor stacking Warriors with ease. The deck’s viability solely depends on its survivability.
A Starship Hunter deck is probably most incentivized to run a full starship package, as its starship doesn’t have any cap on its scaling, with Biopod offering the most straightforward win condition for the deck in the late game.
Our goal is to find our two Biopods with the help of a moderate discover package, grow our starship while stalling the game, then finally kill the opponent with a starship launch and a Yelling Yodeler 9-mana combo. A 10-attack starship with two Biopods will deal 40 damage to our opponent on an empty board. It’s not difficult to grow our starship even further than that.
The main counterplay from our opponent is to develop minions to try to soak the damage. A 0-mana Ceaseless Expanse removes that counterplay. Alternatively, wearing down the opponent’s resources with Star Power/Laser Barrage, or finding additional copies of Biopods thanks to Rangari Scout will make the damage scale so hard that it will be difficult to avoid getting killed.
In faster matchups, the win condition is more straightforward, as our starship can gain a ridiculous amount of armor while denying the opponent the ability to develop a board through Specimen Claw. Alien Encounters should also help us stabilize.
The Discover package is very exciting, as it can potentially enable a playstyle that’s very different from anything we’ve seen before in the Hunter class. This build had an impressive showing during the theorycrafting streams, while being incredibly fun to play. Its ability to generate resources is absurd, on the level of Thief Rogue in its absolute prime.
The key is Rangari Scout. In combination with the plethora of our discover options, it can easily represent a 1 mana 1/2 that generates 2-3 cards. Astral Vigilant represents two additional copies of Rangari Scouts. We just need to be mindful of the other Draenei in our deck (Naielle, Astrobiologist) and when we play them.
We could even run Pet Parrot for further Scout abuse, but Parrots felt a bit overkill during games, giving us genuine hand space issues. We like the idea of running Tidepool Pupil to potentially copy more discover effects, or best-case scenario, a 0-mana Alien Encounters.
This deck’s late game gets quite ridiculous. Ignoring the endless value generation, we can discover multiple copies of The Ceaseless Expanse. We can discover multiple copies of Griftah Artifacts. This deck just never runs out of steam.
The potential addition of Gorm to Egg Hunter adds a new dimension to the deck, as it can suddenly pressure a lot harder in the early game with Extraterrestrial Egg. A turn 2 Extraterrestrial Egg, into a turn 3 Gorm, into a turn 4 Mystery Egg, sounds like an incredibly powerful curve.
Gorm is also a huge minion, so once it awakens, we can just slap Absorbent Parasite and Always a Bigger Jormungar on it. It costs no mana when it wakes up, so it’s an easy play to execute.
Egg Hunter is a resource-focused deck, so Naielle should be a core card for the archetype, improving its late game consistency. It probably goes into Face Hunter too, to be fair.
The discover package can be accommodated in Reno Hunter without much trouble. Yes, Alien Encounters is that good. We also believe Exarch Naielle should be amazing in a Reno deck, as the archetype is naturally inconsistent through its deck building restriction. Boosting its consistency does more for it, relatively speaking, compared to a duplicate deck. The ability to constantly dig into our deck with a 1-mana Tracking hero power means our late game can match up better with decks that possess a more decisive win condition.
Of course, finding Reno more often will lead to more games won. That’s basic science.
Tribal decks are usually not our cup of tea, but we must admit that the new Elemental Mage looks hot. The flavor and feel of the deck should be attractive to those who already enjoyed the deck during Perils. It’s all about swarming your enemies and burning them down.
Blazing Accretion is a terrific source of card draw that’s largely responsible for the new deck building path that the archetype will take. It always draws three cards in the context of this deck.
Overflow Surger serves an increasingly important role in the deck. It’s the best enabler for Solar Flare, which offers an early-to-mid game swing in faster matchups. It’s also the best enabler for Saruun. A post-Saruun Surger is this archetype’s version of Sif. Up to +7 spell damage means we can straight up OTK the opponent in the late game with some combination of Molten Rune, Solar Flare, Spontaneous Combustion and Flame Geyser. More card draw and more damage means that Elemental Mage suddenly has a very scary late game.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Saruun is too slow and redundant thanks to Lamplighter. We recognize that. If it doesn’t work out, we can always cut the two greedy cards (Saruun/Rune) for the next best (and boring) elementals (Rolling Stone).
But on day 1, we experiment with what’s fun.
Arkwing Pilot is the most exciting card in the Mage set when it comes to late-game-oriented Mage strategies. We can see it fitting into different shells alongside Ingenious Artificer. The first case is for it to be added to Rainbow Mage.
Raylla is a Draenei now, so she offers another potential target for Artificer to enable. The archetype already wants to discount “Buy One, Get One Freeze” with Watercolor Artist to copy Sif, so Arkwing Pilot offers a faster win condition for the spell to run over faster matchups. Pilot/BOGOF + 2 spells is a full board of Pilots. Arkwing Pilot also has good synergy with Primordial Glyph, Divine Brew or Discovery of Magic, as they are spells that generate more spells.
Arkwing Pilot can be a good fit for a Skyla Tourist deck, thanks to its coin generation and mana cheating potential through Sea Shill, giving us more enablers alongside Ingenious Artificer.
We have a significant number of Rogue cards in the deck, so running Robocaller to tutor Snatch and Grab could help us clear the board from big threats on the Arkwing Pilot turn. Robocaller can also act as a soft tutor to our key Draenei minions, as they have unique costs (5,7).
Petty Theft works well as an enabler of Greedy Partner, Arkwing Pilot and Snatch and Grab. Astral Vigilant gives us another copy of Arkwing Pilot if our opponent clears the first two waves of Pilots by some miracle, or we haven’t drawn the second one. We can even run a second copy if we’re very greedy, though the card is a bit dead in early-to-mid game, so we think one copy here is appropriate.
Arkwing Pilot continues its tour across all possibilities in the class. A dedicated Raylla deck that sheds the Sif win condition might give some forgotten Paladin cards a place in the spotlight. We have a plethora of repeatable 1-mana spells that can help us chain an Arkwing Pilot board.
Divine Brew is incredibly annoying for the opponent to deal with if we’re casting it on Pilots. Ethereal Oracle is a great tutor for these spells. Grillmaster tutors Arkwing Pilot. Troubled Mechanic tutors the full Draenei package. This deck has a lot of tutors!
Seeing that we’re going to find our Draenei very quickly, as well as the fact Raylla looks like an increasingly dangerous card within this shell, we’re tempted to slap two Astral Vigilants for more copies of Raylla, or Arkwing Pilots. The game plan is to repeatedly produce waves of boards that are difficult for the opponent to clear, whether they’re sticky Raylla boards, or devastating Pilot boards.
The Libram package seems very powerful on the surface, with the only limit coming from its discount cards being a little slow. However, we believe there’s a way to increase the consistency in which we hit a 4 mana discount, the breakpoint in which Libram of Divinity comes online as a recurring free buff.
Interstellar Starslicer can be consistently found thanks to Instrument Tech, but afterwards, we need to find the second weapon, or both Interstellar Wayfarers. The key is the addition of Astral Vigilant. It allows us to copy the first Wayfarer we find and get a 4 mana discount as early as turn 5. Late game, Astral Vigilant can be used to copy Yrel.
The plan: Turn 2 Instrument Tech. Turn 3 Starslicer. Turn 4 Wayfarer. Turn 5 Vigilant/Wayfarer/ Divinity. If we hit that curve, our deck becomes completely cracked, with Holy Cowboy ready to discount a Libram of Faith to 0 mana as well.
Turn 3 Holy Cowboy into turn 4 Libram of Faith is borderline oppressive pressure, without any discounts required. Libram of Faith is a card we should play whenever it’s remotely discounted. Don’t worry about discounting it to 0 in most games.
What strikes us about Libram Paladin is its drawing power. Interstellar Researcher and Hi Ho Silverwing means we draw our Librams very quickly, while Holy Glowsticks should permanently cost 1 mana.
Once we get to the late game, Lady Liadrin fills our hand with free copies of Libram of Divinity, which we can use to buff Leeroy Jenkins and burst our opponent from hand. Our huge drawing power, combined with two free copies of Libram of Divinity every turn, should drastically discount The Ceaseless Expanse, which is also an insane draw from Amitus.
A Lynessa shell is an intriguing option for a slower Libram Paladin deck. Lynessa can repeat the cast of discounted Librams. More importantly, Sea Shill serves as the deck’s Holy Cowboy, with one additional target: Lumia. Turn 3 Sea Shill into turn 4 Lumia is an oppressive line against every aggressive deck, while following that up with Conman is outright bullying. A Lumia/Conman combo can genuinely stop OTK decks from touching us for multiple turns in the late game. Conman is also a tasty follow up for Libram of Faith. Turn 3 Sea Shill, into turn 4 Libram of Faith, into Turn 5 Conman, is game over in a lot of matchups.
If we had to bet on what the best Draenei deck is going to be, our money would be on the one that plays Librams. As shown earlier in the Holy Cowboy build, the Libram package can exert a lot of pressure on the opponent, while its key minions are undersized Draenei, so it makes sense to improve their impact on the board through Draenei’s signature effects.
Our ability to fill our hand with minions through Libram of Clarity should help Crimson Commander get more value. Orbital Satellite is easier to activate in a deck with a low curve. If it discovers two Draenei minions, one of the options is very likely to be a Paladin Draenei. Finding an Interstellar Wayfarer could be crucial.
We don’t expect Lynessa Pipsi Paladin to change much, but Lumia is a game changer for any deck that runs Sea Shill and Conniving Conman. Running Metal Detector means that we’re even more likely to drop Lumia earlier, which completely locks out aggressive decks from the game.
Mystified To’cha is one of the strangest cards in the set, but one that has massive potential in allowing Priest to stabilize and get to its late game. The class’ main challenge will be what it’s supposed to do in the late game, which is what this build tries to answer.
First, let’s talk about To’cha. We tested this build during theorycrafting streams, and we managed to trigger it every game. The key is to have so many ways to manipulate our health that it becomes very difficult for the opponent to play around.
Let’s assume our opponent is at full life and see whether we can trigger To’cha at different health totals of our own hero. These are examples, but not all of what the deck is capable of!
20: Acupuncture
19: Acupuncture, Tea, Bandage or Fan Club
18: Acupuncture/Hero Power
17: Acupuncture, Bandage or Fan Club
16: Teax2
15: Teax3, Bandage or Fan Club. Acupuncture, Hero Power, Bandage or Fan Club
14: Tea
13: Teax2, Bandage or Fan Club
12: Just To’cha
11: Tea, Bandage or Fan Club
10: Hero Power
9: Bandage or Fan Club
8: Tea, Bandage or Fan Club twice.
7: Hero Power, Bandage or Fan Club.
6: Bandage or Fan Club twice.
So, we’re looking at a range of 15 life, in which it is feasible to trigger To’cha with a maximum of 3 effects. As we said, it is straight up impossible for the opponent to play around!
The deck is built to draw through Crimson Clergy and Ethereal Oracle, with the latter looking like an amazing card with Hot Coals.
Our late game consists of Aman’Thul/Ceaseless spam through Power Word: Synchronize and Creation Protocol. For the very grindy matchups, Kil’Jaeden cancels our fatigue clock. The Puppet Theatre slots are very flexible. They can be whatever we want, depending on what the format demands.
We have an alternative take that’s not To’cha reliant, which focuses on Askara/Shield of Askara to stabilize in faster matchups. We have multiple minion tutors that can find us these minions before turn 5, including Pendant of Earth, which can occasionally find The Ceaseless Expanse and heal us to full.
We’re not too optimistic about Control Priest decks in this expansion because of their late game question marks, but we must admit that these decks look slick. Maybe Ceaseless Expanse spam just carries.
A dedicated Draenei Priest deck can pressure the opponent early, while falling back to a late game surrounding Askara and Velen. Astral Vigilants can find us more copies of Velen. Pip can find us more copies of Astral Vigilants! This is potentially a near-infinite value loop.
If we’ve played Askara before Velen dies, our next Velen will summon a copy of itself. If those Velens die, our next Velen will spawn two other Velens. Remember that these Velens will enjoy the buffs of all the Draenei effects we’ve played during the game, so we can envision this win condition becoming genuinely threatening in late game matchups.
Overheal Priest has been eliminated from competitive play, but perhaps it comes back in a different, more aggressive form. This build tries to imitate Inner Fire Priest by buffing a minion’s health total to such an extreme degree that we can use Crazed Alchemist to kill the opponent from full health.
The key card responsible for making it happen is Anchorite. It can buff our early game board with Fan Club and Funnel Cake, but it also has single target verticality thanks to Flash Heal, Holy Springwater and Pip. If we have two minions in play and an extra 3 mana to spend, we can double up the Crazed Alchemist effect with Vol’jin, buffing a single minion, attacking with it, then switching stats to our other minion. It helps that we have a stealth minion in the deck (Hidden Gem) that we can just let sit on the board until we buff it with Anchorite.
We believe that a Starship Rogue deck possesses the most value generation out of all starship decks. Its starship is not a reliable source of lethality, as shown in Hunter, but allows the Rogue to grind out the opponent through incremental means.
The Gravitational Displacer is an extremely slow card, but one that encourages us to maximize starship pieces, as they are all “doubled up” in value once our starship is launched. The Exodar is particularly scary in Rogue thanks to Breakdance and Shadowstep. In grindy matchups, we can use Exodar to refill our hand with starship pieces, bounce it back, and rebuild starships repeatedly.
Of course, we can’t forget about Rogue’s inherent synergy with The Ceaseless Expanse, which is a prime target of bounce effects. Expanse and Exodar are so powerful that we don’t think Tess Greymane is needed in this deck. It’s probably a waste to bounce her. We would rather bounce Velarok, which can be activated by our scavenged starship pieces in the early stages of the game.
What’s impressive about this deck is its drawing power. Ethereal Oracle helps us get everything we need for the late game, while acting as a soft tutor to our other major source of draw in Dubious Purchase. More draw means The Ceaseless Expanse gets discounted faster.
The introduction of Spacerock Collector and Eredar Skulker has encouraged us to build a faster, beatdown deck that’s centered on Rhyme Spinner as its major payoff. Lucky Comet can help Rhyme Spinner become massive. Pressure Points is a sensational bulk discount card that helps us get further ahead and sets up big Sonya turns with our 2 mana combo cards.
A major Sonya combo is Sonya/Collector(x2)/Spinner(x2)/Breakdance(x2), which enables a massive board swing. This can also work if we use Shadowstep on Spinner instead of Collector.
Pressure Points’ most threatening use could be in an OTK deck, where it discounts 2-mana direct damage spells and allows them to be duplicated by Sonya.
The OTK setup requires us to have a 1-mana Oracle in hand after Shadowstep and a couple of damage spells discounted by Pressure Points. Oracle is a terrific card in the deck because it can help us draw our combo pieces and survive through Tar Slick/Fan of Knives board clears, so we don’t mind playing Oracle, triggering its spellburst, then returning it to hand.
The execution starts with playing Sonya, then a 1-mana Oracle, which gets duplicated into another free Oracle. We then play a 1-mana Mini-Scoundrel, followed by a 1-mana Cover Artist, which means we’re copying Sonya twice.
With three copies of Sonya in play, every 2-mana damage combo spell that has been discounted by Pressure Points is copied three times. A single ‘Oh, Manager!’ generates 4 coins and deals 16 damage. Eviscerate deals 24 damage. Tentacle Grip deals 20 damage. It’s easy to understand that even the most resilient, armor stacking Warriors, cannot outlast the damage potential of this deck. Survivability will determine its viability.
Gaslight Rogue might be capable of discounting The Ceaseless Expanse the fastest of any deck in the format. Considering it already utilizes Shadowstep and Breakdance, it should be the perfect fit for the card.
This build can work with either a Robocaller package or an Oracle package. Oracle is a more stable source of card draw that adds survivability to the deck in combination with Fan of Knives. Oracle does not draw ‘Everything Must Go!’ as reliably as Robocaller, but it’s a bit of a soft tutor for it. Hard to say what’s going to be better.
Quasar is a fascinating card with potentially massive late game implications. The key to leverage it is to run an absurd amount of card draw, which helps us find reload off the top after playing Quasar and emptying our hand. Preparation, Quick Pick and Knickknack Shack are the best cards we can find before playing Quasar. When it comes to the mulligan, we suspect the correct play will be to mulligan everything for Quasar, and if we do have it, find the setup cards (Shack, Pick, Prep).
This is the deck for Triple Sevens, which is the strongest possible card we can find after playing Quasar. Our win condition is centered on our minion package, which is tutored by Dig for Treasure and Elven Minstrel.
Moonstone Maulers, alongside Shadowsteps, can shuffle 12 Asteroids into our deck. With Ethereal Oracle drawing them, that’s 36 damage. Two Oracles are worth 48 damage.
The question is how we make sure that the Asteroid damage goes face, rather than hitting the opponent’s board, which is likely pressuring us. One way is to play Tar Slick, then Fan of Knives after dropping our Oracles. That’s a 6-damage board clear. Another way is to play The Ceaseless Expanse, which completely removes all counterplay once it’s discounted to a playable cost. However, it might be too slow for the deck.
Elemental Shaman is getting a boost in both early and late game power. Ultraviolet Breaker is a very nice minion for early game board control for all Shaman decks. Its elemental tag makes it mandatory for the archetype. Moonstone Mauler is less convincing but provides some incremental advantage over a drawn-out game.
The top end is where things dramatically change. Murmur enables a turn 6 Ceaseless Expanse, or a Shudderblock/Kalimos combo that can deal 18 damage to the opponent (Yes, it works with Kalimos. We’ve known this since Shudderblock was released). We could even add Alexstrasza and have a full OTK, though it’s probably not necessary thanks to Lamplighter and Skarr.
The Asteroid package looks very promising in a late-game-oriented Shaman deck, providing strong inevitability to a class that has been missing it for a long time. This build wears down opponents with Incindius Eruptions and Asteroids. Our deck is curated with very few spells, making Triangulate a relatively consistent effect. Triangulate can help us shuffle more damage into our deck, while Hagatha generates Meteor Storm Slimes that can be tripled by Shudderblock. Bolide Behemoth serves an important role of scaling up the Asteroid damage. Its spellburst is nice to activate, but not completely necessary. Nobundo and Sasquawk offer us more Meteor Storms.
This deck packs a lot of damage but does not kill the opponent in one turn.
A small tweak can completely change the game plan. The addition of Murmur and Gaslight Gatekeeper now makes an OTK possible through two different lines of play. We’re required to have generated a Meteor Storm Slime from Hagatha.
Combo 1: Shudderblock on turn 7. Sanctuary in place. Turn 8. Slime/Mini-Block/Gatekeeper.
Combo 2: Sanctuary in place. Turn 10. Murmur/Shudderblock/Slime for 6 mana (Murmur dies, one charge is left on the location) then Mini-Block/Gatekeeper for 4 mana.
This combo deals 45 damage to the opponent’s hero if we played Bolide Behemoth this game. 60 damage if we played both copies. The damage increases if we’ve previously shuffled Asteroids into the deck. The damage always goes face because we’re dealing 15 damage to the board before drawing the Asteroids. There is no board-based counterplay.
The addition of Murmur makes The Ceaseless Expanse a strong option for the deck. Those two are always seen together.
This deck looks to repeatedly cast discounted copies of Nebula, enabled by Shaman’s Draenei package. The deck only runs three spells: Triangulate, Frosty Décor, Nebula. Triangulate is meant to discover and shuffle extra copies of Nebula, which can be fished out by Cosmonaut and Hagatha. Lunar Trailblazer can drastically discount Nebula, especially when played on turn 3 following a Planetary Navigator.
An example of a line of play is to drop Cosmonaut on turn 5, after getting it discounted by Navigator. This leaves us with 2 overload on turn 6, exactly enough mana to play a 4-mana Nebula. If we play Lunar Trailblazer on turn 3 or 4, following a Navigator discount, we can discount Nebula to 3 mana and play it on turn 5, or turn 4 with a coin. Farseer Nobundo is another source of repeated Nebula casts, after we get the first one off. Its initially slow body can be helped by Navigator.
Frosty Décor offers us defensive stabilization in faster matchups, as repeatedly casting it can be an adequate alternative to beat an aggressive deck. Cosmonaut can fish and cast it for free.
Thanks to Murmur, Hagatha and Shudderblock, a triple Nebula play is realistic, generating a full board of 8-drops that are impossible to get through. A triple Frosty Décor play isn’t too shabby either.
The Warlock Starship package is solely focused on survivability, which means we need to pair it with a late game win condition that can help us close the game out. The obvious candidate is Wheel of Death, which has been on the fringes of the format since its nerf during Whizbang.
The good news is that the Starship package does have a robust list of defensive tools. Bad Omen makes us want to maximize the Starship package so it’s always online on turn 6. Crystal Welder offers a medium-sized target for Forge of Wills, which is a great card to have in play when we launch our big starship. We have a lot of 3-drops and 2-drops for turn 5, just before Bad Omen and just after Forge of Wills.
Wheel of Death discounts both Fanottem and The Ceaseless Expanse, which are prime targets for Forge of Wills. Kil’jaeden removes our fatigue clock, which makes Wheel of Death carry no such downside. Note that The Ceaseless Expanse does not get discounted by Kil’jaeden, as its effect does not destroy cards, it replaces them.
An alternative build does not utilize the Starship package, instead taking further advantage of Endgame and Dark Alley Pact. Eredar Brute is an ideal Endgame target in faster matchups. Loken gets another massive target for discovery in The Ceaseless Expanse. This makes it a near-guarantee that we will find a 15/15 from Loken, which can be a big deal when following up Forge of Wills.
The Demon generating archetype doesn’t look like the most promising strategy in this expansion, but we tried our best to leverage its synergies. Foreboding Flame is the most important card in the deck and a mulligan priority. Pop’gar discounts the buffed Demonic Dynamics to 0 mana.
The list also has a K’ara package, which works best with Abduction Ray in the late game but can be serviceable in the early game along with Demonic Studies or Monstrous Form, the latter makes K’ara more likely to survive a turn and gives us an excuse to throw in Leeroy Jenkins.
K’ara seems like a reasonable fit in Pain Warlock, as we’re already running multiple Shadow Spells in the deck. Demonic Studies is not a bad card in the deck as it helps us land a turn 2 Malefic Rook. Following the nerf to Party Fiend, it’s been doing decent work as a turn 1 play.
The other interesting addition to Pain Warlock, which we expect to see in Insanity Warlock too, is Healthstone. This card can be worth a huge amount of health for Pain Warlock, as turns where it damages itself for 10 are quite normal. Developing Molten Giants often puts the deck at risk if a 4 mana investment on ‘INFERNAL!’ doesn’t follow them to set our health to 15. Healthstone allows us to damage ourselves with impunity, drop Molten Giants and revert the damage for no additional mana cost.
And if the card isn’t currently useful? Just trade it away. This is going to be a powerful tool for the archetype.
Warrior may birth the most aggressive Draenei deck, one that possesses a significant amount of off-board damage potentially. The attack scaling on many of the Draenei effects naturally lead us to build a deck that’s focused on handbuffing. Cup o’ Muscle is a curve filler that can activate the spellburst of Troubled Mechanic in a minion-dense deck.
A card we believe will be core to the archetype is Through Fel & Flames, as it lets us attack with Akama on the turn we play it at no additional cost, with no setup required from Expedition Sergeant. Note that Sergeant and Through F&F stack, so we could technically attack twice with Akama in a single turn.
Velen would normally be considered slow in an aggressive deck, but its large body makes it an interesting follow-up to Sergeant or Vindicator, while setting up a powerful turn for us once it dies. This deck seems to heavily punish a passive opponent that doesn’t contest the board, leading to Sergeant and Vindicator attacks going straight to the dome.
We don’t expect Reno Warrior to disappear, no matter how bad it will be. Hostile Invader does look like a powerful addition to the deck, becoming increasingly ridiculous post-Brann. We’re playing a slow attrition deck, so The Ceaseless Expanse always goes in.
Invader is particularly amazing in Odyn Warrior, as it can activate it at a greater consistency while tutoring it with All You Can Eat. Goggles/Invader on turn 5 is the big play that should cripple aggressive opponents. Once we hit 7 mana, activating Invader becomes trivial. We suspect that playing Invader by itself will be a powerful play on many occasions.
We want to test The Ceaseless Expanse in Odyn Warrior for a couple of reasons. The deck’s drawing capabilities are strong, while it tends to kill a lot of minions through its removal toolkit. But the additional upside of a discounted Expanse is removing Odyn counterplay.
Imagine the opponent develops a wall of taunts that makes it difficult for us to get through with Odyn damage. Currently, we need to spend 6 mana on a Brawl or Sanitize to get through. Expanse adds another solution that can cost 0 mana, allowing us to potentially clear the board and kill our opponent with armor burst in a single turn.
Finally, we must end it with Blackrock ‘n’ Roll. For the last time before it rotates out of Standard.
The idea here is to take advantage of Warrior’s Draenei package with the biggest attack buff possible. Expedition Sergeant, Unyielding Vindicator and Ace Wayfinder are all significantly amplified by Blackrock ‘n’ Roll. We can hide a Through Fel & Flames for Akama inside ETC. If any of our minions stick to the board for one turn, Akama probably ends it.
Another very good addition to the deck is Eredar Brute, which should be a very strong stabilizer post-Blackrock. To top it off, The Ceaseless Expanse gets buffed to a 115/115! That’s way too funny not to try.
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The Data Reaper Podcast will return to discuss the early impressions of the The Great Dark Beyond meta! Follow us on Twitter for updates on when it will occur, if you want an early scoop on developments before November 14th, when Data Reaper Report #306 comes out.
We’ll see you then.
The Vicious Syndicate Team