Game Duration During The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan Meta

A popular request from the community is for us to revisit game duration statistics during the current Meta. How fast is the MSG Meta compared to previous expansions? Which archetypes have the fastest/slowest games and how does the length of games correlate with their performance? To answer these questions, we’ve collected data comprising of nearly 800,000 games from the months of December and January. The statistics we present are the following:

  1. Global average game duration during the standard year timeline.
  2. Average game duration of common archetypes.
  3. Average game duration of common archetypes separately for wins and losses.

Average Global Game Duration (by seconds or turns)




Since the standard year of the Kraken began, MSG has been the fastest Meta when you look at game duration by turns, though it has slowed down from December to January. Interestingly, turn duration in the current Meta is relatively higher than during WoToG or ONiK, so the difference in game length strictly by time isn’t as big. Note that while we have more limited data regarding the LOE Meta, we can confidently say that it was faster than any period post-rotation: the average game duration was 410 seconds and the average turn per game was 9.02.

Average Game Durations for Specific Archetypes (by minutes or turns)




Average Wins/Losses Durations for Specific Archetypes (by seconds or turns)




Not surprisingly, Patches decks are very fast compared to Reno decks. Miracle Rogue’s result is perhaps the most eye opening. Despite it being considered a combo deck, when it comes to game length, it very much exhibits the behavior of an aggressive deck. Pirate Warrior is lightning fast compared to every other deck in the game, which makes it particularly attractive for ladder players who want to climb the ranks efficiently. Of course, the longer the game goes, the better chance a control deck has of winning a game, and the opposite is true for an aggressive deck, which we can see in the dotted graph.

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