The most popular and successful lineup
at the moment is Evolve Shaman, Tempo Rogue and Combo Priest. There
is a very good reason for that: those decks do very powerful things
that no other decks currently can match (mostly getting a lot of
stats on board extremely quickly and bursting heroes down). Now you
might know I am not very fond of aggro decks and the idea of playing
mirrors that are mostly determined by starting hands did not appeal
to me, so I looked for an edge elsewhere.
The obvious place to start is Warrior,
as Rogue and Shaman share a weakness to Control / N'Zoth Warrior
variants, so you can swap one of the default decks with Warrior and
force a Warrior ban, getting a small edge. After doing extremely
poorly with Quest Shaman at first, I got the hang of it and realized
that is extremely well rounded and doesn't really have bad matchups
out of the common decks, so I locked that deck in as well as since
Ienjoy having the opportunity to play Hearthstone every round and not
only play matchup roulette. I wanted my third deck to also have
favorable matchups against Rogue and Shaman and, well, I couldn't
find any obvious one by looking at stats. I talked with Eddie who
suggested Resurrect Priest (also known as Big Priest without Barnes).
I was a bit skeptical at first but as I practiced I did better and
better with it. I started with his Bucharest-winning list then made
some small changes for the open cup meta.
One thing I told myself I would do
after witnessing Eddie's victory is to stop relying so much on
statistics. They are very useful when it comes to quick mulligan
advice or to get an idea which decks are the most popular, but the '5
to legend' global winrates will be very different from the winrate a
top player can get. The key is to find out which decks have higher
ceilings and to navigate towards decks that suit my play style and
from which I can extricate the more obscure edges.
So after tuning the lineup for 10 or so
open cups this is what I ended up with:
Warrior is very bad against N'Zoth
Rogue, Malygos Druid, Highlander Hunter, Highlander Mage, so there
will be some trouble or auto-losses against dedicated Warrior target
lineups. However, those decks are all lacking in early interaction
and can't beat the default lineup so we're just going to have to hope
to get through the initial rounds. This is why there is no Hakkar in
the Warrior list, as Druid would be the ban and it is not necessary
against any other archetype. There is a Zephrys the Great though,
which is flexible enough to be useful in any matchup and can break
the mirror or other control matchups. I would like to avoid running
Brewmaster / Seance but they are a necessary evil to win the Elysiana
mirrors. These matchups are pretty fun though as they require a lot
of situational awareness to know if it is better to get an extra
Elysiana or an extra N'Zoth, for example. Against most lineups you
have the luxury of banning Combo Priest, Quest Shaman or even Evolve
Shaman, as this lineup farms Tempo Rogue and most Warriors as well. I
know the Shaman and Priest matchups against Rogue are not really
favored according to statistics but that is not my experience at all
over a pretty significant sample size.
I would highly recommend this lineup if
the meta does not shift significantly.However, all these decks will
require a lot of practice, especially to navigate control mirrors.
Just remember that as good as Warrior is against Rogue and Evolve
Shaman, it is way way worse against the anti-Warrior decks and
requires a lot of mastery to pull off an occasional win. My first
round involved a game that took 49 minutes and went to the turn limit
double face explosion.... so yeah that can happen. Note that draws
count as both a win and a loss on Battlefy and won't be a rematch.
Shout-out to Odemian who inspired my
Warrior list and to Eddie for the Resurrect Priest idea! Shaman is
super standard but remember to always use the best Shaman, King
Rastakhan.
See you in Texas!
