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Hearthstone9 years agoRadoslav "Nydra" Kolev

Three winning decks from BlizzCon NA day one


Results, standings and scheduleDay 1 recap

The North American qualifiers for BlizzCon are under away. Even though the groups are yet to be wrapped up, several cool decks have already emerged and caught our attention by sweeping the opposition and making a splash.

 

1. Tempo Storm's Frost Mage (7-1 after day one)

Mage controls have been trying to get back into the meta for a while now. Ever since Naxxramas was released, several players and most notably Hyped from Tempo Storm, have been playing with the idea of building the new-school late game oriented deck that just stalls and stalls until it accumulates enough firepower to melt the enemy.

One of the first iterations of this post-Naxx Mage was the "Secrets" builds. Focused around [card]Duplicate[/card]'ing value minions like [card]Twilight Drake[/card] and [card]Sludge Belcher[/card], the deck was designed to outlast other control decks in the drawn out wars of attrition. It got the job done but it never became a truly consistent deck.

Hyped came back to the archetype some later to craft the second iteration, the so called "Miants Gage". The deck lay on the foundations of the original "Secrets" but had a couple of [card]Molten Giant[/card]s as well, taking advantage of the low amount of health control Mages usually operate with past the mid-game. 

During the first day of BlizzCon NA, Hyped and TidesofTime, two Tempo Storm team-mates famous for their deck building prowess, brought the third iteration of the control Mage. This one goes back to the roots of the archetype, relying almost entirely on frost spells like [card]Frost Nova[/card], [card]Cone of Cold[/card] and [card]Blizzard[/card] to delay the game until [card]Alexstrasza[/card] can halve the enemy life, setting the stage for [card]Archmage Antonidas[/card]' hadoukens. 

There are no [card]Molten Giant[/card]s nor there are [card]Duplicate[/card]s. The latter have been replaced by the ice secrets [card]Ice Barrier[/card] and [card]Ice Block[/card] to fit the stalling theme of the deck. The rest of the deck is composed of cantrips, removals and direct damage.

As a final note, from what we saw on stream, Hyped and TidesofTime seem to be playing slightly different versions of the deck. Tides was seen running [card]Pyroblast[/card] while no such card was seen in Hyped's version. As Tides only played two games on the Mage, it's hard to pinpoint which exact card was replaced by [card]Pyroblast[/card] but if we had to guess it'd likely be one of the [card]Cone of Cold[/card]s or one [card]Acolyte of Pain[/card] since all of the other cards are more or less auto-include.

 

2. Chakki's double [card]Doomhammer[/card] Shaman (3-1 after dya one)

For the longest time, Chakki has had the reputation of an aggressive player and this Shaman deck of his fits his renomee perfectly. 

Looking at the deck from afar, it's more or less a standard mid-range Shaman. It has the strong early game cards in double [card]Undertaker[/card] with double [card]Haunted Creeper[/card], supported by all the trademark 1-mana removal of the class. It has the [card]Hex[/card]es, the [card]Fire Elemental[/card]s and [card]Feral Spirit[/card]s, i.e. all the cards you will always have in a good, solid Shaman deck.

What makes it diverse is the two copies of [card]Doomhammer[/card] and two copies of [card]Lava Burst[/card] (Note: double Lava Burst was never actually played by Chakki, but it's something DoA mentioned on stream). 

Using double [card]Doomhammer[/card] has a number of advantages. Between the two weapons, there's a total of 32 damage, which can be used either directly to opponent's face or to clean his board. It also increases the chance for [card]Doomhammer[/card] and [card]Rockbiter Weapon[/card] to be drawn together, which is a 10-damage swing. It also allows the Shaman player to be more aggressive, not having to save the last Doomhammer chargers for minions and instead bashing the enemy character, knowing that there's another copy of the weapon waiting.

The [card]Lava Burst[/card]s further add to the aggressive nature of the deck. 5 damage for 3+2 mana allows the spell to be used on earlier turns as a counter to [card]Innervate[/card]d minions like [card]Chillwind Yeti[/card], to kill half of [card]Sludge Belcher[/card], [card]Cairne Bloodhoof[/card] or [card]Savannah Highmane[/card], but it also provides a means to reach to opponent's last hit points. 
 

 

 

3. Deerjason's Ramp (6-0 after day one)

Druid Ramp decks have been making a steady comeback into the competitive scene with the slowing down of the meta. During the BlizzCon European Qualifiers, Numberguy managed to  reverse-kill Frezzar on the back of his Ramp. Although he was one of only two players (the other one being Kaor) to play this deck when every other Druid user fell back to the more mid-range archetype, the dominance with which the deck eliminated the Swede impressed.

Now that the BlizzCon North American qualifiers are under way, we get to see how the Druid meta has shifted compared to last week and there hasn't been much changed. Most players still prefer to go for the quicker builds and only a handful of chosen ones select ramp. One of those was Deerjason.

Despite known as a talented guy in the pro-player community, Deerjason was yet to prove himself before the Hearthstone audience. And he did that, going 6-1 in the first day, topping Group D and threatening TidesofTime with elimination... all while killing it with his ramp.

What's so special about his deck then? Honestly - not much. It ramps, it plays taunters and it [card]Swipe[/card]s away stuff. The key to his success, however, has been the single [card]Healing Touch[/card] a card that saved him twice in his series last night, most notably against the frost mage of Tempo Storm's ace TidesofTime where a clutch healing allowed him to live against the Antonidas' [card]Fireball[/card] barrage.


BlizzCon NA qualifiers continue today with the last group stages matches, followed by the deciding quarter finals. Follow our coverage here

 

 

 

 

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