DreamHack Winter was played this weekend, representing the last major of the Karazhan meta and the first major for HCT 2017. Mitsuhide came out victorious over Weghuz in the finals, wrapping up the DH circuit for this year and surviving a metagame defined by two decks: Shaman on the ban bench and Zoo on a killing spree.
Talking points
1) Zoo was the deck to beat
To no one’s surprise, Zoo came in dominant this weekend. With Midrange Shaman with lifetime subscription to the ban bench, it left Druid and Warrior as two of best classes in the metagame and Zoo swept in to counter them. Exploiting arguably the biggest flaw of Last Hero Standing, Zoo was able to deliver multiple clean kills over the reigning classes, in the playoffs included.
2) Shamans go wild
Even though Thrall was almost always checked off the list of available classes, players still had to bring him to the tournament. What many did, however, was deviate from the standard list, just in case Shaman was left open and matched against anti-Shaman line-ups, including pocket decks such as Freeze Mage. [card]eater of secrets[/card] could be seen as tech card in several Midrange lists, while some went completely off-board, bringing Aggro Shaman or N’Zoth Control, just to have that element of surprise against their opponents.
3) Another tournament without Paladin and Priest
This is far from a shocker at this point of time, but DreamHack Winter was yet another major where two of the classes were not represented in the final stage, with Priest and Paladin nowhere to be seen. Still, some rejoice ought to be had when comparing this weekend’s tournament to last weekend’s GameGune, where only five of the nine classes were used in the playoffs.
Gadgetzan cannot come soon enough, it seems.
Stand-out decks
Cifka’s RenoLock and TheFallen’s C’Thun Reno
RenoLock is very rarely seen in this meta where Zoo is the preferred archetype for Warlock, so a hat tip to StanCifka, Pokrovac and TheFallen who chose to believe in the rich-seeking explorer.
Tech cards were not exclusive domain of Shaman this weekend and players such as SuperJJ, DawN and A83650 had curious iteration of Druid, where [card]barnes[/card] and Y’Shaarj were played to make for snowballing turns. Firebat was another player who trusted the Y’Shaarj Druid and pulled off the Barnes into Y’Shaarj into Y’Shaarj dream in the swiss stage.
Zorstan’s Aggro Shaman and TheFallen’s N’Zoth Shaman
Remember when we said some players went completely off the book Shaman-wise? Spaniards Zorstan and TheFallen were such players, the former going the full aggro route, while the latter building a greedy N’Zoth Control with that sweet [card]hallazeal the ascended[/card] + [card]elemental destruction[/card] combo of devastating power.
Pokrovac
SuperJJ
Dawn
Un33d
Ness
Weghuz
Kufdon
Zorstan
Loyan
Mitsuhide
