The Problem Continues
Damnit Gadgetzan, you were the chosen one. You were supposed to dethrone Shaman, not make them stronger. You were supposed to bring balance to the meta not leave it to aggro decks.
Okay, so at first glance not much has changed with the release of TMSoG. In fact, you could argue that the meta got even more frustrating. Midrange Shaman is still strong but the top spots seem to have been replaced with Pirate Aggro decks, and now that Patches the Pirate is a thing he’s an auto-include in any Pirate list, even better when he’s in a deck that has access to weapons because then he has Small-Time Buccaneer (another new card) to be combo’d with, and that can be game winning on its own if you don’t draw an answer to it.
Between Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman — two of the most popular decks on ladder — the meta has sped up to a breakneck pace where you rarely play games past turn 6, and if by chance you do stabilize and stop their rush your opponent will often just concede knowing that they’ve lost too much steam and probably the game. It’s a frustrating state of affairs. The Twitch streamer Savjz said it best the other day, “What is turn 6 grandpa? Oh, turn 6 is something that we used to have in the old days. Let me tell you all about it.” (The best part of that clip is seeing Patches come blasting out of that deck at the end. Perfect)
Hearthstone is most fun when playing with and against decks that have a wide range of options on any given turn; decks that truly beg to be played with a strategy; the opposite of pirate and aggro decks that are mindless “play your whole hand and go face.” And this is why I actually have hope for the future of the game because there are decks that require brain power on the ladder. The big one right now being Reno Warlock.
The Great Purple Hope
Renolock is awesome. It takes advantage of a neat mechanic where if you have no duplicates of any card in your deck, certain powerful cards will activate that have the potential to swing the game in your favor. This mechanic is amazing and I wish more decks utilized it.
It begs to be played with deeper strategy than most decks. Since you can only run one copy of each card, you’re prohibited from stuffing your deck with a ton of the strongest cards and hoping for the best. There are good combos in Renolock, yes, but you can’t guarantee on pulling the perfect one every game. Instead, the deck is built around synergy with a greater pool of cards. So the combos aren’t always as strong as other decks, but there is a greater number of possible combos. This leads to situations where you have to critically think about the cost/benefit of every play.
“Do I want to use my Bran Bronzebeard with this Defender of Argus to stop some nasty face damage, or should I save it for a couple of turns to get the most out of my Kazakus?”
“I’m at 12 life… Should I use Reno Jackson this turn, or risk waiting a turn to get a bit of a board presence and in doing so get more value out of him?”
“Should I use my Dirty Rat and hope that I pull a low life minion that I can board clear? Or save it for a turn where face damage is a bigger concern?”
These questions come up constantly in the Renolock deck, and in my opinion, they’re the type of scenarios that actually make Hearthstone fun.
Certain Jade Druid decks show similar moments of brilliance but they often suffer from the same problem as the aggro decks where you just want to play everything on curve and hope that your opponent doesn’t have an answer.
Ok… so how do we fix it? Click on thru to the last page to find out…