By NPH Pasca and WickedGood
Here are all the statistics about the Hearthstone Masters Qualifiers Arlington #61 to #75!
Don’t worry, next week we’ll try to get the report done earlier in the week because we are totally not addicted to Battlegrounds.
We also can’t wait to see if Sthrovarr has an impact on the Conquest meta at all.
Data summary from Off Curve:
Tier List:
Click on the players names to find out their lists and copy deck codes from Yaytears. The ones that are in bold are Qualifier winners who have provided comments about their strategy. Scroll down past the tier list to read them.
Meta Defining Lineups:
Combo Priest, Tempo Rogue, Token Shaman (TIZS / MokraniChile / Zorkthar / Killinallday)
Proven Lineups:
Tempo Rogue, Token Shaman, Aggro Warrior (zlofany)
Quest Druid, Tempo Rogue, Quest Shaman (AyRoK)
Combo Priest, Tempo Rogue, Quest Shaman (MARZiTONFiRE)
Tempo Rogue, Token Shaman, Control Warrior (tholwmenos / HotMeowth / ToastMonster / Zananananan, Pinche)
Quest Druid, Quest Shaman, Control Warrior (Keppada / NanoNasone)
Pretty Good Lineups:
Quest Druid, Quest Paladin, Quest Shaman (Fenom)
Malygos Druid, Tempo Rogue, Quest Shaman (Tars)
N’zoth Rogue, Quest Shaman, Control Warrior (BullBence / LastHopelolz)
N’zoth Rogue, Quest Shaman, Highlander Warrior (자바)
Resurrect Priest, Control Shaman, Control Warrior (Levik)
Malygos Druid, Holy Wrath Paladin, Quest Shaman (Bravo)
Combo Priest, N’zoth Rogue, Quest Shaman (Gunzerker)
Quest Druid, Tempo Rogue, Token Shaman (myr)
Highlander Hunter, Tempo Rogue, Token Shaman (DiegoDias / Tyfoon)
Highlander Hunter, Holy Wrath Paladin, Tempo Rogue (Wilms)
Tempo Rogue, Quest Shaman, Control Warrior (Jaina / MJM)
Quest Druid, Highlander Hunter, Tempo Rogue (Metafalica)
Interesting Lineups:
Quest Druid, Holy Wrath Paladin, Quest Shaman (SaucisseSwan)
Highlander Hunter, Quest Shaman, Control Warrior (이스티)
Combo Priest, Token Shaman, Control Warrior (Afterglow)
Quest Druid, Token Shaman, Control Warrior (IlluminaTIN)
Tempo Rogue, Quest Shaman, Aggro Warrior (IllustBeast)
Quest Druid, Nomi Priest, Control Warrior (PeaceHawk)
Comments from the winners:
The lineup is built knowing that people can’t counter aggro on Asia because most dont have cards for it. Hedged a bit for aggro with my tech choices like mct in rogue – it didnt actually steal anything but every single opponent played around it meaning they never had more than 3 minions on board. The lineup doesnt hard target anything but is flexible and has very few bad matchups. You mostly ban token shaman and rogue but you also priority ban ctrl warrior and you dont ban quest shaman. The way you ban with this lineup is that you find out how you get out ur worst deck vs his lineup. If you have to ban druid to get out rogue then you ban druid. Most of the time its how you get out priest vs aggro or rogue vs target rogue. On EU i would not bring rogue because most have cards to target it and bringing druid is very common on EU while its not on asia and NA. So the lineup you bring depends on the server ur on, how the meta looks and what predictions you make.
zorkthar
Well I mostly copied Zorkthar’s lists because I only had cards for the good decks on NA, with the only change being +1 Lightwarden in Priest for more earlygame. The decks are pretty much all teched against Shaman, Combo Priest and other board centric decks. You almost always have to ban Tempo Rogue with this lineup, having an unwinnable and two slightly unfavorables against it, and against people not running it you just scout what they ban and do a flex ban according to it.
penhadani
The lineup is built with the strongest aggressive decks, the idea is to ban the Evolve Shaman and carry strong cards against the more control decks, so the full aggressive version of the Rogue and the inclusion of Visions in Shaman.
mokranichile
I’d just like to credit Villain for the Rogue and Priest decklist and Caravaggio for the Shaman.
killinallday
I built my lineup to play well (target) 2 decks: Combo Priest and Quest Druid. Also added some cards to better play with Quest and Token Shamans. In my Token Shaman I abandoned the Sea Giants (which only help with Token Shaman) in favor of the draw (Witchwood Piper, Lightning Storm and Haunting Visions to play with Spirit of the Frog) in order to play even better with Combo Priests and Quest Druids. With the Shamans the Giants are not so important, more decides the fact who has a second turn and have a coin. Play a coin with Spirit of the Frog begins to make a strong draw cards, then Evolution on Desert Hare on the turn 4. In my opinion, the Rogue plays quite a lot with the all agro decks and the Shamans. But I improved the deck against Quest Druids and put Chef Nomi, the Myra’s Unstable Element and Questing Adventurer, they help very well against the Druids. For all Qualifications and a Masters Tour Bucharest score with the Druids is 10-0. The Warrior plays well with Druids and Priests, and with the Shamans it plays perfectly! My general score in the tournaments is 17-3 against the Quest and the Token Shamans. Sometimes with Priests (and Control decks) the game is delayed, so I put one Battle Rage to get 2+ cards from it. My lineup does not like control decks with N’Zoth and Tempo Rogue. Therefore, I banned mainly the Rogue and N’Zoth Warrior. But it all depends on opponents deck building. Some N’Zoth decks were very heavy and slow, so I did not ban them, but tried to win faster. And some Rogue were week edited (with pirates), they quickly ran out of cards in their hand when playing with agro. And if they do not receive Myra’s Unstable Element, they almost always lose. So that Rogue with pirates I also did not ban. I am very surprised that there are few agro lineups without Combo Priests. After all, there are almost no lineups that counter them. For example, on a Masters Tour Bucharest, only a few players had such an anti-aggro lineup: Hunterrace, Silvors, Oldboy, etc. Therefore, my choice fell on such a lineup, since there are a lot of lineups targeting Combo Priests.
zlofany
I wanted an anti-control lineup because I was sensing that control was getting better and more popular. At the same time, I could not afford to lose to Hakkar. Curator Quest Shaman and Phaoris Quest Druid were obvious picks. They have the additional perk of being good against Tempo Rogue. Their only common weakness is Combo Priest, so I could just ban that. But Combo Priest is nowhere near as popular as Shaman, so most of the time I could ban Shaman anyway. I had to dig deep to find a suitable third deck. Holy-Wrath Paladin was out of the question because it loses to Hakkar and Control Warrior. So I cobbled together a Quest Paladin. It fits the bill of having a lot of value against control while being weak to Combo Priest. I tried it on Friday but my list wasn’t good enough and I didn’t play well enough. I refined it and somehow came up with Blessing of Wisdom. That was what cemented the deck. And it worked on Saturday. Blessing of Wisdom gives cheap cycle and additional scam from Prismatic Lens. And it is good to copy with the hero power. And it can be put on a big enemy minion to at least give you additional chances to find an answer.
fenom
The idea of the lineup is to target control decks such as N’zoth Warrior and N’zoth Priest so I usually play Malygos Druid alongside Quest Shaman and N’zoth Rogue. As a European, I do not have all the cards on NA server so I chose to replace Druid by Combo Priest, knowing that it would be more complicated against Control warrior with this deck. Fortunately, I only played twice this match up and won both. Then, Quest Shaman is known as a top tier deck able to win against everything. Only Quest Druid is kind of a threat but still winnable. Let us focus on N’zoth Rogue which is less known and more recent. One of the key cards is Togwaggle’s Scheme, allowing me to play a very large number of N’zoth so that slow decks do not have answers for all of them. The only condition is to keep a Shadowstep to get an 8-mana N’zoth in your hand. So, the Karthut/N’zoth/Scheme package offers an insane win condition during the late game. The rest of the deck is tempo oriented with the Lackey and Vendetta packages. That makes the deck adaptable to every matchup, the worst being Quest Druid and Evolve Shaman. An important thing with the deck is to draw but your only cards allowing that are Novice Engineer and Togwaggle so it is often necessary to play Novice with Shark and to use one of the Shadowstep on these cards against control decks. My N’zoth Rogue was undefeated during this open cup with a total record of 7-0. As regards the ban phase, it is not easy with this line up because it often depends on your opponent’s ban. For instance, if your opponent plays Druid and if you anticipate that your Priest will be banned, you must ban Druid but if he does not ban druid, you should let Druid open to give your Combo Priest a good match-up. Evolve Shaman is probably the most popular ban with this line up. If you play with Malygos Druid (which I recommend) instead of Priest, Quest Druid and Evolve Shaman are the most popular bans which is interesting because they are rarely played together in the same lineup. Wishing good luck to every player trying to get a ticket for MT Texas.
gunzerker
NoProsHere 