The Meta According to Discord: Week of 24 April 2023

Introduction

Welcome to the heavily delayed April meta sample. The release of gauntlet and the somewhat uninspiring nature of the patch means that sources were less thick on the ground for decks, and the addition of the start of Team Wars 2 (hosted by Harpu, check out the TW Discord here: https://discord.gg/XznGhYTUxZ) meant that some of the people who contributed last time were keeping decks in reserve to try to keep the edge on the competition.

Thanks to Jay, EurasianJay, Dragall and the deckbuilders themselves for their input.

This list is shorter than last season’s – most of the decks from last season can still be played unless they clearly built around a changed card. Please refer back to that for more details.

Abyssian

The rework of Nightsorrow Assassin (3 mana 3/1 Opening Gambit: Destroy a nearby minion with 3 or less attack -> 3 mana 3/3 Opening Gambit: Destroy a nearby damaged minion) makes it a substantially weaker reactive tool in the early game, requiring something like a Bloodtear Alchemist to activate it. It does perform better in the late game, but it’s a blow to the early game. Similarly the nerf to Spectral Blade (When your General destroys a minion, heal your General for 2 -> When your General destroys a minion, heal your General for 1) makes it weaker as an early control tool. Both cards are still run, but neither is as powerful.

With the nerfs and minimal compensation, Abyssian is generally considered the 5th best faction right now, just above Vetruvian, or possibly the 4th best above Vanar.

Creep Abyssian

The deck looks very much the same as it did last patch, with adaptation to the new Nightsorrow Assassin.

Jay’s Creep Abyssian:

Aggro/Burn Abyssian

A deck that didn’t quite make the list last season.

Niklaren says: “A lot of people seem to like Abyssian, & the aggro tools it has. But it is surely in a worse spot than the prior patch due to a rise in Lyonar and Nightsorrow Assassin being worse in that matchup now, no longer deleting Sunrisers, Silverguards & Ironcliffes. Moreover, the change in general hurts the tempo of the deck as you now have to spend precious damage and actions hitting certain minions that would have died previously. Sadly, in my testing Nightsorrow Assassin still seemed to be necessary to not just roll over to certain minions. The Spectral Blade nerf doesn’t hurt too much though, as 1 or 2 lost HP rarely matters for a quick deck that will also use the charges to go face.

There’s also a variant running Firespitter/Shadow Reflection/Saberspine Tiger/Blood Siren, though I prefer a more rounded deck. The neutral minions can contest board and face in the early game, while Void Pulse, Dark Seed & Spectral Revenant remain reliable enough ways to end a game with direct damage.”

Niklaren’s ResultsMaehVary Aggro Abyssian:

Lyonar

Lyonar was very nearly completely unchanged by the patch, which only cemented its position as the generally accepted best faction. Some lists run Komodo Scavenger (reworked to 1 mana 1/3 “This gains attack equal to the cost of the next artifact you equip”), but most prefer not to run it unless they’re heavily all in on Skywind Glaives and Arclyte Regalia. The top Lyonar deck remains Healyonar.

Healyonar

As seen last season:

Healyonar is a tempo deck hinging on Lyonar’s excellent healing cards and their synergies, particularly Sunriser. The usual suspects, Windblade Adept and Silverguard Knight, provide an excellent early game backbone, with Lightchaser offering a bulky body for a 2 drop with potential to scale out of control if not answered quickly. Sunriser gives even more crushing board control than Lyonar usually has, punishing your opponent for healing themselves as well as triggering off your own cards.

This deck version omits the Lightchaser as less consistent, in favour of Primus Fists. As a Solafid list, it also runs only 3-ofs (this increases deck consistency by leveraging the fact that replacing a card will never return another copy of the same card; Solafid is famous for only building decks with all 3-ofs).

Solafid’s Healyonar:

Magmar

Magmar received a substantial nerf to Twin Fang this patch (3 mana “Your General has an additional +2/+0 for each time an ally takes damage” -> 2 mana “Your General has an additional +1/+0 for each time an ally takes damage”), removing the easiest extreme burst combos the faction had access to. At the same time, Phalanxar was reworked from 2 mana 7/2 -> 2 mana 4/4 “This can only move 1 space”, making it a terrifying early game threat.

Overall, Mag is generally considered a mid-tier faction at this point.

Midrange Magmar

About this specific version of the deck, Jay says: “I typically always like to have 1 more Silithar Elder than what’s standard in midrange/control mag (ATM no one runs it that I’ve seen) just to make sure I never lose late game and can relax/not feel rushed in mirrors. IMO Bloodtear Alchemist is a staple 1-of minimum in Mag because it’s so good and I don’t feel running more than 1 is that needed (plus the deck has plenty of 2 mana plays). The one Dreamgazer could probably be a lot of things but I really like the option to tempo the [fiddlesticks] out of my opp some games with free units, and it’s very useful even late game so it being a 1-of isn’t even inconsistent. At any point in the game Lady Locke + Dreamgazer is just OP. And because of both space AND wanting to be extra safe (the self hurt can matter if you do it too often), I felt 1 was perfect. Dancing Blades could honestly be a ton of things but I think Dancing Blades is super good in these types of Mag decks because it’s very hard to play around it. Bloodtear is also kinda the same as Dreamgazer in the sense that it’s super good in Mag at any point in the game so it’s never really inconsistent. But you also don’t want to overclog your hand with utility.”

Jay’s Midrange Magmar:

Zoo Magmar

Zoo Magmar wants to develop an overwhelming board advantage using cost-effective high stat minions, especially with Lady Locke, then convert that into overwhelming damage with Twin Fang. The new low cost Fang can easily be developed for value rather than insane burst.

Jay’s Zoo Magmar:

Songhai

Kaido Assassin had a small buff from “Backstab (1)” to “Backstab (2)”, making it much more useful in many Songhai decks. Due to other meta shifts, Songhai is considered upper-mid tier by many at the moment.

Spellhai

Spellhai is the same in spirit as it was last season: play spells, deal damage, and kill your opponent. Niklaren played this list to win a tournament, so I’ll let him explain it:

Spellhai - Tournament Report Part 1 - Deck Tech (and playlist) - Niklaren on YouTube

Niklaren’s Spellhai:

Vanar

Vanar received a near-crippling nerf to Glacial Elemental (“When you summon a Vespyr, deal 2 damage to a random enemy minion” -> “Infiltrate: When you summon a Vespyr, deal 2 damage to a random enemy minion”) along with a minor nerf to Ancient Grove (no longer summons a 1/1 Treant when it itself is killed), combining to plunge it from the top of the rankings to near the bottom.

Midrange Vanar

This is a pretty standard Vanar’s Vanar deck. Araki Headhunter and friends provide a powerful opening, Fenrir Warmaster is still sticky tempo, and Jax Truesight with Prophet of the White Palm and Razorback is still deadly.

Jay says (when asked about the 1-of tech cards): “Well, the one Primus Fist is mainly because I still like my philosophy of 16 2 drops to always keep Fenrir Warmaster in the mulligan (counting Dreamgazer as one here too), and I think 2 Rust Crawler is too needed. So you only really have space for one Primus Fist. The one Emerald Rejuvenator is mainly just a bit of extra safety, because this deck is extremely good against anything so just some security that I win vs. all the aggro cheesers helps. I don’t really like more than 1 though because I really don’t wanna see it often, Emerald Rejuvenator is kinda not great in tempo vanar decks. And I used to run 2 Ancient Grove over the Emerald Rejuvenator, but after the Ancient Grove change I found it’s not as safe and the meta also sped up so 7 mana is not as reliable. But having 3 late game cards, one being good vs Mag/Lyo is still nice to have. Oh, and I forgot I run 1 Snowpiercer. That was mostly just a hard to find deck space thing, I really want 2 because Lyo is the best ATM and it’s super good vs. them and Mag, plus having burst in vanar is nice. But I really don’t want to cut anything else. Also partly why I liked the Emerald Rejuvenator in there too because with Snowpiercer it feels more needed to have a tiny bit more heal.”

Jay’s Midrange Vanar:

Ramp Vanar

Rather than playing Araki Headhunter to contest the early game, Ramp Vanar wants to play Crystal Wisp to skip the early game and get to the good stuff faster – Jax Truesight and Razorback, Ancient Grove, and sometimes even Zurael, the Lifegiver.

CrankyPanda says: “[This is the deck] I used for part of 48 wins [to S rank]. It’s pretty solid but maybe a little out of date. I don’t like how big minions are weaker to abyss now.”

Cranky’s Ramp Vanar:

Vetruvian

Vetruvian remain the faction beloved of many players but, apparently, not beloved of the developers. The reworking of Cosmic Flesh (2 mana “Give a minion +2/+4 and Provoke”) to Syzygy (4 mana “Give an allied minion +3/+0, another +0/+3, and another Blast this turn”) offers a small boost to Zoo-style decks, but only a small one. The reworking of Imperial Mechanyst (2 mana 2/3 “At the start of your turn, restore 1 durability to your artifacts” (I think)) to Imperial Saboteur (2 mana 2/3 “Give a nearby minion -2/-0 until your next turn”) nominally offers support to Sabotage Vetruvian (built around cards like Sand Howler and Blindscorch), but in practice it’s not used much.

Most Vetruvian decks from last season should still be usable, although Cosmic Flesh and Syzygy don’t quite fill the same niche.

Vetruvian remains at the bottom of the totem pole for now, 6th place in power rankings but 1st place in sandiness.

Zoo Vetruvian

Zoo Vetruvian, like Zoo Magmar, wants to develop a large board and maintain an advantage with a plethora of low-cost minions. Unlike Magmar, Vetruvian doesn’t have access to Twin Fang to convert that board advantage into a game win. How exactly anyone does convert a Zoo Vet advantage into a win is something no-one has been able to tell me yet, but I assume it happens.

TopDeckTimmy’s Zoo Vetruvian:

Dragall Vetruvian

A deck that defies categorisation so much that everyone just calls it Dragall Vet after its creator and best known pilot, Dragall.

EurasianJay says “it’s a Vetruvian goodstuff deck that’s highly adaptive, can pivot to aggro or longer games and rewards player positioning without compromising on minion quality and falling trap to getting clearly countered by specific factions due to how it just plays a generalist “good” plan.”

Dragall says: “The deck was designed to mimic my Songhai deck in 1Draw. Early board control and multi-varied threats followed by a finisher (which used to be Zendo/Spiral) and is now a bunch of low damage spells used simultaneously. Vetruvian decks have been very one-dimensional in purpose in D2, confined to linear win conditions like arti-vet, obelysk vet or zoo vet, so I just wanted to capitalize on the few unique capacities which vet have which are high tempo play + dispel on the same turn, as well as enough threat types that it is impossible to play around everything.”

Jay says: “Because of all the small pings/damage cards such as boneswarm/rasha/tiger/fury/bloodtear he constantly clears the board, and things such as Jax aren’t even that good a lot of times. Plus while running all these cards, you innately threaten to kill the opp when it comes to that time.”

Deciding whether it’s a tempo deck, an “anti-tempo deck”, a zoo deck, a combo deck, or a control deck is left as an exercise for the reader. What it is though is apparently one of the strongest Vetruvian decks in the current meta.

Dragall’s Vetruvian: