There are more minor variances, such as the inclusion or exclusion of Spiritsinger Umbra in Cube Warlock or the choice between Lyra the Sunshard or Gadgetzan Auctioneer in Highlander Priest, but those don’t stand out quite as much. But occasional interesting inclusions do exist: Sonya Shadowdancer made it into Jason “JasonZhou” Zhou and Muzahidul “Muzzy” Islam’s Tempo Rogues, for example.Īdditionally, Frank “Fr0zen” Zhang has elected to contest the board with Violet Teachers and Mark of the Lotus in his Jade Druid. There are a few unsurprising tech cards making appearances, like Rin, the First Disciple in several Control Warlock decks. Those with the tools to contest Raza and Shadowreaper Anduin more efficiently-using decks like Jade Druid-will be the few to forgo playing against Gul’dan.īroadly speaking, there are fewer edge-case tech cards in play here, as players are laser-focused on bringing heavily refined decks and playing with the full suite of cards available for this Standard rotation. Most competitors will ban whichever of their opponent’s Priest or Warlock list is most difficult to beat, with the majority likely erring towards Priest. Multiple decks running anti-aggro tools (Golakka Crawler, etc.) suggests that players expected aggressive Druid, Paladin, or Rogue lists, and have focused on improving those matchups at the expense of targeting the difficult-to-isolate Priest or Warlock. Working from that knowledge, a conservative line of strategy is to ban one of these two must-bring decks, and then position your remaining decks to have the strongest possible matchups against what you believe will fill those remaining two slots. With 16 players packing Priest and 15 wielding Warlock, that turns out to have been a pretty good prediction! Within the common classes, there are also outliers: a lone Big Spell Priest from Anthony “Ant” Trevino or the only Dragon Combo Priest from Thomas “Sintolol” Zimmer stand apart, as does the one Zoo deck in Samuel “SamuelTsao” Tsao’s choices.įrom what we know, players arrived at their lineups working from two very important assumptions: that both Priest and Warlock would feature heavily in the tournament overall. Mage and Paladin are the other underrepresented classes, with two players looking to Control Mage to defeat aggro line-ups and three players banking on Murloc Paladin to be their silver bullet against Priest. With the potential to open aggressively enough to beat most anything and the reach to ignore the Great Wall of Voidlords from Warlock, it’s an interesting strategic direction-and in the absence of much Paladin, it could just work. Here’s an at-a-glance look at how the class selections break down by the regions players hail from:įor those of you looking for the off-meta selections, you have Jon “Orange” Westberg to thank for the tournament’s biggest surprise: a single Aggro Hunter. (The most-played single line-up of Aggro Druid, Highlander Priest, Tempo Rogue, and Control Warlock will be fielded by three players.) Rounding out the bulk of players’ rosters is their Druid of choice: Aggro or Jade. While it struggles against the major stabilization that Control Warlock is capable of, Tempo Rogue’s explosive opening potential continues to make it a very viable choice. Warlock and Priest will be met in battle by the ever-reliable Tempo Rogue, which is the most-played single archetype in the field (but only because there are two distinct flavors-standard and Dragon-of Highlander Priest).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |