Regionals Primer-Part 1

The first wave of Regional championships is coming up January 13th. That's just about three weeks away. I'm here to try to help you get prepared for your chance to qualify for Nationals. Today in Part 1 of my Regionals primer I'm going to devote this whole post to talking about the deck to beat in the current metagame, the weenie rush. I'm going to talk about the different variants of the deck, ways to possibly improve it for those of you playing it, and finally ways to beat it.

In the only 2 major tournaments we have seen so far there were 4 Elendril rush decks (one of which won the Regionals at GenCon) 2 Sen'Zir Beastwalker decks, 2 Ta'Zo decks, and 1 Litori Frostburn deck in Top 8's. That's 9 out of 16 spots in the Top 8 of those 2 tournaments.
Basically you have 2 decisions to make when you build your deck. The first choice is Alliance or Horde. The second choice is Mage or Hunter. You could make these decisions in the reverse order choosing class first and faction second. I'm going to talk about what each unique choice here gives you in your deck.

Your first decision is Alliance or Horde. The real question here is Elusive or Ferocity. Alliance also has access to Leeroy Jenkins. The Elusive vs. Ferocity debate has been an ongoing one. I will be casting my ballot for Elusive here. When you're playing a rush deck your goal is simple. Deal as much damage as fast as possible. The easiest way to do this is to keep your allies alive. There are three basic ways to kill allies. 1) Remove them directly with abilities 2) Attack them 3) Kill them when they attack. Since your allies will usually be heading straight for the hero the last point is usually done with protectors. With the Elusive allies you remove one of the three ways to kill your allies meaning your allies will generally live longer. Living longer means getting to attack more. Elusive gives the rush player the ability to decide which allies get to trade for other allies. When your opponent plays an ally that you really need to kill, such as Freya Lightsworn you have the option to attack and kill her, but the opponent is not given the same courtesy. If you decide one of his allies is of little significance, that ally isn't going to do much to disrupt your gameplan since it won't be able to remove your Elusive allies. I think the Horde does have the advantage in the faction only Quest department as Torek's Assault is superior to the Defias Brotherhood. In rush decks Brotherhood borders on a win more card. If you have 4 allies in play, your opponent doesn't seem to be doing much to stop you. You should already be well on your way to a win here, so completing Brotherhood will rarely result in you winning a game you would otherwise have lost. If you are losing the game, you won't ever meet the requirement of the 4 allies to complete the Brotherhood anyway. Torek's Assault on the other hand will get played in many games where the outcome is still in doubt. It only costs one resource for one card. The only prerequisite is that one of your allies has damaged your opponent's hero. If you're not dealing any damage with your allies well...one card certainly won't be turning that around any time soon. One other thing to consider when choosing which side you will play is the Alliance heroes flip abilities are worthless and nearly worthless for these decks. Ta'Zo has a very relevent flip ability and SB can get a Fury back in the mid-to-late game. The final thing to consider when choosing your faction is Leeroy Jenkins. I think Leeroy deserves a special note here. I will say that I personally am not a huge fan of Leeroy. I think he is just too situational. I can't imagine a time I will want to play him on turn 4 and essentially lock myself out of attacking the next turn. So he is basically a burn spell. You only want to play him if he is actually going to kill your opponent right then. Even if your opponent is within 6 points of death, playing Leeroy is still a big risk unless they are tapped out. Any instant speed removal spell or healing ability will essentially result in a Time Walk for your opponent (should a say a Chromie here?) since Leeroy will lock down your allies next turn. I personally would not be playing Leeroy in anything that has allies that aren't named Leeroy Jenkins.

The other choice you have to make is Hunter or Mage. As an aside, I think that Warrior is a possible choice as a hero here, but for the purposes of this post I'm just talking about the rush decks that have been in the top 8 of GenCon events. First let's look at what the Hunter offers. The main thing you gain from playing a Hunter is access to the brutal pets Bloodclaw and Fury. The Mage has no pets at all so getting the only 3/1 for 1 in the game and also a 5/3 for 5 with Fury are bargains for a deck looking to serve up the beatdown. The Hunter also gives you access to Krol Blade. With a weapon you will have a recurring source of non-ally damage. The Mage doesn't have any weapons that are meant to be attacked with. The Hunter also has 3 more health which can be the difference in the game against a Mage rush deck. So where does the Mage catch up? In its casting ability of course. Playing a Mage gives you access to cheap removal that you won't find in a Hunter deck. Fire Blast is the most cost effective burn spell in the game. You get Polymorph for problem protectors (Sarmoth anyone?), you can go up to Frost Shock and Fireball if you want. You also have Counterspell for Frost Nova and Rain of Fire which are two of this decks least favorite cards. You can even have Frost Novas in the board for the mirror. If you can find room you also get Mana Agate to keep yourself from running out of steam. The Hunter abilities aren't anything to write home about. Elendril lets you play Aimed Shot which is less efficient than Fireball and will rarely do more damage with these decks. Arcane Shot is OK. I think Ravenous Bite is underrated, but abilities aren't why you play a Hunter. To sum this all up, the Hunter is more savagely efficient where the Mage gives itself more options. Having said all of this, if I were playing rush, I would choose Alliance/Mage. Alliance for the superior allies and Mage for the extra versatility despite being possibly a turn to a turn and a half slower on average.

What should you do if you are going to play this deck at Regionals? The first thing is expect a lot of hate. There are going to be Grimdrons, Searing Totems, Sarmoths, Protectors, Frost Novas, Flame Wraths, and every other card you have nightmares about all over the place. I would suggest deciding which build is right for you and just playing it over and over and over until you know how to play the deck expertly. You will win some games on the power of the deck alone but if you want to survive all the hate you simply have to play the deck at a near perfect level or you simply won't have a chance. If you're not playing rush, you better be able to beat it. If you can't, don't expect to have a very good record at the end of the day. If you can't beat any other deck, beat this one.

Having said that, how do you beat the swarm of weenies? The 2 decks that seem to have the best matchups vs. this deck are Oliver Schmid's Darkmoon Faire winning Shaman deck, and the Warlock deck. I will talk about these decks in detail in my next post. Mage control decks are also good due to the presence of Frost Nova. Taz'dingo is a great card against rush decks because he will generally kill an ally when he comes into play and then trade with one in combat as well. The Shaman deck and Warlock deck both have an overwhelming array of cards that are really bad for rush decks. Searing Totem, Taz'dingo and big-bodied protectors allowed Oliver Schmid to go 10-1 vs. Hunter rush at the DF. Add in the Annihilator allowing him to kill allies that attack his hero and the Draconian Deflector essentially denying one attack per turn and Ghost Wolf cancelling another you should see why this deck is so good against the rush. The Warlock deck has its own fair share of problem cards for the rush player. A turn 1 Grimdron is very bad news as it will set a Hunter player back at least 2 turns and a Mage deck one turn assuming either has the answer in Arcane Shot or Fire Blast. If they can't remove Grimdron, he basically wins the game by himself. If they do clear Grimdron out, then there's the next pet on the ladder, Sarmoth. While Sarmoth might not be as bad for the rush as Grimdron, he is still a problem. He will usually require two attacks to kill and will regularly take one ally with him when he dies. He doesn't outright dominate the board like Grimdron would but he functions as a virtual Time Walk getting you into the mid-game. Turn 4 can see another nightmare card out of the Warlock player, Rain of Fire. While this card wasn't played in the Warlock deck that Top 8'd the Faire it's, a better call now with a more defined metagame. It will only be in play one turn, or two at the most, but that will be enough to decimate your opponent's board. After the Rain ends, we see the final nightmare for the rush player, Infernal. Everything that Rain of Fire did, Infernal does in a 6/6 body. If the Warlock player is still at a respectable health total when Infernal comes out, the game is over. The only possible answer to Infernal is a Mage with Polymorph. The Warlock ability Steal Essence is also a real nuisance since it kills an ally an nullifies one attack with its heal ability.

Overall, the rush decks are a very powerful, very fast, and not too expensive to build (unless you want 4 Leeroys). I think they will make up around 25%-35% of most metagames with anything up to 50% not shocking. They will take their share of Nationals invites through numbers alone, but there will be a lot of hate for them. Only the very well prepared will be able to navigate the sea of hate. Today, I talked about the deck to beat (not necessarily the best, just the one that will get played the most). Next time, I will talk about the decks that I think will show up in big numbers, just not as big as the rush decks.