More on the Post Regionals Metagame

Here's what the deck breakdown that we will be using today looks like. It's about 2/3 of the Regionals so this should give us a pretty good idea of the metagame we will be looking out.

Horde Shaman-36
Alliance Warlock-24
Alliance Hunter-21
Horde Hunter-12
Horde Warlock-8
Horde Mage-5
Alliance Paladin-4
Horde Warrior-3
Horde Priest-3
Alliance Mage-2
Horde Druid-1

One thing to remember when looking over this information is that we don't have decklists for very many of these decks. So despite the fact that there are 36 Shamans, there could be a lot of variance in the lists. I think the Shamans most likely all have the same rough idea. Play control against the Hunters and aggro against everyone else. I would bet the most variance occurs with the Alliance Warlocks with some looking to beatdown and some looking to last long enough for the big boys to come out and play. It looks like we have pretty well established the tier 1 decks.

Playtesting showed, to me at least, that the Shaman was probably the best deck for Regionals. This is why I was planning on playing it along with my brother-in-law, Gary. It has a great matchup vs. Hunters, especially on the play, and good matchups vs. the Warlock and Mage control decks. The things that worried us the most were the Warrior matchup, which was really just a race to see if they could combo us out before we finished them and Hunter players putting Annihilators in place of their Krol Blades. We found that this one swap actually gave them a pretty good chance when they went first. It looks like one of our fears was close and the other was nothing to worry about. Reports have been saying that a lot of Hunter players were switching to Annihilator, but it doesn't seem like the Warriors fared very well, so we probably would have missed our matchup fear.

I am betting that most of the Warlock decks that did well were probably in the control camp. This is another deck that has a very good matchup vs. the hunter, but I think the advantage goes to the Shaman in the other tier 1 matchup. I don't think it's a huge advantage but I still think in the long run the Shaman will win this matchup more than it loses it.

Obviously, everyone knows about the Hunters. They've slipped a little from where they were at GenCon and that's probably a result of all the hate they had to face at Regionals. The fact that a total of 33 Hunters still punched their ticket to Nationals shows a lot about the resiliency of the deck. I think as more people realize the power of Annihilator in their worst matchup (Shaman), Hunters will stay right there in the top tier.

Now we're looking at a very strange situation with three Tier One decks. Most times, when there are three T1 decks, you will have a paper-rock-scissors environment where Deck A beats Deck B which beats Deck C which beats Deck A. But in this situation, the Shaman actually has a really good matchup vs. the Hunter and a pretty good matchup vs. the Warlock. The Warlock fits the mold with a good matchup vs. the Hunters but a tougher one vs. the Shaman and the Hunter has a bad matchup vs. both of the other top decks. This information would lead us to believe that the Hunters are in trouble. While, I think the popularity of the Hunter deck will continue to decrease slightly, it's still a powerful deck that is capable of really punishing any kind of bad draw. The slightest slip against a Hunter can seal your fate. The raw power of the deck will continue to make it a popular choice for the forseeable future. It will simply be up to the players of the deck to do what they can to help their bad matchups.

Now, let's take a look at the tier 2 decks and see if any of them have a chance of stepping up into the top tier.

First up is the Horde Mage. All of the Horde Mage decks I've seen are aggro decks. While this deck does have a lot of power with the same basic ally suite as the Horde Hunters, it gets better spells, but loses three health points and more importantly the pets and weapons of the Hunter. As far as its matchups vs. the big 3, it's going to face the same bad matchups against the Shaman and Warlock that the Hunter already faces, but the Hunter matchup comes down to the Mage's abilities vs. Fury, Annihilator and Aimed Shot. I think the deck will continue to see play, I think the Hunter will continue to be the most popular choice for players who just want to smash face.

Next is the Alliance Paladin. Anyone who read my posts leading up to Regionals, knows I thought this was the best deck in the format. I still think that it's a very good choice as the proper build has good matchups vs. both the Shaman and Hunter decks. The biggest problem the deck will have in the new metagame is the prevalence of Medoc Spiritwarden and Moira Darkheart. Finding a reliable answer to this problem will prove to be the defining issue of whether this deck can move up into the top tier of decks. One possible answer which would cause the deck to lose consistency and valuable card slots is to play Spread the Word and Blessing of Might. This will allow to continue to attack with unpreventable damage. The ideal situation would be to clear away their protectors so you can get to Medoc.

The lack of success of the Horde Warrior deck was a little shocking to me. I wasn't expecting it to take home as many slots as say Shaman or Hunter, but I thought it would at least be a little closer than this. This deck has a good matchup vs. Shaman and a decent one vs. Warlocks but is weaker vs. the Hunters. This deck probably poses the biggest threat to the Shaman deck but ironically the Hunter deck that the Shaman beats so mercilessly may keep the Warriors down enough to let the Shaman stay at number one. The problem I have seen with the Warrior deck is that it's possible to build the deck to beat Hunters but doing so generally weakens it in its other good matchups. I think this deck will rise in popularity. I'm not going to say it will move up into the top tier yet, but I think it has a shot.

The Horde Priest took as many slots as the Warrior in the tournaments we know about. I didn't cover the Priest in the lead up to Regionals. I didn't think it would make the splash that some others on the Internet thought it would. It took a couple of spots. The current problem I see is that to be successful, the Horde Priest needs to be aggressive. The ideal situation is to put out some attackers and then strip your opponent of their hand, leaving them with limited options to deal with your attackers. The problem is the deck isn't as fast as the Hunter decks and a lot of decks are surprisingly resilient to the discard. I think this deck will continue to show up in small numbers and remain a solid tier 2 deck.

The biggest surprise of the weekend in my opinion was the total flop pulled by the highly touted Alliance Mage control decks. This deck had a lot of people praising its power and some going so far as to call it the deck to beat. So what happened? Many people are citing the lack of cards and high price of the Mage singles as a reason no one piloted the deck. With no pilots, obviously no one made top 4 with it. Since we don't have deck breakdowns of the entire field, it's impossible to know how many Mages actually showed up, but I don't think the price of the deck was as much of a factor as other people think. The Alliance Hunter deck runs 2-4 Leeroy Jenkins and a full set of Fury and Aimed Shot. The total price tag on an Alliance Hunter deck is probably right up there with the Alliance Mage, but that didn't stop people from playing Elendril in full force. But a better indicator that the price tag wasn't as much of a factor is the presence of more Paladin decks in top 4's than Mages. One of the final builds of the Paladin deck we had before we finally decided on Shaman before Regionals was pushing $300 for the singles. I'm sure not all the Paladin players were running that expensive of a version, but the Paladin singles aren't cheap either, but more Paladins made top 4 than Alliance Mages. I think the real culprit was people realizing that it simply wasn't the best ally-based Alliance control deck. That title went to the Warlock. Once people who were really preparing realized that the Warlock was better in the important matchups, I think that pushed people away from the Mage deck. It will be interesting to see if the Alliance Mage deck starts showing up in greater numbers as more cards become available, but my prediction is that Dizdemona will continue to be the premier Alliance control deck.

The only other deck to make a top 4 was a Horde Druid deck. I have seen this decklist, and it runs the Shaman ally suite with Innervates, Starfires, and Entangling Roots. I wouldn't expect it to make a big splash in the new metagame as I think it's basically inferior to the Shaman deck.

One of the surprising things about these results is the total lack of anything that wasn't expected. The only deck that's even remotely unexpected is the one Druid deck. Other than that everything was known about before Regionals. I wasn't expecting to see anything great and new that would take the world by storm, but maybe a few people who decided to play Rogue for the fun of it or because their MMO character is an Alliance Priest and them make top 8, but no such luck this time around.