Metagame Madness 5/31

It's everybody's favorite time of the week. Time for your weekly dose of metagame breakdown and analysis.

First let's look at the factions and see if the blue team was able to extend their lead or if the red team closed the gap.

Alliance-63 +19
Horde-50 +16

So the Alliance continues to lead and pulled away a little further, but the disparity for the new additions is close enough to say that this battle was pretty even this week.

Moving on to the class breakdown we've got:

Shaman-29/+8
Hunter-20/+5
Warlock-18/+7
Druid-18/+6
Warrior-14/+4
Paladin-8/+4
Mage-3/+0
Priest-2/+1
Rogue-1/+0

There are a couple of things of note here. First is the bounceback of Warlocks this week. After getting blanked in last week's breakdown, they came back with a vengeance this week finishing second only to Shaman (which should be no surprise if you've been reading this for more than two weeks). Shaman is still the most popular by a small margin for the week and continues to pull away overall. The other interesting note here is the 4 Paladin decks. Out of those 4, 3 of them were Nimaasus rush decks. The other was Savin Lightguard and I'm not sure whether it is rush or control. The lesson here is that Alliance rush is slowly taking over. When you look at the totals, we've got 113 decks. Phadalus, Telrander, Elendril, Dizdemona, and now Nimaasus are all Alliance rush decks. When you add it all up, over half of the decks are Alliance rush including the two most represented heroes, Phadalus and Telrander. So the foremost consideration when building or choosing a deck for Regionals should be, "How do I handle a blue rush?"

Now let's get to the specific heroes. Two quick notes on the stats here. There was a tournament in Brighton, MA where 2 Rogue decks made top 8, but I got no other information from that tournament, so I haven't included them yet. Also, in Jacksonville, a Telrander deck made top 8 and then dropped from the tournament which moved a Mojo Mender Ja'nah deck into the top 8. For these calculations, I have given the top 8 credit to the Telrander deck since I feel like that's a truer representation of the top 8, but there was a Mojo Mender Ja'nah deck right there too. So without further ado:

Phadalus-25/+6
Telrander-16/+5
Pagatha-9/+4
Bulkas-8/+3
Sen'Zir-7/+2
Gorebelly-6/+1
Azarak-6/+1
Dizdemona-6/+3
Elendril-6/+2
Grennan-4/+2
Nimaasus-4/+3
Aleyah-2/+0
Thangal-2/+1
Omedus-2/+1
Graccus-1/+0
Morganis-1/+0
Kayleitha-1/+0
Ta'Zo-1/+0
Ruby-1/+0
Grumpherys-1/+0
Radak-1/+0
Savin-1/+1

One thing that I find interesting about these numbers is the similarity in the Alliance decks vs. the diversity in the Horde decks. On the Alliance side, you have decks that are mostly going to run basically the same set of allies and just intermingle their own abilities. They all have the same basic plan, kill you with a ton of cheap, efficient allies. But the Horde decks are all very different. Pagatha tens to play a more pure control game, Bulkas is in the middle and makes great use of some powerful abilities and equipment, Sen'Zir tends to play giant dudes and try to overwhelm the opposition with them, Gorebelly is the closest the game has to a combo deck right now, and Azarak is a Hunter control deck. The Horde has a lot of depth and versatility, where the Alliance is really becoming a one trick pony.

Don't underestimate the power of that one trick pony though. Alliance rush decks continue to take up the most slots in top 8's with Phadalus once again being the most represented hero. His numbers would be even better if people hadn't started playing Nimaasus instead. After Phadalus, the second most represented hero is Telrander, also an Alliance rush deck. I already know there is going to be an outcry that this isn't a typical Alliance rush deck. But let's be honest, despite all the nifty Feral abilities this is still an Alliance deck that plays a bunch of cheap dudes and wants the game to end sooner rather than later. This deck lacks a little bit of consistency for more late game power. Where the other Alliance rush decks tend to run out of steam this one is just getting started. Of course, there will be games where you can't get into Form, or get your form card destroyed and won't have the resources open to save it and have even less gas than a typical deck. It's just a matter of deciding whether that trade off in consistency is worth the extra power later in the game.

Pagatha bounced back nicely this week to show she is still a solid option. Bulkas, Nimaasus, and Dizdemona all turned in solid weeks as well, with the two Alliance heroes riding the untargetable wave. I think the Bulkas deck is reverting to being a very solid choice as there is less and less hate for it since the Phadalus and Telrander decks are dominating and it is capable of handling weenie rushes very well. After the deck gets to add Drillborer Disk, Eskhandar's Right Claw, and stupid Warrior pants, I think it will become even better. Start saving up to get your Stronghold Gauntlets and MC loot because Warriors are going to be good.

That wraps things up for this week. Good luck to anyone attending Regionals this weekend, and if you do attend and can pass along results it truly helps me keep this going. The more results we get, the better picture we get of the metagame.