Darkmoon Faire:Chicago Recap Part 2

Yesterday, I looked at some of the non metagame related information coming out of Chicago this past weekend. Today, I'll move on to the decks and what to expect in the coming weeks.

Before we get to the top 8, let's take a look at the overall field.

I'm going to list the numbers from the Darkmoon Faire first and then the numbers that we've got from last week's Metagame Madness to see how they stack up.

Phadalus-30 (18%)
Telrander-16 (10%)
Pagatha-16 (10%)
Nimaasus-13 (8%)
Bulkas-12 (7%)
Gorebelly-9 (5%)
Dizdemona-8 (5%)
Omedus-7 (4%)
Azarak-6 (4%)
Sen'Zir-5 (3%)
Elendril-5 (3%)

From Metagame Madness last week out of 173 known top 8 decks:

Phadalus-33 (19%)
Telrander-17 (10%)
Pagatha-14 (8%)
Gorebelly-12 (7%)
Dizdemona-12 (7%)
Azarak-11 (6%)
Sen'Zir-10 (6%)
Bulkas-9 (5%)
Elendril-9 (5%)
Nimaasus-7 (4%)
Omedus-4 (2%)

And for Posterity's Sake

Chicago favored the Alliance 54%-46% and Metagame Madness showed an Alliance advantage of 53%-47%.

One final note to show how closely this event correlated with past results. If you'll notice, these are only the "popular decks." The other heroes make up 23% of the DF field combined while they make up 21% of our top 8 decks from our weekly stats.

I'm not showing you all these stats to brag. In fact, there's nothing for me to really brag about anyway since these are simple numbers and I had nothing to do with reaching them other than actually tallying them up. But I am trying to show you that with just a little bit of work, you should have a very good idea of what to expect when you head to a tournament.

The only hero that was more than slightly off from our numbers was Nimaasus, which isn't too much of a surprise anyway since he's been gaining a lot of steam in recent weeks. So the field was pretty much what we expected it to be. Let's take a look at the decks that successfully navigated this field and made it to the top 8.

When you look at the top 8 decks there isn't a whole lot there to get excited about. We've got 2 Phadalus rush decks, a standard Telrander deck, Chris McMurry's Pagatha deck which was a lot more exciting in Austin, the new standard Gorebelly deck and then a couple of unexpected decks in Grennan rush and Omedus discard/aggro. I really only want to talk about three of these.

The first is the Gorebelly deck. For anyone who missed the coverage of DF: Frankfurt this is the new Gorebelly. Instead of a control deck with a combo finisher, it has become a rush deck with a combo finish. To be honest, the new version is scarier to me, but seems far more inconsistent. I will admit upfront that I haven't playtested with this version of Gorebelly much, but it seem like in terms of potential, this deck is off the charts. The thought of a good rush deck backed up with the Mortal Strike/Heroic Strike combo is nutty.

But to me it seems like too often the deck would not be able to have the combo in the times when the allies fall short. If your rush doesn't get there, they do almost nothing as far as buying you time to comb out. On the flip side it seems like there will be a lot of games where the combo just sits in your hand and you don't need it, but if it were something better it would actually affect the game. I think the thing that confuses me most about these decks though is why they're Gorebelly and not Victoria Jaton. The Alliance has far better allies for rushing at this point and Victoria still has Mortal Strike. The main reasons for leaving the combo deck as Gorebelly in my mind have always been Steelhorn and Counterattack and these decks play neither. I think Victoria fits the rush/combo style a lot better and Gorebelly would prefer a control/combo strategy.

The Grennan deck is mid-range deck that can play a little bit of control vs. aggro decks but can still end things quickly when it needs to. I've always been a fan of Shaman decks and I think Chain Lightning is easily one of the top 5 cards in the game and only got better with the release of Untargetables. I've been leaning towards the Horde lately because they seem more versatile in the sense that a lot of their cards are good on both offense and defense. Scout Omerrta for instance can take off as a 2/1 for 1 when you want to get aggressive, but also serves as a good offensive protector when you want to slow the game down against a deck like Phadalus. From a personal standpoint, I really like this Grennan deck, and I think it's got a lot of potential if people start picking it up.

The other noteworthy deck in the top 8 was Omedus. When I first looked at this deck, I kinda thought it must have been Eric's playskills that took him that far, because the deck is a little out there. But the more I look at it the more I like it, especially Power Word:Shield. At first glance, the card doesn't seem very good. But when you look a little closer, you can use it as a 1-cost Vanquish. Since it doesn't prevent damage to and by, you can attach it to any ally, swing it in and not get it killed in the process. It seems really good to me. There are some other things I'm not too high on like the 1 Brainwash and a few of the allies like Nyn'jah. But he did take it to Top 8 so he must have done something right.

Based on the fact that there really wasn't anything new this weekend, I would expect to see more of the same moving forward until Nationals. I'm a little sad that Fires of Outland won't be legal so we'll be stuck in an established metagame, but such is life. I'm going to be out of town tomorrow, but I will be back Thursday with an all new Metagame Madness.