Metagame Madness Revisited

One of my very astute readers out there left a comment regarding this week's metagame madness that I would like to clarify. Anonymous left this comment:

"I don't know what you have against Gorebelly, but you've really had to stretch the boundaries of logic and reason not to include it as tier 1. First, instead of your usual classifying tiers by Hero/Class (which in this case Gorebelly/Warrior would fall into Tier 1), you've made a random and unique exception to classify by archetype.Then, instead of putting solo warrior and solo rogue together into the same archetype as "solo equip" and naming it the obvious tier 1 dominant deck, you've somehow decided that the three tier 1 archetypes are "Daspien, Omedus, and hoot'n'shoot" (mixing up Heroes and Archetypes as convenient for your theory). This makes no sense. Either the "Gorebelly" hero is tier 1 just like you say the Daspien and Omedus heroes are tier 1, or you should stay consistent classifying by archetype and not hero. In that case both Daspien and Gorebelly are bundled into "solo equip" and it is the dominant tier 1 deck."

This is actually very good point, and I felt like the clarification needed its own post rather that simply another comment because I know not everyone reads the comments section. I welcome anyone who has any valid questions or comments regarding any of my writing to call me out if you think I've made a mistake. If you do it in a civil manner like Anonymous has done here, I will try to address where you think I've messed up. Sometimes, I do mess up and I'll be the first to admit it when I do. Anyway, back to the point at hand.

First of all, I have nothing against Gorebelly. In fact, if you read my blog on my.tcgplayer, you would know that last week I said we thought Gorebelly solo was in fact the best deck.

There are two main reasons why I've broken from my usual classifications. The first is that there is just more information out there now. When I started this back in January, there weren't very many heroes that say play so when sending me information or posting on forums, etc., most people simply put Grennan, Dizdemona, Sen'Zir, Elendril, etc. More and more people are now posting the decklists online and at least differentiating between say Gorebelly Twig aggro and Gorebelly Solo/Control. This added information allows me to make a more informed assessment of what decks are popular.

The second reason I have now added the extra breakdown is because we've never had multiple VERY different archetypes played to equal success by the same hero, and we've also never had two heroes who played almost the exact same deck. In HoA the Grennan decks had varying degrees of beatdown vs. aggro, but most of them weren't vastly different from one another. With Gorebelly now we see 2 incredibly different archetypes, both with a fair amount of success.

As for combining the two heroes that make up Hoot'n'Shoot, that's also a byproduct of never having two heroes with the same Faction and Class playing similar styles of decks. I still list all the heroes individually, but in the end the real goal of this article is to show everyone what they can expect from the metagame. Hoot'n'Shoot despite being played by 2 different heroes, is currently more popular than either Gorebelly deck individually. That is the point I made and I think it would be misleading (and possibly ethically wrong) if I didn't bring this distinction up in addressing the metagame.

As to why I didn't lump Solo Warrior and Solo Rogue together to make solo equipment and dub it the hands down best deck, there are actually several reasons. The first is that this column has nothing to do with the best deck but instead, the popularity of all decks. Also, despite having the obvious similarities (no or few allies, mostly equipment, hates Hammer of Justice, etc.) the two decks play very differently and require different gameplans to beat them. This may seem crazy, but the Rogues decks are actually closer to Telrander than Gorebelly. The final reason I didn't lump Solo Rogue and Solo Warrior together is because there just aren't as many Solo Warrior decks as you seem to think.

In the end, I still gave you the normal hero breakdown that I always have. As far as I know, UDE still hasn't named me Official Assigner of Tiers yet, so if you think "solo equip" is the obvious most dominant deck, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. I simply showed where the numbers could be deceiving and showed you how I would currently put the decks into Tiers 1 and 2.