It’s that time of the year again: a new expansion has come to Hearthstone, and with it, a whole new set of powerful decks. Here are the best ones to play if you’d like to climb the Standard ladder—get to them while they’re hot and before they get nerfed!
Imp Warlock
This was the first deck to dominate the new metagame featuring ultra-explosive starts with the new Location card called Vile Library, which is especially potent with a turn three Fiendish Circle follow-up, but it is pretty damn busted otherwise as well and it should be the number one card you mulligan for.
Ideally, you’ve got your over-statted minions on the board by the first few turns and you’re ready to completely take over the game.
From that point on, you can just read what the cards say and rely on your Imp synergies: use Impending Catastrophe to draw, Imp King Rafaam to resummon a board, Mischievous Imp to go wide… you know the drill.
Wildseed Face Hunter
Hunter’s got an unbelievably strong set of cards with Murder at Castle Nathria, including a package of Wildseed cards, which all summon one or more of the over-statted Wildseed minions that will quickly take over the board for you.
Couple this with the class’ other powerful early-game cards and the massive burn potential of Collateral Damage as a curve-topper, and you’ve got a winner.
Play for tempo, take the board, then it’s SMOrc time!
Questline Hunter
You know it, you love (or hate) it: the core of the archetype remains virtually unchanged from the previous metagame, but now you get a couple of amazing Wildseed cards to have even higher tempo output as you complete your Questline and unlock the ability to repeatedly refresh your 0-cost Hero Power and quickly close out the game.
Survival (and clearing the board) is the name of the Hearthstone game until that point, but once you do get there, you are almost sure to win.
Control Murloc Shaman
A variation of an already existing archetype, the new-look Control Murloc Shaman added a couple of strong late-game tools from Murder at Castle Nathria to match the oomph that’s dished out by the current top dogs. Insatiable Devourer and Sire Denathrius offer powerful tools for the late game that can turn the match around for you against any opposition.
Skeleton Mage
Take your Big Spell Mage deck from the previous expansion and sprinkle it with most of the new Volatile Skeleton-related synergy cards added in the new set, and you get Skeleton Mage. It is the only viable Mage deck of the current metagame and it still struggles against the top dogs, but when it does work, the payoffs are truly explosive, courtesy of the latest Kel’thuzad card, the awesome new Mage legendary.
Play for the long game and stay alive: there’s always going to be a card, either in your deck or something you’ve generated, that can bail you out should the match go long enough.
