As with any card game, the meta changes about as often as your socks. (You do change your socks, right?). The month of January and Hearthstone‘s ranked gameplay was no different. Containing a major patch in the middle of the season that completely turned the meta-game on its end, it was a pretty interesting month to play Ranked. Many classes had opportunities to climb the ladder at some point.
I do enjoy seeing that 10 mana cost on this hated spell.
With the large nerfs to Pyroblast and the aggressive Warlock, the last few weeks has seen the rise of the Druid and Shaman classes. Druid is an absolute late game monster with enough removal to be considered an eraser and Shaman’s only true bad matchup was Mages. With the nerfs to Mages, the previously rare Shaman deck shot up the ladder fairly quickly, being able to handle aggressive early game decks as well as go toe to toe with late game powerhouses.
If you played within the last week however, the most common decks you’ve seen are Warriors and Hunters. With the new Unleash the Hounds, Hunter decks are insanely cheap (cost wise, not tactic wise) and effective at burning an opponent down before they can even begin to mount a counter attack.
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These are not the dogs you want let out on you…
Likewise, there has been a rise of an aggressive Warrior deck put together by Reynad, a long time Magic player who has rapidly climbed the Hearthstone ladders through raw talent. Creating a Warrior deck that was almost completely “budget” cards (meaning they are either given to you through the tutorial or by reaching level 10 in the class through gameplay), Reynad looked to prove that Hearthstone was an inherently skill based game and was not a “pay to win” game. Granted he has years of experience in card games, but the fact that anyone can pull off a feat like that has to say something about the general conception of “more money, more wins” in the game.
With its fast paced gameplay and even faster meta, Hearthstone‘s ranked game mode continues to eat up my free time at alarming rates. With the game now in open beta, there’s no excuse to not at least be trying the game out. A great ladder structure and easy to get into but hard to master gameplay are just two reasons to jump on in to the next Season of Hearthstone Ranked play. How high can you climb on the ladder?
