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Hello folks, [DKMR]Hexar here from team Don’t Kick My Robot with an article discussing going over or under the Metagame. This is a concept for players trying to stay ahead of the Meta and not necessarily play the Meta.

Going under the Meta: means you are playing a deck that is trying to ignore what people are doing and play smaller threats in an effort to win before your opponent can set up.

Going over the Metagame: means the contrary, it is about playing answers to the Meta decks and usually involves running bigger and better threats with the idea that you will have inevitability against the Meta deck.

Luckily DKMR publishes a Meta Report every week, which gives you an idea of what to expect and also teaches you to analyze the Meta for yourself.

If this is a little too complicated, an easy way to explain is to simplify the decks. Assume the Meta is all 5 health/5 attack creatures that cost 5 to cast; you don’t want to play against this for obvious reasons. Let’s say you have the choice to play 3 health/3 attack creatures that cost 3 to cast. This would be considered trying to go under the Meta. On the contrary you could play 7 health/7 attack creatures that cost 7 to cast. That would be considered going over the Meta. The issue lies in trying to go too big or too small. For example 1 health/1 attack creatures that cost 1 to cast would be far too ineffective and 10 health/10 attack creatures that cost 10 to cast for 10 would be way too slow to ever stand a chance.

There are a lot of decks out there, this is only a rough list but a sample Meta would look something like this (in order from fastest to slowest):

1. Warlock Aggro
2. Hunter Aggro
3. Shaman Aggro/Midrange
4. Rogue Aggro/Midrange
5. Paladin Midrange
6. Mage Midrange
7. Druid Midrange/Control
8. Warrior Control
9. Priest Control

This is just currently our opinion with my personal lists we are running. You definitely want to analyze the Meta to the best of your ability. If this is difficult for you, don’t worry too much yet. Some useful tips are reading articles that people are posting, watching constructed streams, and keeping track of the decks you run into on a spreadsheet. After hitting legendary we noticed a lot of druid midrange as well as a lot of aggro decks. This led us to go in two separate directions.

The first was to play something similar to [DKMR]’s Aggro Paladin:

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This is our choice for going under that particular Metagame. This deck is very fast and can win a game quickly before the druid midrange decks can even handle what’s going on. Ironbeak Owl helps a lot by negating the taunts and Divine Shield+Blessing of Might lets you push through lots of damage. If they are able to draw the game out, Divine Favor pulls the game back in your favor. The other great thing about this deck is that it’s very good against the other aggro decks. The deck is kind of soft to explosive trap, but you can easily play around that. Knife Juggler/Truesilver Paladin/Blessing of Might are also very explosive but double as helping you against other aggressive decks.

The second option was to play a very hard control deck. Here’s a rough list of what we would recommend:

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This is a very controlling deck which has a lot of tools to stop early game pressure. Warrior is great for this because of armor stacking and ability to get to late game without suffering a lot of damage. Furthermore the late game capabilities of this deck are insane. If you get to the late game, this Warrior deck is going to win. With the exception of a priest Mind Controlling your huge threats, there’s not much better late game than a control warrior. You will have more resilient threats and a higher number altogether,

However, please keep in mind the Meta changes almost daily and keeping on top of the Meta will take you from being a good player to a great player. The higher rank you get, the less players misplay, so having the benefit of a deck ahead of the meta will provide you with a significant advantage from the other grinders. This also applies to tournaments, however you should expect a different meta in tournament play than the ladder as they are two entirely separate entities, but that’s another article altogether.

Thanks for reading and be sure to stay ahead of your game. Feel free to check out the rest of the team at www.dontkickmyrobot.com and continue looking for our articles on ihearthu.com!