Team IHearthU Article: Pre-Goblins v Gnomes Meta

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As the end of the Naxxramas metagame is on the horizon and we’re about to experience a whole new metagame, with new matchups, new decks and a ton of new stuff to try, I figured that there’s no better way to end the format than with a discussion on the best deck of the Naxxramas metagame and arguably the one that will be the deck to beat in the first few weeks of the new metagame. To me, that deck is none other than the dreaded Zoo. A popular archetype filled with the best aggressive neutral minions and two Soulfires, the deck is easy to play and difficult to master. What makes Zoo so strong? Why was it the best deck in the old metagame and what makes it the deck to beat in the new one?

Well, first of all. Zoo is a very consistent deck. It wishes to do the same thing every single game. The game plan with Zoo is to populate the board, grind the opponent out of relevant cards and make their life extremely difficult. Zoo does that by combining many cheap yet efficient minions with the Warlock hero power. The warlock’s hero power is above and beyond the most overpowered in the game. Drawing cards for free, as well as playing a deck with only cheap and relevant cards makes it so everything you have is going to have an immediate impact on the game. Combined with the once-free, now almost free Soulfire, you’re able to get super efficient board control and lock your opponent out of the game.

Different decks handle Zoo in different ways meaning Zoo players need to play a different gameplan every single game and every single matchup. For example, when playing against a Shaman - you have to be squeezing in as many Hero Powers as you possibly can while developing a threatening board yet not completely overcommitting to the board. You also have to trade with their minions and kill all their totems because Shaman can only play their game if it has minions on the board. Following that, the only way a Shaman player will beat you is by taking out all your cards in one shot with a Lightning Storm so the way you combat that is by drawing so many cards that if they Lightning Storm your board, you have enough resources to just redevelop all over again. They won’t be able to handle your board and they’ll be overloaded so their options are limited the following turn. Once it rolls back to you, you continue the same strategy, building up your cards so you have adequate answers to a Fire Elemental and a second Lightning Storm. If you follow this game plan you will surely beat Shaman.

On the same note, if you’re playing against a Druid player, you have to approach the matchup with a different game plan completely. Druid doesn’t have any effective board clears so your mentality against Druid is to put up as many minions as possible while going for as much face damage as you possibly can. The reason you do this is because the Druid’s cards are so expensive that they’ll often only play one a turn so if you put up way too many things for them to kill, you’ll be able to deal way too much damage early on and they will get crushed.

Lets look at my own personal Zoo list, a variation of which helped Chance get #1 legend last season.

The ratios with this deck were extensively tested and I came to the conclusion that this was the best Zoo deck possible in the metagame for many reasons. First of all, the deck had to do well in 4 key matchups, the Priest, Warrior, Hunter and mirror matchups because those were the decks that were most represented on the ladder. The ladder metagame for Naxxramas focused around a few key nuances. Hunter was by far the most popular strategy on the ladder. No contest. 1 in every 4 games (I played over 200 games played last season) was a Hunter. It was incredibly important that my Zoo deck had a good matchup versus the Hunter players. This zoo deck did very well against Hunter. Being able to develop way more minions than them and racing them forced the Hunter into an awkward position, one where it didn’t ever want to be. You had more damage output every turn in comparison to them and they’d be forced to clear. Once the hunter player starts clearing, the control of the game is yours.

The other super important matchup was the mirror match. Though less popular than the Hunters, you’d still play against a Zoo player one in every 6 or 7 games and that’d be enough to make choices that help the mirror match. Echoing Ooze and Ironbeak Owl were two metagame influenced cards that really helped this matchup. Echoing Ooze gave you two immediate bodies to trade with. That meant using the coin and Echoing Ooze hard countered Abusive Sergeant, Leper Gnome and Voidwalker openings. In addition the 1/2 bodies were very efficient in cleaning up Spectral Spiders after breaking the top end of a Haunted Creeper and Echoing Ooze could clear boards combined with Dire Wolf Alpha. Ironbeak Owl allowed you to silence and kill opposing Nerubian Eggs with no downside. In addition, it allowed you to gain huge tempo by removing Haunted Creepers without losing any minions. Once you had the momentum in the Zoo mirror match, you often won’t lose it, so instead of very fringe card choices like Hellfire - I opted for a build that would fight very hard for the board early and wouldn’t let you take it back.

The two other popular decks in the metagame were Priest and Warrior. These two decks exist solely to counter Hunter while being acceptable in other matchups. Priest could also happily queue into the Warrior players and farm them for wins as well. These decks both struggle very hard versus Zoo as you often give them too much to handle. Warrior’s primary way of dealing with your minions is by taking damage and clearing with weapons. That means if you continue to push nothing but face damage (only killing Armorsmiths and Acolyte of Pains along the way) you’d be able to kill the Warrior player very, very quickly. The only board clear Warrior had access to was Brawl and Baron Geddon, two very costly cards (as well as two 1-ofs) meaning you were more or less free to do whatever you wanted against them until late in the game. Warrior players hate nothing more than to queue into Zoo players because it’s a matchup that they won’t be able to consistently win.

Priest, on the other hand, had access to many board clear options, but they were all combos that required two or more cards so unless they had pieced together their combos early, you’d be able to beat them quickly. Priest beats aggro by taking the game long where their value cards bring them back while their hero power gives them back their life lost. Zoo would simply run them over before they get their combos off and if they didn’t have the combo right away, they’d be so low they wouldn’t be able to win anyway. Priest wouldn’t be able to run the Zoo player out of cards either simply due to the Hero Power. The key to this matchup was rushing to assemble a board, preferably with a Deathrattle minion or two, then use your Hero Power as often as possible. You also should hold your Knife Juggler and a bunch of low drop minions to snipe the Auchenai Soulpriest after the Circle of Healing combo. Priest players also didn’t like playing against good Zoo players as they would have to hope everything went right from the get-go or they wouldn’t be able to win.

Once you understood how to beat those matchups, you’d put up very positive results versus the entire field and it was no surprise that Zoo was not only the best deck but the deck with the best overall results for me and the other very experienced Zoo players, namely Ant and Chance.

Now, what is on the horizon for Zoo is unknown but if Blizzard felt that Soulfire needed to be nerfed, it meant that they understood the power of Zoo going into the Goblins vs Gnomes expansion. Zoo will probably see a revamp and be the baseline deck to beat yet again, but only time will tell if this is true. Until then, we’ll see what are the top strategies coming out of the new metagame.

This is IHearthU’s Impact signing off, so good luck, good games and have fun with the new Goblins vs Gnomes metagame!