Hearthstone October Standard Deck Selection

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With the new season upon us and some minor tweaks to the Standard metagame, the time has come to start looking at decks to play for the October season. I’ve gone through my collection and come up with a few options. I’ll lay them out below and then put a poll at the bottom for you to vote on. I’ll reveal the results next week as well as the first half of the month’s results on the Standard ladder.

Discard Warlock

This is the deck I played last season and ended up at rank 11. Not too bad for someone who plays fairly casually and doesn’t have access to [Imp Gang Boss]. The only card in the deck that has changed for October is [Abusive Sergeant] which saw its power drop from 2 to 1. This is a very significant change because it means the Sarge will no longer be able to deal with a lot of threats on his own. Sure, he’ll still be a solid way to clear out threats, but that one point of attack is a big loss in my opinion.

On the other hand, the change to make [Rockbiter Weapon] cost an additional mana means we can play [Malchezaar’s Imp] on turn one and it has a better chance of surviving against Shaman. The change to the casting cost of [Call of the Wild] is also in Warlock’s favor because it’s one more turn to close out the game against Hunter than it used to be. With Shaman and Hunter losing out, could Warlock win big? 

Anytime you have a metagame shift it could be beneficial to play the format’s best aggressive deck, and after the changes made to Shaman, it could be possible that Warlock will once again be a Tier 1 deck and the format’s premier aggro deck, making it a great way to quickly jump up into single-digit rungs of the ladder.

On the other hand, Warlock already struggled against decks like Druid and Tempo Mage which could control the board and close out the game with large threats. Maybe we should consider one of those?

Modified Classic Druid

Our next October Standard Deck option is something I already hinted at last week, which is a modified version of Classic Druid. You might recall from a few weeks ago that I opened [Cenarius] in the new Welcome Bundle so now I can build a complete Classic Druid deck. But, with Standard Rotation coming in three months and the recent changes put in place, I wanted to build a Druid deck for the future, focusing on Old Gods and Karazhan as well as Classic.

Token Druid and Malygos Druid are both top decks on the ladder these days, so I figured I’d look at which Old Gods and Karazhan cards were performing well there, and then see if we can jam them into the Classic Druid recipe deck. [Fandral Staghelm] immediately stood out to us but unfortunately we can’t afford to craft him right now. [Mire Keeper], [Nourish], [Moonglade Portal], and [Arcane Giant] all appear in both decks so we will look to add all eight copies. Unfortunately we don’t have [Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End] either.

Two copies of [Mire Keeper] went in for a [Sen’jin Shieldmasta] and a [Chillwind Yeti]. A pair of [Nourish]es went in for [Claw] and [Earthen Ring Farseer]. The [Moonglade Portal]s replaced the recipe list’s [Boulderfist Ogre]s on the premise that any random six-drop should be mostly better than the Ogre. Lastly the two [Ironbark Protectors] came out for two [Arcane Giant]s and we were ready to jump on the ladder.

Modified Tempo Mage

For our last October Standard Deck option, I began building this deck from the Temp Storm meta-snapshot deck list. Tempo Mage is a very powerful tier one deck, but I needed to make modifications for a few reasons. First, as with the Classic Druid deck, I wanted to get more accustomed to the Old Gods and Karazhan cards while avoiding Blackrock Mountain and the Grand Tournament. There’s only a few seasons left until rotation but you can never start too soon. Besides, I didn’t want to waste any dust on cards that are rotating out in three months.

Cutting out Blackrock Mountain and the Grand Tournament means losing out on [Arcane Blast], [Flamewaker], and [Emperor Thaurissan]. Since I’m not made of money, missing out from Classic and Old Gods are [Bloodmage Thalnos], [Archmage Antonidas], and [Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End]. That’s eight cards missing from the deck.

The focus on the deck is around getting value out of your spells with [Flamewaker], [Cult Sorcerer], and [Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End]. So how do we keep that going? The first slot was easy to fill as we added in a second copy of [Firelands Portal] which is a great card for tempo. Another easy addition from Karazhan was two copies of [Arcane Giant] which helps us replace Antonidas and Yogg as finishers.

To finish out the final five cards I decided I wanted a bit more control to help replace [Flamewaker]’s ability to clear the board. I added two [Cone of Cold], two [Wild Pyromancer], and just to humor myself and see if it’s as much fun as it looks, [Medivh, the Guardian].

Your Thoughts

Make sure you pick a deck in the poll below and then let me know on Twitter or Facebook what you think about my deck decisions? As the season goes on I’ll report back on the progress we’re making and solicit feedback for changes!

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Rich has been playing Hearthstone on and off since the closed beta and has a golden E.T.C. to prove it. He enjoys playing Warlock on the ladder and wishes he could get more than five wins in an Arena run. He’s trying desperately to figure out how Hunters always seem to have Call of the Wild on curve.