HouseCup #3 coverage hub

May is near its end and with it the unbearable draught of major Hearthstone competition. At the time of this article, sixteen players are on their way to Bran Castle in Romania for the third Viagame HouseCup tournament.

To the Hearthstone community, the HouseCups are special events. It’s not so much the prize pool or even the atmosphere – the latter being one of the defining features of other big tournaments like SeatStory Cup – but the unique pick/ban format that’s a HouseCup trademark. Before each series, the players go through a five-step procedure to eliminate decks of their opponent and build their line-ups on the go. Every participant brings nine decks, one of each class, as their deckbuilding skills are put to the test. This is how the pick/ban phase goes:
 

  • Both players ban 1 deck from their opponent. 
  • Both players pick 2 decks from among their remaining decks. 
  • Both players ban 2 decks from their opponent. 
  • Both players pick 2 decks from among their remaining decks. 
  • Both players ban 1 deck from their opponent. 


Needless to say, this adds additional depth which is lacking in traditional three-deck tournaments. Players are designing their line-ups and strategies, knowing they can eliminate classes they’re not comfortable against and force their opponents into match-ups in which they feel comfortable. As a result, HouseCup metagames have the potential to vary a lot, compared to those of orthodox competitions.

To predict the metagame from the upcoming edition, we did the most logical thing of all – we asked the best players in the world. Almost 40 pro players were approached with six short questions:
 

  • Which will be the two most banned classes?
  • Which will be the two most picked classes?
  • Which will be the class with the highest win-rate?
  • Which will be the class with the lowest win-rate?
  • Which will be the deck of the tournament?
  • What’s one cool/non-standard deck you’d like to see?


For the last four days, we’ve been collecting and organizing the answers and you can find everything listed and graphed below. We’d like to thank everyone who got back to us – make sure that you follow these guys on social media. They made this article possible.

The most banned


Hey, look, Warrior is expected to get all the hate. Everyone got in there and hated on poor Garrosh for one simple reason – [card]Grim Patron[/card].

For the last month and a half, [card]Grim Patron[/card] Warrior deck has been the terror of competitive play. Players are consistently hitting #1 legend with it or crushing tournaments. The deck performs excellently against the majority of the metagame decks, including Zoo, Hunters and Freeze Mage. It punishes builds centered around low-attack minions as a [card]Warsong Commander[/card] plus [card]Grim Patron[/card] often results in a full board wipe for the opponent and a Patron-infested board for the Warrior. With lots of defensive spells and minions, the Patron Warrior is capable of surviving even against the quicker decks.

The fact that the Patron has only few weak match-ups – most notably Control Warrior and Handlock – makes it even scarier in HouseCup’s format where those classes can just be flat out banned, guaranteeing that the Patron will not be all-killed by a specifically designed line-up.

That’s partly the reason why Warlock is a class that’s expected to be in the top 3 most banned classes, that and the fact that every single one of its builds is viable and strong. What makes Warlock even more unpredictable is that Zoo and Handlock can be subtly changed to the point where one can never guess the exact list. Players like Lifecoach have displayed the power of that flexibility during the KPL, where his Handlock builds varied each week. The same is with Zoo, which iterations vary from more aggressive, ending with [card]Doomguard[/card] and [card]Loatheb[/card] to slower, Demon-based with [card]Mal'Ganis[/card] at the end of the curve.
 

The other class in the top 3 is Hunter, coming in as second place. Once again, it’s a fully expected outcome. Face Hunter is terrifying in a Conquest format where a deck doesn’t stay for consecutive games, but that’s not all what Hunter is nowadays. The rise of the Hybrid Hunter which merges early aggression with mid-range powerhouses like [card]Savannah Highmane[/card] and [card]Piloted Shredder[/card] has become a serious threat to Handlocks and Zoolocks.
 

The most picked


The one thing that vouches for the strength of these three classes is that players seem to think that when they’re not banned, they’ll get immediately snatched. Their answers are also in congruence with what the data collected from tournament games in the last month shows. Said data also puts Druid and Mage as the classes filling up the top 5, which is exactly what the prediction graph shows. Shaman is also there, tied with Mage, so there’s hope for Thrall still.

One could argue that if HouseCup features a ban phase, then the strongest classes should suffer, but that’s not really the case and I, too, believe that our pro players are correct here. At the start of the pick/ban process, only one class is banned initially, leaving quite enough freedom for a player to pick the rest of the “Power 3”.

As usual, no love for Paladin and Priest but it’s unusual to see Rogue in that company. Valeera and her Oils have been losing their popularity slowly, pressured out by the popularity of Warriors and Druid. Additionally, there aren’t many players in HouseCup #3 known for playing Rogue and the class is expected to be championed mostly by the Archon duo of Firebat and Orange. 
 

The winners


Moving on to the winners and losers of the current metagame and, what a shocker, the “Power 3” of Warrior, Hunter and Warlock are still on the top of the highest win-rate graph. The difference between them and the rest of the classes is significant: At #3, Warlock is whole five votes ahead of the tied for #4 Druid, Shaman and Rogue.

It seems a believable prediction, but weirdly enough, that’s not what tournament stats for the past month are showing in reality. The widely disregarded Druid is, in fact, the most winning class in the past month with 55% win-rate. And while Hunter and Warlock are top 3 there as well, the hyped-up Warrior is tied for fourth with Rogue and, believe it or not, Paladin. Even though there are many advocates of Druid being weak in the current Conquest meta, numbers do not lie. A good ramp start with [card]Wild Growth[/card] and big [card]Innervate[/card] tempo plays can win Druid even unfavorable match-ups.

The question here is: Is Warrior in actuality an overestimated class? 50% is not a bad win-rate for a class of Garrosh’s popularity but it’s not a support of pro players’ expectations either. One possible explanation about this discrepancy is the high level of skill that a deck such as Grim Patron requires. It’s perceived as the strongest deck in modern Hearthstone, but at the same time not everybody can play it perfectly. With close to 1,650 games recorded in our database for the last month alone, it’s not unreasonable to think that a large part of the players get screwed over by believing in a deck they haven’t fully mastered yet. In addition, Control Warrior is still in a weird place where it tries to win back players’ affections, most of whom are on the Patron hype train, and with good reason.

Nevertheless, it might actually be Control Warrior that delivers the high win-rate. The deck crushes both Face Hunter and Patron Warrior with ease and has almost an auto win against Freeze Mage and Oil Rogue. His major problems still come from Hybrid and Midrange Hunters as well as combo Druids but those are bannable classes in HouseCup. Control Warrior players certainly have the potential to surprise.
 

The losers


The losers, of course, are apparent. Priest got most of the votes and with no dedicated Anduin players at HouseCup #3 except Amaz it definitely looks like that will be the case. Shaman and Paladin share a similar fate where nobody would believe in them.

If the HouseCup #3 metagame is a slower one, however, pro players’ predictions might turn out incorrect. Paladin and Shaman are known to destroy Control Warrior and Handlock, while Priest performs excellently against Druid, especially if they manage to Circle up a T3 [card]Injured Blademaster[/card]. With the decline of Oil Rogue, all of these three classes have lost their strongest adversary, so there’s at least a glimmer of hope for them.

What many might also not realize is that Shaman, Paladin and Priest will be decks picked and played very little, which increases the chance for them to have a high win-rate. They will certainly be tricky ones to draft, however. I expect them to be reserved as tech decks for the later stages of the tournament when players have revealed the specs they’re playing.  
 

The decks

I really hoped that the graph on the left here would be different but I didn’t have huge expectations. Almost unanimously, players and crew members consider Patron Warrior to be the deck of the tournament, and since we talked about that at length already, let’s move on to the more interesting part.

The best part about this preview is this last question and this last graph. We know what we’re going to see but what’s something that we crave to see? Thankfully, players were not unanimously sold on one particular deck, though there is a clear winner.

The Malygos Warlock is the latest attempt at building a viable Dragon deck that successes where Dragon Paladin couldn’t. We covered Neirea’s and MrYagut’s builds in a post from yesterday so you better check it out.

I could understand why players want to see a viable non-mech Shaman but the amount of love the Majordomo Mage is getting is surprising. The deck first appeared around mid-May as a player called SirFunchalot showed off his build alongside a top 100 legend achievement. The mere fact that the deck uses [card]Majordomo Executus[/card], a card considered for all intents and purposes an utter garbage, makes it noteworthy. The fact that it apparently wins games is even more impressive.

So what else? We have Mill Rogue as #4, even though we forgot to contact Freshca. There are Giants Mages, Aggro Warriors and Eboladins wrapping up the top 7. Some brave soul even hoped for a Mech Priest.

As if those will ever happen.

For going away present, we give you six builds of these non-standard decks. Use them at your own risk.


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