There are 3 major deck archetypes in Hearthstone, and these archetypes exist in most similar card games, like Magic: The Gathering. These are Aggro, Midrange, and Control. The most common analogy for their interactivity is simply Rock, Paper, Scissors. Like roshambo, each option has one favorable and one unfavorable matchup. There are many different subcategories within each of these 3 categories, but almost all decks fall into Aggro, Midrange, or Control. Some of the subcategories would be Combo, Tempo, Swarm, and Burn.
Aggro
When it comes to deck types in Hearthstone, Aggro tends to be more popular than both Midrange and Control in most formats. Aggro decks focus on building a very powerful early-game advantage and winning as quickly as possible, generally ignoring the opponent’s minions unless absolutely necessary. The most common aggro strategy is flooding the board with strong and inexpensive minions. Mechs are a strong tribe for Aggro decks, with Mech Paladin remaining one of the strongest decks in Wild.
It has a very strong card draw (a 3/1 minion that draws a free spell to draw 5 Mechs) and it has many creatures that reduce the price of Mechs, which results in being able to play 1 or 2 Mana cost Mechs for free. A turn 1 with a coin allows you to potentially play two 2/3 minions and one 2/1 minion. This is possible through playing the coin, Mechwarper, Frequency Oscillator, and another Mechwarper. Alternatively, Galvanizer also works in place of Mechwarper, so you have decent odds of pulling this combo off. With the generous card draw in this deck, spamming minions as fast as possible is not risky as it normally is in an Aggro deck.
Wild Mech Paladin decks:
Mech Paladin (#2 Legend Wild S111)
Mech Paladin (#95 Legend Wild S109)
The three cards that can be played on Turn 1 (Mechwarper and Galvanizer are interchangeable) with a coin in the mentioned Wild Mech Paladin deck.
Another powerful option is relying on summoning a large number of minions and buffing them. Summoned minions (as opposed to playing as a minion card) are unofficially referred to as tokens by the community. This comes from Magic: The Gathering, which officially uses the term for a category of minions generated similarly. The official Hearthstone term is Uncollectible because these generated minions are not cards that can be added to your card collection and put in a deck.
The powerful Totem Shaman deck which is currently dominating Standard is considered by most to be a token deck because of the rate at which it generates minions through many different means. Some would argue that Totem Shaman is a Midrange deck due to the large minions it can play for free after a few turns, but these are really just supplemental cards. Winning with this deck without ever drawing these free power cards is not hard at all. In fact, you can have an extremely powerful early-game board of buffed-up weak minions by turn 3.
Totem Shaman on turn 5 with totems buffed from The Stonewright, which was played on the turn before. This board is enough to sway the game to win, quickly but with a Bloodlust it is a win condition.
Paladin is also a strong proponent of the Token archetype, which has found many different ways of creating a wide army of Silver Hand Recruits. The Recruits are unofficially referred to as dudes, so a deck built around them often includes Dude in the deck title. Token Death Knight was a powerful deck in the previous Standard set, however, Death Knight has a larger variety of tools at their disposal at this point. The token-generating cards are still mostly present in current Aggro Death Knight decks, but it is no longer the focus of the deck because of the number of powerful Aggro cards. However, in the current set of Standard, Totem Shaman is the strongest Token deck being played. It is generally believed that it sits closer to the Midrange category than Aggro, but there are many opening hands that can put you in a powerful position by turn 3.
Standard Aggro Token decks:
Totem Shaman (#256 Legend Chuntyun)
Totem Shaman (#19 Legend Wuling)
Pure Paladin is a very strong deck that similar to Totem Shaman, also straddles the line between Aggro and Midrange. It has a strong early game, and it has some powerful cards for mid/late-game as well. The main alternative to this decklist is the Pure Dude Paladin, which adds strong early-game Silver Hand Recruit summoning or buffing cards. The name Pure Paladin comes from the fact that it is purely made up of Paladin class cards, no Neutral cards. This deck has 3 strong cards that demand no Neutral cards in the deck for their effect to trigger, which is why it has to abandon all neutrality. The Countess, Lightray, The Purator, and Class Action Lawyer all have this requirement. Lightray also lowers Mana cost based on each Paladin card played, so it also benefits from abandoning Neutral cards.
Standard Pure Paladin Decks:
Two variants of the Pure Paladin deck, and both climbed to Legend rank on June 2 and June 4.
Burn is another subcategory within aggro, which involves dealing direct damage to the opponent and generally ignoring the battlefield. In the past, the strongest proponent of the Burn archetype has been Mage due to their large pool of strong spells that can throw damage to the opponent’s face directly. The current Standard Burn Mage deck relies on generating a large amount of Volatile Skeletons, which deal damage to a random enemy on death. Questline Druid is possibly the strongest Burn deck in Wild, and has been very strong for a long time. It generates a very large amount of damage to the opponent’s face by using Quests and spells to attack directly with the hero and also increase the stats of the Druid Hero Power.
Burn does have the advantage of being stronger against removal spells, as they run very few minions that need to hit the opponent. Most Burn minions have their power behind their Battlecry or Deathrattle effect, so removal spells are fine against these (other than removal that does not trigger Deathrattles, although this is uncommon). The strongest neutral Burn minion is the Ashen Elemental and sees use in almost all Burn decks, although it also sees use in certain combo OTK decks.
Wild & Standard Aggro Burn decks:
The Ashen Elemental was added during the Murder at Castle Nathria set.
Death Knight is extremely powerful in the current Standard metagame when it comes to Aggro decks. Many of these cards also come free after unlocking the Death Knight as a playable Hero, so it is a very accessible decklist. Unholy Death Knight and Frost Death Knight are two of the strongest Aggro decks at the moment. Unholy (Egg) focuses on building up an army of Undead creatures that generate a large number of corpses and also generate additional minions from the Deathrattles of the egg minions.
This early-game attack is powerful, especially if your Arms Dealer is able to buff up your eggs so that they can attack. By late-game, you have many corpses at your disposal to either cast Grave Strength and give your minions +3 Attack, or play Lord Marrowgar and summon an army of Risen Golems. Frost Death Knight obviously focuses more on playing the strongest Frost cards available, which have very strong removal and freezing powers. This deck still generally also has many of the powerful Undead minions that the Unholy (Egg) Death Knight deck has, though not as many in order to accommodate the many Frost cards.
Standard Aggro Death Knight decks:
The Arms Dealer and Foul Egg card combination is played in almost all Death Knight Aggro decks.
Aggro decks are generally strong against Midrange decks and weak against Control decks. Midrange decks do not have enough early-game value or strong removal spells in order to take the game back against an Aggro deck that took an early lead. Control decks have a large number of strong removal spells, and most Aggro decks struggle to draw enough cards. Having the board wiped is a game-ending turn if you are playing Aggro and only have 1 or 2 cards in hand. Aggro decks have fewer resources than midrange and control decks, so they struggle to recover after having their board wiped with few cards in hand.
The flow of power within the 3 major deck types in Hearthstone.
Midrange
Midrange decks have a mana curve weighted more towards the middle (3-6 Mana cost) and aim to take control of the game after using these cards. Tempo is a subsection of midrange decks, but the term is often used to refer to midrange decks as a whole. Tempo means a lot of different things, but it mostly means playing your cards on the mana curve. This refers to using up all of your Mana for maximum value, so if you play a 1-cost minion on turn 1, a 2-cost minion on turn 2, and a 3-cost minion on turn 3, you played on curve for three turns.
Tempo or midrange decks need to play on curve and generate a large amount of value, generally using most of their Mana to play high-value minions. This is frequently done through powerful minions that scale in value each turn until they are removed. A large amount of value can also be gained by using an inexpensive spell to destroy a big minion. These decks frequently have a combination of powerful early-mid-game minions and weak removal.
Because of the amount of value that Midrange decks generate through efficient minions and inexpensive spells, they can recover from having their entire board wiped by a Control deck. Or at least, recover much better than an Aggro deck in this situation. Because of this, they are very strong against control decks, which struggle to control the board against a deck stacked with big minions.
One of the most prevalent minion-focused Midrange archetypes is simply referred to as “Big”. Big refers to minions that are approximately 6/6 or larger. Big Demon Hunter is one of the strongest decks in Standard at the moment, which has a large number of cheap cards that deal damage and/or draw cards. Because of this, it does a good job when it comes to removing threats and drawing additional spells to help with this. Big Beast Hunter is another powerful Standard deck, although definitely weaker than Big Demon Hunter at the moment. Hunter has always had access to a large pool of powerful big minions.
The Big minions of Big Demon Hunter can be summoned by playing Felscale Evoker.
Wild & Standard Big Minion Decks:
Midrange decks tend to be weak against Aggro decks because Midrange decks normally aim to play the strongest/most valuable cards with their mana each turn, having a more even mana curve with the most cards at the 3 to 6 Mana range. This lowers your chance of playing on curve in the early game compared to an Aggro deck, which will almost always play on curve in the early game. Having a large army of weak minions or “going wide” is a very strong strategy in the first few turns for overwhelming your opponent, and most Midrange decks are going to play only 1-2 minions per turn in the early game.
Midrange decks run a small number of removal spells to deal with powerful threats, but they struggle to clear an entire board of minions with their few numbers of removal spells. For these reasons, Midrange decks will struggle to take the game back from an Aggro deck that took the early lead. However, you do have a chance if the Aggro deck had a very bad turn 1 or 2 and they allow you to generate value on board. Inexperienced Aggro players will ignore the board entirely and allow your scaling minions to grow, so if you can survive you can eventually sway control with this method.
Midrange decks are going to be strong against Control decks because Midrange decks are filled up with powerful minions that cannot be removed by weak and wide removal spells designed against Aggro decks. Control decks do have large removal as well, but still not enough to deal with a Midrange deck playing a large minion every turn on curve. Midrange decks have plenty of cards in hand because playing on curve often (but not always) means playing only a single card for all of your entire mana value. Aggro decks struggle in this category, and Midrange decks also have more resource-generating minions that tend to sit higher on the Mana curve.
Control
Control decks aim to control the game and survive until they reach their win condition. This win condition is often having a wiped board and then playing an extremely powerful card or combination of cards that require a large sum of Mana to cast. Combo decks generally fall into the Control category of decks, as it can take several turns of stalling before you draw the required cards for your win condition.
Because the largest and most powerful minions in Hearthstone are often Dragons, these are a common sight in most Control decks. The term XL refers to a deck size, which is 40 cards as opposed to the usual 30. This is possible with the inclusion of Prince Renathal in your deck, which also increases your max Health to 35. Control decks clearly benefit from running more cards and having a larger Health total, with the exception of Combo decks that need to find specific cards as quickly as possible. For this reason, a very large number of Control decks in both Standard and Wild are XL.
Prince Renathal’s full art and card.
In Wild, Reno Jackson is a very powerful card to have in a Control deck. It does have the hefty cost of requiring only one of each card in your deck, no duplicates allowed. If this requirement is met, then your Hero is fully healed. If you run into a Control deck in Wild, there is a very good chance you are going to see Reno Jackson on the board right before your opponent dies. Priest has extremely powerful removal spells, and for this reason, Priest has been one of the most powerful Control classes in the game. Priest also has a very large amount of healing spells and obviously, the Hero Power to heal any target for 2 Health.
In Standard, one of the more effective Control decks at the moment is XL Control Priest. It generally has a large number of removal spells and a small number of creatures. These creatures are most commonly Mind Eaters and Psychic Conjurers because they give you random cards from your opponent’s deck to play and also function as cheap minions to stall your opponent. A small number of these creatures are giant minions, game-winning Colossal creatures that require a full board or removal spells to clear. However, this deck generally does rely on using at least a small number of your opponent’s cards, which adds an element of randomness to it. Depending on your playstyle, this randomness may be a welcome addition.
Reno Jackson in the League of Explorers trailer and the card.
Control decks are strong against Aggro decks because they are good at running the game very long and draining your opponent of resources over a long period of time until they are playing one card and hitting their Hero Power every turn. Aggro decks have very weak card draw and after one board wipe, most Aggro decks will struggle to recover unless they are able to draw more cards for a low Mana cost.
Control decks are weak against Midrange decks because their minions are large enough to survive the board clear spells that normally wipe out Aggro boards with only 3 Health per minion at most. Additionally, Midrange decks have stronger card draw and are more likely to draw along the Mana curve into the mid and late game, generating another threat for each one removed. If you are able to clear their giant minions you have a chance at beating a Midrange deck, because fortunately many Midrange decks only run a small number of minions with stats greater than 8/8. Stalling for this long is still quite difficult, and it requires very patient and careful use of removal spells.
Wild & Standard Control decks:
Aggro, Midrange, and Control decks are all equally important to the balance of Hearthstone, and the correct choice depends on your playstyle and how quickly you plan to win (or lose). The three deck types create a sort of equilibrium within the metagame, and for this reason, they are all essential. If for example, an Aggro deck became extremely powerful and dominated the entire meta, players would experiment and formulate the strongest Control deck to counter it. Once this Control deck rises into popularity as a powerful counter to the “strongest” deck, it could even take the role of the strongest, or most popular Tier 1 deck. If this were to happen, obviously a Midrange deck would rise into popularity as a solution to this new troublesome Control deck.
This is the cycle of the metagame for Hearthstone, and also many similar card games, like Magic: The Gathering. For this reason, becoming comfortable with Aggro, Midrange, and Control gives you the advantage of being able to adjust to the current meta in order to increase your odds of winning.
