Legend Zoo deck

Gameplay

Unfortunately I’m still pretty unwell and haven’t had chance to play much hearthstone BUT I have looked through the GvG cards so I’ll give my initial thoughts here.

I’ll start by saying that this expansion MAY vastly reduce the amount of zoo not only because it adds more tech cards to help decks fight zoo as well as more early game minions some decks may utilise to help against zoos early game, but also because demon warlock might a better deck with the new cards introduced. Looking through the cards I wouldn’t say that zoo gained a huge amount either. Still, zoo will always be viable with its great snowball potential and ability to punish greedy decks and bad draws.

Ok first things first. The Soulfire change. This change is pretty huge honestly. That extra mana really hurts your potential for an early game tempo swing removing and playing minions, but doesn’t remove it completely. You will often be able to fit 1 mana in to remove something, but you will have to consider this when trying to play on curve and mulliganing for a good curve. The biggest difference will be that this change may remove the ability to take initiative against other early game decks on turn 1 or 2. Honestly I will need to do some play testing to get a feel before thinking about removing Soulfire.

I have already gone ahead and made the most obvious change to the deck. Clockwork Gnome is clearly just a better version of Leper Gnome since the spare part it gives will likely hep you take control of the board. What you need to realise about playing aggressive decks that are minion based rather than burn decks like some hunter and mage variants, is that controlling the board translates into way more damage over time by keeping minions alive to hit face later, or soak up threats so OTHER minions can hit face later. Standard ZOO IS NOT ABOUT FACE DAMAGE rant over. Looking at the spare parts there are some pretty useful effects. Stat buffs are always nice. Freeze may help push damage, or delay a threat you are struggling to deal with helping you develope the board further. Stealth can help you protect valuable cards like Undertaker, Knife Juggler, etc, or just low health minions, or if you are desperate help you make a late game push for damage. Taunt can also help protect valuable minions, and works nicely with Nerubian Egg. Returning a minion is obviously great when combo-ed with buffing givers like Abusive Sergeant.

There’s a couple of other changes too and I’ll talk about those cards below. The deck will likely be changing a lot until the meta settles and the new cards are tested. Right now I’m thinking about how best to smooth the curve around the 3 and 4 drops. The problem is that I don’t want to drop any of these 4’s, but I’m not sure you can get away with a curve so clunky in zoo if you are looking for the consistent draws.

Now. Time to look at potential new cards for zoo!