THL Wild Tournament - Recap and Player Comments

Welcome Disco to the blog as he revisits thl's first ever wild tournament!

Team Hearth Legends hosted their first Wild tournament this past weekend to great success. This tournament is unique in that, unlike THL’s other series and events, this tournament was played using the Wild format, which allows players to use cards from any previously released set. Old favorites, returning nightmares, and everything in between showed up for this tournament.
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The THL Wild Tournament consisted of two parts: four rounds of Swiss, and a single elimination bracket for the top 8 players in the Swiss rounds. The games were played in a best-of-five conquest format with open decklists and one deck ban - the same format used for THL’s Pro Series. Games in the Swiss rounds were not streamed, but TwoStarMako and NateWolfeTCG streamed matches in the top 8, top 4, and championship.

Each of the top 8 players was kind enough to provide some insight into their lineups, bans, changes, and overall impressions of the Wild format and the THL Wild Tournament.

A2Battleship: I did get top 8, but I wasn't fully satisfied with my finish, given that I basically came in the middlest place possible. My choices were based on the idea that quest mage was incredibly hyped up, both in THL and in general, so I picked decks that had favorable winrates vs Quest Mage. I kept the deck as is from what people used on ladder because I wasn't completely sure there would be a popular deck other than Quest Mage, and I felt that Loatheb was the only card that might've been useful was Loatheb, but it would always be too expensive for my deck. I started out banning Cube Warlocks and similar decks in the beginning, but after realizing I still couldn't beat Quest Mage I just decided to start banning that. It felt like my decks drew flat, and it felt like specifically my Odd Paladin had a hard time keeping up versus the other decks. If I were to change anything, I might've changed my Secret Mage to a Quest Mage and my Odd Paladin to an Even Hunter or Pirate Warrior. I felt like this tournament wasn't representative of my skill and I hope to perform better in the future in Wild.

basedinc: Wild for me has always been my “Johnny” format. My Rogue deck is the prime example of it. It’s the deck I whipped up and primarily played to rank 5. I felt most comfortable playing that deck and consequently (and unfortunately) why I brought it. I had been testing a Togwaggle Druid in that place but didn’t think I had nailed down the nuances of that deck enough to play it considering I didn’t log too many games with it while it was in standard. So that’s how I landed on the Rogue, it performs well into Reno Priest but not a lot of other meta decks. It’s particularly weak to Even Shaman. Which leads me to my second biggest regret, Even Shaman is an incredibly nuanced deck and I am bad at the deck. Wish I’d logged more games with it. 0 mana cards are hard to play with properly. All the other lists I brought were taken straight from Tempo Storm with a couple tweaks to my Cube Warlock which I was quite happy with. The tournament was a blast and I was pretty happy just making it to top 8. But look out, my “Spike” will likely be the one showing up to future Wild events.

ItsMeMikeV: I think going in Mage was definitely on my radar as an auto ban, although in different situations both Warlock and Priest can be intimidating. I honestly didn't expect a lot of control so I tried to go with tempo based decks with the egg version of Cube Warlock instead of the Control version, Odd Paladin, Even Shaman, and I did choose Reno Quest Mage instead of Quest Mage but that was for its durability. I did only see one Odd Warrior so the lack of control seemed to be true. Overall, I think it was a great event, everyone brought their best to the table. I have seen the upcoming 3v3 Wild THL event announced and I am excited for that, I think more Wild events is definitely the way to go.

nhlnjfan: With my lineup, I was looking to bring the best, most balanced decks in the format. This meant bringing Mage, Warlock, and Shaman. For my fourth deck, I wanted to bring something that countered Mage without losing badly to aggro. Togwaggle Druid is known to do well against Reno Quest Mage, which lead to me choosing to bring it. Reno Quest Mage did have a sizeable showing, though I think I'd consider Reno Priest next time to handle aggro better. Had I brought Priest, my lineup would've been tuned a bit more away from Mage with me banning Quest Mages in most lineups

Itachi: I've always had a love for Wild, but the lack of competitive support outside of ladder kept me largely away. I grinded to a top 50 ladder finish once, when the Wild open was announced. Other than that I've only dabbled into the format for fun. So I was extremely excited to see THL host a Wild tournament, and despite being at work during most of it, I figured I would play anyway. I figured that Reno Quest Mage would be far and away the most represented deck in the tournament, so I went with a strategy that attempted to keep it from winning the game, while also putting up a decent matchup spread vs decks like cubelock. It ended up as Odd Paladin, Darkest Hour Warlock, Even Shaman, and I chose to round out the lineup with Reno Quest Mage of my own because of how powerful the deck is. The lineup did pretty much what it was supposed to do, and even won some matchups that it shouldn't have. By far the worst inclusion was Darkest Hour Warlock. I haven't played Wild in quite some time, so I was unfamiliar with the nature of the deck, but I did enough research to know how to pilot it. However, I did not realize that the deck was SO bad if you didn't draw Darkest Hour at all. I figured the tools it had were enough to keep myself alive through pressure, but I often found it to not be enough. Most of the losses were with that deck. Other than Warlock, I was mostly happy with the lineup. I would likely have swapped it out for Galakrond Warrior, as it is also slightly favored against the mage. I wouldn't change anything about the decks themselves aside from Even Shaman. I would have likely included Lich King for a late game bomb when the deck started to run out of steam.

ShadowRanger: When I decided to play in the tournament, I hadn't played much Wild recently, and Blizzard had just shaken up the meta by adding Kael'thas. So I DM'd a friend of mine that was chillin at top of Wild legend, and asked for some good decks to play. I spent the next couple days testing decks and different versions of them (Big shout out to ItsMeMikeV for the playtesting). I ended up going with the Quest Reno Mage over the Quest Mage because although the Reno variant loses to the other one, the Reno variant does much better against aggro. This fed into my plan of banning mage (which I did in almost every match). Secret Mage also would have been a good deck to bring, but I didn't. In terms of my other decks, I definitely wanted to bring newly revitalized Reno Priest, so I did that. Even Shaman was also an exceedingly strong deck so I found a version of that to bring. My fourth spot was where a lot of my deliberation came in. Originally after testing a bunch of decks I was going to go with the new KT Yogg Jade Druid, a new deck that can be very highroll-y but is consistently annoying. In the end I decided to go for a more consistent deck that still maintained highroll potential (Egg Cube Warlock). Overall I was happy with my lineup, but if I could resubmit I would definitely consider a few more decks. Some of which would be Secret Mage, Darkest Hour Warlock, and some sort of more refined Druid list.

RonMexico: It was a fun event! I didn't go too in depth honestly, I just looked at stats and what decks had high winrates that I pretty much had all the cards for already. The strategy wasn't much more than ban Mage because Mage is super broken and then hit em in the face. :-)

Nineeyebrows: My strategy for my lineup was mostly based around comfort and highrolls. All the decks I brought had some sort of “nuts” curve or turns that generally happen early and just seal games, with the exception of Even Hunter. With the introduction of Kael’thas, I was really scared of Druid heading into the tourney so I built a lineup that would aim to ban that, and since like 50% of Wild ladder seems to be Mage I prepped to beat that class mostly, as well as some Priest because the raza unnerfs. To my surprise I didn’t hit a single Druid the entire tournament, so I went with ban Warlock instead because none of my decks beat a Voidlord. That was really it for strategy, I used to play a ton of Wild so I was super comfortable on Pirate Warrior, Quest Mage draws a ban every time, and Even Hunter was… rough at times but came through. The Murloc Paladin is the deck I wanna highlight most, it is by far my favorite of what I had. It’s a really cheesy deck that revolves around a few highrolls: pirates, prismatic, Nozdormu + Tip the Scales. It has Anyfin Can Happen for finishing out games since the pirates and early murlocs only get so far if you can’t get an early Tip the Scales. It’s a super fun deck and if you have the cards give it a shot. It’s not the best due to relying on highrolls but when you hit them it is absurd. I also wanna thank THL for supporting Wild, it’s hard to find that nowadays and I am looking forward to the threes league for sure. Also, a ton of thanks to Mako and NateWolfeTCG for hosting and casting the stream. Super great job by them.

And that’s it! With the success of this tournament, THL is in the process of setting up a brand new, star-studded, Wild Series, which is slated to start on April 27th. If you’re interested in playing in, captaining a team in, or just watching the exciting fun, join the THL Discord and get connected.