Dreamhack Summer: A Look at Realz’s Decks
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
Dreamhack Summer was the biggest Hearthstone tournament that the world has seen to date. With a 256 person open entry tournament and a 16 person group stage (4 of which were qualifiers from out of the BYOC with the other 12 being seeded invitees) along with a prize pool totaling $25,000, it’s no surprise that people have continued to talk about the tournament long after the last game has finished and the stream has ended. Over the course of the weekend and into this past Monday, we saw high tier play and some truly innovative decks. We’d like to take the next few days to showcase the Round of 8 deck lists that the top four finishers used.
Today we are going to focus on Team Managrind’s star player, Realz. Realz was able to finish in the top 4 losing to his opponent shown in the picture above, Amaz. Realz ended up bring some fairly standard meta decks to the tournament. He didn’t innovate much but sometimes that is what you need to do. In this case he brought the decks he is most familiar with and performed quite well with them. Let’s take a look at the decks he played below.
Midrange Druid
This is a fairly standard midrange druid deck. You see some ramp with innervate and wild growth and then you see the finishing move with Force of Nature and Savage Roar. You have the staples of the deck which is Wrath, Swipe, Druid of the Claw, Harvest Golem, Keeper of the Grove, Chillwind Yeti, Cairne Bloodhoof, and Ancient of Lore. All of these cards you typically see on the ladder whenever you play Druid so there is nothing really nothing new here. The most interesting aspect of this deck though is the decision to use Wild Pyromancer. In fact I think this is the first time I have seen Wild Pyromancer in this style of deck and it really makes sense to use it here if you think you’re going to go up against aggro/zoo. Unfortunately though, you really don’t see a LOT of aggro/zoo in tournaments because of the lower win rates when opponents know what you’re playing.
I will say though, if you’re playing a midrange druid on ladder, try out the wild pyromancer. If you can pair it up with Swipe you have a pretty decent AOE on the board.
Realz Druid
Class: Druid
Cards sorted by Low Cost
Druid (18)
- Innervate x2
- Mark of the Wild
- Wild Growth x2
- Wrath x2
- Savage Roar
- Swipe x2
- Keeper of the Grove x2
- Druid of the Claw x2
- Force of Nature
- Ancient of Lore x2
- Cenarius
Neutral (12)
- Wild Pyromancer x2
- Big Game Hunter
- Harvest Golem x2
- Chillwind Yeti x2
- Azure Drake x2
- Argent Commander
- Cairne Bloodhoof
- The Black Knight
Handlock
The second deck Realz brought was your typical handlock deck. For those unfamiliar with handlock the entire idea is to get big hand sizes, lay down your Sea Giants or Twilight Drakes early on and with combination of your hero power allows you to drop some free Mountain Giants later on as well. The deck is a very late game deck and you have to get used to playing with your life low and make the right decisions throughout the game in order to win. One wrong move and you’ll probably lose the game as this deck is very unforgiving if you make mistakes.
There are a couple different cards in this version of Handlock though that you do not see very often. The addition of Alextraza is new to me and I can only guess you use that on your opponent if they’re still at high life when you have your giants out to try and get a killing blow. Then again it could also be used on yourself after you lay down a couple free giants and boost yourself back up to 15 if needed.
Other than that card everything is fairly standard. In my Handlock deck I only run 1 Ironbeak Own instead of 2 and I run an extra Faceless Manipulator. I also run 2 Hellfires and don’t have a Shadowbolt. Instead of Alexstraza I run Sylvannas, although after seeing this deck list I am thinking of trying Alex and see what happens.
Realz Handlock
Class: Warlock
Cards sorted by Low Cost
Neutral (19)
- Ancient Watcher x2
- Ironbeak Owl x2
- Sunfury Protector x2
- Earthen Ring Farseer x2
- Defender of Argus x2
- Leeroy Jenkins
- Twilight Drake x2
- Faceless Manipulator
- Alexstrasza
- Mountain Giant x2
- Molten Giant x2
Warlock (11)
Miracle Rogue
Oh hey… look… Miracle Rogue. *YAWN*
Once again, the Hearthstone equivalent of Solitaire saw very heavy use in Dreamhack as it’s a top tier deck if not THE top tier deck. The idea is always the same – cheap spells in conjunction with Gadzetzan Auctioneer equals being able to cast a boat load of spells and reload your card advantage cycling through your deck faster than should be legal.
Realz’s version is a really standard version you see all the time on ladder with the exception that he is running an Assassin’s Blade which you see pretty rarely in this deck. So yeah, not much to be said about this otherwise boring deck you will surely see again in the next couple articles.
Realz Miracle
Class: Rogue
Cards sorted by Low Cost
Rogue (22)
- Backstab x2
- Preparation x2
- Shadowstep x2
- Conceal
- Deadly Poison x2
- Blade Flurry x2
- Eviscerate x2
- Sap x2
- Shiv x2
- Fan of Knives
- Edwin VanCleef
- SI:7 Agent x2
- Assassin’s Blade
Neutral (8)
- Bloodmage Thalnos
- Loot Hoarder
- Earthen Ring Farseer
- Leeroy Jenkins
- Azure Drake x2
- Gadgetzan Auctioneer x2
Check in with us again tomorrow as we continue to cover the remainder of the Top Four finishers and their decks.
