Every once in a while meta in Hearthstone had a deck that was so overpowered that it even had its own tier based on the power level that sometimes it was simply unfair like Jade and Aggro Druid or pretty much any Druid deck was back in the newly released KotFT expansion.
Even that can't compare to some of the decks that seemed like there was nothing you can do to prevent your opponent from pulling off their win condition or even interact with their plan whatsoever and some of those decks were: Freeze Mage, Patron Warrior, Face Shaman and most recently Shudderwock Shaman; basically making it unfun for the receiving end. These types of deck bring a lot of frustration and hopelessness to the "victims" of these strategies and that leads to premature concedes sometimes on turns 1-2 or even before mulligan.
Very recently a new deck that is on the rise in popularity, Mecha'thun Warlock and it brings similar problems mainly being lack of interactivity from the opponent.
This is just one variant of the deck but all of them have these combo pieces in common:
The idea is simple. Draw through the entire deck with cycle cards while protecting yourself with board clears and play 2 Galvanizers to reduce Mecha'thun mana cost to 8. Play Mecha'thun and follow that up with Bloodbloom and Cataclysm, and GG. Fairly easy to pull off, only 5 combo pieces, 5 or more Health on your hero, no taunts or Health/Armor amount to survive... This is why it's really frustrating to play against it. Of course, there are some ways to counter or prevent this from happening but before we look into that and how effective it actually is I want to highlight a brilliant idea from Disguised Toast.
If you are following Hearthstone on Youtube or Twitch you probably know about this guy. Beloved streamer and youtuber that likes to play wacky/meme decks while testing unusual card interactions and combos.
Just to show you how frustration can cause players to concede prematurely, Disguised Toast made his version of this deck:
You might see some differences in this decklist to one shown before. Not only that this deck is a bit different, but it doesn't even have MECHA'THUN! This might look like a stupid idea (not saying that it isn't) but it's not stupid it if works, right!?
This is absolutely brilliant and is one of the reasons I love Hearthstone. If you want to see this deck in "action" watch this video and check out his channel for more awesome stuff:
I had to share this really funny "psychological effect" so to speak, that can be exploited in a game of Hearthstone, now let's get back to some possible ways of countering this strategy. There aren't that many and most of these cards are bad to have in your deck.
I'd like to start with the best one, fortunately enough it's a neutral card.
Mojomaster Zihi should be obvious. Even though Mecha'thun Warlock can go through the whole deck in 12 turns consistently by having this as a tech card in your deck can grant you around 65% chance to draw it by then if you didn't draw extra cards during the game. It's a fairly decent chance and it also helps in other OTK match-ups. Another good thing is that besides drawing it there is no other random element that can screw you. Certainly, the best choice if you are trying to counter these type of decks. Only "downside" is that it's a legendary rarity and that can be too much of an investment for a tech card for some players that weren't lucky to pull it from a card pack.
Other options are not that good, nor they have an effect that can guarantee you to mess up their combo and on top of that they are class cards:
Demonic Project has a reasonable chance to help you in this match-up since most of the time last cards in Mecha'thuns players hand won't be a lot of minions. A downside to this one is that it's probably a dead card in the aggro/mid-range match-up because spending 2 mana and potentially turning some 1-drop into a larger Demon will only help your opponent. Void Contract, on the other hand, has a much greater chance of disrupting any kind of combo deck, but oh man is it a dead card versus so many decks. Also spending 8 mana without actually doing anything right away can be pretty hard even versus combo decks but all in all is a viable option if you are trying to target those types of decks.
Not a card I thought about at first and for a good reason, this card is bad in almost every case, but I just wanted to mention it. It doesn't really disrupt the combo, but it creates an interesting situation where your opponent has to be careful while trying to draw out his deck. It's not that hard for Warlock to remove minions of any size, Siphon Soul and Twisting Nether come to mind. Also, both of these cards are really expensive and that brings a threat of spending mana to draw extra cards, 'cause it might just kill you. Wouldn't recommend putting this card into your deck, but it seems like an interesting choice.
If you want to go full meme and use some really bad cards you can consider these:
Saronite Taskmaster and The Beast, of course, both really bad cards but hey, they can buy you a turn because while they are on the board they prevent cataclysm from activating Mecha'thuns deathrattle because when any of them dies your opponent doesn't fulfill the condition since they will get Free Agent or Finkle Einhorn on their side of the field. The Beast can potentially even survive a turn since it doesn't die to Warlocks DK hero power.
Rebuke and Nerubian Unraveler also can buy you a turn but again, you probably won't have these cards in your deck, to begin with so yeah...
Okay, I guess that covers all the ways to counter these decks, and it seems pretty bad with the exception of Mojomaster Zihi. I didn't want to include milling the cards since that is dependant on how your opponent chooses to manage their hand size.
If I missed something please let me know down in the comments.
Thank you for reading!
, z3ll
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