A look at Tar's Summoning Stone Yogg Saron Druid

                Both casters and crowd observers alike watched in pure shock as Tars proceeded to absolutely steamroll a Freeze Mage during Dreamhack, despite some unfortunate RNG. On paper, this deck can play out well – your spells can be used as board control/removal, can get extra value from Summoning Stone, and start stacking towards a late game Yogg-Saron. Unfortunately for Tars, he won the game before turn 10 rolled around and the spell-slinging begun. However, the sheer amount of control and hilarious outcomes that this deck can produce is not only a blast to watch live, but also produces a halfway decent outcome.

                For starters, taking this kind of a deck to an event like Dreamhack is funny in its own right. He was relying pretty heavily on RNG to produce a decent outcome, and even so, he didn’t quite find it. A Doomsayer out of his Power of the Wild activated the Summoning Stone was unfortunate for sure, as it ended up wiping his own board. However, even due to this unfortunate amount of bad luck, Swipe + Living Roots was enough to seal the game.

                Let’s spend the rest of this article discussing matchups frequently seen in both tournament and ladder, and theorize how well this innovative deck could perform against them on paper. As of right now, it appears to be anti-aggro enough to survive most of the commonly run decks. It includes Innervates, Violet Teachers and Power of the Wilds to contest board control quickly, especially when paired with Living Roots. It also has the mid game sustain such as Azure Drake, Druid of the Claw and Emperor Thaurissan to maintain board control and set up for an earlier win condition with Yogg Saron.

                Early game, this deck can be quite aggressive, especially when matched up against a late game style deck like Freeze Mage or Control Warrior. Due to this, opponents will often times panic and scramble a weak board presence to contest yours, while blowing most of all of their removal on your minions so the effect doesn’t snowball. This often leaves them wide open for a Summoning Stone or Druid of the Claw play that they might not be ready for. Even without Yogg-Saron, this can easily snowball into a win condition.

                As we know, however, not only is this wishful thinking, but the Meta right now seems to be frequently dominated by Aggro decks, such as Shaman and Zoolock. Actually, this deck wouldn’t really do that poorly against them either. The deck has the early game to at least contest the board, even if this means boosting an early Druid of the Claw or Azure Drake from an Innervate, but if this is done at least halfway decently, the result can be a Summoning Stone played that your opponent has no answer to, or overreacts to. While the previous of the two is preferable, keep in mind that this is still one piece of removal that gained them little tempo on the turn it is used. Overall, this deck appears to be alright on ladder, and even in tournament. Congratulations to Tars and the other competitors on providing an extremely entertaining tournament to watch, and be sure to leave a comment if you have any suggestions for either the deck or Tar’s performance.