Dog on Winning ONOG and Crushing Tournaments

The One Nation of Gamers circuit is one where up and coming players can earn a shot to make their name against established pros. That's the plan at least. But the pros are the pros for a reason.

The ONOG Feature tournament was last weekend and Dog was one of the invited players. There he continued his impressive run through the dying days of Pre-Standard Hearthstone. With the win, Dog earned himself an expenses paid trip to PAX Prime to compete in the grand finals for $25'000.

We caught up with him last week to talk about his recent successes and the secret to beating the tournament meta.

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With your second place at Insomnia, strong showing in the Archon tournament, and now victory at ONOG Feature #2, you've had a pretty good few weeks. What's the secret?

Players are usually just concerned about bringing the best decks. Now that the meta is figured out, the issue with that is if everyone just brings the best decks you get a bunch of 50/50s which doesn't get you very far in the tournament. I try to counter what will be popular instead of joining in.

You've been bringing some very off-meta decks to tournaments lately: Tempo Mage and Malygos Rogue at Insomnia and Malygos Rogue/Midrange Paladin/Demon Handlock for ONOG. How do each of these decks counter the meta?

Insomnia was a LHS standing tournament and I needed a deck that could stop Druid. The only deck with a good enough winrate against Druid is Tempo Mage. Zoo is maybeeeee good enough but I wanted a sure thing because my other decks were very good against everything except for Druid.

For ONOG I expected people to bring what they thought were the best decks: Druid/Secret Paladin/Zoo/Control Warrior. In this tournament, however, I had a ban so I could ignore Druid ^^. So Midrange Pally and Demon Handlock do very well against Control Warrior, Pally, and Zoo even if they have very weak matchups like Rogue and Mage. Luckily, those classes aren't considered the best right now so they weren't really a concern of mine. Just because a deck isn't tier one doesn't mean it's not the best deck to bring to a tournament.



While most Rogue players are still bringing the traditional Oil Rogue with Sprint to tournaments, you're tending to favor more of the Malygos version with Auctioneers. Can you run me through the differences between the more popular Rogue combinations now (Oil/Sprint, Malygos/Sprint, Charge or Oil/Auctioneer, Malygos/Auctioneer)? Why are some of these types better than others?

Oil is a much quicker variant than Malygos. It tries to put a ton of pressure on the midgame and end it somewhat early. That's why Sprints are in the deck: dump your hand and then Sprint into an Eviscerate to find lethal.

Malygos Rogue is a bit slower. You have to have enough spells to cycle with your Auctioneer and it is a bit more board centered. I personally think Malygos is better against Zoo, although I haven't tested it too much. On the other hand, it's worse against Druid and about even with almost everything else. I just decided to go with Malygos since it's the list with which I am most comfortable.



Oil also just wasn't performing for me even though most other players were trying to convince me to bring it over Malygos. If you aren't confident that a deck will do well, you probably shouldn't bring it.

What about this cool Handlock deck that doesn't include Mountain Giants, Ancient Watchers, or Sunfury Protectors? I don't think I've seen anything like it. Is it something you created yourself?

I originally got the list from Eyelance because he hit Rank 1 with it a long long time ago. I altered it quite a bit but that's its origin. It's basically just anti-aggro Handlock. Not too greedy but can win any control matchup because it has Jarraxus and enough Taunts. Fibonacci used a similar list in the HWC to qualify after I streamed it a bit.

Molten Giant and Zombie Chow are both great cards to stop the aggro decks. The list doesn't need Sunfurys because it doesn't run Watchers or that many things that need to be taunted—the Argus is enough. This way you can also get value with Brann off the Argus/Peddler/Boom/Healbot. The optimal number of four drops needed in a deck is like three or four. If you are Life Tapping and don't get one, you should always have a power play on four. Adding Mountain Giants just clutters the hand and makes it greedy.



You had some pretty fun games in the tournament, the first being a matchup between your Handlock and Vlps's Renolock. Did you expect to be favored going into this matchup and how were you feeling when he seemed to have an answer to all your threats?

Yeah, the Anti-aggro Warlock isn't very favored against Combo-Renolock. You don't run too many threats and they can usually burst you down. I was just trying to be as aggressive as possible to give myself a good shot of winning. Once he started using his resources sub-optimally to deal with the board, I just dropped Jaraxxus and had an infinite barrage of 6/6s.

Of course I couldn't play around full combo the entire time but they almost never have the full combo so it's safe to play around roughly 12 damage. And it ended up working out! That's a good way to win matchups in which you are not favored. Take an aggressive approach—and even if their deck is greedier—they have no choice but to use their removal in a sub-par way. Do this and your deck can suddenly out-value them or mess up their game plan.

Oh, I also reviewed VODs from earlier and played around Mind Control Tech because that was the only way to lose.

That's some really great advice. But as we all know, you need both skill and luck to win a tournament. Traditionally though, luck hasn't always been on your side in the finals of tournaments. This particular finals though, things seemed to have turned around. Was that last game the luckiest you've ever drawn in a tournament?

Hahaha. Yeahhhhhh, I mean, I was up in the series and he had to make his Control Warrior win against my Druid, but it was nice ending the series there on the back on some pretty crazy draws.



You seem to be doing well in the final few tournaments before Standard comes around. Do you think you and your particular set of talents will tend to do better with the new set and new rules? Or do you favor a more defined metagame where you can really counter your opponents' predictable lineups?

Things are definitely easier when opponents are predictable so we'll have to see. The thing is there will always be people bringing the same decks. It's an online cardgame so decks spread quickly and I can still anticipate what people will bring. That said, I am also a very good deckbuilder so we'll just have to see how it all goes.

Cool, thanks for the interview. Any closing words or final thoughts?

Nothing really, thanks to Neirea for always helping me with decks when I need it. That's about it Oh and the team of course for making it all possible: TL, Team L, the Liquid Team.