The best Hearthstone: Ashes of Outlands cards to craft day one, per class

Ashes of Outlands marks a big shakeup in the landscape of Hearthstone, being the introduction of an entirely new class (Demon Hunter) with some powerhouse cards.

Despite the fact that you could easily populate a list with just the top 11 Demon Hunter cards, we’re going for a broader format: the best card from each class (and Neutral) you should craft. This also means every card here is Rare or higher; we’ll assume (especially with the change to duplicates in packs) that you’ll end up with every Common card eventually. Where a Common card is probably the de facto best for the expansion, we’ll note it in the text.

Demon Hunter

As mentioned, there were a lot of strong picks for Demon Hunter. We settled on Skull of Gul’dan as the safest bet. 5 mana draw 3 is already borderline good, but when combined with the discount, it makes this card pretty bonkers.

If this doesn’t make it into almost every single Demon Hunter deck, we’ll be surprised. It’s a very safe craft.

Druid

Druid was a bit of a harder choice, but we eventually went with Glowfly Swarm, narrowly beating out Marsh Hydra. Token Druid decks have historically been very good, and the last expansion was no exception. This seems like a natural slot in for a more spell-based token deck, and at the least probably replaced Force of Nature for most variants.

Hunter

For Hunter, this set seems more like a “let’s set up a strong deck for later” set. Zixor is the card that we think will become the centerpiece of a Beast/Rush package that has been slowly built up for the last couple of card releases. In the meantime, we still expect it to be pretty good at the worst, so is likely the safest Hunter craft.

Mage

Mage gets a rough go of things this time, with a few half-realized packages. Solarian is a standout card, though that likely slots into Highlander Mage, and we’d be very surprised if it didn’t feature prominently in a future deck as well.

Paladin

Paladin’s real best card is Hand of A’dal, but that’s a Common. The second best is likely to be Aldor Truthseeker, star of the Libram package, and likely to be the big boost that Pure Paladin needs to start shining a bit more brightly.

Priest

Priest is a bit of a wildcard this expansion, with the new cards coming right after its rework. Reliquary of Souls though is likely to just be a general good card in any board based Control Priest, and makes a very good buff and Resurrect target.

Rogue

Much like Hunter, most of Rogue’s new toys seem like set up for a future expansion to really flesh out the Secret or Stealth packages into something greater. Still, we think Blackjack Stunner alone is a good reason to give the Secret package a try, and as a Rare you’re not out too much if it turns out to be subpar.

Shaman

Shaman’s in a weird spot right now, and it gets a number of disjointed tools encouraging them toward a Control archetype deck. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to be super great, so Vivid Spores takes the spot as a great general purpose spell, though Torrent was a strong contender. Vivid Spores isn’t likely to be deck defining, but it’s nice to have for most types of deck.

Warlock

Warlock gets a lot of nice new toys. We don’t quite believe in the Shadow Council meme dream, but Imprisoned Scrap Imp both works as a potential part of that, and as an include in Zoo type decks of all variety. It seems like there might finally be a handbuff card worth using.

Warrior

While Imprisoned Gan’arg is probably the strongest card here, it’s also a Common. Kargath Bladefist is the only other card this expansion we can say is probably going to be at least OK for Warrior. This is the iffiest slot in part because Warrior seems to get a lot of cards pointing toward a package that probably doesn’t work very well. Kargath, on the other hand, is a decent general use card.

Neutral

Neutral is weird this expansion. Not only are there about 15 fewer cards than usual, but the cards we do get are also a lot more niche and out there. Maiev is the only standout we can see being used in multiple decks. The others seem good in some cases, but very inconsistent.