Im sorry but the bulk of “skill” in hs is decklists, which are public info, and the search engines for meta is super optimized, takes less than a minute, with video guides to see how to curve it.
You want a game where there is a highER execution bar after the decklist is set. HS’s metadecks for example in wild, are like “curve out your aggro, point face, if not facing another aggro deck, and sometimes you still want to just pt face vs aggro”, or “look for your mana-cheat cards for your good-meta-combo deck, and play those mana cheat cards, and win from that extra mana you got and/or continue to get over time”
Like, the aggro/combo matches are just lame it’s just face vs combo-search or defense if it can. Aggro v aggro, sure, decisions. Combo v combo, sure, decisions.
However, if you go not-meta aggro, it’s just slow and not as good. If you go not-meta combo, same thing, and really can only be teched vs aggro or other combo decks. For example, not-meta combo would be something like mill rogue. It doesnt do well vs aggro, like an auto loss, while being better vs combo decks. You’d be better off playing a more balanced combo deck like raza priest that can do ok vs aggro sometimes and can otk most combo decks.
So, the whole thing that hs takes all this skill, after decklist from info share…like break that down. Knowing the meta? Sure, this is the biggest part, and its like not that hard to memorize about 10-15 decks that are being played, and their obvious spikes if not all 30 per deck. So, not that impressive or hard to do. Like i said the ‘skill’ plays are like holding cards in combo v combo, or taking or avoiding a tempting trade in aggro v aggro. Like that’s it.
I’m watching my fav MTG player Adrian Sullivan playing lantern control. He plays meta, with not-meta 1 of’s in lots of his decks, so it’s not really meta then, and in HS, like, there’s no room to do that by design. Many turns on these grand prix matches are like lots of things going on, that aren’t just curving it out. For example a not meta 1 of could have all these effects, not just ‘stats’ or something, so the 1-of can like snowball the game away bc depth of the card/game compared to HS. Or it could be like a 0-cost counterspell next turn tap 5 mana, a tempo play to like ensure something gets resolved, combo required as balance for that power. And so on.
HS is too simple to be like “yea mega skill goes into climbing ladder, not tournaments” it’s more like “play meta or don’t win” and that’s not skill, it’s just using a search engine and only making off-curve plays in like archetype mirrors.
At this pt in wild all metadecks are built around the best mana cheat for that class, and/or draw if they aren’t the same card or combo. It’s that boxed out. It’s not like we have some card that says “look at your opponent’s hand, make them discard a card of your choice” and then effects like “get a card from your graveyard back to your hand” to potentially recover or something. It’s all just 'find mana cheat, play it" in wild and that’s super lame.
So i dont see “lookup a decklist, find mana cheat, know the meta” as being “HS takes skill (in match, implied)”. The “skill” in HS is in deckbuilding, which barely happens in wild, and only happens in the beginning of an expansion when there’s a slight influx of new cards to the meta, since the old mana cheating cards remain the top dog, looking for support cards each expansion.
There isn’t this crazy new deckbuilding going on, so is learning the meta, not altering your metadecklist bc you’ll just make it weaker overall, and hunting for mana cheat really that skillfull? This is not like old days HS were mana cheat wasn’t nearly as common and didnt dominate the format, and if it did in the case of old-innervate, old-Druids by design did not have good draw to negate the penalty for that spike. Like, Kirin Toring out a secret and have no cards in hand then? Demons costed mana actually, pirates actually used to cost mana too, and so on.
So, just dont go saying HS takes all this skill when in wild f/e the skill is just cheating mana repeatedly and/or as quickly as possible outside of archetype mirrors where usually that same path is the best path anyway.
over LOR. They’re exaggerating.