Artifact Red Blue Meepo Magic Deck

by Swellzong

Hey guys, Swellzong here.I’ve been working on a deck called “Meepo Magic” for a long time and I finally feel that it’s been tested enough for me to write a guide about this awesome deck. Some of you may have seen a few games posted here and if you have you know how devastating and fun it can be.

But can it win? Yes it can.

The final version I’ve been playtesting for the last week currently has a winrate of 84,21% (16-3) in Prize Constructed. It has beaten Mono-Blue 4 times out of 5, Mono Red 2 times out of 1 and RG Ramp 2 times out of 2. It’s a small sample size but I wanted to include it since this last version is the one I deem most optimized.

Overall through the deck’s entire life cycles I have a 73.44% winrate in Prize Constructed using Ogre Magi (over 64 games).

The deck is Red/Blue featuring Axe, Legion Commander, Tidehunter, Ogre Magi and Meepo. It plays as a combo deck by drawing a lot (sometimes all) of the cards in your deck and summoning a bunch of Meepo copies and casting Time of Triumph on all of them repeatedly and closing out the game in one turn with blink daggers or two turns by one-shotting the ancient.

Deck list: https://www.playartifact.com/d/ADCJUoLtLgCEARTGri7AkJlAoiWgQFxAbMBiEQHnVOzAU1lZXBvIE1hZ2lj
Video guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MasNRFMlCtE&feature=youtu.be

General Game plan:

1. Damaging the enemy tower DOES NOT MATTER. You can easily kill two 40hp tower in one turn when the combo goes off (not that you have to, something will be hitting the enemy tower somehow).
2. Stall out the game by any means neccessary.
3. Draw as many cards as possible without letting too much damage through to your towers.
4. Sometimes you need to sacrifice 1 tower to keep your 2 other towers more healthy. It is much easier to defend 2 tower properly than to try to defend 3 towers and letting 2 or more drop to below 20hp. By keeping 2 tower above 30hp until the combo turn you can usually leave one of them completely open and focus on the combo lane.
5. Consider if you need to use a Time of Triumph on mana turn 8, sometimes even on 1 hero. Sometimes you have to do this to stay alive and it also makes it easier to clear opposing heroes in the lane you want to combo in (explained further in point 5).
6. Set up Tidehunter or Aghanim’s Sanctum in the lane you want to combo. This opens the option to either use Tidehunter’s stun to disable the enemy heroes or use “Duel” to kill an enemy hero (or more) before getting back up to 9 mana with the Aghanim’s Sanctum and unleashing the combo.
7. Unleash the combo. You won’t always be alone in a lane so you need to think about what plays your opponent can make to stop your combo. If it’s a play that’s very likely to happen consider if you can hold out a few more turns in the other lanes for a better combo setup later. You only need one turn with the combo to kill two towers in different lanes if it’s done properly.

Hero choices:- Axe is here to provide a strong red body that can help us survive until mana 9. His card Berserker’s Call is a valuable tool for clearing a safe lane for the combo once you have a red hero with ToT on it or for clearing up any creeps blocking your heroes after you unleash the combo.- Legion Commander has the same role as Axe, but her card is better for unleashing the combo since it only costs 2 mana. This means you can potentially use Duel twice before putting down Aghanim’s Sanctum in the same turn to get back up to 9 mana.- Tidehunter is an essential key hero in this deck fulfilling three very important roles. He tanks like a champ and lets you stay alive. He can stun a lot of opposing heroes so you can use your combo, or he can stall a lane an extra turn by himself. Lastly his signature card gives initiative which means you don’t have to spend main deck cards for initiative.- Ogre Magi is the least important hero in the lineup and I have tried swapping him out for a lot of other heroes but he has the highest winrate overall for me. He helps stall against aggro decks with his Ignites and he can copy spells which is super valuable for the card draw spells. If you copy just one of those during a game (we have 5) we’re usually very good on the card draw front.- Meepo is obviously the star of the deck and without him the whole premise would crumble. He allows us to get off massive ToTs and win the game in one turn.

Notes about the deck:- After using the combo you can move 2 Meepos to another lane and push with just 1 blink dagger by blinking one of the new copies and using “Poof” with the main Meepo to follow the clone.- Try to play The Omexe Arena into a lane that you’re going to Annihilate later. If the tower in that lane can survive waiting one turn you should even consider giving up initiative for it (if you’re certain you can Annihilate it the turn after).- If possible against high-damage heroes, sacrifice Ogre and Meepo in consecutive turns right from when they are deployed. I don’t mind deploying Ogre Magi in front of even a Bristleback if it means he dies on mana 4 and blocks 8 tower damage. This means he comes back on the Annihilation turn. If Meepo and Ogre always dies in different turns you’ll always have Annihilation ready for a new lane.

If you want to see how the deck plays and get tips on how to beat specific match ups I have uploaded a bunch of games with analytic commentaries on my youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/Swellzong

Thank you for checking out this guide. If you’d like to see me play the deck in action I will be playing it in the Brainscans.net January+February league on Thursday the 10th at 19:00 CET/1pm EST on my twitch channel here: https://www.twitch.tv/swellzong

If you have any questions about the deck just ask away, I’d love to see more people succeed with this deck.

Edit: Since a lot of you are asking how it does in certain matchups I’ll post links to matches against every popular meta deck here (with commentary):
Mono-Red: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-RJ-9bjxtoM
Mono-Blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK0HqSmIIHAR
RG Ramp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HFmSPHtibU
BU Econ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIUlsKP5aAg
2x Mono-Blue, 1x Mono-Red: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwxRZ1gN2O8
Mono-Red, RB Hero Killer, Off-meta Black-splash-blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV8pxNrkBOw
The last 2 videos linked make up my latest perfect run with the deck.