I dont really queue solo shuffle much, but I noticed that I was the highest earthen MW at a little below 3k on my alt so I wanted to post it as an achievement and motivation for others at the same time. I noticed some one offs of other races which is great, I just know both US and EU are still pretty meta driven and the mentality steeps to lower brackets.

I know plenty of people on the subreddit say you "have" to play a meta race, and I always advocate against it as long as you know you are going to inevitably lose some games because of it. 

Playing other races can give niche advantages though. Mechagnome for example has a crazy strong base mainstat for early in an expansion. You can also use the illusions to eat frozen traps from hunters, or as additional mobs to reduce the likelihood a howl of terror / psychic scream gets you. 

Earthen really doesnt have much going for it but I did learn some nifty things that can be done such as casting/stop casting your racial to get kicked WHILE IN HEX to get precog for follow up CC chains. This is even more common the higher up you go because people try to pre-kick mistweavers on our one school a lot.

You might lose some games with the wrong race, but playing unique ones can win you some as well.

Gl to everyone next season!

Ran a race no one else did. Earthen MW and some additional thoughts.