Introduction
With all the reveals, reviews and discussions, people are eager to start experimenting on Knights of the Frozen Throne cards as soon as they hit, but while there are tons of cards we really want to experiment, sometimes finding a playable home to experiment and playtest those cards end up being harder than it looks.
Same goes even when you’re simply trying to fish some easy wins out of the inexperienced players building all those clunky decks: Building the right aggro deck to munch of all those bad Control decks can sometimes be a challenge, especially on an expansion such as this one where are seems to be just so many untested tools even for Aggro.
Today’s article is for you, looking for decklists to playtest some of the most promising cards in Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion, regardless of what you’re looking to do!
Prince Keleseth Decks
Aggro Paladin is the obvious deck we’ll be testing with Knights of the Frozen Throne, but not so obvious in a sense that it spots cards that I really think have potential to break the metagame but haven’t been discussed as much as cards I personally consider to be way overrated, and that one card is: prince-keleseth.
The Prince is a card that I have talked about a little on my reviews and only touched it recently saying I have a belief that it is underrated but I didn’t quite go too deep there because back at the time I wasn’t really trying to brew decks as I was later on.
The fun fact is, Prince Keleseth has the potential to do what few cards have done in Hearthstone: Break the meta.
As a 2-mana card, it is not hard to spot it on 1-drop filled Aggro decks such as Paladin or Zoo, and the effect of turning 1-drops into something potentially higher than a 2-mana card without even lowering the mana cost of the cards, despite not being something that seems to be that tempo-oriented, causing some sort of problem for deck building, it indeed is an effect that can be completely or partially nullified by effects that abuse card draw, and guess what? Both Zoo and Aggro Paladins do have effects that abuse card draw, such as divine-favor, small-time-recruits and the Warlock hero power, Life Tap.
With that said, I only recently came to realize how well rounded up those decks were, and how capable of completely obliterating the metagame during the first few days they are, so if you ask me for decks that can give you high profit those are the two ones I would recommend you playing.
Playtesting the Big Guy
the-lich-king was a card that was revealed in the last stream and since then has been quite turning people’s heads upside down with claims of how powerful it is.
Recently I wrote on an article my take on it, stating that I believe it is a completely overrated card because I am sure it just can’t see play in every single deck there is, and because it is simply just another finisher in a world full of “good finishers”.
With all that said, it is still a pretty damn good card and people will still win games with it by having it snowball out of Control after exhausting the opponent out of threats in Control matchups, despite me not believing this will be the same very often. Following the “rating” articles I made, I’d rate The Lich King as a well rounded up 3/5 card.
With that said, there are still ways to completely abuse its ability without actually playing it that often, and that is: barnes and yshaarj-rage-unbound.
After some pretty long tinkering I came up with the deck I am now presenting to you guys, which seems like a rounded up well balanced take on what a Control Playtesting starting point should be in Day-1 of KTF.
The reason why I believe this has a much bigger chance of succeeding over the clunky and heavy builds people will be making is that this has some sort of “Combo” feeling into it, which can easily steal a few matchups here and there even against Aggro decks, while still maintaining all the powerful anti-aggro tools of traditional Control Priest and the ability to easily play the long-term Control vs Control matchup in case you end up stumbling upon (and you will, trust me) those clunky Control decks.
The Safe Approach in Playtesting
And while many people are interested in either having fun by playing those big Control decks, or possibly streaking wins, there is always the safe route of playing an already well-known MIdrange deck to be powerful with a few additions from the last expansion that, at least in first sight, makes complete sense and feel like obvious additions.
With that said, I made quite a few changes to Midrange Paladin to make it the deck you guys now see, to a point that we’re sure the deck will work, just not much sure on how better it will end up being than the traditional builds.
corpsetaker seems like an obvious addition to Paladin Midrange since it already runs wickerflame-burnbristle and tirion-fordring, and just the Taunt+Divine shield is already enough to make it a powerful 4-drop, and the chance of it having Lifesteal is just the ice in the cake.
Meanwhile, bonemare seems like quite the powerful Tempo play if played into the snowballs, so it feels natural to add one or two into the playtesting list.
Beating all the Control
Going deeper into safeness, Jade Druid quite seems to be on the spot for the metagame we’ll be facing in the first few days: With the addition of malfurion-the-pestilent the deck can now consistently Armor up! +3 every turn, and it doesn’t matter how powerful and how many late-game threats your Control deck has, you will not be beating a Jade Druid on the late game that is gaining 3 Armor every turn. I know, people talked about skulking-geist but the card has been discussed already and is highly likely to not see any play.
In addition, we have ultimate-infestation that adds the next level of consistency to the already powerful Jade Druid, now you don’t need auctioneer or clunky combo-ish cards that don’t do anything on their own as you have a card that does everything all these cards want to do, in addition to being what Druid really lacks: A removal. Ultimate Infestation fits perfectly into Jade Druid, makes it a lot more consistent and on top of it all it is indeed something you want to Ramp into – Jade Druid players might be familiar with spamming Ramps and then being stuck with a clunky hand, well no more!
Closing
And these are pretty much the lists I will be playtesting right after KTF is out, obviously after I get to defeat The Lich King with every class so I can earn my Arthas Hero Skin 🙂
So many decks, so many delightful possibilities!
So what do you guys think of the deck lists I made? Is there any other deck you’ll be playtesting right off the bat when KTF lands? Which ones? What were your playtesting results?
Let me know everything and anything else you have to say in the comments, I will be eagerly awaiting your comments!
Love you guys,
Nuba
