Introduction
With Mean Streets of Gadgetzan out for a couple of days now it is the best time to experiment and see which decks function and which don’t. I’ve been doing some experimenting with different decks such as pirate rogue and jade golem druid with moderate success (I may cover those in a different article) but for now as someone who enjoys playing different Reno decks I’ve took it upon myself to check out the Kabal, or more specifically, Reno decks. Reno decks were given a couple of nice tools for each class in the form of class legendary minions and powerful spells, but since the launch they have been struggling a bit to keep up with the crazy aggression that the pirate warrior deck is currently putting out. Nevertheless, with all these crazy new cards to support Reno decks it would be a shame not to give them a go and try to make them really work.
Today we will be looking at three different Reno decks, one for each Kabal class, and hopefully they will inspire you to give Reno decks a shot in this expansion.
Reno warlock
The first deck that we’re going to take a look at is the Reno Warlock. I’ve briefly mentioned that Reno decks are currently struggling against the insane aggression that pirate warrior decks are putting out at the moment and Reno Warlock is the one that has it the hardest. In the past, Reno warlock was the defining Reno deck because it had worked so well with the warlock’s hero power. However, since the introduction of Means Streets of Gadgetzan, this deck has become somewhat weaker because with all these pirate warriors running around it has become a bit unfavorable for you to use your hero power often and thus the thing that had made this deck work so good has become a weakness.
First and foremost thing that we’re trying to do here is survive the early aggression. Cards like mistress-of-mixtures, earthen-ring-farseer, refreshment-vendor are here to try to keep us on a healthy HP number until turn 6 and until we draw our reno-jackson. Surviving those first 6 turns is the key with this deck.
Other tools to stopping the aggression and keeping us alive are the huge number of AoE spells that this deck runs. Demonwrath, Shadowflame, Hellfire, felfire-potion, abyssal-enforcer and twisting-nether are all here to do one obvious thing and that is to keep the board cleared and/or the board state in our favor. Another card that I was considering adding to this deck was baron-geddon which is a bit of a risky because it will damage you as well but it can be a constant source of board clear and if you’re desperately looking for another one than I would advise you to give baron-geddon a go.
Last but not least oddity is the inclusion of both acidic-swamp-ooze and harrison-jones. Under any other circumstance I would advise against running harrison-jones in a Reno warlock deck because you’re already drawing a ton of cards but, against thanks to pirate warrior and the new warrior legendary minion, there are indeed a lot of weapons that can be buffed and need to be dealt with as soon as possible. That is the only reason why I would advise you to run harrison-jones in this deck along with acidic-swamp-ooze but once the meta slows down and, hopefully, pirate warrior goes away I would just keep the acidic-swamp-ooze.
kazakus, kabal-chemist and kabal-courier are here to dig for answers. kazakus provides you with insane versatility while kabal-chemist is valuable because it can draw you an additional board clear (3 potions are board clears) or maybe even greater-healing-potion to help you stabilize yourself.
Reno dragon priest
Next up is the Reno dragon priest deck. I’ve toyed a bit with the idea of a Reno priest deck but dragon synergy in priest is soooo good that I just couldn’t leave it out. It would be a shame not to capitalize on it. Thanks to raza-the-chained and the priest’s hero power we don’t need as much healing cards as we do in Reno warlock so we can focus more on card synergy.
One of the things that you really want to do with this deck is to get your raza-the-chained going as soon as possible. A free hero power each turn is a huge deal, especially if you get to power it up with justicar-truehart quickly. Playing raza-the-chained early on, preferably turn 5, is going to keep you alive against all kinds of aggressive decks and help you quite a lot in the long run.
The other big thing that we have going on here is the dragon synergy. You both want and need to have dragons in your hand to keep the synergy going. Wrathion is a good card here because not only does it draw you cards but it can also fetch you a dragon to keep reactivate the many synergy effects in case that you run out of dragon minions in your hand. Some might like the-curator more than wrathion because it will draw you a dragon 100% of the time but I wouldn’t play it in a deck where I can capitalize on only 1/3 of the minions ability. However, if you don’t have wrathion but want a guarantee dragon card draw later on in the game than the-curator might be a good option for you. However, if you take that route than I would try to squeeze in at least a stampeding-kodo.
Powerful board clears are always necessary in a Reno deck and this one is no different. For board clears we rely on holy-nova, excavated-evil, auchenai-soulpriest + circle-of-healing and, most importantly, dragonfire-potion. I’ve said this a million times before and I’ll say it a million times more, dragonfire-potion is hands down one of the best board clears in the entire game. Next to none non dragon minions can survive a hit from this thing on turn 6 and, most importantly, you get to keep something on your board.
Last but not the least there are the late game minions, especially ysera and ragnaros the firelord. Both of them are very good cards but I wouldn’t call them irreplaceable. If you feel that one of them isn’t doing enough in this deck or you don’t feel like you have enough late game dragons than I suppose that you could replace it with a different big dragon. I’ve personally went for ysera because she is my favorite big dragon minion and she fits this deck more than malygos or nozdormu. Some might not agree with me and try something different like deathwing, dragonlord or nefarian. I don’t think that those are the best options but Reno decks sometimes have the luxury of being flexible with their late game legendary minions.
Reno mage
Last but not the least is the Reno mage. Now, I will be honest with you, I don’t have a lot of experience with Reno mage in general. I have played it before but out of all the Reno decks that I’ve played, and I’ve made one for each class, Reno mage is my least played deck. Mage is my least played class in general and it being the only hero that is still not level 60 is a testament to that. After checking all the available cards this is what I’ve come up with.
With mage being the definitive spell casting class that is what we’re going to focus on the most. Casting spell and getting more stuff out of them. To help us do that we have babbling-book, kabal-chemist, kazakus, cabalists-tome, ethereal-conjurer, faceless-summoner and firelands-portal. The ability to get more cards out of cards that we already have is amazing because it allows us to be more flexible when creating our deck and we don’t need to worry about fitting every single thing in our deck. Yes, it is still random most of the time, but a random card draw, or in some cases multiple random card draw or random minion summon, is definitely not something to shy away from.
Best case scenario is to have our opponent pop our ice-block and then play our reno-jackson and just watch them concede (sometimes). It is a pretty funny combo that is unfortunately less viable in standard than in wild because of the lack of ways to get your ice-block out in time, mainly mad-scientist. If you can afford to get this combo running then you should aim for making it happen most of the time.
As mentioned in the previous decks board clears are extremely necessary in Reno decks which is why we’re running three of them. volcanic-potion, blizzard and flamestrike are all good board clears, but the best thing about Reno mage is that we can get multiple of them through some other cards like ethereal-conjurer, babbling-book and cabalists-tome.
Last but not the least, lets talk about inkmaster-solia and kazakus. inkmaster-solia is now a staple card for all Reno mage decks. It is not a must have card, you can do fine without it, but it can give you crazy amounts of value if played correctly. My personal favorite combo is inkmaster-solia and kazakus. You play kazakus and brew yourself a customized potion that costs 10 mana which you then play for free with inkmaster-solia. One thing to keep in mind is to know when to play your inkmaster-solia. She has a really powerful effect so try to get the most out of it. In other words, don’t play her in combination with super cheap spells like frostbolt or arcane-intellect. Play her with something big like pyroblast, flamestrike, firelands-portal, cabalists-tome or the kazakus potion.
How do these decks compare to one another?
After going through each of the three Reno decks it is time to see how do they compare to one another. Keeping in mind the current state of the game, one which is likely to change in the following weeks, the weakest Reno deck to play right now is the warlock one. I’m not saying that what I’ve provided is a bad list but that the Reno warlock itself is currently in a very tough position. In my opinion the current best Reno deck is the dragon priest Reno deck. It has all the necessary recovery that a Reno deck needs, it has powerful card synergy and it has amazing board clears. Reno mage is somewhere in the middle. It is the Reno deck that I’m least experienced with so I’m a bit biased on that one but I can say for certain that it is more powerful than a Reno warlock deck. Maybe Reno mage ends up being the dominant Reno deck but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
Conclusion
With all the being said I’m going to bring this article to an end. There isn’t much left to say other than I’m very glad that the developers have decided to further support the Reno decks with all these new cards and that I’m afraid of what awaits us when Reno rotates out in April. I saw someone say that they might make a new card which would function like a mini Reno just do give the decks more survivability but as someone who mainly plays the wild format I really don’t want that to happen because that would mess up wild quite a bit. Hey, who knows, maybe the ”reprint” Reno or move it to classic set which probably won’t ever happen but maybe they will surprise us.
What are you currently playing? Have you given the new Reno decks a try? Do you have some other lists that you wish to share? What is your experience with a Reno mage? Let me know in the comments below, it is always fun to talk with you and see your opinions on these articles. As always  if you’ve liked this article do consider following me on twitter https://twitter.com/Eternal_HS. There you can ask me all sorts of Hearthstone questions (unrelated to this article) and I’ll gladly answer them as best as I can.
