”Golems are girl’s best friends…and shaman’s…and druid’s….rogue’s.” – Aya Blackpaw
Welcome, dear readers, to another definitive guide article where we take a look at yet another newest decks archetype, the Jade Golem deck. This will be our final definitive guide article regarding specific deck archetypes and for the next nine weeks I’ll be covering classes instead. With almost all deck archetypes covered so far the last one that I haven’t talked about is the Jade Golem deck and that is for a good reason. I’ve been waiting for this new mechanic and decks revolving around it to get a bit more polished and find their spot in the metagame before doing a coverage of them. I’ve honestly believed that Jade Golem druid is going to be the main jade golem deck so Jade Golem shaman had completely caught me by surprise. As it is with every other definitive guide, I’ll be covering the basics first and then I’ll be moving onto more advanced stuff, decklist and deck guides. All decks are taken from hearthstonetopdecks.com and links to all decks will be provided.
With all of that out of the way, sit back, relax and let’s dive right into it 🙂
Jade Golem 101
As always, this guide will be divided into three sections. The first section, this one, will cover the basics behind jade golems including a brief history of the mechanic and the cards and what role do jade golems have in different classes. If you’re looking for a more in depth analysis and/or decks and are not interested in these very basics then feel free to skip ahead to the next section where you’ll probably find what you’re looking for.
History
The jade golem mechanic was introduced in the latest expansion Mean Streets Of Gadgetzan which came out last month. It is the signature mechanic of the Jade Lotus gang which is based on ninjas and eastern culture. The idea behind jade golem mechanic is creating tokens, starting with a 1/1 token, and then making each other token bigger for +1 stat point in both attack and health for each other token that was summoned before it. This means that the first jade golem is always going to be a 1/1 minion, then the next is a 2/2 minion and the sixth is a 6/6 minion and so on until one of them somehow becomes a 30/30 minion which is most likely never going to happen but that is the known upper limit of the jade golem minions. Druid and shaman were both given three cards that support the jade golem mechanic while rogue was given only two.
The idea behind the mechanic itself is unique to Hearthstone but the way that it is executed is all too familiar to all those who have played token decks before which is what jade golem decks effectively are. You play cards that summon tokens, minions that don’t exist in form of cards that you can have, and then you swarm your side of the board with those tokens, find ways to make them bigger and crush your opponent with their overwhelming numbers. Those who have played token druid before should be very familiar with the jade golem playstyle. While I’m not the biggest fan of token decks I do find this one interesting to play so I’ve given it a go a couple of times (in shaman, something that I haven’t really expected).
When the mechanic was introduced Jade Golem druid was all the rage back then. Everywhere I’ve looked people were completely sure that Jade Golem druid is going to be the best deck in the new metagame. However, once the expansion came out, Jade Golem druid had proven itself to be way too slow and way too clunky to handle aggressive decks that were popping out everywhere and the only real success that it had found was in phasing out control warrior and being a counter to Reno priest (not sure about Reno mage). Jade golem rogue phased out as soon as it phased into the game and I don’t think that there are a lot of people trying out the deck on the ladder because it indeed is quite under-performing. The jade golem deck that actually managed to take the ladder by storm, the one that I really did not see coming, was Jade Golem aggro shaman and Jade Golem midrange shaman. Yes, while we were all expecting shaman to finally go away, it ended up having the best jade golem decks in the game. The latest Vs Data Report  shows that aggro shaman makes 12,94% of the ladder while midrange Jade Golem shaman makes up 5,76% of the ladder. Shaman is once again the tier 1 class and the other two deck only make up for 6,07% (druid) and 1,14% (rogue). That leaves us at the present day!
Pros And Cons Of Jade Golem Decks
There are three different jade golem decks out there, one for each class, and each has its own pros and cons. Much like I did with pros and cons for other decks and deck mechanic in my previous definitive guides, I’ll try to find the middle ground between those three classes, which will revolve around the jade golem mechanic, not the way how it is presented in different cards, and try to give you the pros and cons of each jade golem deck. This means that I won’t be talking about each individual deck but I’ll instead mention the pros and cons that the all share.
Pros
Board presence: This is one of the biggest pros when it comes to jade golem decks. This mechanic is usually attached to spells that do different things or to minions. Regardless of what the mechanic is attached to, what it does is assure you some kind of board presence because all of them generate a single jade golem. This doesn’t seem like a big deal at the very start of the game but as the game progresses and your golems become bigger, each card with jade golem mechanic becomes a lot more valuable and a lot more powerful. For example, if you play jade-claws on turn 2 you will get a single 1/1 jade golem minion. This is not a bad deal because for 2 mana you’ve just got a minion and a 2/2 weapon. Ok, the minion isn’t the biggest one but at least you’ve got a minion on the board. Fast forward to several jade golem cards later and let’s say that now it is turn 8. You topdeck another jade-claws but because you’ve had several jade golem minions in play before let’s say that this time instead of getting a 1/1 minion that you’re getting a 5/5 minion. Now you’ve generated some powerful board presence. This becomes even better if you use jade-lightning to remove your opponent’s only minion and get something like a 5/5 jade golem out of it. In short, the biggest pro of the jade golem decks in that they always guarantee board presence.
Snowbally: This one goes hand in hand with the previous pro. I’ve mentioned how board presence with jade golems can be great in the late game. Because jade golems function in a way that each new jade golems is bigger by +1/+1 than the previous one, if the game draws out long enough they can get out of control pretty fast, especially in a druid deck. Summoning a lot of jade golems from the early stages of the game and onwards with steady progression can suddenly snowball out of control when you start getting huge minions, 5/5 or 6/6 or even 7/7 minions, in a very fast succession one after another in a relatively early stages of the game. Jade Golem druid is the worst offender here because of the cards jade-idol which can summon huge jade golems later on in the game for just 1 mana.
Control killer: Control decks seek to draw the game out into the late game, drain their opponents out of resources and then either beat them down with their huge and powerful minions or simply win the fatigue war. The long game is actually where the jade golem mechanic shines the most because the longer the game goes and the more jade golems are produced the more powerful will the next jade golem be. Control decks struggle against jade golem decks, especially jade golem druid, because those decks will most likely keep on generating huge minions even after the control decks run out of steam and way to remove them. The biggest piece of evidence here is that the jade golem druid had actually managed to phase out control warrior which was one of the most persistent and ever present decks on the ladder since the open beta days and maybe even before.
Cons
Weak to aggro: Jade golem decks can generate huge jade golem minions, that much is true, but doing so usually takes a lot of time and that is something that aggro decks won’t allow. If you look at the provided Vs Data Report you will notice that the most played jade golem decks are aggro and midrange shaman and both of those are in fact quite aggressive decks and use jade golems for that purpose. The slower jade golem decks, druid and rogue, have been chased away by aggro decks such as the many pirate decks and aggro shaman. Even if we take into consideration that jade golem druid performs well against Reno decks because they are after all late game control decks, the sheer number of aggro decks on the ladder still push that deck back.
Resource dependent: If you’re goal is to play a jade golem deck which is not an aggro deck and you want to use the mechanic to its full extent and create big golem minions than unfortunately you are out of luck because the mechanic is very resource dependent, with rogue only having 2 cards that can generate jade golems which means that if you get to summon them with those cards your biggest golem will be a 4/4. Add in a jade-spirit for a 5/5 and aya-blackpaw and you end up with your biggest golem being a 7/7 minion. It is not about the size of the minion but about the accessibilty of way to produce them. If you’re playing a jade golem rogue deck you can have only up to 6 (maybe 7) cards that can produce jade golems. If you’re playing a jade golem druid you can get more of this cards thanks to raven-idol and jade-idol but then again you need a reliable way of getting to them which is why every jade golem druid runs a single copy of gadgetzan-auctioneer. In short summary, one of the main cons is the lack of resources in each class to create a fully functional jade golem token deck.
Jade Golems In Each Class
Jade golems appear in druid, shaman and rogue and they serve a different purpose in each of those decks despite the mechanic acting the same way.
In druid, jade golems serve the purpose of acting as a fast growing token army. This is evident in jade-idol card which is the only jade golem mechanic card that gives you more resources to create jade golem tokens. None other class has access to a recurring summoning effect like this. Besides jade-idol, druid is the only class that has a minion that as a battlecry summons a jade golem. jade-behemoth is a 3/6 taunt minion for 6 which summons a jade golem on battlecry which helps you generate your token army faster. These is another minion that summons a jade golem and that minion is jade-swarmer but that effect is a deathrattle and it serves a different purpose. There is also jade-chieftain but that one had faded out of the game a long time ago. Last but not least there is the jade-blossom which is a token generator that acts as a mana accelerator to help you get your army of token quickly.
In shaman, jade golems serve as additions to removal. It is all about removing something from your opponent’s board and getting something in return at the same time. Because weapons are one of the better sources of removal we have jade-claws which is a great card because, as previously mentioned, not only does it 9/10 times remove a minion from your opponent’s board but also places a minion on your side of the board. The other, more direct removal which is lately more used as a direct damage tool, is jade-lightning. 4 mana, deal 4 damage, remove something, get a minion on the board. To sum it up in more simpler terms, while jade golems in druid are used as more of a late game tool because you seek to build a huge token army and beat your opponent with it, jade golems in shaman serve a much more aggressive purpose which is evident in the top two decks in the Vs Data Report. More often than not you use those jade golem generator cards to deal direct damage and the jade golems generated to deal even more direct damage.
So, one is the goes slow while the other goes fast. What does the third one do? That is a very good question which is, in all honesty, not easy to answer because out of all jade golem decks, rogue had found least success with the mechanic. There are only two jade golem cards, jade-swarmer and jade-shuriken, and both of them act as differently as jade-lightning and jade-chieftain. When I did my first article about the identity of each class (you can check it out here) I’ve mentioned rogue to be the one card that seeks to gain tempo through spells. jade-shuriken fits that role perfectly as it acts as a cheap removal tool that generates a minion if you manage to combo it. It is a bad card, don’t get me wrong, but it serves what the rogue’s class identity should be. The other card, jade-swarmer, is not like that. It is a deathrattle minion which acts as a replacer. By that I mean that you use this minion to kill another minion and then replace this minion, via deathrattle, with another minion. There are multiple such minions in the game with the first that come to mind being harvest-golem and haunted-creeper. With that being said, what role do jade golems have in rogue? I’m honestly not sure. We’ve been given two very different cards with very different roles so it is hard to pinpoint what exactly did the developers want the golems do to. If I could guess I would say that they were supposed to serve as replacer cards, like jade-swarmer, but the design of jade-shuriken went in a completely different direction.
Advanced Masonry
Ah, welcome, young grasshopper, to the second section of the article. In the second section of this article we’ll be taking a bit more in depth look at the jade golem cards and jade golem decks. As always, the decks provided come from hearthstonetopdecks.com. In the last section I’ll be talking about the future of jade golem decks so if you’re just interested in that part you can skip ahead.
Constructing You Jade Empire
We went over the role of jade golems in different classes and now I’m going to teach you how to create your own jade golem which is focused more on generating tokens than hitting face. This is probably why I’m going to mainly focus on the druid and the rogue class because of two reasons. First is that they can actually utilize their jade golem cards towards the end of creating big jade golem tokens and the second is that both shaman jade golem decks are already fully optimized and whatever I tell you to do will probably result in a worse jade golem shaman deck than the top tier one. This guide is mostly for those who seek to make their own jade golem deck instead of googling for the best one in each class.
JADE DRUID
Utilizing Jade Idol
jade-idol is the bread and butter card of all jade golem druid decks. It is without a doubt the single most powerful jade golem generator card as it can get out of hand very quickly and once you start summoning huge jade golem tokens for 1 mana you’ll notice the absurd power level of this card. So, as a choose one: card, jade-idol provides us with two options: either summon a jade golem now or shuffle three copies of this card to your deck. How do you use this effect to its full extend?
Although it seems very tempting to shuffle 3 copies of jade-idol into your deck, doing so with your first copy of jade-idol is a mistake. You must keep in mind that your resources are very limited as you have only 3 jade golem generators. At first glance, adding more of those generators into your deck seems like an amazing idea, but you must also keep in mind the way that the mechanic functions. For each previously summoned jade golem the next one gets bigger by +1/+1. First and foremost you must kickstart that mechanic somewhere and that is where your first jade-idol comes into play. Getting a 1/1 minion for 1 with no additional effects seems bad on the surface but it will be worth it in the long run. It is more valuable to get a 2/2 jade golem minion from something like jade-blossom and to get a 1/1 jade golem minion from it or even a 1/1 jade golem minion from jade-behemoth. What do you accomplish if you use your first jade-idol to shuffle more copies of it into your deck and then draw one of them 4 turns later? A 1/1 for 1 in the 4th turn is pretty bad.
Here is the ideal sequence:
Use your first jade-idol to get a minion.
Use your second jade-idol to shuffle 3 copies into your deck.
Use your third jade-idol to get a minion.
Use your fourth jade-idol to get a minion.
Use your fifth jade-idol to shuffle 3 copies into your deck.
Basically, use your first jade-idol to get a minion, use your second jade-idol to shuffle 3 copies into your deck and from that step ondwards use your last jade-idol to shuffle three more copies into your deck.
Getting The Draws
I’ve already mentioned how limited your resources are which makes drawing cards even more precious. Luckily for us, our old pal gadgetzan-auctioneer has got our backs. In ideal world you will get to play your first jade-idol quickly and then you will relatively quickly get your other jade-idol and shuffle 3 copies of it into your deck but then you need to draw them somehow.
Most jade golem druids run a single copy of gadgetzan-auctioneer in their decks to dig for those jade-idol cards. The synergy between these two cards is crazy because you’re not only either getting a potentially big minion or 3 additional cards in your deck but you’re also getting to draw a card which basically makes jade-idol a 1 mana draw a card spell that does something awesome along the way. Only one gadgetzan-auctioneer is necessary because most of the time it will get you to where you need to go and playing two copies can either make you overdraw or turn the other copy into a simple win-more card with not much purpose behind it.
This is not your only draw engine. Two copies of nourish are also mandatory in each jade golem druid deck. Do not neglect theit choose one: effect because it is one of the best choose one: effects that you have in your deck. Getting to draw 3 cards is a big deal, especially when you need to refill your hand, and getting 2 mana crystals is also amazing for ramping up. The order in which you play those two effects is usually, from my experience, getting the 2 mana crystals with your first nourish and then drawing 3 cards with your second nourish. You are playing your fair share of big minions and 4 onwards cost cards so ramping up as fast as possible is kind of what druid really wants to do. The only scenario where you don’t go for the mana crystals is when you’re really stuck and you desperately need those 3 cards. Best case scenario is to play this card with fandral-staghelm on the board.
azure-drake is a staple in all druid decks, and it is also played in jade golem rogue, so I won’t be talking much about it. The card that I will talk about, however, is raven-idol. This card works wonders in the jade golem druid deck as it can replace itself for another golem generator such as jade-idol or jade-blossom. This is already common knowledge but in case that someone needs a reminder, always choose spell unless you’ve got an empty hand and you need any minion immediately. Useful spells that this card can provide are: jade-idol, jade-blossom, nourish, innervate, warth, living-roots, feral-rage and swipe. Worst case scenario is that you don’t get any of those but you get another raven-idol so you get to try again 😛
Survivability
Last but not least thing that we need to talk about regarding jade golem druid is the survivability. There are a plenty of aggro decks out there and you need to stay alive long enough to start growing your jade golem army. Basically you need a way to survive into the late game where you’ll most likely win. The easiest answer to surviving is healing but druid’s healing cards, or healing card, to be more exact, sucks. The other answer is removal and this is where we’ve got some more interesting options.
When it comes to removal cards you wish to run two copies of living-roots, wrath and swipe. Don’t let your opponent flood the board because druid severely lacks in the AoE department. As a matter of fact, the lack of AoE is druid’s most glaring weakness. Another card that I did not mention when it came to removal cards is feral-rage. feral-rage is an interesting card which is basically a stronger version of bite. However, unless you really must, don’t go for the attack but pick armor instead. Think of feral-rage as your only healing card. 8 armor for 4 mana is a pretty sweet deal and will offer you some decent survivability. Last but not least option is taunt minions that you want to get out quickly. Quickly, that is what ramping is for. Two copies of jade-behemoth and up to two copies of ancient-of-war will keep you alive if you manage to get them out fast. Some decks run druid-of-the-claw while some don’t but I recommend using this card as well for additional survivability.
JADE ROGUE
Playing On The Recursion
This will be the only point in the jade golem rogue guide because frankly it is the only one that actually matters and differs from the jade golem druid.
First and foremost you need to decide do you want to use jade-shuriken or not. On the positive side it is an additional jade golem generator but on the negative side it is a really bad card. 2 mana for 2 damage and a chance to get a jade golem but only if you’ve played something before it doesn’t sound very good to me but if you like you can add a single copy of it. Some of you may prefer running two copies which is fine, I guess, but I don’t think that you will really need two copies of it with the direction that we’re taking here.
The card that we’re going to focus on is the jade-swarmer and, more precisely, deathrattle effects. I know that deathrattle rogue has been done before but I honestly don’t see a different way to run a jade golem rogue deck with only 2 jade golem class cards. So, what do we need to get the most out of our jade-swarmer? First and foremost we want to get as many golems as we can so we need to trigger this effect multiple times. In order to do so we’re going to run unearthed-raptor. Luckily for us, jade-swarmer has stealth so it shouldn’t be too hard to keep it alive long enough to get the unearthed-raptor into play. Unlike with jade-idol, don’t waste your first jade-swarmer to get a golem unless you’ve copied the effect with unearthed-raptor. Rather run a copy of jade-shuriken and use that card as a generator for your first jade golem. I’m saying this because unlike with jade-idol here you’ve only got two shots of making unearthed-raptor and jade-swarmer work.
Other deahtrattle jade golem card that you’re going to use is aya-blackpaw. For this card alone I would rune barnes in this deck as well. Don’t underestimate the value of aya-blackpaw and her deathrattle. Last but not least, you’re going to run the big deathrattle daddy himself, nzoth-the-corruptor to bring back aya-blackpaw and your jade-swarmer and generate even more jade golem tokens. Will this deck function? I’m not completely sure but with the tools that were given to us this is the best that we can do.
Jade Golem Decks
As promised, here are four jade golem decks 🙂
The Future Of Jade Golem Decks
Since this is a new mechanic it is difficult to pinpoint what will happen to it in the future but today was a Q&A with IskarHS and Ben Brode and Ben did say that there won’t be any more jade golem cards coming out in the near future but that there will be cards that will support the deck in some other ways like brann-bronzebeard so the developers are certainly aiming to make the archetype stick. They have mentioned the possibility of nerfing pirate decks if they get out of hand so if that happens and the metagame slows down we’re going to see the rise in jade golem decks.
Conclusion
That is it for our last definitive guide for a certain deck archetype. I hope that you’ve enjoyed it and do tell me what are your thought on the jade golem decks. Do you want to see more token generating jade golem decks in the future? Do you think that if the meta slows down we will have problems with too powerful jade golem decks? Let me know in the comments below. 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.
Published: Jan 14, 2017 02:45 am