Introduction
It’s time for the fifth Journey to Un’Goro deck recommendations. A series where I share interesting and powerful decklists that had some success on the ladder. I won’t generally post a standard meta decks (you can find those easily anyway), but rather more off-meta decks. Lists that haven’t seen any play lately, decks with unexpected tech choices etc.
I could say that the Un’Goro meta is stabilising, since it’s already 1.5 months into the expansion. But that wouldn’t be completely true. There is still a lot of variance and new decks are constantly discovered. Every week I’m facing new lists in Legend and it’s really cool to see more and more decks popping out even so late into the expansion.
All the decklists have been playtested by me – most likely either in Legend (mid-late season) or close to the Legend (early in the season). They were all working at the time I was writing this and in the meta I was playing, but I can’t assure that you’ll get similar results. Let’s start!
Kranich’s Face Secret Hunter
Oh the good, old Face Hunter. It used to be one of the most universally hated decks before people realized that getting killed on turn 6 or 7 on average is a luxury when compared to Pirate Warrior. It disappeared from the meta, because it was pushed out by other, more powerful Aggro decks. So far, the Journey to Un’Goro meta has been all about the Midrange Hunter. It’s one of the most popular decks in the meta, but at the same time, Hunter is probably the class with least diversity.
Kranich took this Secret Face Hunter list up to #7 Legend, which is quite significant this late into the season. But is he suddenly so successful with the deck that isn’t even played in the meta? The answer is quite simple – Mages. Mages are the new plague of the ladder, especially in the higher ranks/Legend. The class is extremely popular and each build is more or less based around Secrets. For which Flare is a great counter. Not to mention that Face Hunter was always good against the slower Mage builds, with or without the flare. Since you can deal a lot of early damage before all the board freezes/clears happen, you can get Mage pretty low in the mid game and then conveniently pop the upcoming Ice Blocks with burn and Hero Powers. But that still meant that Mage is buying extra turns – him surviving until turn 9 (Alexstrasza) might swing the game in his favor. But well, if you run Flare, that’s not a problem – you just take care of the Ice Block and kill him.
Flare is similarly powerful against Secret Mage build, which is getting more and more popular. They play 2 Secrets? You just swipe them for 2 mana and draw a card. While it’s not a tempo gain if they play them for free, if they spend 3 mana on them, then it’s great. Just remember that Counterspell actually counters the Flare, not the other way round. Anyway, outside a very fast start with Mana Wyrm, you should still have the upper hand against that Mage build.
But that’s not all. What’s great about Face Hunter in the current meta is that no one expects it. Not only people mulligan for Midrange Hunter, they expect the usual Midrange Hunter minions, but they don’t expect Secrets. That’s right – Cloaked Huntress + Secrets is amazing, because people really have no clue what to play around. By turn 3 you might still look like a Midrange Hunter, so what it might be? Freezing Trap is probably the most common one they play around. They can also play around Snake Trap. It’s almost impossible to tell that you’re playing exactly Explosive Trap + Cat Trick, unless this list gets more popular. Secrets are strongest when they are, exactly, Secrets.
When it comes to the basic strategy of this deck, I probably don’t need to tell much. You want to play as much minions on the board as possible in the early game, play Huntress + Secrets for even more tempo, then start Hero Powering every turn around mid game while still putting pressure with minions. At some point your opponent should get low enough that you might be able to finish him with burn, charge minions and well, even more Hero Powers. The deck is pretty straightforward, but it can be really powerful if it works.
P.S. Flare is a very specific tech to counter the heavy-Mage meta Kranich was facing. If you happen to play against less Mages, it might be wise to remove it from the deck and play something else instead. For example, you can add Scavenging Hyena, second Wolfrider or another Secret like Snake Trap. If you want to build a list that’s a bit heavier on Secrets, you can also consider going for the Secretkeeper – the card is very powerful after just a single Secret was played (plus it’s nice against Mages and possibly Paladins, as you keep them from playing the Secrets).
maniacoak’s Token/Evolve Shaman
While the deck’s author called it Evolve deck, I don’t think that’s a good name. While yes, the deck plays Evolve, in my opinion that’s not the main theme of the deck and not the main win condition. I’d call it a “token” or “flood” deck, because most of the time I won exactly like that – by flooding the board with tokens and then utilizing the Flametongue Totem and/or Bloodlust synergies. I mean, it’s really easy to spawn 4 or 5 small minions when playing this deck. 5 minions with 1 attack is 5 attack in total, which doesn’t seem threatening at all. But if you play Bloodlust, that suddenly turns into 20 attack, which can easily close out the game.
But yes, Evolve is also pretty significant. There are two ways to approach the Evolve in this deck. One – you can turn a bunch of small minions into a bit more powerful small minions. E.g. playing two bodies of Firefly + Evolve means that you’re getting two random 2-drops for 1 mana each. Similarly, Bloodsail Corsair + Patches the Pirate are two random 2-drops for just 1 mana. While it’s, obviously, not worth to use it on two small minions, a bigger board can get a nice upgrade for just 1 mana. Evolve combos nicely with Stonehill Defender, which is a 3-drop with a pretty weak stats. Average stats of 4-drop are around 4/4, so he gets a nice offensive upgrade most of the time. But the biggest reason for playing Evolve is obviously Doppelgangster. That 5-drop + Evolve means three random 6-drops for just 6 mana. You’re paying for one, you’re getting three! That combo can win the games and I’m not kidding. While sure, you can get a low roll (I’m looking at you, Big-Time Racketeer), most of the time you’re getting at least 3x 5/5 and that’s an insane tempo play. Last, but not least, you can also use Evolve to “heal up” your minions after trading. Let’s say that you have 2 or 3 minions that are damaged and will most likely die to AoE next turn. You can just Evolve and hope to get some healthy guys, possibly with even better stats than the original minions.
On top of those two packages, the deck also runs Jades. Not “a lot of Jades”, but “enough Jades to make it worth”. Basically, the Jade package that was used in every Aggro Shaman build in Gadgetzan – Jade Claws, Jade Lightning and Aya Blackpaw. Those 3 are pretty powerful even if you aren’t late into the game, they’re already getting strong around 2 or 3 Jade Golems in. This is more like a supporting win condition, you won’t pass the 4/4 Jades in most of the games, but that’s good enough. And if the game goes long enough, you can get up to 6/6, which is always nice.
The deck has one significant weakness – board clears. If you face a deck with quite a lot of AoEs, winning can get hard. If that’s the case, you probably need to go for the Evolve game plan instead. Keep Evolve for that Doppelgangster and try to swing the tempo this way. If he won’t be able to answer all 3 minions (which is most likely the case), then flood the board with small guys. Now, most of the time, your opponent will have to pick between clearing the big minions or the small minions, leaving any of them is not appealing for him and great for you.
And one more advice – if you’re holding onto the Bloodlust, just count your potential damage every turn. Even with just a few minions on the board, the damage can be insane. I’ve missed lethal a few times already by not realizing how much damage I can deal. I mean, my opponent is at 25, I can’t possibly kill him, right? That’s not always the case, because sometimes that Flametongue + Bloodlust combo can add a lot of reach.
Windello’s Exodia Mage
This build was used by Tars to hit Top 100 Legend on EU, up from ~3k Legend, with 57-24 stats in total (quite a solid win rate over such a big sample size). It’s a 4 Giants version of the Exodia Mage. Most of the early builds have only used Arcane Giant.. but maybe let’s start with the basics. If you aren’t familiar with the archetype (because it was only popular very early in the expansion), it’s basically a combo deck that relies on a 2-turns kill that’s basically an OTK thanks to the Open the Waygate Mage Quest (it creates a Time Warp as the reward). You drop your Giants and play Time Warp one turn, then on the next turn you play Alexstrasza on the opponent and swing with your Giants. You need at least 2 of them. And that’s the main reason why this deck runs 4.
With only 2 Giants, the combo was a bit less consistent. Not drawing one of them even though you have everything else ready meant that you have to stall for maybe even few more turns, which might have resulted in a game lost. A Giant being literally the last card in the deck meant that most of the time you couldn’t win, because of the fatigue (you draw one card when you get an extra turn, and if opponent has put you at 1, even Ice Block didn’t save you). Sure, fringe case scenario, but Giant on the bottom of the deck was a real problem. With 4 Giants, it’s almost impossible to not draw 2 of them. But that’s not the only reason. Sometimes 2 Giants were not enough. 2 Giants into Alexstrasza assumed that a) your opponent doesn’t have Taunt minions and b) your opponent doesn’t have Armor. Which wasn’t always the case. Dropping 3 or even 4 Giants increases the odds of getting through whatever he has on the board.
Then, in some matchups, mainly Aggro matchups, the Arcane Giants were simply too slow. To get them cheap enough so you can play them without losing a lot of tempo, you needed like at least 7 or 8 spells played, which is quite expensive. On the other hand, Molten Giants are easy to play against Aggro. You will get damaged no matter what and you will eventually be able to play them for free or nearly free. They can serve as an alternative win condition in fast matchups, the matchups Exodia Mage was always struggling with. Sadly, after the nerf, you need to be at 5 or lower for them to cost 0. But remember that you’re playing Mage and Ice Block exists. Being at low health isn’t as scary with Mage as with some of the other classes. Even if they pop you, you can always go for Giant (or two) + another Ice Block or Alexstrasza to heal yourself and hope that the Giant(s) will carry you. Never underestimate the 8/8 body on the board, this game can stall for quite a while and if you hit your opponent each turn, you might just gather enough damage to simply kill him.
Overall it’s an interesting build. It’s niche when compared to the Burn Mage or even Freeze Mage, but it’s like a more extreme versions of those decks. It wants to be even less interactive, and that’s the reason why I can see it being played in tournament from time to time. Exodia Mage always had a very polarized matchups – it was countering some of the decks quite well, but at the same time it was getting countered hard by the hyper-Aggro decks. In tournament environment, where you can ban something or counter-pick your opponent, such a deck might be significantly more useful than on the ladder, where ultimately everything is random. But hey, Tars has managed to climb quite well with it, so maybe it’s not that bad. After all, most of the pros have dropped that idea soon after the release.
Wild: Abar’s Reno Mage
I’ve been enjoying some Wild gameplay lately, so I’ve decided to put one Wild deck on the list, the one I was playing for the last 2 days. It’s my first season of Wild, to be honest, before I’ve played maybe 20 or 30 Wild matches in total. And I’m enjoying the mode quite a lot. I’m still not going to drop the Standard and start playing Wild, but the Wild HTB got me hooked into the format more.
I feel like Reno Mage is one of the strongest decks in the Wild right now. Overall, I think that as the time goes by, the Reno decks will start to dominate the meta more and more. In Standard, building your decks with only 1-ofs was usually a big sacrifice. You needed to put non-optimal cards into your deck and while the reward was nice (Reno Jackson, Kazakus) it wasn’t clear that it’s worth it. But in case of Wild, as more cards are released, putting only 1-ofs is becoming less and less of a problem. At some point there will be enough crazy powerful cards that you can play only a single of each and you will still have exactly everything you need in your list. And on top of that, you will have the Kazakus and healing up to 30. It’s still not the case yet, but you can already see that Reno decks are more powerful in Wild then they were in Standard.
But, back to the deck. It does what Reno Mage always did best – counter Aggro decks. Well, maybe not exactly “counter”, because it’s hard to counter a nuts opening from an Aggro unless you play only anti-Aggro cards, but you get it. With a lot of cheap removals, AoE clears, Secrets that give you Armor and prevent death, Sludge Belcher, Antique Healbot AND Reno Jackson, it’s hard for the Aggro deck to get through all of that and still win. But it doesn’t mean that it completely drops the slower matchups. Just like in Standard, it plays some big threats, but probably the most important thing is the Alexstrasza + burn. One of the most common ways to win is simply playing Alexstrasza, getting the opponent down to 15, hoping that they won’t have a way to heal and then go for Fireball + Roaring Torch + Frostbolt to deal 15 damage. It’s also a viable strategy against Reno Warlock’s Lord Jaraxxus, but you can obviously drop the Alex part.
Another win condition in slower matchups is Archmage Antonidas. You can gather a lot of cheap spells, play Emperor Thaurissan and then generate a bunch of Fireballs. Unanswered Antonidas is usually an auto-win, but even if it gets answered nearly right away, you still should get at least 3 or 4 Fireballs out of him quite consistently. Especially with the new Primordial Glyph – which can give you 2 Fireballs with one card (if you get something cheap as the second choice). Oh, and the classic Brann Bronzebeard + Kazakus combo. It’s one of the highest value moves in the game if you go for 2x 10 mana potion and get some good choices.
Overall the deck is quite similar to the one that was commonly seen in Gadgetzan – it’s just improved with a bunch of Wild cards like Mad Scientist, Sludge Belcher or Dr. Boom. Abar has hit #1 Legend playing it, so it’s definitely a viable choice. So far I have 11-1 stats with it in the Wild, although I’m only around rank 10 now (grinding from rank 25 is quite a chore :p).
P.S. Let me know if you want to see more Wild decks in the future. I could go for 3 Standard + 1 Wild or 2 Standard + 2 Wild distribution if a lot of you enjoy the format too.
Closing
Do you know any fun/interesting decks that can also get you to high ranks? Some decks with non-meta choices, techs that you haven’t seen before etc.? If yes, let me know and I can include them next time! I hope that you’ve liked this batch of decks, I have played a few of those myself and I found them really cool. I’ll try my best to provide you with more fresh lists every now and then.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.
Good luck on the ladder and until next time!
