Introduction
My last post with New Year deck recommendations was pretty popular, so I’ve decided to write a new one. I want to make a good mix of fun and competitive decks, but with one requirement – each of the decks I’ll post had to either get the player to Legend or be played in Legend with a quite good result. Not every of those decks is #1 Legend material, but each one of them is viable and tested by pro players already.
I’ll add a my thoughts to each list – description of the deck’s origins, playstyle, maybe a few words about matchups. I haven’t tested each of those decks personally, but I’ve played nearly every of those archetypes in the past, so I have some experience when it comes to that. I hope you’re going to like it!
Spark’s Control Shaman
Control Shaman decks are interesting. Especially those targeting Aggro decks. The deck is basically the early/mid game removals and big drops. There are no early game minions, there is almost no mid game at all (well, if you count Earth Elemental as a mid game then I suppose). The deck is basically remove, remove, remove and then drop big minion after big minion.
Optimized against Aggro is an understatement when it comes to this deck. It’s like made to destroy Aggro. Unless you draw really poorly and get your big drops right away, it’s hard to lose those matchups with so much removal. 3 different AoEs (2 copies of each) – Maelstrom Portal, Lightning Storm and Elemental Destruction means that a faster deck will have hard time sticking any minions to the board. Then, there are some smaller, single target removals like Lightning Bolt or Lava Shock. And big single target removal – Hex. When it comes to removals, this deck has nearly everything.
Then, the threats, because you can’t win the game only by removing stuff. In Aggro/Midrange matchups – you have way more than enough to play the complete value game and win it. There are ~10 big threats in the deck in total (counting the ressed and shuffled ones), so it’s almost impossible to lose like that. However, some Control matchups are still pretty hard in terms of value. RenoLock can win with the early Jaraxxus (since you have almost no burst), Control Warrior, if played wisely, can outlast you in the long run (at least more greedy lists), Jade Druid can also win with – obviously – infinite Jade Golems train. However, those matchups aren’t unwinnable and good matchups against Aggro should make up for those.
But you know which card I love most? Barnes. It’s probably the best deck to put Barnes in you’re ever going to see. Every minion has some upside. Well, Taunt is the smallest one, but it’s still better than nothing. But everything else is great. Thalnos – Spell Damage + Draw (it’s like, you know, getting a free extra Thalnos!), Emperor – discounts, Sylvanas – steal, Ragnaros – 8 damage, Ysera – Dream card, White Eyes – extra 5 mana 10/10 shuffled in your deck, Hallazeal – extra healing if you happen to have spells. But I’ve still left the best one – Y’Shaarj the Rage Unbound. It happened to me only once so far, but it’s instant game win most of the time. Barnes pulled Y’Shaarj which pulled out Ysera. On turn 4. If that Y’Shaarj pulled second Y’Shaarj and opponent would have no hard removal, that would be even better, but Ysera was enough to win right away. There is really only a single bad target Y’Shaarj can pull – Thalnos (and maybe Barnes if you happen to play Y’Shaarj before him).
I’ll have to say that even though I don’t like Shaman class, I’ve enjoyed playing this deck. It has pretty unique play style, very different from other Control decks. It reminds me of a classic Control Warrior a bit, with almost no early game drops (a lot of removals) and few big threats to finish the game. The deck is pretty hard to play in a way that you need to get used to this play style before you start rocking – but if you’re a Control fan, you shouldn’t have a problem. Oh, and I think that there is no need to mention that the deck is disgustingly expensive. It’s around 13.5k dust not even counting the necessary adventures. I had to craft the White Eyes myself, because I wasn’t lucky enough to open it in a pack. Which is pretty sad, but right now every Control deck is very expensive…
Kolento’s Buff Paladins
This time around, it will be two decks instead of one! And Paladin decks, on top of that. It’s like a second Christmas for the Paladin players. Kolento tried to optimize those decks and used them to climb from rank 3 to Legend. Okay, but first things first: it doesn’t mean that Paladin is great. It only means that Kolento has found a semi-viable list and that he’s a great player. However, it also means that it’s possible to climb with Paladin, which is good news.
First list is the Midrange Buff Paladin. It plays three things – hand buffs, minions that benefit from hand buffs most and independently strong Paladin cards. Let’s go through them.
When it comes to hand buffs, Kolento decided to run the whole Paladin “AoE hand buff” package. 2x Smuggler’s Run, 2x Grimestreet Ouftitter and 2x Grimestreet Enforcer makes almost impossible to not draw buffs, which makes Paladin play overstatted minion for the biggest part of the game. He also runs Don Han’cho as a big single target buff – it’s great, because later in the game you can isolate exactly the target you want and then buff it. Let’s say that you need more card draw – you can leave Acolyte in your hand, buff him and play 6/8 Acolyte which should take a few hits before it dies.
Then, the minions that synergize with buffs. Kolento has decided to not go all-in on cards like Dopplegangster, but instead play cards that are individually strong even without a lot of buffs. He plays some small drops, including a Worgen Infiltrator which hasn’t seen any competitive play since old Face Hunter decks, but is a great buff target. Not only it costs only 1 mana, it has Stealth – after let’s 2 hand buffs you get a 1 mana 4/3 minion with Stealth, which is very strong. Kolento also decided to play a lot of Taunt, Charge and Divine Shield minion – often a mix of those two keywords. For example, Argent Horserider is great, because it has both Charge and Divine Shield. Same goes for Wickerflame Burnbristle as a Taunt/Divine Shield combo – the card really benefits from the buffs. But they’re still good cards if you topdeck them or if you have a no-buff Starting hand.
And lastly, he runs some Paladin core cards like weapons (Truesilver Champion), Aldor Peacekeeper or Tirion Fordring (which is a solid buff target because of Taunt/Divine Shield combo too).
Overall, the list seems pretty weird, but it has to be that way. For example – it seems weird that Paladin runs no Consecration, not to mention other spells. Kolento tries to accomplish everything with minions. The reason for it is that Paladin hand buffs work way better in minion-heavy lists – after all, multiple spells/weapons don’t clog your hand negating the buffs that minions could be getting otherwise. It also forces a certain play style on the Paladin player – proactive game play all the way. Paladins are known for a good reactive play with tons of removal, healing, weapons etc. but it’s not the case here. If you fall behind on the board, you have no comeback mechanic – it means that you need to play minion after minion and aggressively play for the early/mid game board control. When you have board control, you can pick the trades and with the upgraded stats, you should be a favorite. But if let’s say Shaman floods the board with minions, now it’s hard to make a comeback.
It’s also the reason why Kolento has put so many Taunts into the deck. While not as good as Equality board clear combos, they let the Paladin player catch up against opponent’s boards. Assuming that they have no hard removal in hand, Aggro decks will often have to run multiple minions to destroy a big Taunt. The deck actually reminds me a bit of a Paladin Arena deck I got 12 wins with recently – I had 5 hand buffs in total (1x Smuggler’s Run, 3x Outfitter and 1x Enforcer) and TONS of Taunts – those two are great at making comebacks, because your opponent has to deal with the overstatted stuff, he can’t just ignore them and rush you down after you spent 2-3 turns buffing stuff.
The second one is also a hand buff Paladin, but this time around it’s the Dragon version. I’ve never thought about those two themes synergizing with each other, but I see some merit. A lot of Dragon cards are understatted cards with powerful effects. If you boost those stats, they will lose their main weakness. If Blackwing Corruptor was a 7/6 instead, or Book Wyrm was a 5/8, already powerful cards can become even more insane. However, the main difficulty here is fitting those two packages in. That’s why Kolento had to make quite a lot of cuts. The list is actually quite low on the Dragons themselves (8, but 4 of them also require OTHER Dragon in the hand to work). He seems to keep the rest of themes intact – still going for the proactive play without spells and with Taunts being his way to come back. Dragon package, however, fits the removal gap a bit – especially 2x Book Wyrm, which is great at controlling the board and can be used to swing the tempo back even when behind (especially when it’s buffed too).
I’ll be honest that I didn’t have time to test those lists, but I’ve heard that they actually work quite decently. Of course, quite decently isn’t good overall, but for Paladin it’s amazing – besides an occasional Anyfin Can Happen Paladin, those are the only lists I’ve seen working quite well so far.
Fibonacci’s Malygos Rogue
If you’re a Rogue fan, if you like the Miracle play style, but you’d like to try something a bit different than the classic Questing Adventurer/Leeroy combo, you can play the good old Malygos Rogue. It’s the deck that’s always somewhere, in a corner of the meta, but is never really highlighted or too popular. However, it’s very strong as multiple players have proven over the history.
Current Malygos Rogue lists looks similar to the old ones. The biggest difference is – obviously – Small-Time Buccaneer. Well, Patches the Pirate too, but I’d say that Buccaneer is what gave Rogue a huge win rate boost. Since Rogue has so easy access to the weapon, he sits on his dagger for nearly whole game and turn 2 is usually Hero Power turn, Small-Time Buccaneer is pretty much a Flame Imp without the downside of losing 3 health. It gave Rogue more consistent early game, because right now it doesn’t have to pass until turn 3-4 and actually has some proactive early plays available.
The biggest difference between this and the more standard Miracle Rogue, is that the other deck often wants to win the game faster, in a more Aggro way, while this nearly always goes for the long game and combo win condition. In slower matchups, that is, against Aggro there is no such thing as turn 10+ combo, because Rogue either kills his opponent or dies around turn 7-8 at best.
This deck, however, shines in some slow matchups where burst is great. For example – against Reno decks (well, maybe besides Reno Mage if he gets Ice Block before you combo). It’s very easy to deal 25 damage (Malygos + 2x Sinister Strike + Eviscerate), but with the right set up (play Emperor Thaurissan on the right cards or keep Preparation/Coins) it’s quite easy to OTK if you add second Eviscerate or Shiv to that combo. Anyway, even 25 damage should generally be enough – you just need to stick some minion to the board and that’s it, even if your opponent is at full health.
When it comes to interesting tech choices. The deck doesn’t run Bloodmage Thalnos, which on the one hand is weird, but on the other it has been cut from some other lists too. I’m not too sure about it, I guess spell damage and cycle isn’t as necessary against Aggro, but still – you face more slow than fast decks in Legend. It also cut 2x SI:7 Agent, but this one is understandable – there is just no space in the deck to run them on top of the Maly combo cards AND early Pirate package. Theoretically you could cut one Swashburglar for the SI, but I’m not sure how well would it work. Last interesting choice is only a single Sap – I guess that once again the deck is optimized to fight faster decks, where Sap is pretty bad. A lot of the minions either do something immediately or have Charge, most of the minions are also small, so Sapping them won’t accomplish too much. So my guess is that it was a list for early laddering, not for the mid/late season Legend grind.
Oh and one more thing – in my opinion this version is more fun to play than the other Miracle list, but that’s probably because I enjoy playing combo decks quite a lot.
Tansoku’s Secret Face Hunter
Note: This is probably not a Legend deck, it’s weak, but I still decided to put it on the list (explanation below).
Another unexpected class, right? Some “fun” stats: Hunter’s and Paladin’s representation in Legend COMBINED are about 1.5%. It’s a little bit more on the overall ladder, but it’s still less than 5%.
Did someone find a new, crazy Hunter list? Nope, not really. It’s just the old Secret Face Hunter, which was one of the top tier meta decks for a while after Karazhan. With no new cards at all. Why? Because Gadgetzan wasn’t grateful for the Hunter. They tried to go all-in on the hand buff mechanic with class cards, but it’s not good in the current meta. Even though other Aggro decks got an early Pirate core, Hunter didn’t – not enough weapons to support it. The only good “early” Hunter weapon is Eaglehorn Bow, but that’s not enough. If he still had Glaivezooka, then we’d probably see the Pirates in Aggro Hunter too.
Hunter doesn’t work that well against the current meta. It has poor matchups against Reno Priest and Reno Mage AND poor matchups against faster Aggro decks.
But, the deck is not only the negatives. HotMEOWTH has climbed with the deck a bit this season and it worked fine, actually. There are some merits to the deck. For example, it works quite well against RenoLock – even though it’s a Reno deck, this Secret Hunter can still beat it, mostly thanks to the Hunter’s Hero Power – I won against some RenoLock even after they’ve played Reno, so it’s not completely unreasonable. The deck works well against Miracle Rogue too – Miracle always struggled against Aggro decks. I mean, it’s better right now, with the early Pirates, but it’s still a good matchup for Hunter. And the Jade decks, especially Jade Druid – their slow snowball might be not fast enough to stop the Hunter.
Of course, it’s still a Tier 4 deck and you shouldn’t expect a very high win rate from it. But if you want to play Hunter, it’s probably the best option you will get right now. So I will recommend the deck only to the more dedicated Hunter fans. Rest of you – play something else if you value your rank.
Savjz’s N’Zoth Jade Devolve Shaman
Okay, that’s a classic Savjz for you. Stuff as many different themes into your deck as possible, still make it work somehow. This is the second Control Shaman on this list, but each of those decks has really different approach to the archetype. Last one is mostly anti-Aggro, slow, Control gameplay with a lot of removals and multiple individually strong big threats. This, on the other hand, is much more heavy on minions, light on removals, it focuses a lot on the mid game and plays different synergistic win conditions instead of just slamming big minion after big minion. So I’d say that the last deck is more brute force approach, while this is more.. refined.
One card I want to talk about first is Devolve. Savjz runs 2 copies instead of the Maelstrom Portal and I’m still pretty confused. Portal is an insane card and it seems so necessary in the heavy-Aggro meta. However, it seems that the other AoE (Lightning Storm, Elemental Destruction) are enough to make up for the lack of Maelstrom. Devolve is best when combined with another AoE. If your opponent has scary board you can’t answer, you can always try Devolving it. If your opponent plays minions with Deathrattles or the minions he can resummon (e.g. C’Thun), devolving doesn’t “kill them”, but rather “transforms” – effect similar to Polymorph or Hex. The card is situationally very powerful, but it’s also very RNG-based. You need to remember that Devolve can actually improve the minion’s stats – e.g. devolving Azure Drake into Flamewreathed Faceless. I haven’t played around with this list a lot and I think I will first need to playtest it more carefully before giving out my final verdict to the card. It might actually be decent, but it might also be another example of “Savjz making something useless work quite well”.
The first theme of the deck is Jade. It plays 2x Jade Claws, 2x Jade Lightning, 1x Jade Spirit and 1x Aya Blackpaw. Which, after a fast count, makes a 7/7 Jade Golem in the end. However, in reality Jade Golems can usually go up to 9/9 or 10/10 if the game lasts long enough. You can summon an extra one or two golems with Brann Bronzebeard and then resummon Aya for another one.
The secondary theme is Deathrattle. Even though the deck doesn’t run a lot of Deathrattle minions – namely only 3 in total – each one of them is very impactful on a Control game. On top of that, it plays N’Zoth, the Corruptor to get them all back once again in a Control matchups. As it turns out, White Eyes is INSANE in Control games, especially if you respawn it again with N’Zoth. The fact that you shuffle up to two extra cards into your deck means that you’re not afraid of fatigue that much, and those cards aren’t just any cards – those are 5 mana 10/10 Taunts. Insane tempo and value at the same time. And that’s the deck’s main win condition in slower matchups. Run the opponent out of removals. He will have to start answering your Jade Golems with big removals eventually, probably around 6-7, and then you have a few extra Jade Golems AND N’Zoth AND 2x 10/10.
So honestly, I think that it’s safe to say that the deck has slow matchups covered. However, the main advantage of the second list is that it’s much better at countering the Aggro. With more AoE options and early removals, with Feral Spirit and with higher health Taunts (Thing from Below is also great, but it’s not Earth Elemental + Ancestral Spirit) it has better matchups against Aggro. But on the other hand, that lists struggles in some of the slowest matchups, it has no big “punch” win condition and it’s very possible to just remove each of the threats, one after one, and win the game this way. So it’s probably up to the meta you face more – I think that the previous list might be better on the lower ranks, pre-Legend, against much more Aggro. And this one might be better in Legend itself.
Savjz grinded it from rank 3 or something to Legend with this list, then he played a lot more in Legend and the deck was performing quite well. It’s not a meta breaker, but it’s still fun to play & pretty strong overall.
StrifeCro’s Reno Discover Dragon Priest
This is an interesting take on already established meta deck. Even though Reno Priest has been losing popularity in higher ranks, mostly because of poor matchups against popular decks like Miracle Rogue and RenoLock (Reno Mage gained popularity in its place), it’s still a great option for laddering and on the lower ranks. And this list is pretty unique.
But what’s the big deal about it? Discover cards. The deck runs a lot of those, more than any other Reno Priest I’ve seen. And what’s the point of those? Discover = value. Most of the time, at least one of your options is some high value card. Thanks to all those discover mechanics, StrifeCro could cut some of the late game, making the deck’s curve lower = better in faster matchups, while still keeping some advantages in the slow ones. Museum Curator, for example, is an okay thing to drop on turn 2 – better than passing, at least. And it might give you something alright against Aggro (let’s say Infested Tauren) and at the same time it’s nearly guaranteed to give you some bigged drop like Sylvanas Windrunner or Cairne Bloodhoof which you can pick against slow decks. Jeweled Scarab is a similar story – you can often go for a more high tempo 3 mana card, which is okay against Aggro, while at the same time you might get let’s say Thoughtsteal or another Shadow Word: Death or maybe even Kabal Courier for more discover madness. The mechanic is strong, because of its flexibility – most of the cards are good against either Aggro or Control, Discover cards are something in between and that’s why they’re so popular.
That’s exactly the reason why StrifeCro doesn’t run any big Dragons as a win condition. Those big Dragons are useless in fast matchups – they’re just dead cards. Most of the games don’t last until turn 9 to play Ysera, and even if they do, you don’t need to play it – you even prefer to play something smaller and heal instead (if you don’t have free Hero Powers yet you usually spend 2 mana every turn to heal). On the other hand, cards like Jade Scarab won’t be game-breaking against Aggro, it’s still only a 1/1, but it’s an extra 1/1 you’re getting instead of passing the turn. The deck’s curve ends at 6 mana.
Besides that, it runs a pretty standard Dragon Reno Priest core – nothing to talk about specifically. The only interesting thing is that it runs both Cabal Shadow Priest AND Justicar Trueheart – most of the lists were cutting one of those (usually Justicar), but it seems that StrifeCro has found enough space to play both. Which is cool, because I really love Justicar in a deck that runs Raza the Chained – the combo has so much potential.
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 was really busy this month and I haven’t hit Legend yet, so I’ll probably pick one of them and start my rank 5 -> Legend grind soon 🙂
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!
Published: Jan 15, 2017 11:45 am