Mean Streets of Gadgetzan Brews: Rise Of The Kabal

With the launch date dawning upon us, it’s time to get back to brewing and what better way to kick things off than start with the Kabal? With the ‘Canadian Highlander’ theme being set in stone for Mage, Warlock and Priest we have new cards that go beyond just Reno Jackson to support a singleton style of deck building. Let’s look at 3 new decks that we brewed up just for you, do try them out and let us know how they work out for  you!

Shadow Reno Priest: Embrace the Shadows

To start things off we have Priest with a Shadow Reno deck. You have access to all of the important removal tools that Priest is known for and it features some new cards from the expansion including Raza The Chained to make Shadowform a lot more appealing in the deck and some pseudo card draw to draw cards outside our deck. Do keep in mind that we run two copies of Shadowform so you need to be careful about when you play cards that require you to have one offs left in your deck.

You should mulligan for early drops and removals along with Shadowform to kick things off to a start and follow through with drawing and stalling with your removals until you get to your win conditions. You have access to some solid deathrattle minions in the deck to get value out of nzoth-the-corruptor and plenty of mid game to contest against aggressive decks. Doomsayer is one of the best cards to have in hand against aggressive decks because you can stop them from having board initiative in the early game if the effect goes off.

Dragonfire Potion is one of the AoE spells I have my eyes on, it may very well be one of the best epics on offer this expansion and it should be good enough against most decks. We do not have the ‘Circle of Killing’ combo that Priest is known for; we have also excluded the shadow-word-horror shenanigans with Pint Sized Potion because running them as one offs would make it too inconsistent versus single card AoE effects. Card draw is one of the more concerning problems for Priest and it does not have non-situational card draw like most other classes do. Overall, Shadow Reno Priest is a decent mid tier deck right now in the pre-Gadgetzan meta with players having hit Legend with it just recently and Brian Kibler being a frequent player of the deck. We hope the new cards pushes the archetype further and it’s good enough to see frequent play with cards like Raza and Kazakus pushing the highlander archetype heavily this expansion.

Reno Mage: Potions and Madness

Reno Mage is one of the decks that is on the verge of viability and I feel with the tools that Mage is getting this expansion, it might be good enough to see a decent amount of play thanks to the Kabal faction’s cards. Manic Soulcaster is one of the additions I made to the deck because of the high amount of Battlecry minions. Unlike the Priest deck where you want to out-value your opponent with your hero power this Mage deck has the ability to generate a massive amount of burst damage through Archmage Antonidas and the ability to get massive tempo with Inkmaster Solia is one of the most interesting facets of the deck. Kazakus makes an appearance here too and being able to play a 10 mana Kazakus spell with Inkmaster Solia on turn 7 can be borderline game winning. The deck has the right balance of removals in the deck and has the potential to control the pace of entire games.

The Alexstrasza and Archmage Antonidas burst combo has been tried and tested in the past as a win condition for Reno Mage as well as old Grinder Mage decks and it surely works out quite well.

Renolock: Armies of The Undead

Reno Warlock is the most successful Reno Jackson deck and there is no doubt that Warlock will continue to hold the title. The Warlock hero power Life Tap is one of the best tools you have access to when it comes t consistently drawing through you deck and with more board clears than ever, Warlock is looking quite good. N’zoth Renolock is one of the best Reno decks in the game right now and we gave it a twist with new cards to push the deck forward. This is the only deck among the three where the respective Gadgetzan legendary does not make an appearance. While Krul the Unshackled is a powerful minion on its own if it pulls out even two minions, it does not seem particularly good in the Standard format. However, with substantially better demons existing in Wild and better demon synergies, you can try out the card in Wild if you are looking forward to trying Krul out.

Coming to the deck, the list has all the Reno Warlock goodness with some new class cards and neutrals thrown in. We chose to build a list with N’zoth and Lord Jaraxxus to control the lategame and finishing games off. You have plenty of health gain mechanisms in the deck allowing you to stay in the game until you are able to finish off your opponent. One of the biggest problems of the current Renolock lists is that sometimes you do not have enough catch up mechanisms and you are limited by the deckbuilding restriction in terms of including AoEs but with an abundant choice of AoEs being available to use now, there is a lot to look forward to in the coming sets.

That’s all for today’s deck building and theorycrafting from me. Please try out the decks when you open your packs at launch and I hope all of you get the legendaries you want to try out! If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments below and we can discuss card choices and other new decks that you might want to talk about for the Kabal faction.