MUA: Control Warrior vs Control Warrior (Mirror)

Introduction

Hello ladies and gentleman, today I decided to go out of my usual thing, which is writing guides about decks and how I built them, to focus on something quite different: A MUA guide.

I do not plan on making MUAs that often, and this is just an exception because the League of Explorers expansion is right around the corner, and after writing a ton of articles about it I want to write about something different, but since I believe that writing a deck guide right now is impossible I decided to make this MUA.

Warrior Control is a deck I have recently mastered – not only the mirror match, but all the matches in general – and I wanted to share a little bit of that knowledge with you guys without having to write a huge 4000 words article. With no more delays, let’s start!

Sample Decklist

There are quite a lot of Warrior Control versions flying around the metagame, a lot of different versions that are good against different types of opponents. The list I choose to spotlight is one I just made right now, which seems to be the most standard list played on the ladder – No extra techs, no unused bombs, no metagame oriented strategy behind: just plain, clear, Control Warrior.

This is a list not made to win the Mirror matchup, but to have the best overall performance in the ladder.

In case you are wondering which techs to use in order to have a better mirror matchup, they are usually: a bigger number of recursive threats (Cards, usually Legendary, that have exponential value, such as ysera and nexus-champion-saraad) and more removal, like adding a second big-game-hunter. Another great way to tech your deck against Control Warrior is to remove the acolyte-of-pain and the cruel-taskmaster from your deck, making your deck both less susceptible to fatigue as well as more resilient in the late game.

Mulligan Guide

When fighting against other Control Warrior the last thing you want to see is your acolyte-of-pain. The card is likely to never be played, and in case you do want to play it, do so in a way that you generate the less draws with this as possible, because of reasons that I will explain later in this article.

Cards you will want in your starting hand:

• armorsmith
• sludge-belcher
• piloted-shredder (in case you have in your deck)
• Weapons.
• justicar-trueheart.
• shield-slam, if you already got a good minion.

Basically, the early game will be all about dropping Midrange threats, reducing the opposing armor and killing their Midrange threats, so that is why you want weapons and that is why you want minions, even if the 5-mana ones.

Also, the Trueheart keep is something few people do, but that gives you a lot of advantage in the game: in the fatigue wars, whoever has more armor wins, and if you started to Tank Up! faster than your opponent, you are very likely to have more armor than he does in the end of the game.

I will explain the rest of the mulligan in the next section.

The Game

Control Warrior mirror, much like Freeze Mage mirror, is a game of knowledge, if you know the matchup well you can not lose against people that don’t, no matter how lucky they are. This happens because the Warrior Control mirror match is a game of resource management rather than anything else, and being able to manage these resources is prime in the game’s development.

Early Game Plan

You will start the game by killing their Midrange threats with your weapons, be them Armorsmiths, Acolytes, Shredders, Belchers and Shieldmaidens. The early game is a fight to see whoever can take more armor out of the opponent without wasting resources (which means, you never go face with your weapon). So: Drop your minions, kill theirs and Armor Up! as much as you can.

Mid/Late Game Plan

Proceeding to the late game, you’ll start seeing threats as: dr-boom, baron-geddon, and sometimes a couple few Legendaries here and there.

To deal with Dr. Boom you should always try to use the brawl (even if you have a big-game-hunter), you then proceed to use your shield-slams and the Big Game Hunter to kill their next threats, saving Execute for the very end of the game.

During all these phases of the game, you’ll want to draw less cards as possible, because this game will, for sure, go into fatigue. So use your slams without generating draws from the (to kill 2 health minions, for example), and try to only drop your Acolyte of Pain if you are going to Brawl(<- very important).

You should keep track of their removal, since you’ll most likely be playing around them when the time comes.

Oh, and one last thing: Another important thing to notice is that, even if you have a single small minion on board and your opponent doesn’t, you don’t need to overextend any further. Remember that you are winning if you have a 1/1 and he has nothing, and you’ll be reducing his armor by 1 every turn while he won’t be reducing yours!

Late/Fatigue Game Plan

Later in the game, in case your opponent haven’t used their executes yet, try to bait that execute, and only in the very late game (when they have no armor, few responses and have already used their removal) you go for the grommash-hellscream hit. That will usually happen AFTER the Fatigue Wars started. Of course, you can Grommash before if you think you’ll have no activator for it(<- Very important), or you can always save for later if you can make them waste all their execute activators. Oh, and don’t forget you only need 1 Threat into play at a time in order to win, don’t rush things, don’t play into their brawl, because you’ll be just giving them more removal to work with.

I have lost the count of games I won with a damage-less Grommash just because I was able to bait (and count) all the opposing Execute activators, and ended up winning with a 4/9 hitting the opponent’s face multiple times.

Resuming Everything

So, let us just try to remember everything that has been said here:

• Early in the game, drop minions(even if weak minions), reduce their armor by attacking them, equip weapons and kill whatever they drop in play.
• Mid game, use Shield Slam to kill stuff, but let brawl try to kill dr-boom.
• Save Execute for later(or for Grommash).
• Win with Value.
• Don’t overextend into their brawl.
• Count their removal and play around it.
• This is nothing more than a resource management game, and whoever does it better, wins!

Closing

A lot of the things that has been said here should be trained a lot in order to be mastered and perfected, I had a much harder time doing so because I wasn’t given a guide like this, so I hope you guys enjoyed.

The Warrior Mirror match is the hardest to master of all Warrior matches, even if the Midrange Druid is a harder match to win, this one is much harder to be good at.

After you have mastered the Warrior Control Mirror, you’ll most likely be always winning the matchup in the ladder, so that is must – When playing Warrior I am always happy to see a Warrior in the other side, because I know that with my experience I am very likely to win that game, even if it takes half an hour to finish.

So this is it for the MUA analysis of Warrior Control Mirror Match, I hope you guys enjoyed and in case you have any doubt here, just let me know in the comments below!

Love you all, see you around!

Cuddles,

Nuba