Introduction
In the Quick Brews series, I’ll make a single pre-release deck for each class and talk a bit about it. However, since it’s impossible to tell how the new meta will look like, those might not be the best lists or they might not even work at all. And so, I don’t recommend crafting the cards Day 1 – you should probably wait and see how the meta turns out!
First of the new batch is Midrange Buff Paladin. I spend few hours thinking about how to make it work and I came up with a very experimental deck. It might not work at all, but hey, let’s take some risks!
Midrange Buff Paladin
The biggest problem with the new Paladin Quest is that you have to play a lot of buffs. The more buffs, especially cheap ones you play, the faster you’ll finish your Quest. I’ve seen a lot of people theorycrafting about putting just about every 1 mana buff into your deck to finish the Quest as fast as possible. And I honestly dislike this approach – you’re putting all your Eggs into one basket, which is Galvadon. And while it has a decent chance to just win the game, you can hit the bad Adapts or it can get countered and then the rest of your deck is just small, nearly worthless cards. You can’t win.
So instead I’ve decided to take a slower, more Midrange approach. First of all – less buffs. The deck runs 10 in total, which should often be enough to accomplish the Quest while drawing less than half of your deck, especially since you get extra value from the Primalfin Champion and The Voraxx. Primalfin Champion basically doubles the amount of the buffs you play on it, and while it wasn’t confirmed anyway, if I understand it correctly, playing a buff on The Voraxx counts twice for the Quest (since another copy of the buff is casted on 1/1). Edit: It was confirmed that it’s not the case, Voraxx only counts once. It’s a shame, but I still think it has a place in the deck.
Why Finja, the Flying Star and The Curator? For few reasons, actually. When it comes to the Finja, the card is really great. Since you run 2x Primalfin Champion anyway, I’ve decided to add an extra Murloc Warleder and Finja for the sake of combos. While it’s not as strong as the Bluegill Warrior Murloc package, because of no Charge, there is another way to look at it. Primalfin Champions are really crucial for your Quest progress, not getting them while having buffs in your hand is pretty bad. With Finja, you have 100% chance to pull at least one. The best combination is pulling out 1x Primalfin and 1x Murloc Warleader. Not only you have a nice board, but you can also immediately start casting buffs on your Primalfin, since you have full mana to work with.
And why The Curator? Because of the card draw. I want to play Murlocs and Beast in the deck anyway, no matter if I run The Curator or not. So I put another Beast and a Dragon to make it a consistent 2 cards draw which sometimes even draws 3.
When it comes to The Curator targets – Murloc are obvious, there are 4 in the deck so it’s very likely that you will draw one. The only situation where you won’t draw Murloc is when you’ve already played Finja, got 2 Murlocs from it and drew another one, but if that was the case you’re happy anyway. When it comes to the Bests, Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale is AMAZING in such a list. It creates 2 Bananas, each gives you extra Quest point. I’ve also added Stampeding Kodo since it’s a good Paladin card – you can combo it with Aldor Peacekeeper to kill any late game target. And Dragons. Most of the powerful Dragons have rotated out and since this is a Midrange deck, I didn’t want to add something like Ysera, because it just doesn’t fit thematically. I think that Onyxia is the best choice, because it’s an alternative win condition if your Quest fails + it’s a great board refill when you’re running out of steam. A lot of the time you’ll draw Onyxia before The Curator, but that’s not a big deal.
One more important part of the deck are the cards that combo with cheap spells. Running Wild Pyromancer without Equality might seem stupid, but it’s not a deck where Equality would be good – most of the time you play to have the board and Equality doesn’t work well with buffs. But Wild Pyro is still powerful if you can cast cheap buffs on him, as an inexpensive board clear. There is also a 30% chance to Adapt him into Poisonous, which is a board clear like Equality. That’s why I’m not sure whether 2x Adaptation wouldn’t be the better idea than 2x Divine Strength. Another card like that fills the 4-drop slot – Violet Teacher. It also combos well with the cheap spells and it gives you something you can drop on turn 4 on curve. Every other 4-drop card is very situational, because you don’t always have a good target. Violet Teacher is just a solid 4-drop.
And my favorite combo. The Voraxx + Spikeridged Steed. Sure, it’s a 10 mana combo, but it’s so powerful in nearly every matchup. You basically get 5/9 Taunt + 3/7 Taunt, both of which Deathrattle into 2/6 Taunts. It’s a wall that really, really hard to pass.
Also, this deck is optimized more for the Midrange/Control meta. In case the meta will turn out to be Aggro, there are some ways to improve it. Adding some healing, like Forbidden Healing, can make the deck better in fast matchup. Also, you can run Sen’jin Shieldmasta as a 4-drop instead of the Violet Teacher – Taunts also combo nicely with buffs, especially in faster matchups. Another tech, especially against more aggressive Midrange decks, might be Ragnaros, Lightlord instead of the Onyxia – extra healing + a body they can’t ignore or else it will heal you even more.
This deck might be a completely failed project, but Buff Paladin in general is a concept that’s not VERY likely to be powerful. And so maybe making it a bit weirded might be the way to go.
Closing
Thanks for reading! Remember that those are still prototypes and they will first need to be tested on the ladder and optimized. I will test most of those decks on the first days of the expansion and I will write full guides for the ones that will turn out to be working properly.
Good luck on the ladder and until next time!
