Introduction
Ah, greetings, travelers! Today I will be covering the different quests from Journey To Un’Goro, the newest Hearthstone set which launcher today in the US and some time later in EU. I know that there has been some confusion as to when will the expansion launch in the EU and, don’t take my word as an absolute truth, but I think that it usually launched around 02:00 CET. I’m pretty sure that the expansions don’t launch on midnight but I might be wrong. Regardless, a newest set is upon us and this one brings a completely new types of cards, quest cards. Today we’re going to explore some of them, 3 to be exact, some that I’m personally more interested in and that I’ve tried to make work (on paper, of course) and next time two times we’ll covering the remaining quests.
Sit back, relax, and let’s dive right into this! 🙂
Why wild?
The first thing that I want to address is why am I writing about quest cards in the wild format when we’re about to get a fresh new metagame in the standard format? Well, besides me being the ”guy who writes about the wild format”, I’ve taken a closer look at all of these quests and originally I did plan to make a quest guide for the standard format but halfway through I came to a sudden realization. It is not that the quest cards are bad, far from it, but it is that they work extremely better in the wild format. The first quest deck that I set out to do was the druid quest deck, jungle-giants, which is my favorite quest by far and a godsend to someone like me who is missing only about 30 wins for a gold hero and doesn’t want to play jade idol druid anymore. This is the first card that I will craft once the expansion comes out today and I can’t wait to try it out. However, while I was working on a deck for the standard format I’ve noticed that I’ve been struggling to make it work. I could make it work, I could fit in seven 5 attack minions, although not the best ones, but the payoff would have been minimal because most of the 5 attack or more minions in the format are those super late game minions that you want to play for free in the late game.
Frustrated, I’ve decided to make a priest deck focusing on the awaken-the-makers but I’ve ran into a similar problem. Standard format just does not offer as much support for quest cards as the wild format does. Eventually I’ve gave up and I’ve decided to try to make some wild quest oriented decks and I was extremely happy with the results. I’m bringing in 3 decks today and hopefully 3 or more the next week because I’ve only figured these ones out (yes, I should be ashamed of myself) and I want to test the others out before writing guides on them. So, today I’m covering druid, priest and, as a punishment for making only 3 deck guides…the warrior quest deck :/
Jungle Giants Deck
I love ramp druid. I’ve probably mentioned this before but I love playing ramp decks and this quest got me super excited to once more give a ramp druid a chance and try to climb to legend rank by playing only this deck, which probably won’t happen, but when I’ve got to making this deck I ran into some issues that I’ll be covering in the deck guide. Turns out that the druid quest might not be as good as I thought that it would be.
I’ve mentioned this problem just a little while ago but I feel the need to mention it again because it stick with you regardless of the format in which you’re playing your deck. There is a huge lack of 5 attack minions that are both good and not super late game minions. The whole point of the quest is to make it so that you can slam your powerful end game legendary minions for 0 mana but the problem is that the best 5 attack or more minions in the format are exactly those legendary minions so what we’re going to have to do here is improvise and see how can we make this deck work while keeping the goal of playing our huge late game legendary minions for 0 mana.
First and foremost, we need 5 attack or more fodder. Luckily we’ve got this covered thanks to tortollan-forager and shellshifter who provide us with 4 5 attack or more minions. This is good because it means that there are only 3 slots left to fill. What can we put in those slots that isn’t a late game legendary minions? We can use sylvanas-windrunner, loatheb as a tech card and a good 5 attack minion and I’ve even put in the newest Elise, elise-the-trailblazer, because I believe that the card is really good against control matchups and it is another cheap 5 attack minion. Last but not the least are two copies of ancient-of-war. So, we’ve covered the seven 7 attack minions that we need to play to activate the quest. What are the big minions that we want to play after we’ve completed the quest? We’ve got the usual suspects, dr-boom, ragnaros-the-firelord and ysera, and I’ve even thrown in cenarius for good measure.
So, what do I think about this deck? I think that this is probably the best test version that I’ve came up with but there are some improvements that can be made. The biggest issue is, once again, if you’ve already drawn multiple of these late game minions and then your quest reward doesn’t mean as much as you’ve wanted it to mean. There is another version of the deck, something that I’ve had on my mind for a very long time, but I didn’t want to put it here just in case if someone sees it and decides to test it out, the deck turn out to be bad, and then I’ll be the one to blame. This doesn’t stop me from talking about it 😛
The idea that I’ve been having for a quest druid deck actually revolves around playing none other than hemet-jungle-hunter as your last minion that you need in order to complete the quest. Once you’ve completed the quest you don’t want to draw your early game cards, right? You want to draw you big minions. What hemet-jungle-hunter is supposed to do is to get rid of all those early game cards before the cost of all minions becomes 0. This way you’ve thinned a large portion of your deck and you can be quite sure that you’re going to start drawing minions after minions (with a few exceptions here and there). This is, at least, what I believe will be the best use of hemet-jungle-hunter and I might be crazy enough to craft it once the expansion rolls in and give it a shot 🙂
Awaken the Makers Deck
The second deck on my list if the priest quest deck, the awaken-the-makers deck, and this deck has been talked about in the wild community ever since the card was spoiled a long time ago. Although standard players are struggling to make this quest deck work, we wild players are going to have a blast with this card. Unlike the previous quest, this one is far easier to complete and you don’t need to rush it into completion in order to win the deck. Nope, you play the game normally and the quest will resolve itself naturally as the game goes on. Let’s see what I’ve brewed for this quest!
Dear readers, I present you with the ultimate resident sleeper deck! This one is for all of you who love playing extremely long games (and for those of you who love playing Reno decks). I’m very proud of this creation and I think that this will be the staple awaken-the-makers deck in the wild format. Let’s explore it!
First and foremost is your game plan. For all purposes you’re playing a Reno deck with amara-warden-of-hope being your second reno-jackson. The difference between this quest and the previous druid quest is that you don’t need to rush your quest completion. The problem, however, is that you’re going to need to play all of your minions with deathrattle effects in order to get your quest completed, which can happen in the extreme late game, so naturally this deck is going to be extremely slow. It is a shame though because I’ve always thought that playing amara-warden-of-hope and playing reno-jackson second is the ultimate combo wombo but the more I dig into these quests the more I find them to be difficult to complete. The only tip that I have for completing this quest is telling you to keep in mind that dr-boom summons two minions with deathrattle which adds 2 quest completion counters. This means that you don’t need to play every deathrattle minion in your deck to get the quest done. Also look out for brann-bronzebeard and museum-curator play in order to get an additional deathrattle minion. Why did I include dragons? Priest has a extremely strong dragon synergy so it felt weird to leave it out. Besides, drakonid-operative might be able to snatch you a deathrattle minion and netherspite-historian might get you chillmaw so there is a way for dragons to help you finish your quest.
Last but not the least is you win condition. You’re playing the most late game deck in the entire game, the ultimate fatigue deck, the deck that has 3 health bars! What do you do with such a deck? You drain your opponent from all of its resources. You play your minions, they are forced to remove them with either spells or their own minions, you remove their board and play reno-jackson (best case is that you play amara-warden-of-hope first), you once again force them to use up their resources, clear the board, finish the quest, play amara-warden-of-hope, prolong the game until you’re sure that your opponent has no more board clears and then just drop nzoth-the-corruptor and win the game. Sure, it might be a 30min game but the payoff is great 🙂
Fire Plume’s Heart deck
There, I’ve forced myself to build a deck around fire-plumes-heart. Instead of going for a full taunt warrior, I’ve been listening to feedback from pro players who claim that this is a great control card so I went a built a control warrior that just happens to run 7 taunt minions, although you really shouldn’t be doing that but you should be playing good cards instead. Well, no way of avoiding this now…here’s fire-plumes-heart deck -.-
I really can’t stand fire-plumes-heart. I can’t stress this enough! Nevertheless, I went out of my way to make this deck for you and I hope that you will enjoy playing it because I certainly won’t. The main idea of the deck is to play it like you would play any other control warrior deck but this time you have an alternate win condition in ragnaros-the-firelord hero power which can close games really quickly. The problem is that you need to play 7 taunt minions and there are only 4 actually good ones so we need to put in 3 more taunt minions.
Ok, let’s see. All of the minions that I’m going to mention here might be a good fit for the deck but I’ve decided not to go with them because I want you to try the newest cards. dirty-rat is a good option and you should consider it if Reno decks don’t fall in popularity any time soon. I usually wouldn’t recommend playing both dirty-rat and deathlord but we need to find 3 more taunt minions and dirty-rat is one of the better ones. Another card that you can go with is second-rate-bruiser which is not a bad taunt minion. It is no sludge-belcher but it is still better than most…you know what, scratch that. The original version of this deck ran two copies of direhorn-hatchling and a tar-lord but you…you deserve better than that! You deserve that I put some effort into making this deck work! Ok, those cards are out and instead of them this deck is going to run two copies of second-rate-bruiser because I assure you that hunter quest decks are going to be everywhere for the first month and I’ve decided to go with primordial-drake. I usually go for baron-geddon as a 7 drop and primordial-drake has a similar effect and taunt so why not?
Last thing that I want to mention is that this deck doesn’t run any Elise because the quest reward alone will win you the game vs control decks. If you’re really feeling like it you can remove any non taunt card and add ragnaros-the-firelord because of overkill 😛
Conclusion
We’ve reached the end of the first 3 part ”Running Wild” article mini series which revolves around quests. What have I learned from this? I’ve learned that despite these quests seem to be easy to fulfill they are most certainly not. I’ve had to bend over backwards to find the necessary types of minions in a required high number to make the deck work without ruining the deck. Yes, some quests are a lot easier to fulfill than others (like the mage quest for example…or the shaman one) but I don’t really mind that very much. I like that we have some quests that are very hard to build a deck around without ruining the deck as long as the reward is a game ending reward. Druid’s quest reward is brutal, priest’s is extremely annoying and warrior’s would have been perfect if the requirement wasn’t to play one of the worst decks in the entire game. Ok, I’m being too hard on the warrior quest. There is another quest which forces you to play a even worse deck that taunt warrior and that quest is the paladin one. Cast spells on 7 minions? That is crazy! I must tackle that in the near future.
So, tell me, what do you think about these decks? Do you have any better suggestions for taunt minions for the warrior deck? Do you have any suggestions for above 5 attack minions for the druid quest deck? If you have any of those I would love to hear them so feel free to leave your feedback in the comment section below as I read everything that you post and I always try to reply as soon as I’m available.
As always  if you’ve liked this article do consider following me on twitter https://twitter.com/Eternal_HS. There you can ask me all sorts of Hearthstone questions (unrelated to this article) and I’ll gladly answer them as best as I can…and one more thing before I go, regarding the twitter account. I’ve noticed that some of you have followed me there and I’m very glad that you’ve decided to do so 🙂 I’ve briefly wanted to mention, because the article will reach more of you than my twitter account would, that I’ve finally got an high speed internet…or I will have it once the cable guy decided to show up, which means that I might do some wild streaming from time to time (hopefully starting next week). If any of you are interested into watching me experiment live with Un’Goro wild decks be sure to follow me on twitter so that you can get updates as to when I’ll be streaming! That’s all, have a good day 🙂
