Running Wild: Give Me a Quest! (Mage, Shaman, Rogue)

Introduction

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to another ”Running Wild” article and the second of our 3 part mini series regarding quest cards in the wild format. Last time we’ve explored the druid, priest and warrior quests and today we’re going explore shaman, mage and rogue quests. Ever since the expansion came out a few days ago I’ve been trying and testing out different quest decks in the wild format and now I’m ready to share what I’ve made!

Sit back, relax, and let’s dive right into this! 🙂

Opinion On Quest Cards

So, the expansion has been out for a couple of days and people have been trying various quest cards with very interesting results. One thing that I did not expect, not even in my wildest dreams, is that the rogue quest, the-caverns-below, is considered the most overpowered quest in the game. This is, in my opinion, blown completely out of proportion. Yes, the rogue quest is powerful at the moment but please, before saying that it is overpowered, take into consideration that the expansion has been out for only a couple of days and that there was always, with no exceptions, an aggro deck that came out of nowhere during the first days of the expansion, wrecked everybody who had played against it, and then was shut down as soon as the actual meta had began forming. the-caverns-below is powerful now but I would advise against crafting it, unless you really want to, because I strongly believe that it will be phased out of the ladder play as soon as the new meta starts forming and fully optimized decks appear.

Regarding other quest cards, well, I’ve been reading a lot about them on different forums and I’ve noticed that people have been quiet upset with the quality, or the lack off, of various quest cards. It is my belief that quest cards are really powerful but that players still don’t know how to build a deck which is supposed to use them. It is still waaaay to early in to exclude the quests from ladder play. Another problem is that most player’s that I’ve seen don’t really know how to build a quest deck. A quest is your end game reward which is set to come naturally. Forcing your deck to complete the quest as soon as possible just makes your deck bad and as a result you’re going to deem the quest bad. Quests are not here to be completed ASAP. They are not here to be your primary win condition. They are here as an extra tool in case that the game goes on for longer than expected and that you need something to wrap it up.

Now, let’s take a look at some wild decks 🙂

Shaman Quest Deck

Shaman quest is amazing! I honestly didn’t expect much out of, I didn’t think that murloc shaman, out of all things, a deck that the developers have been trying to push for years, will ever be playable but to my surprise it is one of the better quest decks out there, especially in standard. It is incredibly easier to complete than most other quests (hunter’s comes to mind) and you don’t need to cripple your deck in order to finish the quest as soon as possible. So, let’s take a look at the deck, shall we?

In order to complete the quest, unite-the-murlocs, what you need to do is to summon ten murlocs. Summon is the key part here and it is the sole reason as to why is this quest so easy to complete. If it were ”play” ten murlocs than the quest wouldn’t be garbage but it would be a lot worse than it is in its current iteration. This is what’s been bugging me with some of these quests. Most of them would have been a lot better if they had required you to summon minions instead of playing them (I’m looking at you, fire-plumes-heart, you fiend!), although in that case one would need to increase the number of required minions from seven to ten so that the quests won’t be too easy to complete.

Ok, what helps us summon ten murlocs? Turns out that primalfin-totem is an amazing card for completing this quest. It guarantees a summon, for the quest, at the end of your every turn which will speed up the whole quest completion process. Other cards that help us complete the quest are call-in-the-finishers, which gives 4 quest triggers, murloc-tidehunter which gives 2 quest triggers and finja-the-flying-star which turned out be a lot better card than I thought it would be when I first saw it. To be completely honest, it is a lot better than probably anyone thought it would be.

Now that we know how to get our quest done, what do we do with it? The biggest issue that murloc decks have had, up until this point, is the card draw. This is why the murloc warlock deck, way back in the closed beta, was the absolute best murlock deck ever made (march of the murlocs type of deck, not the combo murlocs deck). What megafin does is that it solves the card draw problem. By the time that you complete your quest you’ve probably already played every card (or almost every card) in your hand. megafin refills your hand with murlocs which is, thanks to the strong synergy that murlocs have, incredibly good. You don’t need to rely on your topdeck and hope to get something that will buff your murlocs and win you the game. Now you can probably, hopefully, get it alongside a 8/8 murloc monstrosity for 5 mana.

Last but not the least are the buff cards. I’m a fan of everyfin-is-awesome and I think that, thanks to the primalfin-totem, nowadays it is a lot easier to cast this spell. For a more reliable buff there is gentle-megasaur which is not a bad card, not at all, if you have a board filled with murlocs (which should be your goal when you’re playing this deck). All in all, the deck is quite good and I wouldn’t write it off so quickly. It is by far the best version of murloc shaman that we’ve ever had so that is at least something 🙂

Rogue Quest Deck

I finally get to talk about this quest! the-caverns-below has been a hot topic among the players in the last couple of days and people have been really upset with the supposed power of this card. I’m not saying that the card is not powerful, far from that, but I believe that, like most quests, the format where it truly gets to shine is indeed the wild format. What I’m going to show you here is the deck that I’ve tried and I’m quite happy with the way that it turned out. It is not your typical the-caverns-below below but it is certainly more fun than what you’re seeing now in the standard format.

Ok, this is a very weird one so let me explain. What you want to do with this deck is to complete your quest, play crystal-core and then beat your opponent with an army of 5/5 patches-the-pirate. However, achieving that with this deck is a bit harder, most likely because this is the current version that I’m using and I know that there are ways of improvement but I didn’t get to test them out yet.

The first thing that comes to mind is summoning patches-the-pirate and then casting gang-up on it twice to get your army of 5/5 chargers. If you think that this is the most important step for you to take when playing this deck then you’re absolutely correctly. However, there is a problem with that. The original version of the deck was more-less a pirate deck in which you do exactly what I’ve just described but the real problem here is that you don’t want to pull your other copies of patches-the-pirate until they become 5/5 minions and towards that end we’re playing a very small amount of pirates in this deck and we can’t bounce our pirates back into our hands because that will trigger the army of patches-the-pirate to come out before they become 5/5 minions. What we need to do is find something else to bounce back.

coldlight-oracle is a great target because it allows us to dig for more ways to bounce it back. Yes, there is always a chance to draw a copy of patches-the-pirate but because it is a 1 mana minion it really isn’t much of an issue. Another minion that we’ll be glad to bounce back is antique-healbot, a card that is supposed to keep us alive until everything is ready, but I honestly don’t think that it is too reliable for completing the quest because we’re running only a single copy of it. The last minion, and probably the best, to bounce is si7-agent.

Once you’ve managed to play crystal-core and summon your army of 5/5 charging demonic squids, or squid like demons, which ever you prefer more, all the hard work is going to pay off because there is nothing unsatisfying about slamming your opponent with a sudden lethal 😛 you’re in CHARRRRRRRRRGE now!

Mage Quest Deck

Last but not the least is the mage deck. Mage is my least played class. I’m not joking, I only have 169 ranked wins with mage and that is not because I suck at playing mage and I can’t win games but because I’ve never found this class to be too interesting to me. Most people have at least a single class that they don’t like playing. Mine were rogue and mage, for the longest time, but then I’ve started playing rogue a lot more in order to get the golden portrait 😛 Regardless, open-the-waygate has got me playing mage like crazy. The reward is super sweet and I believe that we will see a lot of different quest mage decks popping up as expansions come and go. For now, this might be the best one to play in the wild format.

Back when open-the-waygate was revealed I wasn’t too sure how it worked and I thought that in order to enable it you’re going to have to play some insanely complicated deck. In reality, however, completing this quest is the easiest thing to do, especially in the wild format. So, what is our goal with this quest?

First and foremost we need to complete open-the-waygate. In order to do so we are going to need some cards that put random spells in our hand or discover spells. Luckily we’ve got our babbling-book, primordial-glyph, cabalists-tome and ethereal-conjurer to help us out here so getting 6 spells that we didn’t originally have in our deck has just been made a little bit easier. I was considering putting spellslinger into this deck as well because it will almost most certainly give you a spell that not only you don’t have in your deck but you don’t have in your class as well. However, the card also gives a random spell to your opponent and I’m the type of player who prefers knowing or at least being able to predict what are my opponents playing so giving them a completely random spell which can be any spell in the game is not something that I’m keen on doing but if you’re, for whatever reason, having trouble at getting those 6 spells that you need to complete the quest than maybe adding a single copy of spellslinger is not such a bad idea.

Ok, what’s the next step? We need a way to survive until we complete the quest. No worries, we have plenty of things to help us achieve just that. We’re running the standard frost-nova and doomsayer combo, a single copy of blizzard which we can either use as a removal option or as a substitution for frost-nova in case that we don’t have it in hand but we’ve managed to draw our doomsayer. flamestrike is an amazing board clear, especially now when we’re having a lot of decks which love to flood the board (looking at you, quest hunter) running around. Last but not the least is ice-block, two copies of it, which is our only secret so that we have an easy time pulling it out with mad-scientist. All in all I would say that we’re well prepared for survival, wouldn’t you?

Ok, what’s the next step? The next step is to win the game, of course. How do we do that? We’re going to cast time-warp to get an extra turn, then cast two copies of arcane-giant for free, then cast a molten-reflection on one of them and on the following turn we’re going to cast alexstrasza to get our opponent in the lethal range. Sounds like a lot of stuff to do? Yes, because it is and that is why we’re also running archmage-antonidas to provide us with a secondary win condition. This is a fun combo to pull off but don’t expect a flawless execution 100% of the time so it doesn’t hurt to have a secondary win condition. Throw the ol’ archmage in your deck. You’ll be thankful to him when you run into a control warrior that doesn’t care much about you setting its life to 15.

All in all, open-the-waygate is a fun quest to play and I encourage people to try it out in both formats. In my honest opinion it is one of both better and more fun quests to play 🙂 now it is time to get some more wins with my Medhiv!

Conclusion

We’ve reached the end of the second part of the 3 part ”Running Wild” quest deck based aritcle miniseries. I must admit that it is quite fun to both write about different quest decks and to explore them. I really like this mechanic and I hope that we will eventually see it come back, maybe not next year, but eventually, once enough time has passed after its rotation into the wild format (which means in about 5-6 years :/). If you like this article miniseries then be sure to swing by next week when I’m going to tackle the remaining quests, warlock, hunter and paladin ones, the ones that I consider the worst quests (after the warrior one!).

So, what do you think about these wild quest decks? Which one is your favorite? Have you already given some quests a go in the wild format or are you currently just trying them out in the standard format? Leave your feedback in the comment section below and I will replay to it as soon as I can (I’m a little busy at the moment so my apologies if it takes me a day or two to reply). Also, if you will, please tell me which quest do you consider to be the most powerful one, in either format, and why? I would love to hear your opinion on this.

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!

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