Senfglas’s Budget Patron Warrior Deck

Editor’s Note: With the new Standard Format in 2016 for Hearthstone, we highly recommend going for cards in the Classic set and Whispers of the Old Gods (Standard Format). Here are budget guides, also from Sheng, to get you started! Budget Standard Standard C’Thun Druid Budget Standard Midrange Hunter Budget Standard C’Thun Mage Budget Standard  Aggro Paladin Budget Standard C’Thun Priest Budget Standard C’Thun […]

Editor’s Note: With the new Standard Format in 2016 for Hearthstone, we highly recommend going for cards in the Classic set and Whispers of the Old Gods (Standard Format). Here are budget guides, also from Sheng, to get you started!

Recommended Videos

Introduction

Greetings, I’m Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and 7.5 win-average arena player. I run HearthstoneCoaching.com where our coaches have helped many students achieve the same.

If you’re new to Hearthstone, or just have a limited collection of cards—I feel your pain. It is often difficult to find cheap but viable decks that are competitive on the Hearthstone ladder.

When I first started playing Hearthstone, I would often go online to lookup the most popular decks played at Legend rank, and find that my limited card collection would not build them. While it was sometimes possible to substitute less important cards, there would often not be cheap substitutions for a crucial Epic or Legendary that completed a deck.

Given this dilemma, I’ve set out to help those of you with a limited collection by providing ladder-viable decks for each class that cost 1000 dust or less.

Requirements

  1. Reach Level 10 to unlock all of the Basic cards for this class.
  2. Complete the Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain expansions.
  3. Have 1000 dust available for crafting.

Design Principles

Before I started this series, I spent a considerable amount of time last season testing the most popular and viable decks played at Legend rank. From my climb to Legend, I devised an algorithm for constructing a budget deck.

  1. From my data, compile a list of the most essential Commons and Rares for a particular class.
  2. Calculate the total crafting cost of those cards. If the total exceeds 1000 dust, reduce the number of cards until we reach our budget.
  3. Fill in the rest of the deck with cards from the Basic and single-player expansion sets.

While this algorithm seems simple, it’s very easy to get Step 2 and 3 completely wrong, as it can be difficult to determine which cards to build around when you’ve exceeded your budget.

In general, my methodology for determining which cards to cut comes from my experience playing these classes in Legend rank, and my own opinion on which cards are best to build around.

In the end, the result is a deck that is considerably stronger than one built soley from Basic and single-player expansion cards, yet cheap enough such that a new player who has played Hearthstone for a month can craft for themselves.

Deck Origin

Author Note: After consulting some of my friends, I’ve decided to modify this deck after Senfglas’s variation from TempoStorm. Credit for the design goes to him!

Playstyle

Strategy

  • Budget Patron Warrior might just be the most synergistic deck in the history of Hearthstone. Each card in this deck works towards our strategy of surviving until we can bring out Grim Patron or Frothing Berserker to kill our opponent off in a single-turn. Thanks to the low cost of this deck, we haven’t cut too many cards from it to stay within our budget with the notable exception of grommash-hellscream which isn’t completely necessary.

Overview

  • In the early game, you want to control the board with your weapons, while drawing cards to bring about your primary combo pieces of warsong-commander, grim-patron, and frothing-berserker.
  • In the mid game, you want to setup a way to trigger grim-patron. This can be done by saving a deaths-bite with a single remaining charge or whirlwind until you bring out grim-patron. At this point in the game, you’ll want to bring out emperor-thaurissan which is key for maximizing the amount of damage we can do in a single turn.
  • By late game you should have the majority of your combo pieces available to kill off your opponent in a single turn with a board of charging grim-patrons or a very large frothing-berserker.

Minions – 17

2x armorsmith

  • When played in conjunction with whirlwind and a board full of grim-patron, Armorsmith can keep us out of range from dying to burst damage, while building a board at the same time.

1x cruel-taskmaster

  • An enabler for grim-patron an acolyte-of-pain, Cruel Taskmaster can also serve as removal if you can bring by allowing you to execute an enemy minion.

2x unstable-ghoul

  • Another trigger for grim-patron and frothing-berserker that can gain charge from warsong-commander.

2x acolyte-of-pain

  • One of our primary methods of card draw. We want to draw more than one card from each acolyte-of-pain we play.

2x frothing-berserker

  • Besides grim-patron this is another one of our primary win conditions. When comboed with cards that deal damage to every minion on the board, Frothing Berserker can become huge.

2x warsong-commander

  • One of our primary combo pieces, synergizes with almost all of the minions in our deck, and allows us to one-turn-kill opponents with charging grim-patrons and frothing-berserkers.

1x dread-corsair

  • Often a cheap taunt that we can play for free after playing one of our weapons.

2x gnomish-inventor

  • Primarily in our deck to contest the board while simultaneously drawing us a card.

2x grim-patron

  • Our primary win-condition and the reason why this deck works. Extremely awkward card to clear as cards like fan-of-knives, consecration, and holy-nova will just spawn more Grim Patrons for us. You want to save Grim Patron for a turn when you can spawn more copies of him on the same turn.

1x emperor-thaurissan

  • A key card that allows us to play our combo pieces much earlier. He’s also a threat as a 5/5 and can chip our opponent’s health down into lethal range.

Spells – 9

1x inner-rage

  • A cheap card to enable grim-patron[card] or to draw a card from [card]acolyte-of-pain. Sometimes used as removal in conjunction with execute.

2x execute

  • A card that synergizes with most of the spells in our deck. Allows us to deal with large taunts and big threats.

2x whirlwind

  • An enabler for our win-condition minions and also a board clear.

2x battle-rage

  • Allows us to draw a ridiculous amount of cards after triggering our own grim-patrons.

2x slam

  • Serves multiple purposes, allowing us to trigger our own grim-patron to draw a card, or as removal.

Weapons – 4

2x fiery-war-axe

  • A great weapon for establishing control of the board early.

2x deaths-bite

  • Another great weapon for establishing board control. Many times you’ll want to save the remaining weapon charge to trigger grim-patron.
  • Also allows us to play dread-corsair free.

Mulligan Guide

In general, you want to mulligan to setup your first three or four turns. Please note that there is a distinction between going first and going second in Hearthstone, and this should factor into your mulligan choices.

When going first, your advantage is the ability to play first. In addition, you gain mana crystals before your opponent. To take advantage of this, you want to be aggressive in your mulligan to put minions on the board.

When going second, your advantage is mainly the-coin, which gives you tempo over your opponent for a single turn, and also an extra card. Depending on the nature of your deck, whether it’s Aggro, Midrange, or Control, you’ll be looking for different things.

  • When playing an aggro deck, you’ll be looking for the same cards going second as you would going first. The objective is to quickly populate the board and bring down your opponent’s life total.
  • When playing a midrange deck, you’ll also be looking to get onto the board early, with the caveat that you can keep a single copy of a situational minion or spell that you think may be useful to counter an opponent. This spell might be something like a kezan-mystic to counter classes with Secrets or removal like frostbolt.
  • When playing a control deck, you’re looking to save the coin until much later in the game, generally when you can bring out a large late-game threat earlier than usual.

While I won’t make an exhaustive list, these are some of the cards you should consider keeping in your opening hand when playing this deck.

Minions

  • 2 Mana: armorsmith, cruel-taskmaster
  • 3 Mana: acolyte-of-pain, dread-corsair if you have fiery-war-axe

Weapons

  • 2 Mana: fiery-war-axe
  • 4 Mana: deaths-bite

Combos

  • acolyte-of-pain, armorsmith, frothing-berserker, or grim-patron + inner-rage, whirlwind, unstable-ghoul, slam, or deaths-bite.
  • fiery-war-axe or deaths-bite + dread-corsair.
  • warsong-commander + every minion in this deck except emperor-thaurissan.

Gameplay Video

Upgrades

You actually don’t need any upgrades for this deck. It’s a deck that’s viable all the way up to Legend.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my guide to Budget Patron Warrior. For more advanced Warrior decks that aren’t constrained by a limited dust budget, check out the Warrior meta decks on our sidebar. As always, I’d be happy to answer questions from you in the comments section.

Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out the New Players section, other Beginner and Budget Decks, and our most popular section – Monthly Top Meta Decks.

Coaching Lessons

If you’re interested in reaching Legend rank, or earning unlimited gold from arena, my team at HearthstoneCoaching.com would love to help! We’ve provided over a thousand hours of excellent coaching to students around the world. 

Want to Become Better at Other Games?

I also run RankOneCoaching.com, where our top coaches will develop a personal plan for you to achieve your dreams in other games. Personal lessons are an in-depth experience and most students improve significantly after just one full session!


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