If you’re not sitting on tons of dust at the launch of a new expansion, then putting together a new deck can be incredibly frustrating. For most top-tier decks, you’ll generally find yourself needing to craft at least one legendary. This can leave many Hearthstone players feeling as if the fun has passed them by.
Here are a few budget deck options for Rastakhan’s Rumble that will get you back to the table, spell slinging in no time.
Budget Dragon Warrior
This cheaper version of Dragon Warrior is a great deck for players who still want to test out some cards from the new expansion without breaking their dust bank. It features a new Dragon package that includes a number of rare level cards. This package primarily focuses on Dragon Roar, Emberscale Drake, and Dragonmaw Scorcher.
Dragon Roar is a two-cost spell card that allows you to add two random Dragons to your hand. One of those potential Dragons is your brand-new Emberscale Drake. This dragon is a five-cost 5/5 with a Battlecry that gives you five Armor if you’re holding another Dragon. Since this deck is filled with Dragons new and old, odds are having one in your hand won’t be an issue.
Another card you might hit with your Dragons Roar is Dragonmaw Scorcher. This card gives the deck a boost in beef and board clear. It’s a five-cost 3/6 with a Battlecry that deals one damage to all other minions when it enters the battlefield. This card is great against decks like Odd Paladin, which constantly tries to flood the board with 1/1 minions before buffing them up and smacking you in the face.
The deck also includes a number of older, cheap Dragon cards that most people will be familiar with. This version of the deck is the brainchild of Superkowboj1 on HearthPwn.
Budget Zoo Warlock
If you’ve played Hearthstone for a while, then you’re probably used to Zoo Lock smashing ladder during the early days of an expansion. Part of the reason for this is how well the Warlock hero power compliments the Zoo playstyle.
Since most cards in Zoo are super low cost, you’ll usually have mana left over to tap your hero power and draw cards. This means you never run out of low-cost minions to keep flooding the board with. The idea is to overwhelm your opponent and rush face as much as possible before they’re able to get their deck’s core strategy off the ground.
Zoo received a huge boost with the inclusion of Rastakhan rare card Grim Rally. Grim Rally is a one-cost spell that makes you destroy a friendly minion, but gives your other minions +1/+1 for your sacrifice. Pair that with other new Rastakhan rare, Spirit of the Bat, and you’ll soon have any army of beefed up, low-cost minions.
Spirit of the Bat is a two-cost 0/3 with Stealth that, for one turn, will give a minion in your hand +1/+1 after a friendly minion dies. This not only gives you extra value from your Grim Rally, but it will also make your opponent think twice about clearing your board the turn in which he comes into play.
Budget Dragon Priest
Dragon Priest is still a reasonably affordable option for players who want to feel like Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh. This deck will run Dragon Priest mainstays like Twilight Drake, Cobalt Scalebane, and Dustbreaker, but will also get a boost in survivability from Firetree Witchdoctor.
The Witchdoctor is a two-cost 2/2 with a Battlecry that allows you to discover a spell if you’re holding a Dragon. Need some extra removal? How about another Shadow Word: Death to get rid of your opponent’s beefy beast? Or maybe you just want to protect what you have on the field? Another Circle of Healing should do the trick.
This deck hasn’t changed much since it’s last iteration, but that’s part of what makes it so good. It’s a deck that has been well thought out and tested for a long period of time, and it just received a little extra kick from Rastakhan’s Firetree Witchdoctor.
The deck also includes good combo ability thanks to cards like Northshire Cleric, Power Word: Shield, and Divine Spirit. The idea is to overwhelm your opponent with hard-hitting Dragons while, at the same time, using your removal to take care of their threats.
