Hearthpwn

The Steel Sentinel gave me the most problems out of all the heroic Wing 4 bosses. Or rather was the most annoying to beat because you can only ping him AND his minions for one (1) damage at a time and he starts out with 30 life and 15 armor.

After playing him once I observed the following patterns of his:

- he "abuses" his heropower by playing weapons (Arcanite Reaper &Truesilver Champion) as cheap value sources for removal/burst

- his early game minions are Sparring Partner and Armorsmith that become dangerous if he manages to cast Blessing of Kings on them

- his most dangerous big drops consist of Tirion Fordring, North Sea Kraken and Master Jouster

- most of the time he just goes for your face instead of making the value trade (his kraken spits in your face EVERY time, no matter the boardposition #yolo)

 

After making these observations I came up with the following deck that I tried to keep as simple and cheap as possible (fuck your Dreadsteed shenanigans. no, srsly.). I goldfished him 10 times with this deck and won 7 of them - so I take, while being only a first rough draft, the deck performs amicably and I will give you a quick insight on it's basics:

The Opening

Basically you want your opening hand to consist of Flamewaker + a cheap minion/mirror entity. Ooze, while being cheap, comes in handy at around turn 4 since this is the turn the Sentinel will most likely put up a weapon and thus can be aggressively mulliganed for a flamewaker.

How do I win?

The easiest way to glory is by putting up a Taunt minion (preferably Belcher) and Kel'Thuzad, the old Fister.

Just start developing your board by turn 2 (don't throw your Mirror Image away on turn 1..) with some spiders and try to get that Flamewaker to stick - don't play him naked on the board on turn 3 since he could get weapon'd by the sentinel and rather opt for a Flamewaker+Entity play on turn 4. With the Flamewaker up, just go for the value trades and don't bother attacking his face yet except when there's nothing else to do. Your Waker is the most important minion in this matchup until you get KT. Protect him! 

How to get to that sweet spot above?

....you ask? Well, if you take a look at the decklist you will realize, that we are running cantrips such as Intellect and Acolyte in combination with taunt minions - especially the Ghoul is doing fine work in this matchup. By playing the taunt minions alone you are negating the Sentinel of putting up too much pressure. The only threat now are his beefy minions that he can upgrade with a Blessing of Kings. We solve this problem by playing cheap targeted removal like Polymorph and Polymorph:Boar. Don't waste them on naked Armorsmith's or shit like that and wait until he either played a Blessings or puts that disgusting Paladin-asshole on the board.

 At this point you can neglect trading for board and just deal 8 damage to his face every turn.

The luck factor and the remaining choices

Although this deck makes it very easy to win (and the heroics in this wing are pretty easy already) - you can still get rekt by the SENTINEL by having a horrible starting hand/KT being the last card in your deck or by him partnering up with rngesus and getting shit like Gorehowl out of his Blingtron. Also he is running Brawl which can fuck you up instantly if it removes your KT - so just overextend you board with the cheap stuff baiting his brawl and put the finishing screws on by playing KT afterwards.

Cards like Violet Teacher or Arcane Missiles are pretty neat as cheap removal sources that will help you establish board control and speed up the winning process once you have the "lock" down.

I use the term "lock" because basically the AI can't handle you having KT with a taunter up, making him not attack into it and just idling every turn until you kill him (remote seppukku).

I hope there are some people that find this guide helpful. If you have any suggestions for improvement or questions, just leave a comment and I will get back to you. Also if you are looking for salty rogue and warlock ladder-play you can always tune in into my twitch channel since I started to stream very recently and would be glad to chat you up on my channel.

Thanks for your attention and cheerio you suckers (<3)

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