Hearthpwn

Note: the WR% is lower in this screenshot because it’s counting all versions of the deck.

The previous two screenshots are the results of every game from the June 2017 season. Games between “6 days ago” and “2 days ago” at the time of the screenshot were games played between ranks 5 and 3. All replays from June are available here (in chronological order):

63% winrate between Rank 10 and Legend, with a sample size of 52 games

Explanation: the deck appears to, from a significant sample size, perform better at higher ranks. This could suggest that the deck performs significantly better in ranks where you can more accurately predict your opponent’s deck, which emphasizes how important thoughtful piloting is to doing well with the deck.

The 2 key cards to this combo are Raza the Chained to get a free hero power and Auctionmaster Beardo alongside a handful of cheap spells to refresh your hero power, which is used for damage through a healing-to-damage effect or Spawn of Shadows. The combo is very versatile, so you’ll need to be doing a lot of math trying to figure out if you can kill your opponent or not. This is a quick guide to how much damage you’ll be able to do in typical cases.

Note: for all of these combos, you’ll be using Auctionmaster Beardo and your hero power must already cost (0). Make sure you don’t kill yourself with Spawn of Shadows

• Spawn of Shadows: 4 damage * (the number of cheap spells in your hand + 1)
• Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest: 2 damage * (the number of cheap spells in your hand + 1)
• Justicar Trueheart played on a previous turn + Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest: 4 damage * (the number of cheap spells in your hand + 1)
• Spawn of Shadows + Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest: 6 damage * (the number of cheap spells in your hand + 1)
• Justicar Trueheart played on a previous turn + Spawn of Shadows + Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest: 8 damage * (the number of cheap spells in your hand + 1)

Other things to consider:

• If Holy Smite is one of your cheap spells, add 2 damage to your total.

• If Light of the Naaru or Flash Heal is one of the cheap spells in a combo with Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest, remember to add 3 or 5 damage to your total, respectively.
• If you’re playing a combo involving Spawn of Shadows and Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest, know how many times you’ll be activating Spawn of Shadows’ effect and whether or not that would kill you. If it would, you can play your healing-to-damage effect in the middle of the combo so you get as much damage as you can without killing yourself.
• Even though Circle of Healing is a cheap spell, it will kill your Auctionmaster Beardo and possibly Spawn of Shadows if you are under the effect of Embrace the Shadow or Auchenai Soulpriest. You can keep them alive with the Armor Plating spare part, or you can make a 1 mana Kazakus potion with the [Give all friendly minions +2 health] effect. Don’t make this potion unless you know for sure you’ll be using the potion like this in the next turn or two.

The gimmick of the deck is to OTK your opponent through a combo with Auctionmaster Beardo, but that isn’t how you’ll win all of your games. Thanks to the large amount of deathrattle minions and N'Zoth, the Corruptor, it’s possible to win some games on board, and you’ll either outlast or be run over by hyper-aggro decks long before you assemble all the combo pieces.

Vs Aggro:

• Focus on controlling the game rather than working towards an OTK combo. Play the small minions you want early, draw as much as you can to get Reno Jackson but after you draw him prioritize playing minions with stats or taunt over draw effects.
• In these matchups, you can freely play spare parts or Emperor Thaurissan for tempo, because you shouldn’t be trying to combo your opponent.
• You’re looking to win these games either by outlasting your opponent and having them concede, or stabilizing around turns 5-9 and playing a N'Zoth, the Corruptor that is too big for your opponent to deal with.
• Your ideal Kazakus potion in this matchup is 5 mana: [Deal 4 damage to all minions. Summon 2 friendly minions that died this game.] Don’t be afraid to take a 1 mana potion if you need 2 damage aoe right away.

Vs Control:

• Draw at every opportunity in the early game, and against other Reno decks try to put on as much early minion pressure as you can to force them to play their Reno Jackson early so you can start whittling their health down so you need to hoard fewer spells to kill them with.
• Play Justicar Trueheart and Raza the Chained as soon as possible. They help you efficiently keep your minions alive to apply pressure or, when that isn’t necessary, slowly regenerate your hero health so you can save your own Reno Jackson for after your opponent starts applying pressure.
• You typically want to save your spare parts for your combo, but be aware of your hand size. Try to think how many hero powers you’d need to kill your opponent and keep that many - 1 cheap spells in hand. If you know you’ll be playing N'Zoth, the Corruptor in the next few turns, make sure there’s enough space in your hand for all the cards that will be drawn or generated by the deathrattles, seeing as most of the deathrattle minions you’d be bringing back will be doing one of those things.
• Try to get value from your Emperor Thaurissan, but don’t get too greedy with it. Just hitting one or two combo pieces is usually enough, and the 5/5 body combined with the effect demands an answer from your opponent. Because he poses such a huge threat, you can use him to bait out a board clear from your opponent the turn before going wide with a few minions or even N'zoth the Corruptor.
• Always be thinking about what cards you need to kill your opponent. As long as you have Auctionmaster Beardo in hand and your hero power costs (0) from Raza the Chained, you’re only a few cards away from winning the game.
• The longer the game goes, the more likely it is you’ll be looking to kill your opponent with your combo. However, there will still be some games where you play a big N'Zoth, the Corruptor that your opponent can’t answer that win you the game on their own.
• Your ideal Kazakus potion against normal control decks is 5 mana: [Summon 2 friendly minions that died this game. Summon a 5/5 demon.]. Against other N'Zoth, the Corruptor decks, you’re looking for 10 mana: [Transform all minions into 1/1 sheep. Deal 6 damage to all minions.]

• Against Reno mage: If you made the Eater of Secrets tech choice from later in this article, good for you. If not, to beat their Ice Block you need to either take the game to fatigue then combo them low enough to be killed by their next fatigue draw, or pop it with enough damage on board and in hand to kill them as soon as possible. You might have to kill them from 30 if you haven’t seen their Reno Jackson yet. This will be a rough matchup.

Note: Almost every class in wild has moderately strong aggro and control variants (Mage has secrets/reno, Druid has egg/jade, etc.), so I’m writing this guide on how to mulligan vs. archetype instead of class. Try to make an educated guess on what your opponent will be playing based on the other decks you’ve been encountering where you are on ladder.

Vs Aggro:

In order of priority, we want:

• Reno Jackson

• Board clears: Doomsayer, Kazakus,  Excavated Evil, Holy Nova, or Dragonfire Potion
• It’s worth keeping Circle of Healing and Auchenai Soulpriest or Embrace the Shadow if you have both parts of that combo in your opening hand.
• Taunts: Deathlord or Sludge Belcher
• Cards that help us contest the board early: Northshire Cleric, Clockwork Gnome, Shadow Word: Pain, Holy Smite, Loot Hoarder or Mechanical Yeti

Vs Control:

In order of priority, we want:

• Cards that cycle: Northshire Cleric, Power Word: Shield, Loot Hoarder, Bloodmage Thalnos, or Novice Engineer
• Kazakus
• Cards that help us control the midgame Dragonfire Potion, Mechanical Yeti, Deathlord
• Cards we NEED to have played before our combo turn: Raza the Chained or Justicar Trueheart

Note: These card swaps will make your deck weaker as a whole, but give you an advantage in the noted matchups - swap the cards out if you’re seeing a lot of those opponents on ladder.

Vs Aggro:

-Emperor Thaurissan -> Radiant Elemental

Why? The 2 /3 body for 2 mana is a lot more effective at combating early aggro, and if left unanswered it can allow you to play spare parts defensively for free and in extreme cases play board clears a turn sooner. If you make this tech decision, and queue into control, the Radiant Elemental can be used in place of Emperor Thaurissan’s cost discount on spells, especially if your combo hand is full of spare parts.

-Spawn of Shadows -> Potion of Madness

Why? As noted earlier, you’ll in most cases win or lose against aggro decks without even considering using the Beardo combo. You can’t play this minion for tempo, because your own heals will hurt you more than help. It’s easily the weakest card in this matchup. Potion of Madness, on the other hand, is one of the strongest. It can give you 2-for-1 trades and net you very high mana swings. If you’re using Auctionmaster Beardo to heal, it also has a chance to let you use your hero power an extra time, which can be game saving.

Vs Reno or Freeze Mage:

-Novice Engineer -> Eater of Secrets OR Kezan Mystic

Why? If you have no way to remove their Ice Block, you need to either win on board despite all their AoE, or kill them with fatigue damage. The latter is impossible against Freeze Mage, as they can burst you down several times over before they’d run out of cards. Either of these cards is awful in any non-mage matchup, but is a huge improvement to your winrate against them. Usually, I’d recommend Eater of Secrets because it also saves you some stress against Secret Mage, and can be used to guarantee a kill against an enemy mage with multiple secrets. Kezan Mystic, however, can buy you an extra turn against burst in addition to disrupting their survivability, which is similarly huge. Which of these you choose to switch in, if either, is up to you.

Vs Control:

-Holy Smite -> Shadow Word: Death

Why? The 2 damage ping from Holy Smite often isn’t necessary for removal against other control decks, and the game will run long enough for you to gather enough spare parts in your hand to pull off your combo. Shadow Word: Death gives you sometimes game-saving removal, especially when paired with the next tech choice.

-Holy Nova -> Shadow Visions

Why? You have enough AoE against other control decks, and Shadow Visions will help you fetch your other AoE spells if you do need them, or can get a copy of otherwise 1-of removal spells from your deck when you need them. If you don’t need any of those over the course of the game, it can be used in the middle of your combo or to draw Embrace the Shadow to add necessary damage to your combo.

I’ll post this guide with explanations for cards I figure people will ask about, and will update it if anyone asks about other cards in the comments.

• Awaken the Makers: It’s too slow. The deck has a few ways to curve out against aggro decks, and needs key removal spells and healing to survive the early game. The 1 extra chance to draw those in the opening hand is much more valuable than the extra heal late game - without those cards you probably wouldn’t get far enough to play Amara. Against control, the extra heal to 40 still usually won’t save you in games you’d have lost anyway, just wastes your and your opponent’s time.
• Entomb: As valuable as hard removal is in the deck, its high cost makes it harder to play on the same turn as other cards, which is valuable to be able to do since we will usually be playing with a full or almost full hand, and accidentally milling a combo piece like Raza the Chained or Emperor Thaurissan can be game-losing. The way it removes minions is also counter to the general strategy of the deck: we want to survive to draw our combo pieces and this adds a card that doesn’t help us survive, draw, or kill our opponent to our deck.
• Garrison Commander: Auctionmaster Beardo does what he does, just factors more powerfully. While playing Garrison Commander could in fringe games give us an extra hero power use to get exact lethal, a lot of the time we'll have more damage available than we need anyways, so his slot can be better filled with another card that either helps us draw our key combo pieces or stall out the game.
• Lyra the Sunshard: While she could be fun, from a competitive perspective you'd only ever play her in games where you have no other way to win, similarly to a Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, as you'd be throwing away the cheap spells you'd rather hold onto to use for your combo to generate random priest spells, which aren't guaranteed to be cheap enough to play enough on one turn, even with a (1) cost reduction. It's difficult to justify playing her with only a few spells for tempo, as especially in wild you can get some really bad rolls that clog your already tight hand in future turns; and you have enough reach through your combo and N'Zoth, the Corruptor to not need her to generate value. There's definitely an argument to be made for her to save some otherwise lost games, that situation doesn't happen enough in my experience, while she is otherwise a dead card.
• Prophet Velen: While this card gives you the potential to play itself + Embrace the Shadow + Flash Heal + a free Justicar Trueheart hero power to deal 18 damage, it's too expensive to play with the combo that's already run and since the deck also runs N'Zoth, the Corruptor, the slot doesn't seem worthwhile for a third, niche win condition in such an already crowded list.