Pyro's Season 5 Legendary Zoo
- Last updated Aug 29, 2014 (Naxx Launch)
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Wild
- 27 Minions
- 3 Spells
- Deck Type: None
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 1160
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 8/22/2014 (Naxx Launch)
- Pyromelter
- Registered User
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- 5
- 30
- 26
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Battle Tag:
Pyro#1988
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Region:
US
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Total Deck Rating
130
Update:
Just a note on this deck, if you are running into a lot of midrange hunters, you want to go drop the Leper Gnomes and possibly undertakers, and put back in Power Overwhelming and Void Terror. Midrange has a hard time dealing with bigger minions as well as the 4/4 nerubians, while this deck as constructed is meant to maintain board control via deathrattle minions, it doesn't build the big minions that the Void Terrors do. This deck is much better against the cancer/secret type decks, so know your meta.
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This is the deck I used to hit legend. The initial intention of this deck was to re-gain the advantage over secret/mad scientist type hunter decks. When mid-range hunter started gaining popularity, the Void Terror/Nerubian Egg synergy along with occasional chomping of minions buffed with Power Overwhelming was godly against mid-range. But when secrets hunter came out, Freezing Trap became a real issue with tempo, as well as mad scientists being able to easily take out minions such as Flame Imp. Frankly, Void Terrors are too slow to beat the mad scientist hunter deck. Once I switched out my Void Terrors and Flame Imps for Undertakers and Leper Gnomes, I quickly shot up into legendary.
You will note, this deck does NOT contain Flame Imp. This is intended. In the current meta, 2-health minions without a deathrattle are awful. Plus, the extra 3 damage to your own face can be deadly against hunters, where games can be very close on life/health as they are trying to pressure you as much as you are pressuring them.
The general strategy is to get your minions to 3 health as much as possible. Initially, this was built to defeat explosive trap. What I found is that this strategy pays off huge against other classes as well.
Starting hand mulligan strategy is a little different than you might expect. You don't always go for Undertaker and deathrattle minions. Of course, it depends on who you are playing. Here is a quick rundown of mulligan strategy:
Hunter (any):
You want to hard mulligan for Argent Squire and Voidwalker as your one drop attack minions, and also for Abusive Sergeant and Dire Wolf Alpha. You also should not mulligan your Ironbeak Owl, because this card will gain you insane tempo versus Mad Scientist when you silence it. Haunted Creeper is also worth keeping in an opening hand, assuming you can pull a Dire Wolf or an Argent Squire. Remember, this deck is built specifically to deal with hunter secrets. Your goal is to either silence the secrets, or work around them by boosting your minion's health to 3, and also using buff minions to attack first (when a secret comes out, always always attack with cards like Abusive Sergeant or Defender of Argus. Getting battlecry minions back in your hand is almost like a free shadowstep).
Hunters can still mess you up badly with Buzzard/Unleash the Skill combos, and weapon/secret synergy. But with the kind of starting hand I described, you can always handle webspinner, mad scientist, and animal companion fairly easily, gain tempo, and roll over the hunter. Ideally, you want to try to draw into Defender of Argus. Hunters only have 3 removal spells, so one voidwalker, 2 other minions, and a defender of argus = very sad hunter, even with combo.
In recent days, it seems that hunters are becoming aware of this deck. If you find hunters beating you, you want to use the trade I suggested below, -2 Leper Gnome, +1 Power Overwhelming +1 Ironbeak Owl (the extra PO is mostly for activation of the nerubian eggs for more pressure on the hunter, but also helps as a finisher)
Priest:
Priest, you absolutely want argent squire + abusive sergeant. That said, if you have coin, Undertaker + leper gnome is godly. Your goal in the first 2 turns is to be able to do 3 damage on turn 2 to take out Northshire Cleric. This can also be achieved (without coin) by using Leper Gnome + Dire Wolf Alpha. Do not be afraid to aggressively kill the Cleric. A cleric that lives is absolutely deadly, and a cleric that dies will make the priest very sad. Also, often on turn 3 the priest will get out a deathlord. This is where you use things like Soulfire aggressively to remove the Deathlord.
Here's a cool tip you might not know: If you have an undertaker on the field, and you kill a deathlord, if the minion that is summoned has a deathrattle, your undertaker will be buffed.
Paladin:
Mulligan aggressively for undertaker and deathrattle minions. Paladins have no good way of dealing with your undertaker in the first 3 turns, so you can really put the screws to paladins with an undertaker. Also, never mulligan out abusive sergeant (sensing a pattern here?). You can even aggressively throw down a Knife Juggler on turn 2 knowing the paladin can't do jack to it.
Warlock (demon or zoo):
Argent Squire or Voidwalker + abusive or dire wolf. An argent squire with a + damage buff minion is such a huge tempo gain on any early game.
Warrior:
Possibly the toughest matchup. This is all about doing as much damage as soon as possible. The goal here is to get 4 damage on turn 2 to take out any early Armorsmiths. This can be achieved by leper gnome turn 1 followed by abusive sergent, or, if you have coin, something like voidwalker + argent squire turn 1, followed by a dire wolf alpha turn 2. This game you want to race.
One thing: Do not play around Brawl. You can sort of play around it by playing haunted creeper and nerubian egg aggressively, but this matchup is a race. If the warrior has a brawl, and RNGesus gives him a favorable brawl (by, say, keeping alive a 0/2 nerubian egg), you're probably going to lose. Warriors only run 1 brawl however, and by turn 5, you should be looking to get the warrior into lethal range.
Updated note: If you are running into a lot of control warriors, I would not play this deck. Warriors have too much aoe and removal, and too much healing in the late game, you're lucky to win 25% against control warrior at higher ranks.
If you are facing a beatdown warrior, you want to get your deathrattle minions on the board and buffed by defender of argus asap.
Shaman:
Very few shaman on the ladder, but they can be a tough matchup. For this one, I like to keep as many of my "toughie" minions in my hand as possible, argent squire, haunted creeper, harvest golem. Shaman have a lot of outs against you, so your goal is to either have minions at high health (4 health and up), or low health (1 HP). Mulligan out Nerubian eggs, because earth shock will make you sad, and it's better to combo the eggs in the later game with either undertaker or defender of argus.
Druid:
I pretty much don't see druid at all on the ladder. But, if you run into druid, your goal is to sucker out wrath on either your argent squire or voidwalker, and then flood the board with undertaker and deathrattle minions. With all your buff minions, you should be easily able to kill their 4 and 6 health minions, save Owl for Ancient of War, and try to get as many minions at 2 health as possible, as very few druids run starfall, and 2 health minions will survive the ping 1 of swipe. If you are close to lethal, you can ignore Ancient of Lore, but don't let an Azure Drake live because of the swipe synergy.
When I would play druids, a lot of times I would bleed their cards because they couldn't draw from Wrath or Ancient of Lore, and a druid without cards is a dead druid.
Rogue:
Rogue is sort of an all-or-nothing type RNGfest, if you get your right draws, you'll be almost impossible to beat, and same for the rogue, however if you both draw well, the Warlock should win. Definitely mulligan again for Argent Squire, Haunted Creeper is also really good, and your abusive sergeant will help those 1 attack minions knock off any SI:7 agents or earthen ring farseers. These tough minions will then last through mid-game and pressure the face of the rogue. Not having Flame Imp makes this version of zoo way, way better against Miracle, since the extra face damage from flame imp puts you closer to the Rogue's Leeroy/Shadowstep reach lethal, and flame imp is so easily removed by backstab.
General Card notes:
Because I was facing a lot of warriors and midrange hunters, I made the following trade:
-2 Leper Gnome +1 Power Overwhelming +1 Ironbeak Owl
Final notes:
Knife Juggler - The goal with this guy is to synergize him with an attacking Haunted Creeper
Haunted Creeper - this, my friends, is the most imbalanced 2 drop in the game. Every warlock, hell, every deck, should have this card in it. It's got 7 total power for 2 mana. That's 3.5x power for mana. Even the uber value card Cairne Bloodhoof has only a 3x power for mana value. And at 2 health, it lives against so much more than you would expect, for example webspinners, argent squires, Paladin "guys," it absolutely wrecks druids who have to waste way too many resources to kill it... on and on. Basically, if you are a warlock, and you're not playing Haunted Creeper, you're doing it wrong, and I would expect that eventually most of the deckbuilder theorycrafters are going to catch on, and this thing will be in every single deck just like Pagle was when he was overpowered back in the day.
Proof of Legend:
http://i.imgur.com/AwMEH8I.png
My highest legend ranking so far this season is 208, including beating well known players such as tidesoftime and ErA.
what would u change?
This deck has bad matchups against warrior which seems to be all over the high end of the meta right now. I would not recommend anyone running into warriors to play this deck, as warrior pretty much eats this deck alive.
Currently 8-3 with this deck vs control warrior. Tough matchup but very winnable. Sometimes they have perfect answers (double axe and taunts) and you are screwed, but generally you can overwhelm their removal. Currently 4 wins from Legend.
I've actually been quite lucky so far with this and beaten every warrior I've faced. But im only at the rank 7 range so everyone is pretty bad here. Mostly just field management and knowing to set up turn 5 brawls to proc a metric shit ton of death rattles to go in my favor making them rethink such plays. One such match we went card for card until he realized I drew more than him and he had only 1 left to my board / hand. I'm quite enjoying the style compared to old Zoo. Huzzah to the budget!
Glad you are having success. I know a lot of people hate on zoo, but I don't play zoo because of the budget, I play zoo because I really prefer aggressive forms of gameplay.
With warriors, it sort of depends on what they are running, and what they draw. Unstable ghouls and death's bite can really mess up a zoo field. You'll get a life lead, but if he can keep your side of the board clear with a fair amount of health, he can slow the mid-game down with sludges and weapons and make a comeback with shield block and alex. The deck that I've seen Kit Katz run is pretty lethal to all forms of board spam, but not everyone is running 2x unstable ghoul and 1x brawl.
If the warrior gets a slow start and doesn't get brawl, you can snowball and run him over. Since warriors run a lot of higher mana cards, they are a bit more susceptible to being snowballed if they don't get brawl or the right low mana drops. It's also possible that since zoo has gotten a bit more out of favor, warriors are not quite as familiar with how to counter zoo.
What about the Zombie Chow? Would they better fit in the deck than leper gnome? I mean leper gnome is not meant for board control, even if it's deathrattle is nice for undertaker. I think zombie chow are better unless you are racing for your life. The ideal use of zombie chow is to trade it very early on, so it dies before you have the negative effect of the deathrattle.
Imagine the hunter mad scientist deck when you dont have the owl. You play zombie, he plays mad scientist, you kill it with the zombie and activate the trap = profit, it dies before the hunter took damage. and you can ressumon stuff after activating the trap.
Against hunter, it's always a race for life. With their hero power and reach, as well as potentially life-tapping, you can die very quickly, the idea is to race, and to deal with the traps via weenies (as well as utilize things like abusive sergeants being put back into your hand by freezing trap, giving you a pseudo shadowstep.).
Hunter is a very tough matchup for everyone right now. This deck isn't 100% against trap hunter, but played right, assuming you aren't coming up against lucky hunters, you should be able to deal with most of their early game threats and get a 60% ish winrate.
I finally just hitted Legend for the first time with your deck :D
And you are totally right, the zombie chow and flame imp put you too far behind on the race. If you summon both imps and zombies, you are 16 health behind lol...
I wonder if i'm going to put imp back next season if there's less hunters, maybe take out the argent squires for the imp. You would have undertakers, abusive sergeants, leper gnome, imp and void walkers as 1 drops.
I would remove 1 Leper Gnome for the Owl. I like your thought process on Egg -> Deathlord. Knife juggler is crazy good when combined with deathrattle minions, getting 2 free juggles from your haunted creeper is what makes this deck run really well.
I try this deck with: -2 argent squire +2 flame imp -1 PO -1 Owl +2 Shutterd sun cleric
can be ok ? btw this deck is good :)
Maybe include an Ooze if the control warrior matchup is too hard? Could be handy, but the warrior would still probably be preferred.
No mention of the druid match up?
Ramp druid is slow to set up. So you want to race them down. Save your owl to take out a taunt if needed. This should be an easy match, cuz by the time they finally have big creatures rolling around, the druid should be half dead and you should have a strong board. 70/30 favorored.
Token druider is a harder match up, but zoo should have advantage. Focus on controlling the board and removing all of their minions cuz savage roar combo can end the game quickly if sticky minions are left on the board. So prioritize killing there stuff, then attack the face after the board is won.
I'll add it shortly, but druid is ridiculously easy:
Mulligan for Argent Squire. It will make your druid very sad. Voidwalker is excellent bait for a 3 damage non-draw wrath.
After he uses one wrath, literally flood the board with whatever minions you have, most druids do not have the removal to handle all the deathrattle minions you'll be spamming the board with.
I see very few druids at all anymore because I think they have very bad matchups against warrior and hunter.
There are no Terrors in the list!
A real warlock deck with real synergy: http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/94254-demoncontragro. I just went on a 17 winstreak with this deck. It's funny going against other warlocks with this deck, they stand zero chance.
haunted creeper is good to buffer undertaker. Also haunted creeper is a good target for any buff and then trade up.
The idea with creeper is to abuse it for knife jugglers.
Also, with defender of argus, it gets to 3 health, and survives against explosive trap, consecration, holy nova.
I really like this deck and your analysis of the matchups. Thanks for this list!
Why don't you run Leeroy in this list?
Leeroy is certainly viable, and I've used him in past iterations. Problem with leeroy is that he is usually a "win more" card - he's a dead card in your hand until you have lethal, and you don't want dead cards in a deck that runs 4 different cards that will cause discards. The goal in this deck is to empty your hand ASAP to get to your topdeck, Leeroy would be the only card you couldn't just plop down if you had a doomguard or soulfire in your hand. And if you topdeck leeroy and don't have lethal, that's really bad and going to ruin your tempo.