Crusher Deathadin [Legendary]
- Last updated Jan 23, 2015 (GvG Launch)
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Wild
- 17 Minions
- 11 Spells
- 2 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 3020
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 10/24/2014 (Naxx Launch)
- HSCrusher
- Deck Architect
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- 12
- 23
- 46
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
US
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Total Deck Rating
1574
Peak NA Rank (Season 7): 135
Mission Statement: Take control of the board early with cheap, sticky deathrattle minions; reload your hand with Divine Favor; then close the game out fast.
Story: Having done tempo, midrange, and control decks already, I felt it was time I made an aggro climb. I settled in on an aggro Paladin that uses a similar spell/weapon package to Shockadin, but uses a deathrattle minion set. The resulting deck isn't as fast as Shockadin, but is much harder to remove. It's less face oriented than Shockadin, but not quite as board focused as Zoo either. This deck only has one legendary and one epic, and the legendary isn't critical, so it is easy to make a budget version by adding Dancing Swords instead.
Mulligan Strategy: Mulligan aggressively for minions you can play on curve the first three turns (count Noble Sacrifice as a minion). Keep Divine Favor against control and Consecration against aggro. Keep Avenge with Haunted Creeper. Keep Noble Sacrifice with Knife Juggler (extra juggle and protects a high priority target). Toss everything that's not a deathrattle minion with Undertaker (except maybe Divine Favor against control). I would pretty much always toss Coldlight Oracle, and I would also toss King Mukla unless I was really expecting my opponent to neglect the early board (like Ramp Druid perhaps). Those are two cards you usually want later. All the spells I haven't mentioned I would toss; you need minions early.
Matchups: This deck was actually fairly average against some of the more popular decks in the meta like Hunter, Zoo and Control Priest, but it had solid matchups against everything else except its one weakness, Deathrattle Priest. This was my longest climb in number of games (154), but in time it wasn't so bad because of how short games were. The following win rates are from rank 5 1 star through making legend. They are listed from statistically strongest to statistically weakest. Only matchups I faced more than 3 times are listed with everything else aggregated in the Other category.
Handlock: 7/8, 88%
Ramp Druid: 6/7, 86%
Other: 14/17, 82%
Midrange Shaman (5 bot, 5 not, all wins against bots): 8/10, 80%
Miracle Rogue: 7/9, 78%
Control Warrior: 12/20, 60%
Fast Druid: 4/7, 57%
Control Priest: 6/13, 46%
Zoo: 6/13, 46%
Hunter: 18/41, 44%
Deathrattle Priest (the counter to other deathrattle decks): 2/9, 22%
Some Card Choices: We all know now that Undertaker is incredibly powerful, and consequently the cheap deathrattle suite is strong and resilient. I'll comment on a few cards whose inclusion isn't obvious or have a novel synergy with the deck.
Avenge, Noble Sacrifice, and Mad Scientist: Mad Scientist is crazily efficient as effectively a 2/2/2 cantrip that plays a 1 mana card for free. The buff to Undertaker is a nice bonus. Avenge got kind of a bad rap because it didn't fit into any previously existing archetypes. I think it fits quite nicely in this deck and works well with Nobel Sacrifice, which forces your opponent to destroy one of your minions.
Equality: This is the key to breaking through big taunts that a deck like Handlock might get out. Almost functions like an all silence card, but actually lets you kill them. Easily comboed with Consecration, Avenging Wrath or just tokens like Spectral Spiders or Silver Hand Recruits.
Knife Juggler: Equality makes juggles lethal. Play Harvest Golems and Haunted Creepers first then next turn play Knife Juggler before you trade them away for extra juggles.
Coldlight Oracle, Divine Favor, Dancing Swords, and King Mukla: Divine Favor is the key to the deck. Everything is cheap and tries to be as unsituational as possible so that you can dump your hand and reload it up to your opponent's size. King Mukla and Dancing Swords can make your opponent's hand size larger for Divine Favor (and Mukla is just strong in a deck that is good at maintaining early board control). I found that double Divine Favor and double Loot Hoarder weren't quite enough card draw, so I added a Coldlight Oracle. You should be able to spend cards faster than your opponent so it will make your next Divine Favor stronger too.
Truesilver Champion and Avenging Wrath: These are your major damage sources, but they don't have to be used on face only. Avenging Wrath can be used with Equality for a board clear and Truesilver Champion is good at clearing taunts.
Deck in Action: See me face streamers from their perspective.
Tides of Time - Control Warrior (caution: language, audacity)
GvG Update: I've added Jeeves in place of Coldlight Oracle. They function very similarly but Jeeves has less downside and can potentially sustain you for longer. I tried running two Jeeves, but found that the second was usually unnecessary and was taking away from the decks damage potential.
Write any questions or suggestions about matchups or card choices in the comments. For anyone who gives this deck a shot, let me know how it goes and good luck! By the way, I've already heard that one player took in from rank 3 to legend within a day of me posting this, and he beat me along the way, haha. Congrats man!
News: Matt Sparks spotlights Crusher Deathadin in his segment Big Deck Playa. Check it out for card explanations and some gameplay!
I'm kind of scared to try this due to the hunter win %. Hunter is the most played by far. I suppose the not so great hunter matchup is made up by good other ones?
Yeah, and the hunter one isn't that bad. It's close to a toss up. The only bad one is against deathrattle priest. aggro vs. aggro almost always feels like a toss up to me.
Hunter is highly used, but Warlock is sees more usage.
Replacement for King mukla/?
Dancing Swords: Up tempo 3-drop with Divine Favor synergy just like Mukla. Deathrattle is nice, but the downside can be more painful.
Any other suggestions?
Sure, I've got plenty of 31st cards: Redemption, Ironbeak Owl, Argent Squire. Some people have been suggesting some more expensive cards, which make me wary, but maybe the deck could handle one more. Those would be like Loatheb, second Avenging Wrath, or Tirion Fordring.
If its not too much trouble, would you mind giving a list of all your 31st cards? I dont have King Mukla, which is unfortunate since it works really well with Divine Favor, so I would like to just test all of them out until I find a substitute I like.
Just the ones I listed above.
Loatheb can always have a spot in most of build. TIrion can be easily silenced. Wich happens really often. So i might consider your first suggestion with Dancing Swords. :)
Okay thanks. Ill try the 7 cards you mentioned.
Tried out to build a very similar list recently. You can definitely consider including Dancing Sword instead of Coldlight but I like it too ;) Only issue I was having with this kind of build was the lack of finishing potential (ended up playing blessing of might also ^^)
Great work and glad to see you made it to legend with it ;)
Great guide as per usual, my upvote as per usual :)
I'm kind of curious as to why there is no Redemption in this deck, it would seem to be quite powerful with all the deathrattle minions.
Redemption is on a short list of cards I want to find room for in the deck. The problem is that there are already so many spells, I felt I couldn't afford more. You could argue it would be better than one of the secrets I already have in though. I really should try it.
I subbed noble sac for redemption, the point isn't a minion left in ping range it's the extra deathrattle (another card or another minion).
I tried similar stuff with redemption and the thing is that if you include Haunted Creeper (and sometimes be forced to hero power), this secret becomes pretty useless.
I ended up playing 2 Avenge, 1 Noble sacrifice and 1 Redemption ;)
Yeah noble sac is just more consistent and less random than redemption overall ^^
Good Job!