The Gonkening
- Last updated Dec 19, 2018 (Level Up Nerf)
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Wild
- 9 Minions
- 20 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 10520
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 12/4/2018 (Boomsday)
- Echo_
- Registered User
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- 7
- 38
- 117
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Battle Tag:
Echo#11883
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Region:
US
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Total Deck Rating
274
So with Gonk, the Raptor being rated as the worst loa (and even rated so low that it got the Magma Rager award), I decided to give a go at making Gonk work. The whole point of the deck is to assemble a lot of Gonks and smack yourself against anything that moves or breaths.
How to Play
Similar to 95% of druid combo decks, the first step is to ramp and gain armor. Cards such as Wild Growth, Nourish and Branching Paths are all great at bringing you into the late game faster. Once you have done this, the next goal is to draw into the cards needed for the combo, this being Gonk, the Raptor, Dreampetal Florist, cards to copy Gonk such as Prince Taldaram or Faceless Manipulator and as many cards that can increase your hero's attack, such as Pounce, Claw or Malfurion the Pestilent. From there drop the Dreampetal Florist and try to discount Gonk, the Raptor or the Faceless Manipulators. Then, once the opponent has any form of board, simply drop Gonk, copy him a bunch, give yourself a lot of attack, then clear the board and attack face with the remaining hits.
Match Ups
Similar to most other combo druids, this deck excels at killing slower decks, but due to a new expansion being out and not a lot of aggressive decks in the meta yet, I'm not sure how great the match ups for it is. Out of the two aggro decks I've played against (zoolock and Odd paladin), I was able to win both games by just controlling the board with a T7 Gonk and Pounce. I'll try to keep this area updated as I play more against other match ups.
Mulligan Guide
So in your mulligan hand the three types of cards we want to try finding are ramp, cycle or armor gain. As such Wild Growth, Nourish (if you have Wild Growth, Wrath are all typically great in the opening hand.
For aggressive decks, keeping removal such as Swipe or the Lesser Jasper Spellstone are all great for just keeping the enemy off the board.
As for control, keeping slower ramp cards such as Nourish, Ultimate Infestation and Predatory Instincts are all good to make the deck run faster.
Substitutes
Of all the decks I've made, this is probably the most expensive ones but most of the cards can be substituted out.
Flobbidnous Floop and Prince Taldaram are both great for providing multiple gonks for cheap, but the cards can either be replaced for a Carnivorous Cube to provide more ways of making Gonks or more ways of keeping the board clear, such as Wrath, depending on whether you are seeing more aggro or control decks.
Malfurion the Pestilent is a great card for not only keeping you safe, but it also provides a lot of attack for cheap. Because of this, the card is hard to replace, so I'd either run Gnash if you are not running Prince Taldaram and if you are, running more removal such as Wrath is always a good idea. Another interesting choice could be to also cut both Spreading Plagues for two Witching Hours and Wrath. This will turn Witching Hour into 3 mana summon a Gonk, the Raptor which is a really good rate.
Gonk, the Raptor is necesary, sorry if you wanted to try the deck without it. Granted, the cards kinda in the title so you should have expected it to be a main card.
Branching Paths and Ultimate Infestation are not needed for the deck, but not having them would make the deck function incredibly different. If you do not have them, I'd priorities making Ultimate Infestations as they are absurdly good for druid as a whole. Granted, the same applies for Branching Paths, but this card can just be replaced by either more removal or more ways to get on the board early such as Saronite Taskmaster
Dreampetal Florists and Faceless Manipulator are also both pretty important for the deck as both are important combo pieces. The Faceless Manipulators can be replaced by Carnivorous Cubes for a similar effect, but it takes more cards to make it work, whether it be Naturalize or Greater Jasper Spellstone.
Gameplay
So since someone made a video of this deck (first time I'm freaking out), here's some gameplay if you are interested in seeing the deck in action!
Final Verdict
Personally I have had good results with this deck. I was able to take it to 7-5 on a winstreak the entire way, and only once I got down to rank 4 did I start having issues with other decks. Granted this may just be because there is a new expansion and people are trying out worse decks (in a similar manner in how I took a Big Priest running Zerek, Master Cloner from rank 14 to rank 6 fairly easily during Boomsday launch). That being said, this deck is incredibly fun and if you have the cards for it, I'd recommend trying it. I think it can find some spot in the meta once it stabilizes, maybe not this exact list, but something along the lines of it.
Edit:
With the recent nerfs to Wild Growth and Nourish, I'm not sure how good this deck is going to be. It is significantly slower and depending on how the meta shapes up post-nerf, it might just be too slow. That being said, in the mean time I've cut the Wild Growths and a Nourish for Saronite Taskmasters to help cover for the early game (and doubling up by giving a body for Gonk to eat) and another Wrath. Not sure how good these changes will be in the long run, but it's kind of hard to scope out how druid will feel in general because the nerfs are essentially taking malfurion into the backyard and shooting his kneecaps.
Ah, you're right. I was confusing pre-patch attempts with the time I played a 0 costed floop that was a dreampetal florist to get Gonk to 0. That still works just fine, but it does take the extra turn. My bad.
I'm 99.99% sure i've done it myself, but I'll check again.
Nope. It becomes a 0 cost Gonk.
That is not true. After playing a minion, all things that affected Floop or his last form are lost. This includes handbuffs and cost reduction.
I didn't open too many Rumble packs, and did get a Gonk. Played this deck for a few days, as-is and with a few other minor edits.
I have a question about using Flobbidinous Floop. This is from memory, so apologies if I get it wrong.
- If Dreampetal Florist hits Flobbidinous Floop, it's cost drops to zero and it's picture turns to Dreampetal Florist
- Next turn I play Gonk. Flobbidinous Floop's picture turns to Gonk, but it cost turns to 4(?). I can no longer play it on the same turn as Gonk!
I get that I can play Floop on the next turn, and get a cheap additional Gonk... but am I missing something with how these three cards interact?
Edit (to clarify point) - I like playing Gonk + Copy + as much hero attack as I can on the same turn. Floop seems like a bad target for Dreampetal. Since I sometimes only get one proc of Dreampetal, it feels like I would rather run a second Faceless Manipulator than Floop.
Yeah that is the way Floop works. As for why I am running it in the deck over another Faceless is simply because he is significantly stronger than Faceless in almost every way EXCEPT when the discount hits him. One mana can mean a lot on a combo turn as it means another Claw or being able to cast a spellstone to chip away at a minion's health. It is the same reason why there are two UI in the deck over just running 1. The card is just so strong that it's worse case scenarios (drawing both in the early game) is minimized by the fact it's such a strong card.
That being said, there is already 2 copies of Faceless Manipulators in the deck so you can't really take out the Floop for a third one.
So what do you do, when your opponent doesn't play creatures (at last in the late game, when you've assembled your combo)?
There isn't a way to burst them down for all their health, but by just playing threats on the board and using the DK hero power every turn, most the time you can just pressure them to either play minions or flat out kill them. There are very few decks that win with 0 board pressure so even though you may not win on the spot by having them not play creatures, you are still in a pretty good situation.
That being said, I have been trying out adding in Gravelsnout Knights as a way to give you something to attack. They haven't been great, mainly because I haven't gotten a ton of match ups where they are useful but I'll continue trying them out to see if they are worth it at all.
The goal is to have 69 Gonks!
I don't have Prince Taldaram, so I replace it by Ixlid, Fungal Lord and it's crazyyy XD
Example combo : place Ixlid and face manipulator on it, and if you're Gong cost 0... you have 3Gong and 3Ixlid at the same turn ;)
Sorry for my english ^^'
I think it actually makes 3 Ixlids and 4 Gonks because the faceless manupulator gets duplicated right?
terrible
wdym? i got to rank 1 legend with this deck
Its more an bugg/exploit then anything else. It may attack again shouldnt reset your attack timer to 0 twice and give u like a pseudo windfurry effect...
I just wrote a support ticket for this, to report this bugg. This cant be a real mechanic, cause Blizzard never wanted those OTK decks, specially if u have no counterplay potential. If the druid attacks more then 6 Times through 2 taunts and hit u 5 times in the face, it should be hotfixed ASAP!
If it's a bug or exploit and they change it, oh well. However, I don't feel like this is the case as all Gonk does is let you attack again whenever you kill something. Because of that, if you have two Gonks, the first one lets you attack again and the second one let's you attack again as the card is not programmed to reset the amount of times attacked but instead increase the maximum amount of times you can attack by 1.
If it is fixed then I'll concede that it is was a bug, but I doubt something like this would slip past QA testing.
Attack command never stacked in the past, so it shouldnt stack from this card too.
You have 1 attack command per turn (2 if windfurry) if u reset the command u get 1 attack per turn back.. if u reset 10000 times at same time u still only got 1 attack back..
I have no clue what you mean by saying that attacking never stacked in the past. This is the first card to have any form of effect like this so saying it didn't work in the past has nothing to do with it. Like I mentioned, Gonk doesn't reset your attacks and instead just gives you one more total attack a turn.
As for blizzard never wanting OTK decks, did you see any of the cards they got from Boomsday, not to mention that both Togg druid and Malygos druid existed the entirety of Boomsday without getting changed at all from nerfs? I fail to see how Blizzard would deem a deck that can burst you for almost your entire health from an empty board is fine while one that requires you to use your own health and have your opponent overextend into the board isn't. Compared to past druid combo decks, this one easily has the most counterplay options simply for the fact you can just not overcommit to the board in the same way you can play around Spreading Plague. I've checked to see if they've released any form of statement about whether this is the way the interaction works and came up with nothing confirming or denying that this is how it should work, so as far as I see it, it's fair game. Given the amount of attention people like Disguised Toast have given this type of OTK deck leading up to the launch of the expansion (going all the way back to November 30th) if it was an issue I'd assume they would have already patched it.
Compared to other druid decks while this one in my experience combos faster it has many more options for counter play. Simply keeping your minion count low works and it still gets countered by the same counters, anti-combo decks and armor.
I've been a druid "main" from launch, and OMG THE GONKENING FEELS SO GOOD. I've always wanted a deck that capitalized on your hero's attack and this is everything I ever wished for and more!! Thank you Echo and Kiwi, and thank you Blizzard!
I heard that Gonk's effects could stack, but aside from that, I knew nothing about what Toast was doing with the card (to the point that I didn't even knew Toast discovered it). From there doesn't really take 4 trillion IQ to see the easiest ways to create several Gonks and to just used the already established druid formula to make a deck work.
Anyway, I'm glad you like the deck! If this list continues to get support, I might go and try making a more midrange/aggressive list that doesn't rely on comboing and instead uses Gonk as a board control tool alongside Savage Striker, Savagery, etc.