Hearthpwn

got any replacement for val'anyr

Crazy, I too went for the corpsetaker route though my even pally is more similar to the older even paladin from the beginning of the witchwood xpac. I also opted for Glowstone Technician as dropping your 1 cost silver hand as 3/3 minions BEFORE dropping level up is totally insane.

Thanks. I'm no pro deck builder. Just a guy who LOVES playing paladin decks who wanted to see if he could make Level Up! work in an even deck. (Apparently LOTS of other people had the same idea.)

Glowstone Technician is an interesting choice and might be something I'd consider swapping out Crystal Lion for. I often find with this deck that I have a VERY full hand, which makes the Technician a pretty salty choice. That said, it requires that you really play the deck more like a control deck, which it is to an extent, because with the loss of Crystal Lion you sacrifice tempo. The other potential issue with that swap is that it leaves the deck with only one Divine Shield minion, which can harm the Corpsetaker package. So you get a lot with Glowstone, but you give up a lot, too. It might work better in a version of the deck that removes the Corpsetaker package and adds Sea Giant. But that gets us back to being really Silver Hand dependent. If only we could have 32 cards in the deck. I might experiment with pulling the Lightfused Stegodon and adding just one. I like that change because it gets the deck another step away from being overly Silver Hand dependent.

Oh wow didn't actually expect a response, and many of your criticisms are TOTALLY valid. I find myself at the mercy of my draw and HS is brutal sometimes. There isn't much of a choice if you want to use silver hand in today's meta though. The mana cost of of level up is extremely inefficient, it's a 9-mana play to do in one turn. It's still the majority of your mana to do in two and you risk the helpless 1/1's for that and even then, most board clear is online by the time its available. Mage's have WAY too many options in even the most mundane ladder decks. Odd Mage, being the most common, can clear with battlecries and hero power without even needing to Flamestrike or Arcanosaur.

In fact, other than the hunter decks running rampant at the moment, there are so many options to deal with the low number of silver hand you would be putting out and buffing so late in the game. The thing that made level up so successful for Odd Pally was the fact that on turn 5, the board was guaranteed to be full of silver hand, and if it wasn't? Lost in the Jungle. They could throw 4 SH right back on the board for 3 mana. One spell and a hero power. Even Pally needs two turns to do that with a deathrattle minion that could be silenced and shut down out right. It's actually a multi turn play no matter how you slice it because of the dependence on Drygulch Jailor.

The thing is, silver hand are mostly worthless unless there's straight up six or seven of them sitting around. Odd pally can have that every two turns and Even can do it once a game. By the time you actually have the level up play ready, it's likely that maybe 1/3 of a mages board clear has been used. Priests would even have available clear just in random cards they stole (JK they would have OTK'D you by the time you used level up, lol) Warriors have a plethora of options, and shamans just have a ton of low cost minion options. Rogues have vanish and Odd Rogues have more board presence at a faster rate of speed. Druids.... I'm not even touching that one. I run token druid when I'm not trying to force Even Paladin to work. Spreading plague, Whispering Woods, Soul of the forest... Even paladin has a lot of clear but man token is out of control to deal with as Even Paladin. You need immaculate card draw and usually you wont know what kind of druid it is until they've already stalled out the game for 15 turns. You need Avenging Wrath on top of having used knife juggler to finish off equality, so that Consecrate can be used back to back on wisps. Utterly absurd.

Pretty much Hunters are the only ones that are susceptible to big Silver Hand plays. Don't swing to face, GG. Trip the traps when you have 7/7's and it doesn't matter what they do, they have 30+ damage coming down on them. With Hunter taking over the meta I had to revisit Even Paladin because my Even Shaman win rate skyrocketed. Hunters are extremely vulnerable to full boards of minions in a meta where NO ONE ELSE IS. Something like 37% percent of my games across all my decks today were hunters. On my hunter, out of 28 games, 20 were against other hunters.

The problem is that playing paladin as control requires EXPENSIVE cards. The deck I'm using isn't even which blows for answering immediate board pressure. I'm missing Glass Knight, Crystalsmith Kangor and a couple smaller cards to make the deck I'm currently using really work, but with High Priest Thekal and a rotating line up of lifestealing minions, you have full health and 20-30 armor around turn 6. It makes pulling off the Glowstone combo way easier, to the point where I was able to stack on Arena Fanatic on the in-between. This works out to send all those fluff cards you use for Corpsetaker into the fight with much better stats. Windfury Harpy becomes a wind condition on her own when shes at 12 attack, and she's just hand-buffed. Expendable. Not even part of your win condition and you have to use big clear on her. This is a card that most people draw and say "Oh no my corpsetaker's windfury!" Now I'm using two. Along with two Chillblade Champion to pocket nuke / burst heal. Corpsetaker is the icing on the cake. When you finally drop the level up on the SH knights they've exhausted everything they've got just on your filler cards. It's show stopping when it goes well, and of course it doesn't always, as if you draw BOTH glowstones after turn 17, well, you probably lost. I did win in that situation however, because the brilliant hunter allowed my Thekal to to get freezing trapped, refilling my armor. I can only imagine how sweet the right use of Crystalsmith Kangor feels. You wouldn't even have to buff chillblade.

The theory works in practice but I run into too many issues without the one cost hero power. Hopefully I can dump another $100 on cards after next week because I'd really love run it as even. The version I'm using lacks sustainable healing and board presence, not to mention it makes Sun Keeper Tarim kind of situational since you can't depend on dropping a quick minion with your hero power. Which blows. SKT was my first paladin legendary and is still my favorite card. I had a crazy run with Even Paladin before the Call to Arms nerf.

It's a great deck by the way, I still managed 55% wr which isn't heartbreaking. Nice work man.

This decklist seems super promising! I made a similar list with the inclusion of Sea Giants and 2 Lightfused Stegodons, and people seem to find it hard to pull of the combo, me included. The Corpsetaker package fits nicely!