Hearthpwn

I have started seeing successful attempts at Secret Paladin crop up on Hearthpwn - check out Maximal_HS' deck, which was a big part of the inspiration for this deck:

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1224491-4-legend-maximals-secret-paladin-74-winrate

I was just beaten at rank 5 on ranked ladder by someone running Murloc Paladin. That gave me an idea: Hydrologist perfectly bridges the gap between these two archetypes, so why not mix them together?

Overview

The deck is a hyper-aggressive face deck, as murloc decks always have been. This is even more aggressive than usual though, because as well as the usual boatload of cheap murlocs, this deck runs five paladin secrets and 2 Secretkeepers. The big danger here, then, is running out of steam very quickly. For this reason I believe two Divine Favors are justified, if only to increase the consistency with which you draw one by around turn 3-5 each game. The main weaknesses of murloc decks are a) literally any AoE clears, and b) nowhere near enough draw to keep up the pressure into the mid- and late-game. Divine Favor is therefore incredibly high-value in this deck (even more so because you will almost always be able to play it when you have almost no or no cards in hand).

Secrets

All of the chosen secrets act to divert damage from your minions, or to revive your minions once killed (Redemption). This provides strong synergy in a murloc deck, i.e. a deck which wins by sticking murlocs on board to be buffed by Murloc Warleader, Gentle Megasaur, Coldlight Seer etc. There are even some more obscure bits of synergy, for example your Murloc Tidecaller getting buffed when another murloc is killed and resummoned by Redemption. One final thing to point out regarding the secret package is that Hydrologist can obviously give you access to secrets which you don't run. As mentioned, card draw is essential in this sort of deck, however hyper-aggro decks can usually only afford to run very little card draw. Hydrologist will sometimes solve this without you having to have taken up a deck slot with card draw if you choose Hidden Wisdom and the opponent triggers it.

"Late" game

The deck has an incredibly low/fast curve, with the only two "late" game cards in the deck being Prince Liam and Sunkeeper Tarim. Liam gives you an out if you find yourself running out of steam or against a slower opponent who is stabilising. With so many 1-cost cards in your deck, Liam can transform potentially almost half of your deck from low-value cards into potentially super-high value cards and potentially even win conditions. Tarim is just a very powerful card in almost any Paladin deck, but it is especially so here. The entire deck revolves around summoning small minions, which is naturally an excellent combo with Tarim, but it can also allow you to find enough reach to get through a taunt wall to maintain pressure on the opponent's face.

Final points

In this hunter-heavy meta, Secretkeeper is even stronger than it is currently (and bear in mind its relative strength when its buffs (secrets) cost 1 instead of 2 or 3) as the opponent's secrets will buff your secretkeeper. This is also a factor against tempo/aggro odd mage. And finally, Bellringer Sentry: this card provides excellent pseudo-card draw as it "draws" and plays your secrets simultaneously. This provides the bonus of thinning your deck so that you can improve the consistency with which you draw your powerful murloc synergy cards.

Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think.