[LEGEND] Gunnolf's Wild Kalecgos OTK Giants Mag...
- Last updated Apr 28, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)
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Wild
- 14 Minions
- 16 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: TTK Mage
- Crafting Cost: 8880
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/10/2019 (Rise of Shadows)
- Gunnolf
- Registered User
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- 16
- 41
- 88
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Battle Tag:
00100100
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Region:
EU
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Total Deck Rating
1076
Come in and Warm your Frozen Boots by the Fire!
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gunnolf, and I am originally from the Land Down Under a.k.a. Australia. I am an avid gamer that has acquired a real passion for card games, which originated from my humble beginnings as a Yu-Gi-Oh collector and eventually grew from my dabbling in Cardfight Vanguard and Buddyfight, until we reached the game we know as Hearthstone.
I've played Hearthstone since the days of classic, with multiple accounts on both EU and NA servers. Despite having reached the Rank of Legend and my own personal mentality of equating 'having fun' with 'winning', I am not really a fan of meta power-grinding & net-decking, not that there is anything wrong with that. Therefore, I enjoy thinking about new, cool and fun deck ideas that push boundaries while also allowing you to win and those are what I want to share with you guys every-time I post a decklist.
I have presently become a contributing writer to WILDHS and will be posting articles there on a semi-regular basis, regarding deck-archetypes the status of the meta as well as how to get the most fun out of this game even if you aren't a big spender. If any of this sounds interesting, then I highly recommend that you check out of the website, as the writers and the owner himself are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet with great in-game knowledge (link to be website can be found HERE). You can also follow me on Twitter for latest updates.
If you genuinely like my content and would like to see me produce more of it, then please consider supporting me on Patreon. This is by no means necessary but it will definitely help me out in the long run. Thanks for Reading ^^
Deck Introduction
Hey guys and welcome back. I am super excited to bring you the first of many decks involving the Mage Quest Open the Waygate. Today I discovered a super cool interaction with Archmage Vargoth where the quest reward Time Warp actually stacks. While that was not the initial win condition I was going for, it actually made the deck so much better as it truly adds consistency to it. So without anymore ado, let's get into the OTK/TTK stretegy.
Card Choices and Deck-building Explained
In this section, I will explain some of the card choices I opted for and the reasoning as to why they were included over potential counter-parts.
1) Banana Buffoon: This is probably the most efficient way to to trigger the quest count since each minion provides two cheap spells.
2) Magic Trick: Apart from giving our opponents the finger, the card itself allows for the discovery of random spells within a controled mana group ensuring that they are always castable.
3) Kalecgos: While a lot of people would be tempted just to include Vargaoth for the OTK, you can pull it off with this dragon as well. Therefore, since we have two ways to complete the combo it seriously increases the consistency of the deck.
(At the present time, only a few cards have been listed but I will include more if questions pop-up within the comments section regarding substitutions and why other cards were included.)
The Combo Explained OTK/TTK
Assuming you have completed the quest, here are in fact three ways to complete the quest:
a) Triple Turn OTK: Archmage Vargoth + Time Warp + x2 Arcane Giant (costing 0) -> Give you two extra turns to deal as much damage as possible.
b) Double Turn OTK: Kalecgos + Time Warp (costs zero thanks to the dragon's aura) + 2x Arcane Giant -> Next Turn you play Alexstrasza and set your opponent's life to 15. With 20 damage on the board and a free spell to be cast thanks to Kalecgos.
c) Classic Giants: 2x Arcane Giant + Time Warp (5 mana left to play discovered spells) -> Next Turn you play Alexstrasza and set your opponent's life to 15 with 16 damage on the board.
As iterated above, the reason I am running all the combos is for the sake for versatility. It is worthy of note that even outisde of the actual combo itself the cards function well independantly and add a decent amount of versatility to the deck.
Open the Waygate, Keep or Mulligan?
In certain circumstances and other quest decks, there is legitimate merit in mulliganing away the quest in order to increase your odds of discovering anti-aggro tools to deal with aggressive opponents. In this deck, I would in the vast majority of cases recommend not doing so. The main reason is due to the fact that the quest itself is your true win condition as such the only way you win even against aggro is by competing the quest and initially your OTK turn since there is no comeback mechanic like Reno Jackson.
Alternate Legend Deckbuilding
After a few discussions with readers and avid players of this kind of decks, a few alternate suggestions were brought forward that have real merit, especially since these changes were used to break into Legend and even reach top 50 Legend. As such, I would like to bring present them to you, thus allowing you to play around with the build.
Specifically, by substituting out some of the defensive cards and adding in more threats or threat generation you can substantially increase the amount of damage/ attacks your are capable of pulling off during your extra turns.
The cards you can replace are as follows:
-1x Mad Scientist &/or -1x Arcane Artificier &/or -1x Ice Barrier | +2x Molten Giants or +2x Echo of Medivh or a mix and match of both.
However, please do be careful when deciding what extra threats to run. Don't forget you run a very potent draw engine and spell generating cards. As a result, if your hand gets too clogged with unplayable giants you might burng the quest or Bananas.
Further to the above, there is also the twinspell variant inspired by another reader. Specifically, he capitalised on the fact that the second spell actually counts towards the question completion. As such, you can make the following substitutions:
-1x Ice Barrier & -1x Magic Trick | +2x Ray of Frost
-1x Kalecgos | +1x Conjurer's Calling
-1x Alexstrasza | +1x Kahdgar (entirely optional and not even necessary for the Twinspell build)
As a final note, if you want to, you can probably dispense with Kalecgos (I personally don't even when I play Molten Giant). In this particular deck, he is mainly included to increase versatility. However, I would always keep Alexstrasza. She is far too good at setting up lethal scenarios without Archmage Vargoth that her inclusion is warranted.
(As always special thanks to everyone that partiticpated in the conversations for their great insights and recommendations.)
Othe Gunnolf Decks
While I am still working on fresh new decks utilising the new cards from the RiseofShadows expansion, here are a couple of decks with updated guides and lists that do in fact use new cards to boost their strategy.
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Author's Notes
This was truly a lot of fun to make and a great way to combine two new legendaries with a flavor from Un'goro. The deck does require a significant amount of practice but if you are in any way acquanted with Exodia or Freeze Mage, then this deck should not present any problem to you.
I enjoy deck-building a multitude of interesting decks that are both entertaining and Legend viable (with some odd Free-to-Play lists mixed in). So if you like this deck (or anyone of my other ones) consider leaving a thumbs up, as it really helps in the long run! :)
Thank you guys for all your support and if you have any suggestions, let me know.
Check out my other decks!
>>> CLICK HERE <<<
This deck is insane! Thank you!
You're very welcome. I'm super happy it's proving useful to you. :)
I really appreciate your elaborate exposition of the deck and your overall passion in creating truly fun and imaginative wild decks. I believe in the longrun, wild should be where the "real" hearthstone come into play.
Thank you for your kind words. I hope so but Hearthstone really needs new content, even with all these new decks it just feels repetitive sometimes :/
What's your matchup spread like? Does the giant build play around combo disruption?
It doesn't have much to do with combo disruption, although it is a definite upside. Regular Exodia Mage is just better when it comes to infinite fireballs, so I wanted a build that centred around Alexstrasza and Giants.
In general anything that stacks obscene amounts of armor can be a problem if you don't get Archmage Vargoth and you aren't running a multi-giant version. Super control heavy decks like that are few and far between so it isn't a problem. Currently I run just the double giant version cause of aggro and against it I do pretty well.
Your main bad match-ups are Big Priest (becomes much better if they only have one statue and you run multiple giants), Darkness Warlock (no comeback mechanic if you get highroll but it's a degenaret deck) and Kingsbane Rogue cause well it can go face making your board freeze effects not as effective.
Hope this helped! ^^
It needs Polymorph for priests, and volcanic potion for aggros. I play an old version of the deck and this 2 cards alone won me so many times. Also Echo of medivh is good for massive damage against class with lots of armor (i.e. druids and warriors).
After some fantastic feedback and discussions from the readers, I have updated the guide with an Alternate Builds section.
Thank you to everyone that participated, especially MutuhPwn, as all your assistance helps enrich the guides and make wild and the deck more enjoyable overall.
I hope to see you all at the next deck. ^^
Is this deck Legend viable?
That's a hard question to answer. The deck is doing well for me. Much better than I expected I have to admit but I can't in all good conscience say that you can hit legend with it, if I haven't done it myself or wintnessed someone else do it.
Technically you can hit Legend with any well functioning list but it takes time.
All I can say at the moment is that it's an extremely solid deck with great potential. I can update you with my progress in the near future.
Sorry I wasn't much more help.
I just reached legend playing exclusively with a version of this deck.
I use twinspells instead of Kalecgos and Ice Barrier though, which make the deck so much more consistent.
Kingsbane rogue is an insta lose, and darkest hour lock is rly hard too, everything else should be a win most of the times.
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That's actually awesome. Congratulations on Legend. I'm super happy you got there with this deck and especially your tweaked version. I will make sure to update the deck.
That now makes two players to get to Legend with the deck. ^^
Did you try out Khadgar? I always thought that if I used Twinspells like Conjurer's Calling, I'd try him as well.
Man it's been a while since I've played a spicy Mage deck such as this. Absolutely loving it
I made some changes:
-1 Ice Barrier
-1 Coldlight Oracle
+2 Molten Giant
Cool. How's it working out for you? ^^
Right now i feel that i need more practice with this deck. Maybe i'll add more freeze effects. I don't like that it is hard enough to complete quest in this version...
Maybe i will try Control's version with questing adventurers and cyclone elementals =) Looks stronger for me. Did u saw it? :)
I think I caught a glimpse of it on twitter.
I would have liked to try that too but unfortunately, I'm all out of dust for now and I didn't open any cyclone elementals. The bane of being F2P. Maybe next month after the rewards come in! ^^
I see :)
My final version probably looks like this:
Sad that Kalecgos didn't find home here but i am sure he will in some Reno or Big spell Mage decks.
As for this quest architype i think it is quite dirty. I imagine how my opponent piss off after poping 5th Ice Block during one game :D
It's why I like Magic Trick ahaha.
Kalecgos was always a secondary win condition anyway, so no super loss by not being in there. I just like versatility. I think he's more suited for Big Spell Mage anyway. Although, I do make pretty good use of him in my renomage. ^^
So, I'd like to intrude the discussion here.
After some discussion on a different Quest Mage of my own, it seems that Doomsayer can easily be obliterated in this meta, and in particular in this deck, where you actually tend to draw the answers for your opponent. Yes, the guy is still great on its own during early turns, but at that point I was wondering if an extra Arcane Artificer, and/or just more freeze (Cone of Cold?) effects aren't simply better. Or even Stargazer Luna! for card draw, but also as a soft taunt.
Also, I never tried the giant variant. How do you fare against small and big taunts? Voidlord and Obsidian Statue, just to name a few. Is it beatable and/or just a minor problem across the meta?