Hearthpwn

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 ^^

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

[LEGEND] Gunnolf's Wild Bellringer Secret Paladin [NO MC] Secret Paladin Deck by Gunnolf - Jul 21, 2018 View Deck String Export to BBCode Export to Cockatrice Export to MarkDown Export to Html Clone this deck
Minion (17) 1x High Priest Thekal 1x Loatheb 1x Sunkeeper Tarim 2x Molten Giant 2x Bellringer Sentry 2x Knife Juggler 1x Spellbreaker 2x Haunted Creeper 1x Mad Scientist 2x Righteous Protector 2x Shielded Minibot	Ability (11) 2x Call to Arms 1x Competitive Spirit 1x Divine Favor 2x Muster for Battle 2x Avenge 1x Lost in the Jungle 2x Noble Sacrifice	Weapon (2) 2x Unidentified Maul
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[LEGEND] Gunnolf's Wild Malygos Druid ft. Multiple Builds Malygos Druid Deck by Gunnolf - Aug 30, 2017 View Deck String Export to BBCode Export to Cockatrice Export to MarkDown Export to Html Clone this deck
Minion (5) 1x Alexstrasza 1x Aviana 1x Jepetto Joybuzz 1x Kun the Forgotten King 1x Malygos	Ability (24) 2x Branching Paths 2x Ultimate Infestation 2x Innervate 1x Lesser Jasper Spellstone 2x Nourish 2x Spreading Plague 2x Biology Project 2x Ferocious Howl 2x Living Roots 1x Poison Seeds 2x Wrath 2x Moonfire 2x Swipe	Playable Hero (1) 1x Malfurion the Pestilent
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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!

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