Tom Sawyer (A Modern-Day Warrior)
- Last updated Apr 19, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)
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Wild
- 12 Minions
- 17 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Mecha'thun Warrior
- Crafting Cost: 10520
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/19/2019 (Rise of Shadows)
- NicJones
- Registered User
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
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Total Deck Rating
27
I piloted this list from rank 5 zero stars to legend over the past couple of days. In that time, I lost a total of 4 games; by my math that's 29-4. Not sure if I'm going to keep going and try to get to high legend but will update if I do.
I'm not necessarily *sure* this list breaks the meta, but I kind of suspect it does in the sense that it will probably push control warrior out completely since it has a similar matchup profile but cannot lose the "mirror".
The win condition for the deck is for the following to all be true:
1) You have previously played Mecha'thun and he has died. We'll tell your story, Mecha!
2) You have no cards in your deck.
3) Your hand is Da Undatakah, Devastate, and either Whirlwind or Inner Rage.
4) You have no other minions.
5) You have not played any deathrattle minions that create minions when they die.
Basically, you play like control warrior: you draw through your deck stacking up armor and trading with their board, and then at some point (almost always after Boom is down) you play Mecha'thun and he eats a guy, they kill him, and then you exhaust your deck and win with Undatakah.
Some specific card commentary:
Inner Rage/Whirlwind: Playing three copies of this part of your win condition means that you don't need to hold the first two. Neither is a great card on its own merits, but they do do useful things, especially against one-health minions; they also cycle off of Acolyte of Pain and enable Battle Rage.
Devastate: We play two copies of this because we want the first one we draw to not be a dead card all game. Feel free to kill something with it!
Shield Slam: Your best point removal. Note that you can juice this up in a hurry with Weapons Project or Shield Block if something big needs to die now. Try to hold this for something big if you can but it's fine to play it early if the alternative is going to cost you too much life.
Town Crier: Often is correct to hold this a bit in the midgame so that you can whirlwind/warpath it and get a card off of Battle Rage, but you slam it on t1 if you have it. This sets up your early game of Militia Captains very nicely, finds you Zilliax for one of your Killer Kombos, and shrinks your deck.
Battle Rage: It's possible these should be Slams, but Militia Captainenables them quite nicely and so do Crier/Aco with your whirlwind and ping effects. Potent card draw. You actively want to take a little health damage early to turn these on, so long as you can do so without letting the board run away from you. After you Scrappy combo these are worse, so try to play them before you do that, all other things equal.
Sweeping Strikes: In addition to being an important part of one of your Killer Kombos this is generally acceptable removal. Goes fine on a Militia Captain or on a post-Boom Scraphound but mostly it's there for the big Zilliax play.
Vicious Scraphound: You very rarely play this on t2-- Scrappy-Doo is for comboing with Zilliax and/or Sweeping Strikes to make a sweeper plus super-Reno. Has rush post-Boom and can often be productively Inner Raged or Sweeping Struck at that point without Zilliax involved. You play two to hit the Zilliax combo as quickly and consistently as possible and also so that you can dump one to manage handsize or to contest the board early if you have to.
Warpath: Best sweeper around. Try to hang on to these since they also hard enable draw off Acolytes and since they're a great answer to anything that isn't enormous.
Weapons Project: Armor, board control against aggressive decks, and weapons hate, plus the very potent combo with Harrison Jones. I don't usually play these t2 either except against very aggressive decks. Try to hang on to something that kills a weapon against rogue until their picks are gone. Again, we play two copies for combo consistency and because it's a strong, inexpensive card even outside the combo.
Acolyte of Pain: Be careful not to put yourself in a situation where your opponent can make you overdraw unless you already have everything you need. Not really an early play but if you got the mana and the time go nuts. You would ideally like to get at least two cards off of each of these. Obvious synergy with Whirlwind/Warpathand Inner Rage.
Shield Block: Often correct to just HP instead of playing Shield Block, especially if you haven't taken any health damage yet.
Militia Commander: These contest the board for you in the midgame and leave a body your opponent will then spend tempo handling.
Harrison Jones: Mostly in there to draw three cards off of Weapons Projectbut also eats wrenches and picks sometimes.
Zilliax: Amazing card generally but in this deck you really want to try to get more than normal value. Fuse it to a Vicious Scraphound and your seven mana Scrappy-Doo gets you 5 armor, 5 life, and a 5/4 taunt that gains you another 5 armor/life if they have to interact with it in combat. Fuse it to a Scraphound and play Sweeping Strikes on it for nine mana and you probably just killed three minions, gained 15 armor, gained 15 life, and they still have the actual body to deal with. Do not play this without Scraphound unless you absolutely have to do so.
Dr Boom, Mad Genius: Enables rush on your mechs and turbocharges your hero power, plus gives you a bunch of sweet sweet armor. Skip the discover-a-robot HP unless you are sure you have plenty of mana to dump it-- remember, we need to play every card we see to win the game. If you do discover a robot, *avoid token generating deathrattles* or your win condition gets a lot worse.
Da Undatakah: Third-to-last card you play.
Mecha'thun: Play this whenever convenient but ideally after Boom when it has rush and works as a reasonable removal dude.
Matchup profile:
You are favored against all builds of rogue I've seen, although Myra's Unstable Element/Nomi is bad news for you and Myra's/Nomi/Shadowstep will probably beat you.
You basically cannot lose against control warrior or dragon warrior. Your game plan just beats theirs and their only hope is to overwhelm you with bodies off of Dragon Roar/Omega Protocol, which they have plenty of but for which they're paying full price.
You are somewhat favored against bomb warrior but it's a tricky matchup. Try to maximize the gain off of your Zilliax turn since you are going to eat every bomb they put in your deck-- hold your armor gain spells until later since you want to take some bombs on your health before you Zilliax that life back. Do not allow Elekk or Wrench to live, ever.
I managed to play against nearly no druids with this build of the deck on the way to legend. I suspect from playing against token druid with previous versions of the deck it is a pretty even matchup-- we have a *lot* of sweepers and can fight their boards pretty effectively with Sweeping Strikes and Captain and Weapons Project, but they have a lot of dudes and if we're not careful with our answers they can overwhelm us before we clock them.
Conjurer Mage seems like it should be a bad matchup but I beat like three of them and didn't lose to any, so *shrug*. My guess is that it actually is bad because what we are not good at is killing lots of board made up of multiple huge minions and that's kind of what they do, but they aren't going to run you over before you get set up or anything. Try to save Shield Slams for later-- their Twilight Drake on t4 isn't going to threaten kill pressure but the turn they play 4 Mountain Giants definitely is. Polymorph would be very bad news but nobody plays it. Research Project would be moderately bad news but nobody plays it either.
Hunter seems like it should be bad but again I beat a bunch of them and didn't lose to any. The aggressive build of mech hunter with lots of goblin bomb shenanigans is definitely better for us than the build that just wants to play Nine Lives on Mechanical Whelp a bunch. Sweeping Strikes is insane when the guy you're attacking is 0/2. I'm pretty sure that beast hunter can beat us by setting up a bunch of nasty rhino turns late, but nobody found that line against me, and it's possible that it's too slow anyway. I did not play against Malygos Hunter but intuitively it seems like it should be pretty favorable-- you gain a ton of armor and their Big Zul'jin Turn can be answered by Warpath.
You are favored against zoolock but they can beat you with a fast draw if you stumble and Rafaam turns it into a grind. Try to hold Shield Slam for killing something big if possible-- a giant, maybe a Carpet, Rafaam or something downstream of Rafaam.
Control shaman is literally a coin flip. If you have the coin, you can and should Shield Slam your own Mecha'thun. If you don't have the coin, then Mecha is very likely getting Hexed and then you lose. I guess there's probably part of the distribution where you have the coin but they run you over with stupid deathrattle tricks on large elemental men, and there's probably part of the distribution where Mecha somehow doesn't get Hexed (try to bait it out I guess?) or you pull another Mecha or a Galvanizer or something off of Boom, but most of the time the coinflip is going to decide this.
Murloc shaman is a pretty good matchup. Don't let the 2/3 dude hang around or they can overwhelm you in the midgame, but if you can kill the first two or three of those on sight they're going to run out of gas.
Secret paladin is a good matchup.
I suspect that mechapaladin isn't-- see previous thoughts about Very Large Guys and why we don't want to see too many of them in any given game--but I didn't see any so can't confirm.
Resurrection Priest is probably really bad for us but it also doesn't exist so *shrug*
Some general deck notes:
You can play two copies of Sweeping Strikes on the same guy and they will both trigger, hitting the side guys twice. This will proc lifesteal/armorsteal twice even if the first hit is enough to kill the guy in question.
Undatakah plays his death rattles in random order. (Lost my first legend endboss game when I thought he copied the order in which your guys died and so discovered a Whelp I absolutely didn't need to make.) Avoid Boom discovering deathrattle guys who give you a board if at all possible-- that Whelp ain't worth it.
Try to take a little health damage early to get an extra card off of Battle Rages.
You will have to dump some cards out of hand typically at the end of the game, so be thinking about that before you get to the end of the game. Remember, if you have minions that are going to hit the board there, you need to figure out how they can die before you can win. It's totally acceptable to Shield Slam your Acolyte of Pain or whatever. Boom HP can eventually save you if you mess this up but it's much better if instead you just don't mess this up.
If your kill is whirlwind/devastate then it's fine if you have one-health guys on your side, but if you're using Inner Rage then you need your board to be empty. This may mean you sometimes don't want to crank your Boompower to make minibots late, which will offend your sense of value, but hold off anyway. Basically, if you don't need extra guys who may cause problems for your kill, don't make them.
Do not play your second Devastate. Do not play your third Inner Rage/Whirlwind. You need those to win the game. This means you have to count a little bit but I believe in you.
Opponents will misplay against you a lot, although probably less if they've read this. This is a nice plus, enjoy it!
Special thanks to Ridiculous Hat for brewing assistance.
Questions? Comments? Concerns?
try this deck too https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1279776-86-wr-5-3-rank-guide OTK combo only 3 cards, other can full control the board
Polymorph or Hex can be rude on Mecha'thun.....
What do we think about finding room for a Spellbreaker or Ironbeak Owl? It would be nice to have a counter for Hakkar, the Soulflayer. And the silence definitely wouldn't hurt against big mechs (appearing occasionally in both Hunter and Paladin now), or against Edwin VanCleef.
Seems reasonable to me but the tricky part is finding the cuts. I'd probably go with Ironbeak since it's easier to kill it and the body is not all that important to you.
A few observations from playing this decks for a two hours now (8-1 winrate, only loss being poor draws vs a Rogue). Maybe I will update this post after I have played a large enough amount of games to add something statistics-wise.
1) It's super powerful, I have not encountered anything that feels better so far. Even though a lot of cards are underwhelming on their own, they have a specific purpose so tinkering around with the decklist is probably not a really good idea.
2) Your biggest problem is often not overdrawing and thus killing your winconditions. Hence I never played Weapons Project followed up by Harrison Jones. Both cards seem good enough to merit a spot in the deck though. I also often play Sweeping Strikes on opponents creatures just to make room for draws.
3) Da Undatakah is a definate keep versus Warrior for me. They run Hecklebot sometimes and there is no need to run the risk of them baiting out your Deathrattle King. Warrior matchup is as close to 100% winrate as can be.
yeah, that's one of the reasons why you run redundant combo parts-- you want to be able to dump things and not regret it later.
edit: and great point re: Hecklebot. Note also that vs control warrior you can partially play around Saboteur by holding Inner Rage+Whirlwind+Devastate+Undatakah for the kill turn-- that means a 2/3 chance that Sab will steal a redundant piece.
Very enjoyable deck. And thanks for all the detailed notes!
It's so satisfying when the opponent emotes "oops" or "well played" when Mecha'thun dies, like they are waiting on me to concede, lol. Facing a lot of control warriors at the moment so this suits me well.
Well, I got to upvote for the name, right? :D
Jokes aside - I like the different approach to the deck, got to try this out when I am in the mood for standard laddering.
Still early days for me, but I've noticed that it gets destroyed by Silence Priest.
I haven't seen a silence priest since week one.
i think pretty much any priest list beats us, yeah
I absolutely love this deck! EU rank 3-4 and i have approx 65% winrate. And it is FUN!
(Bomb)-Warriors are a fcking candy unless bad RNG hits your play. Just chill and cycle through your deck. Just Weapons Project their Wrenchcalibur and combo with Harrison Jones for extra draw. Use Warpath or Inner Rage + Whirlwind on your Acolyte of Pain for yet another deck cycle. Try to keep max 8 cards so you have some space for card draws. Don't be afraid if their early game is better or if you eat few Bomb . Sooner or later you get Vicious Scraphound + Zilliax +Sweeping Strikes which is just OP heal as F. If you're really screwed just Inner Rage the Vicious Scraphound before attaching Zilliax for 21+21 if you hit three targets... All in all the game usually ends with opponent having like 30hp and 40++ armor. Me emoting "Here comes the BOOM" while Devastating my Undatakahhh!
Rogues are easy as well if you manage to mulligan at least one weapon removal. Just wreck their Waggle Pick by Weapons Project which screws their Leeroy bulls*it. The most amazing play i had was when rogue double-poisioned + Captain Greenskin the second Weapons Project i gave him which got wrecked by Harrison Jones the very next turn. Militia Commander is ideal against their 4/3 (duno the name). Be aware of Edwin VanCleef which could get quite huge in late game so either Shield Slam or something with Rush + Devastate . Or if you have BoomFace then Mecha'thun is just the perfect answer. But the most nasty counterplay is to clean everything but Edwin VanCleef and then destroy their Waggle Pick. I managed to do this once and man i would really like to see his face when his 12/12 boy got bounced back to hand ^^. I lost few times but mostly due to really bad card draw.
Mech-Huners are fine matches and i must say Militia Commander + Sweeping Strikes saved me so many times. Also Vicious Scraphound + Sweeping Strikes basically negates the damage if you hit the 0/2 bombs.
I've played against Warlock only once so not so much to say here. He died ^^
Token druids are really hard so you need to sacrifice a goat in order to get ideal card draw. It goes like this:
Whirlwind against Wispering Woods (if not buffed up)
2x Warpath against The Forest's Aid + Twinspell of it
Weapons Project as early as possible so you can use it + Militia Commander or Zilliax or Vicious Scraphound with Sweeping Strikes against another The Forest's Aid + Twinspell version of it
And just Devastate or Shield Slam anything else. It worth of 2x Shield Slam some 2/2 so there is not enough body for opponent to buff them up.
It is hard encounter but with a bit of luck managable
I've played against few Shammans but i had coin every time so just wrecked my own Mecha'thun after hitting some minions. Lost once due to my own miss-play.
I faced priest only once but it was some weird deck. He burned whole deck via Auctioneer and shitload of 0 cost spells. He was out of cards at turn 9 then played Chef Nomi. I was not expecting this so i left him a Zilliax with divine shield active so the ultimate heal/armor combo did not worked :/
Secret Paladin is somehow managable. Just be aware of the Never Surrender! which can mess up the Militia Commander + Sweeping Strikes kills or Warpath. Also the Mechanical Whelp or Mechano-Egg is nasty with Redemption.
The worst play is against Khadgar mage. I've lost every single game against that deck and i still don't have idea how to beat it unless i swap something for Brawl or other mass-removals. The moment he starts to generate a sh!tload of huge minions is just game over...
So, again, thanks for making this deck!
EDIT: I have two devices and history on one of them looks like this. The other is a bit more mixed with one huge loss-streak but still above 55%
Khadgar mage is beatable but hard. You need to maximize your draw spells because they will eventually beat you with giant splits, so that means try to make sure you get 3 cards off each acolyte and at least a couple cards off of battle rage. You can mostly ignore their Twilight Drakes, the real threat is the giants and copied giants.
You could run a Supercollider if you were especially concerned about the matchup, but I'm not sure doing so is worthwhile overall.
Swap a card for gepetto (maybe one sweeping strike?) and you give yourself an extra out vs. shaman. Plus you draw your deck faster on all matchups.
I've had Jepetto in previous builds; he's fine, but he adds a turn you're not doing a whole lot to the mix, and if he pulls an Acolyte you're basically giving back the card draw he gives you. He also can't be killed by a single Warpath so you have to come up with a way to get him off your board. I would consider him if there was a lot of shaman but don't think he's worth it otherwise.
From my experience with the deck, The sweeping strikes are dead cards in your hand, i often found myself with 10 card sin my hand but i couldnt play any of them, i took out the sweeping strikes, vicious scraphound, and the zilliax for 2x dr. booms scheme (yeah ik), darius crowley, and 2x omega devastator, dyn-o-matic might be better than omega devastator, but for right now this seems to be the better list.
Love the name
Upvoted deck for Rush reference.
Are you climbing Legend with this deck? If so, how is it doing?
Haven't, have been working on other lists. Will play a set today with it if I have time