Mysterious Secret Pally
- Last updated Oct 16, 2019 (Doom in the Tomb)
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Wild
- 13 Minions
- 13 Spells
- 4 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Secret Paladin
- Crafting Cost: 7280
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 10/9/2019 (Doom in the Tomb)
- x15d
- Registered User
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- 1
- 16
- 34
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Battle Tag:
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Region:
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Total Deck Rating
120
Hi everyone, you might have seen this secret paladin deck that I made recently which many of you seemed to like, so I'm bringing you my new version which runs Mysterious Challenger.
This version is significantly better with the addition of the new cards, currently sitting at a 60% winrate at 2600 games, whereas the old version was sitting at 52% winrate at 1700 games (both according to hsreplay).
Mulligan:
Mulligan is much easier compared to before, keep Crystology, Secretkeeper, and Mysterious Challenger. Throw away the rest. Only exception is if you are on coin, you can keep Brazen Zealot and Beaming Sidekick if you have them both.
Card Choices:
For the an extensive list that talks about many of the cards currently in the deck and potential cards that can be considered to add to the deck, please refer to the old version here
Cards that differ from the previous version:
Mysterious Challenger: Your best card going in to the mid/late game and only card in the deck that can take you from a losing position to a winning position. Ideally when you play him your opponent should already be almost dead from your snowbally cards (Secretkeeper and Brazen Zealot), but mostly they will end up dealing with them too, in that case, Mysterious Challenger is your finisher. In the case where you didn't manage to get ahead and deal much damage with your snowbally cards, this dude can help you get back in the game, and he also thins your deck by a lot in the process, so the rest of your topdecks will most likely be very good which will end up winning you the game.
Avenge: It's like getting a Flame Imp with charge that doesn't deal 3 damage to your face, which is pretty amazing, and usually game winning if you get two casts with Rhyssa (but that doesn't happen very often)
Commander Rhyssa: First off all, if you don't have her, you can easily replace her with one copy of Dread Corsair since she is not a core minion for this deck.
You get lots of secrets up compared to the old version thanks to the mysterious man himself, so Commander Rhyssa is now pretty good in this deck. Obviously she is insane if you get to play her after you played mysterious challenger but mostly you will end up playing Rhyssa before him, but that's still ok since Rhyssa is a good threat on her own anyway, so you don't lose much running her for the post-mysterious challenger opportunity. Another reason is Avenge, it's simply just nuts with Rhyssa.
Spellbreaker: It's not in the list, but if you are facing a lot of Nzoth/Quest priests this is definitely a good card to include and you can even run 2 copies depending on how often you face those priests (so basically running a second copy is your choice). Cut Zilliax for one copy and Rhyssa for the second.
Bellringer Sentry: Obviously, Mysterious Challenger is much better than him, so no surprises here.
Dread Corsair and SN1P-SN4P: With the addition of avenge + rhyssa, I needed to make some space in the deck. They didn't seem better than the Brazen Zealot, Crystology, and Beaming Sidekick package since the latter has the better early game snowball potential while the former is just overall midrangey good cards that give you some tempo, so I went with this route. As I said before, you can definitely substitute Commander Rhyssa with Dread Corsair though.
Matchup Guide:
Please refer to the old version of the deck for the matchup guide, since the way you play this deck or the decks that are currently popular hasn't changed significantly.
I like fast decks, I will try!
doesnt really work against Deathrattle Priest. Or sort of..anyone?
works well against Qshaman
I've been able to get a bit more out of this deck by cutting one of the secrets and one of the mysterious challengers and adding two blessing of wisdom. I then mulligan for blessing of wisdom, crystology, secret keeper and beaming sidekick (in that order of preference).
Having draw at the beginning of the game speeds up the aggro plan immensely and by turn 6 you usually don't have too many secrets left for Mysterious challenger to take out of your deck and put into play. Usually, the earlier you can put blessing of wisdom on a minion the better the chances of winning.
I think as with all aggro decks is to put pressure so that by turn 5 or 6 they pretty much done, adding draw is just a waste on turn 2 or 3. Myst Challenger is like a finisher
This deck just does not work after rank 5 sadly... every deck counters it really well although its fun to play. I am sure the meta is different in diff ranks like 10-15 but i lost a ton with this at rank 2. People just have stronger decks.
Well that’s your experience. I have made a different experience with this deck. Works still pretty well around rank 4.
so you see your experience is not an example for the meta OR you might lack skill and make to many misplays? Who knows.
I agree actually. I didn't even use this deck to climb to rank 5. I have found from my personal experience that any deck based on secrets (hunter and mage too) doesn't work after rank 5 due to players knowing better exactly what secret to expect at any given moment so they play around them better. For example, from my experience I have found pure secret hunter (non-highlander) to be the best deck overall in like ranks 15, whereas it's garbage on rank 5, similarly, highlander hunter's power level also decreases as you go up the ladder for the same reason (although it's definitely affected less than pure secret hunter).
There is also a similar story regarding aggro decks as well, in lower ranks people tend to just play their aoes/removal without thinking much about it but when you go up the ladder you can see people actually holding back them for better value.
So both of these factors lead me to believe that while this deck is very good in lower ranks, it's power level heavily decreases as you go up the ladder, but I can't really confirm that theory since I haven't had the opportunity to play this deck in ranks above 9.
Xd said exactly what i wanted to say, it's not my "playstyle" its the deck itself. You also barely see any secret pallys at these ranks for a reason. Everyone is playing real teir 1 decks. (shaman etc) Early game this deck is sick and can beat alot of people i am not hating on it at all! I am sure you can climb all the way down with this deck but not every deck works for every rank, that's why most people swap decks once they hit 5. Playstyles change etc. Its a great deck tho.
With no board clearance this deck struggles greatly against any kind of taunt deck
Ur think ur being smart editing your dumbass comment to something else to make me look bad? Try again.
It’s a standard deck.
I dunno... Probably 20-25 games in now from 10-7 back to 8, back to 7, back to 8, and while I am positive overall, I'm not really climbing. The deck is great fun, but if you don't draw challenger, you basically don't win against most of the meta right now. Yes, you can get some crazy good aggro draws early game that push you over the edge, but there are so many times you get your opponent down to 4hp and then they just stabilize completely and there's nothing you can do because you don't have mass removal of any kind. It's super polarizing, and sometimes extremely frustrating when you just need that one last bit of damage but you have no card draw, no direct dmg to face (if they have taunt heals). I've tried this version, and some of the recommended changes throughout the discussion (cutting Zilliax for Spellbreaker, and Rhyssa for Dread Corsair) but the games just always seem to play out the same.
If you don't have Challenger for turn 6/7, you lose your board basically always.
That all said - I have probably top 1% terrible mulligan luck in the game.
It's true that mysterious challenger is definitely the mvp in the deck but I have played this deck enough to know that you can definitely finish out games even before turn 6 mostly thanks to secretkeeper and brazen zealot. For that reason, your ideal preys are midrangey decks that don't have a lot of early options (like quest shaman, quest druid, highlander hunter).
The control matchups on the other hand are problematic, and nzoth priest is unfortunately pretty popular, it's by far the worst matchup for this deck (worse than control warrior), even though you can try running tech cards like spellbreaker for that matchup you will mostly lose, it's just due to the nature of the game, control beats aggro.
Also I can definitely say that this is a hard deck to pilot as far as aggro decks go since there are many factors to this deck. Firstly, unlike other aggro decks, this doesn't have a lot of card draw/generation, so you need to be aware of your resources and learn how to use them. Secondly, you need to learn and play to the strengths of your own secrets, they are actually pretty valuable to secure some wins it's all about expecting how will your opponent react to the secrets you play according to the board state. And thirdly there are some details that are spesific to the matchups that you need to be aware of (like playing around certain removal cards, expecting and playing around secrets, playing around mc tech in certain matchups etc.).
For a full matchup guide you can also refer to pre-mysterious challenger version of the deck.
it does not work in the meta past rank 5, Too many decks counter it everyone plays really strong tier 1 games.. I won a few games with it but once i got ranked higher the meta changed and its all losses. Pally just isnt strong enough right now i don't think. I do much better with hybrid pally with holy wrath at these ranks :(.
Lol seems like a fun new meta thanks Blizzard :) !
Great deck 12-1 so far. Thank you for sharing!
Just curious why not a Prince Liam just in case of bad draw or something going wrong. Like a last minute hell Mary like a lot of warlock decks run to suddenly have legends if needed?
Also what about Immortal Prelate since he’d shuffle back into the deck with the buffs from the secrets or blessing of champions? I’m just a fairly new player especially with pally so I tinkering with it. Like mixing in those and Sword of Kings but I’m sure someone can assist me and just let me know why these cards don’t work well
I used to sometimes run him in my old version for the memes, but that is just what it is, a meme-tier card. It would significantly hurt the decks win rate and there are many problems with him. First of all, if you draw him in your early turns it's just a horrible 5 mana 5-5 that will sit in your hand until you run out of pretty much everything. Secondly, going with the warlock example, quest/plot twist warlock is a control type of deck that try to run you out of resources while completing a quest, and only then they play the rafaam to get 0 mana legendaries with the hero power and close out the game (not to mention it's a sub 50% winrate deck), whereas this deck is very aggresive and looks to finish games as early as by turn 5-6, so if it comes down to playing Liam to get the win that means you already lost. Thirdly, your average legendary sucks (especially when you don't get them for 0 mana).
If you got liam and desperately want to use him, I recommend playing control paladin with hakkar at the top end. After you play hakkar and got it's deathrattle off you turn the corrupted bloods into legendaries. It's a pretty good deck against control warrior (you gotta wait for them to play elysiana until you play hakkar though, also control warrior is getting less and less popular everyday), but of course sucks against pretty much anything else (i suppose it can be good against nzoth priest too which is pretty popular right now).
Sword of kings is just a horrible card, don't run it in ANY deck.
Immortal prelate is once again a meme-tier card, you don't want to run her in this deck since it's initially a 2 mana 1-3 (which is horrible) let's say you give it the 2 health buff from beaming sidekick, you shuffle it, draw it, and... it's still horrible. You just don't want to run her in any aggro deck since running her is just a big investment that you make for the late game. There are some control type of decks that make use of her. Some variations use undatakah and give him taunt and lifesteal (undatakah keeps the upgrades too after it gains immortal's deathrattle) to constantly shuffle him back into your deck, and there are some other variations that just buff the prelate too.
Thanks so much for the answers. I’m just trying to learn as much as possible and with just running my game on mobile I don’t get access to a lot of side programs like deck trackers and replays so I appreciate the reasoning you gave.