Hearthpwn

Complete gala warrior guide

Hey guys, it's goudhout back with another guide for you to enjoy and hopefully learn form. It has been a while since I last wrote a guide, and that is mainly because this site does not reward good content that well unless it gets enough upvotes to be on the frontpage, and for guides that I put so much time it, to see it then not hit the frontpage is frustrating to say the least. Anyways, corona has come to the Netherlands and I have 3 weeks without anything to do, and I am already bored as shit, so here is a guide.

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 Introduction

This guide will cover everything you need to know to effectively pilot galakrond warrior in your ladder games, so you can rack up a lot of wins.  I personnally pilotted this deck to top 100 legend, proof at the bottom of this section. What you can expect from this guide:

1. An explanation of the general gameplan, strengths and weaknesses of this deck.
2. A little bit about the thoughts and reasoning behind the deckbuilding (Will not be covering card for card like last times).
3. Some tips on possible and common techs.
4. An overview of the matchups against other meta decks.
5. Specific tips on mulligans and matchups.

I do want to put a disclaimer here, I did not make this deck, and will not claim to have made this deck, I took Monsanto's deck as a baseline and believe changed 1 card. The deck in itself is nothing special and the content I am trying to provide here is the guide. 

proof of rank: https://twitter.com/GoudhoutHS/status/1239168150370951171.

 

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Gala warrior in general

Galakrong warrior is a tempo deck that uses a variety of controlling and aggressive tools to take control of the board and quickly finish the game from that point. The large amount of invoke cards in our deck provide us with 3 attack on our hero which we can use to finish our opponents or take control of the board. While invoking we will not only enable our Scion of Ruin for big tempo swings, it will also upgrade Galakrond, the Unbreakable as our ultimate finisher.

The deck mainly revolves around curving well early on, taking control of the board by clearing early minions with our invokes. After this we can opt to start going face aggressively to finish our opponent, or we can choose to draw a lot so we can get and use Galakrond, the Unbreakable to win the game.  

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The deckbuilding

There are quite some notable things about this list that have become standard in high legend but might not be in the lower ranks. I will try explain why I run this list with these specific cards. 

Risky Skipper - While I actually asume, and hope, everyone already plays this card in their decks and is conviced about this card, I have still seen some players and even websites advertise that Eternium Rover is better. It is not a will not better than Risky Skipper. Risky Skipper allows for crazy Armorsmith or Battle Rage turns, it enables Bloodsworn Mercenary, Acolyte of Pain and Bomb Wrangler on top of that it can also be used to soften up the opponents board to allow good trades with Scion of Ruin. In order to do so you need to play this card well, the trick to it is that you NEVER play Risky Skipper unless, you can pop the f*ck off, you can play it t1, t2 with t3 wrangler or, it is thicc af bc it got buffed by gala.

Eternium Rover - I still play one copy of this card in my deck as it helps to get a more consistend curve, it is also really strong against the more aggressive decks in the meta like dragon hunter. 

Armorsmith - Some players are still not playing this card, which I actually do not understand, it is worse on curve than temple beserker, but this card actually allows you to pop the f*ck off with Risky Skipper often leading to what I like to call control warrio cosplay, because you have more than 50 health. 

Acolyte of Pain - This is the last card I will talk about in this section, and actually probably the 30th card in the deck. However with smart usage of Risky Skipper, Acolyte of Pain will provide you with a lot of cards, which offers a great deal of extra consistency in drawing Galakrond, the Unbreakable. 

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Tech's

To be honest this will not really all be about techs but mostly just changes to the deck you can make if you really want to. However so I am still quite conviced that in the meta I am playing in at high legend this deck is the best out there.

Kor'kron Elite - This is a card that still a lot of people are playing in their decks, and it is a good card for this deck. You can replace Leeroy Jenkins if you dont have leeroy or if you just feel the need to have a charger that is better in the middle stages of the game. As an alternative you can also cut 1 Acolyte of Pain, if you just want a more aggressive, burst heavy deck. 

Cruel Taskmaster - overall I myself would not play this card in my deck, but if you feel the need to have more early game pressure this is a decent option. To make place for taskmaster you could either remove a 1 drop from the deck or cut 1 Acolyte of Pain.

SN1P-SN4P - This will always be a decent card to put into any deck, so its the same for galakrond warrior, it also works well with Eternium Rover and the bombs from Bomb Wrangler. Just as with the other cards if you need to make space  cut 1 Acolyte of Pain.

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Matchups

I will provide a matchup chart to show the winpercentages against the popular meta decks. These winrates are based on my own stats, the stats on hsreplay, the matchup charts on tempostorm, and the stats from vicious syndicate combined to give a proper overview of the winrates if you play well. 

I could not get the picture embedded so here is a link: https://imgur.com/a/H7FsWzT.

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Mulligan

To  this section of I want to give some general tips on the mulligan , these will mostly hold for all of matchups.

Always keep - Galakrond, the Unbreakable, Town Crier, Ritual Chopper, Bomb Wrangler and Risky Skipper.

Sometimes keep - Devoted Maniac, Eternium Rover and Armorsmith.

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Matchups

Now I will move on to give tips on how to play specific matchups, however I would like to start this section of with a more general tip.

Most games you will want to play the same, its kinda like a cycle. Every game you start of with grabbing board control from the start on, after the first 4-5 turns have passed, and you have mostly used your resources, you want to be drawing as much as you can. Turns 7-9 you will hopefully have drawn gala, and now you have the choice to either fully invoke gala, or play him for 2 minions. 9/10 times, it is worth it to play gala for 2, dont get baited into making 2 very weak turns just so you can draw 4 and still lose because your opponent was able to get the board. 

Now for the matchups specific tips

Rogue- the Rogue matchup heavily relies on early board control, this is mu where Armorsmith is a keep, if you can sneak in a lot of chip damage early you can go for an early lethal, but dont get too caught up in it as rogue's do have a lot of anti aggro tools these days. Most of the times it is correct to be patient and wait for gala, as your gala provides you naturally with a lot more value that his does on average. 

Highlander hunter- This is a more difficult matchup, there is not a lot to say about this matchup other than the fact that you can be a lot more aggressive than in other matchups if you have the right tools. Hunters only have limited healing and taunts so most often if you go face they will have to race you. You can make this impossible with Armorsmith and Risky Skipper. What is also important in this matchup is that you play gala as soon as possible, if they give you the time, you should play it. If you get greedy they will most of the times play brann, which makes you sad and miserable because now you cant play gala because it is too slow. 

Other hunters - against the other hunters it is mostly playing for tempo throughout every match. However against the more aggressive hunters Armorsmith is key, if you use Armorsmith to do some control warrior cosplay, they probably have to concede. 

Highlander mage and galakrond warlock - These matchups play mostly the same and dont really have any specific tips, just follow the cycle and dont play too much into their AOE and you will be fine. 

Druid - both druid matchups play out mostly the same, however against the quest druid smorcing is also a semi consistent gameplan, they will almost always have the heal and removal, but you are so unfavoured that you can take that risk. Otherwise both druids boil down to the same, just play gala early, if you can play gala early and have a  Bloodsworn Mercenary to copy your big boi, you have a good shot to win. 

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Final words

If you liked the guide and want to stay updated on high legend decks you can follow my twitter : https://twitter.com/GoudhoutHS.

This guide took quite some time to write and put together, so I hope you enjoyed it, if you did it would be really cool if you could give it a upvote, if this deck does well I might consider writing another guide soon.