Hearthpwn

Hey guys - I've been playing Hearthstone off and on for a few years now and just got to legend for the first time with this version of mech paladin. Honestly, mech paladin is in a really good spot right now with this meta; a lot of the most common meta decks are great matchups for you. I re-downloaded Hearthstone a week ago and cruised from rank 25 to legend in 2 weeks (albeit logging about 6 hours a day over those 2 weeks) with a massive win streak on the home stretch of rank 5 to legend. If you've been struggling to make the final climb to legend before the season ends I would highly recommend this deck. The games are fast, the deck is cheap, and you don't have to put a huge amount of thought into each turn.

MULLIGAN:

In general, you want to be doing a hard mulligan for crystology and galvanizer. The wombo combo that almost never loses is T1 crystology, T2 galvanizer, T3 flood the board with sticky mechs that snowball into a T6 win. If you have both crystology and galvanizer in your hand, always play the crystology first so that your galvanizer gets you maximum value. However, even though crystology and galvanizer are the highest priority, you should almost never send back any 1 drops and you should rarely send back any 2 drops. Mecharoo takes precedence due to how hard to remove it is - and any minion that sticks lets you snowball the early game board with magnetics like Glowtron. 

Here's the mulligan tier list:

ALWAYS KEEP: crystology, galvanizer, mecharoo, hot air balloon, glowtron, shotbot, micro mummy, and sn1p sn4p.

ALMOST ALWAYS KEEP: goboglide tech, sky claw, replicating menace, annoy-o-module. (These cards require a little more explanation. You want to keep goboglide tech when you have sticky early game minions that you know will make it to turn 3 so your goboglide is activated. A turn 3 4/4 with rush is better than any mech you could play on turn 3 except a value trade with a magnetic sn1p sn4p. So, you keep goboglide when you have a mecharoo OR any 1 drop with glowtron. Sky claw, replictating menace, and galvanizer you really only want to keep when you have galvanizer in hand, otherwise they are too slow. 

NEVER KEEP: any of the other cards. (the rest are 4 and 5 mana burn cards like truesilver champion, blessing of kings, and wargear. These cards are too slow to clog up your hand and ruin your early game. Mech pally is a snowball deck and these cards bring the progress of your snowball to a halt. You ideally want to draw them in the midgame to buff the early game minions you played earlier.

MATCHUPS GUIDE:

Hunter:

This is the best matchup by far. I had over an 80% winrate vs all varieties of hunter with this deck. Highlander is less favored than dragon, and dragon is less favored than face, but all three major variants struggle to deal with the sheer early game pressure you are able to exert with the mechs. In this matchup you really have to bring the heat - the 80% winrate can only be achieved by playing fast and furious. In practice, this manifests itself in hard mulliganing for cheap minions. For example, if you have a crystology and a mecharoo in your hand turn 1, you go for the mecharoo. While playing crystology turn 1 has a good chance of drawing galvanizer and giving you the nuts combo, you forfeit your turn 1 and have a chance to not even draw galvanizer. You also always want to be trading in the early game vs hunter. Minions like phase stalker or the guy that lets his hero power target minions let him lock you out of the board, and with mech pally being a board based deck, that means you lose the game. Trade in the early game, and then close it out in the midgame with powerful magnetic minions. Sidenote: you always have to be watching for a rotnest drake around turn 5. You want to be going wide rather than tall on the board vs a hunter to avoid the rotnest screwing you over.

Druid: 

This is the second best matchup, over 70%. Embiggen and quest druid only have any significant presence on the ladder because they hard counter rogue, but they do falter against any faster deck, especially one with a lot of board presence like mech paladin. Vs these decks you are on a timer - if the game reaches turn 7 or 8 you have probably already lost because the endgame value these decks are capable of churning out is nuts. You will never be able to deal with a Ysera unleashed or multiple winged guardians. Your only hope is to blitz them down in the first 6 turns before they outvalue you. Unlike vs hunter, since druid has little early game presence you can afford to go for greedy galvanizer plays. They are a little slower, but they allow you to flood the board on T3 and close out the game early.

Vs a treant druid, your game plan changes to be a lot closer to the game plan you follow vs hunter. Controlling the early game board is your objective, so that you can snowball turns 4, 5 and 6 with magnetic minions like replicating menace and wargear and outpace his damage. You always trade treants when possible. Only go face when you are 1 or 2 turns away from winning. If you lose your board presence you lose the game. Coming back from an empty board on turn 6 or 7 is almost impossible. 

Mage:

The game plan here is really similar to the game plan for embiggen and quest druid. Mage has almost no early game presence, which is easily exploitable for an early game centric deck like mech pally. Mage sucks against dragon hunter for this exact reason. If you haven't won by turn 7 or 8, the game is probably already over because the powerful sustain cards are going to start swinging the game back in the mage's favor. You are really just hoping they don't have reno the relicologist - if they do, you're screwed either way, so there's no point playing around it. Nevertheless, this is another 60%+ winrate matchup because of the weak early game board presence mage has. Going second boosts your winrate by a ton because you get more cards and the coin and mage doesn't even run a single 1 drop. 

Priest:

This matchup (40% wr) is kind of rough and makes you want to uninstall the game sometimes. The sheer number of stall tools priest has is pretty reliably able to stall you out and reclaim the board. You only win this one if you are able to draw the nuts combo with crystology and double galvanizer and the priest fails to draw any of his convincing infiltrators or mass hysterias. You can afford to be a little greedy in the early game here, but most of the time its not enough to kill him before he stabilizes.

Rogue: 

This is another one of the worst matchups you have (45% wr for both gala and highlander variants). Rogue's early game presence of backstab, pharaoh cat, edwin, and all the lackeys does a great job of neutralizing any kind of board you might try and set up. On top of this, once you get to midgame T5, 6, 7 etc. the rogue has so many value tools you almost always lose. Similar to the priest matchup, you only when if you have an insane early game with a consistent curve and the rogue fails to draw his early game cards. 

Warrior:

This used to be a terrible matchup, but the HoF has neutered gala warrior's winrate and playrate on the ladder by getting rid of acolyte card draw and leeroy burst. If you do queue into a warrior right now, it's most likely a control warrior using dr. boom. Vs control, you have to balance board presence with keeping reserve units in your hand. Playing everything only to have it brawled is an easy way to lose. Control warrior doesn't play very many early game minions, so you can afford to play less minions and bait out removal. Either way, if you don't succeed in killing him by turn 7 or 8 and he plays boom, you might as well concede. The game is already over.

Shaman, Warlock, and Paladin:

I group all three of these together because their game plan and your counter-reaction is the same for all three (assuming the warlock is playing a gala zoo variant, which most warlocks are). These decks rely on establishing early game dominance and snowballing that with wide board buffs like bloodlust and its ilk to win early. You combat this by trading aggressively in the early game so that you can play magnetic minions later and win the face race. Take every trade you can initially, even at a terrible value loss, because it will prevent them from buffing minions. Vs other paladins especially, you cannot afford to let a mech live on the other side of the board. Luckily, these matchups are pretty heavily favored if you trade well - in the vicinity of 60% across the board.

GENERAL STRATEGY:

You almost always want to trade on T1, T2, T3, and starting on T4 only trade with taunt minions and huge threats that lose you the game. The reason for this is that you really don't do that much damage before T4 anyways. All of the big damage cards take the form of magnetic minions and buffs like blessing of kings that you have to apply to minions you've already played. Keeping your minions on the board should be your highest priority.

The moment you lose the board, you lose the game. It's nigh impossible to come back after T4 if you have no board presence. Taking every trade you can in the early game ensures your early game minions survive to the midgame.

The ideal play vs an aggressive deck like hunter looks something like this: T1 play mecharoo/hot air balloon. T2 play glowtron onto the 1 drop you already played and trade whatever minion your opponent played. If your opponent didn't play a minion, a micro mummy or shotbot is your preferred play. T3 is a goboglide that  you want to trade into your opponent's minions, or a sn1p sn4p magnetize you use to trade. Playing sky claw on T3 is risky, and you almost always want to save it for when you have a wide board, for example when your sn1p sn4p or replicating menace dies. T4 and T5 you play minions like annoy-o-module, replicating menace, blessing of kings, wargear, and zilliax to close out the game. If the game is still going by T8 there is a 90% you lose. 

The ideal play vs an endgame value deck like druid or mage is something like this: T1 crystology, T2 galvanizer or coin double galvanizer with a flood of the 0 cost minions you just discounted, T3 you play the rest of the minions in your hand, and T4-T7 you play whatever you topdeck since your out of cards and hope to God your opponent doesn't have a board clear. 

CLOSING THOUGHTS:

Don't let the bad winrates vs rogue, priest, and warrior scare you away. Priest and warrior make up so little of the meta these days it doesn't matter at all, and the absurdly high winrates vs druid and hunter more than make up for a subpar performance vs rogue. There's a reason this deck is currently the highest performing deck on HSReplay. Like I said earlier, the games are fast, the deck is cheap, and you don't have to worry about making misplays. Any half decent player can pilot this deck to legend. It took me a grand total of 187 games to climb from rank 15 to legend in 2 weeks. If I can do it, you can too. If this guide helped you, please upvote (this is my first decklist on hearthpwn, so hopefully it turns out ok). Good luck out there fellas.