Top4Paladin
- Last updated Sep 14, 2015 (TGT Launch)
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Wild
- 16 Minions
- 14 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 2360
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 8/28/2015 (TGT Launch)
- muirhead01
- Registered User
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- 5
- 7
- 14
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
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Total Deck Rating
930
Hi I'm Muirhead who previously wrote a Top8Patron guide.
Here is my take on the recently popular secret paladin, which I piloted to rank 4 NA legend:
Proof:
I then proceeded to win five games in a row at rank 4 and then lose one all while staying at rank 4! I've never lost a game and maintained the same rank before.
I don't have anything as refined to say about this deck as I did for my patron list, because I only have 63 games recorded with this exact list! However, a few comments are in order.
Mulligans: Keep 1 and 2 mana minion drops and the mysterious challenger. Throw away all secrets, even if you have secret keeper. Keep divine favor only if you strongly suspect you are playing handlock or freeze mage. When playing against rogue, toss juggler in favor of a more sticky 2 drop. Depending on the MU and hand it is often good to keep muster as well.
This deck is very aggressive but has almost no reach, so it plays a lot like demonzoo. At some point you will have to try to rush face, usually after playing the 6 drop. Like demonzoo, when ahead on board it is important to play sticky minions against potential board clears.
The game plan is to flood the board in the early turns and get in some damage. If you draw shredder you can win just from this early aggression, but most of the time you will need to draw a divine favor or mysterious challenger by turn 6 or 7. Either of these cards will draw an immense amount of value, giving the reach you need to finish the game.
The challenger is both amazingly strong and it thins the bad draws from your deck. If possible, try to engineer maximum draw when you play the challenger: don't have a secret in play already that you can draw the second copy of from your deck.
The most unvaforable MU for the deck is face hunter with double explosive trap, which races you aggressively. Other unfavorable MUs include freeze mage and patron warrior. In my small sample size and testing I have a very good winrate vs all other decks.
Repentance is very key to play carefully in certain matchups. It is your #1 tool vs handlock and patron. On turns 5 and 6 patron might want to make a set of 4 patrons on an empty board to crush you, but he cannot play patron when repentance is up. Against handlock, if you set them below 10 HP when repentance is up they cannot play molten giant.
Edit: After a lot of playing and watching people play this deck I have some gameplay tips. I saw a lot of people losing against other paladins to consecration. Most of them were playing far too aggressively and not trading enough. Most paladins have no reach, so board control is much much more important than face damage in the matchup. My other tip is that a naked mysterious challenger is much weaker than a mysterious challenger supported by minions. If you have the choice between flooding the board effectively (i.e. using all your mana on sticky minions) and playing challenger it is sometimes correct to hold off on the challenger for one turn.
Possible tech choices: To improve the matchup against aggro and weaken it vs control, switch leper gnomes for squires. An early game leper gnome against a control deck often translates into about 4 more damage than an early game squire, and it's a much better topdeck late game vs control. However, in the mirror squires are better.
If you feel you are suffering for late game reach with this deck, consider switching one copy of competitive spirit for truesilver champion, a buff, or a big minion. The two weaker secrets in this style of deck are competitive spirit and redemption. If you do decide to run kings, squires become better.
My current version of the deck runs one less leper gnome, repentance, redemption, and competitive spirit. In their place I use coghammer, Loatheb, and 2x blessing of kings.
By request I've linked to some amazingly well-produced video guides to the deck. Not all of them showcase perfect play but they'll give good ideas of how the general gameplan works!
I never commented on hearthpwn before, but your deck is just AWESOME. I was looking for a deck to do paladin win dailies and started at rank 14 yesterday. Then I was just curious at what rank I was going to get my first loss... it was rank 8. And today I continued with this deck, and in just two losses I'm now rank 5. Not going to go any further, I'm just here for the chest, but it's honestly the first deck to get me this far this fast. I do hope they won't counter it too soon.
Extremely nice job! <3
PS: I thought, 2 Divine favor was a little bit too much (a lot of aggro, few cards in opponents' decks), so I replaced one with Murloc Knight. Worked quite fine.
Glad to hear it served you well and I hope you get some awesome golden cards!
It's a bit too slow. You don't really want to be using hero power and most games are decided by turn 7 anyway.
Thanks for the deck this got me from rank 4, 3 stars to legend for the 1st time with only 5 losses. From rank 2, 3 stars to legend I didn't lose. Amazing deck.
Congrats on rank 1.
congrats. did you use the original version of this deck or modified?
Any fair Avenge replacement?
Avenge is pretty much required in this deck since it's a secret and has a great effect. Just buy Naxx with gold/money and be good. Or try your own replacements: maybe another 1 drop.
Omg the deck is amazing! It beats most of the decks in the ladder, but its really weak against aggro, like face hunter. In this kind of matchup you will need to wisely use Noble Sacrifice to protect yourself from minions with charge, and hope he doesn't get any explosive traps, or else you're pretty much dead.
If your board is stacked with 1 or 2 health minions you can play around explosive trap. Use secrets to buff and trade well until you get 2 or 3 that are above 2 health then attack the boss. Just don't attack even if you have 4 minions that can and his face is the only thing on the board.
So.. i will use a lepper gnome or an argent squire?
Pretty cool how as i climbed from rank 15 to 1 i noticed that no matter how many wins i got against decks designed to beat ones like this specifically hunter won every single time.
Muir, I don't know if you have tried consecration yet, but i found it decent until about rank 2-3 but around there and legend it doesn't perform as well, so if you were looking to refine more you might wanna skip over consecration and try other things for now
anybody else try to squeeze in Gormok the Impaler in here?
Loved the deck till lvl12. When you say to replace leper gnomes with squires. Which squires are you talking about please.? Argent squire? Or the one in tgt which has inspire +1 attack. Thx
Argent squire
Thx bro
I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble :(. I'm currently rank 22 Legend with a slight variation of this deck, so I think it's still possible to do well with it.
what's your current variation for the deck? =)
What changes have you been running for your current incarnation?