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
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- 14
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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!
This deck has singlehandedly made me play flare again.
You managed to make aggro paladin even more frustrating to play against.
"Thank you" - Uther
i just put out 2 secret keepers and then put out a mysterious challenger AND THEY DONT GET THE BUFFS... Wtf. I seriously don't know how anyone beats anything with this deck.
Kind of obvious they wouldn't get the buffs, they aren't PLAYED, they're put onto the battlefield.
The keepers are mostly for turns 1-5, while the challenger is for turn 6 :)
I guess I got horrible draws then. But to Sasha, how is that obvious? You're an idiot if you can't understand my perspective. Downvote me please
the deck has been good for me, however I can't beat Consecration
The only thing I can suggest is to carefully make trades that play around common AOEs.
Was rank 1 yesterday 1 win away from legend twice. Then I kept losing so I tried different decks and found this one and nope now I'm almost rank 4. Fml
What do you think about putting tirion in this deck? Also, is repentance really necessary?
If you want to experiment you could try cutting a leper gnome or secret for a big card like truesilver, tirion, boom, loatheb, etc.
The repentance plays the role of equality/owl. If you remove them you would have to put one of those in.
edit, I just feel disgusting playing this deck, I've been struggling between rank 4-5 with all sorts of decks, I haven't lost a single game yet with this, I don't even do anything speical just spam all the cards and destroy
feelsdirtyman.jpg
well I've run into the identical deck a couple of times in a row now, its pretty stupid if one person gets Mysterious challenger and one doesn't its over, pretty annoying and dumb lol
I've been climbing insanely with this deck. This is how the deck should be made. I'm getting an aggro pally playstyle, with the early secrets and secretkeeper keeping tempo and help control their plays since the early secrets it's very hard to predict what it could be, and then you have a turn 5/6 pretty much win button. Thank you, I wish I had been laddering earlier this month definitely could hit legend with this. :)
I'm glad you're enjoying the deck :)
Running in to nothing but face hunters. Stuck at level 4, as i have been for days. Do I go at their face early? or trade? just can't seem to get ahead of them.
Face hunters has been one of my strongest match ups. They're too busy going for face to deal with you minions which means your secrets can do work. My victories have been thanks to being able to make high value trades and removing face damage with sacrifice
Edit: knife juggler is also amazing with sacrifice as you often kill their minion before it even hits the 2/1
This deck has been explosively good and thank you for listing it.
However, I do worry that a decent chunk of the wins on this deck come from people not playing around the Paladin secrets. Paladin only has 5 secrets (nobody is counting Eye for an Eye right?) so when the Mysterious Challenger summons 5 of them, the secrets are no longer secret. But I keep seeing opponents make misplays. This is at rank 8 on ladder FWIW.
I am wondering if you have seen this happen more or less as you got closer to legend?
By now I believe everyone is well aware of the paladin secrets :o. Obviously this deck got some advantage from being fairly new though.
Even pro players are making terrible mistakes. Watching Strifrecro yesterday he used Aldor before activating Vengeance...
This deck is weak and RNG based.
HI man TY for the deck i just finally hit legend grinded my last 2 ranks with this deck with only 1 lose. its really awesome adjusted