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 love this deck and have been playing the hell out of it, but I've noticedSecretkeeper is rarely strategic.
Since the core of this deck is to keep minions on the board, have you considered swapping with something like Murloc Tidehunter or Echoing Ooze?
The deck wants 1 drop minions to play on turn 1 and to help curve later in the game. Secretkeeper to me feels about as good as zombie chow in this deck, without the drawback. If you want to try an echoing ooze variation I think that might be interesting! It feels more likely to be good than tidehunter to me.
I thought the same and did use Echoing Ooze. Obviously it's not a drastic change to the deck strategy but it feels to me a more valuable play during the hand; having that one little extra minion on the board makes the opponent have to worry more about Competitive Spirit and Avenge.
I find Secret Keeper to be a fair card in the deck. It's not going to win you games, but sometimes it does snowball a little which helps in trading upwards. With this deck, you almost always end up with a secret in your opening hand. Having Secret Keeper out on turn 1 helps it become kind of like old Undertaker, which I like. Of course, in some games it doesn't get buffed at all, but in that case you're still getting half an Ooze worth of value for half the mana.
There's literally no possible replacement. He's the centerpiece of the deck. If you don't have him, either you craft him or you play a different deck.
Still using this deck for this season, took me to Rank 5 from R17 in 3-4 hours.. totaly love this deck
changed one abusive and one leper gnome for Mr. Boom and a Truesilver...
AWESOME!
Have you ever felt like every deck is hard tech'ed against you? That's how I feel at the begining of s19. That's the thing with Secredin, very strong, but very predictable.
Hi Muirhead. Thank you so much for this amazing deck!
Just hit legend for the first time.. I used your decklist to climb from rank 18 all the way to rank 1 then adjusted the deck a bit to a midrange version and pushed it through to legend.
Can I add you on NA server? Thanks
Wulala14 bro, can you show me, your current deck ?
Based on Muirhead's current version. -2 Abusive Sergeant, -1 Leper Gnome, +1 Tirion Fordring, +1Dr. Boom, +1 Truesilver Champion
thx bro !!
Congrats on legend!! Glad you found a version of the deck that works for you: feel free to add Muirhead#1397 on NA if you want :)
Leper Gnome gives us turn 1 tempo. Abusive Sargent also get's us tempo on turn 1 plus helps us kill 3-5 health minions.
Boom and Tirion are dead cards until turn 7 and 8. Tirion can be removed with death or hex. Boom can be removed too and the bots are too RNG.
You can change this deck. All changes will be visible in the history of changes.
P.S. Thank you for this deck.
Congrats on your legend!
Congrats!
Roughly how many hours did it take you to reach rank 3 from 11 that day?
can i replace Mysterious Challenger with Mad Scientist?
No :)
great deck. Got me rank 5 after struggling at 6 for a while with other decks.
My version runs a cog hammer 2 blessing of kings, loatheb and dr boom subbing out a divine favour and one of each of the "weaker" secrets and one leper and one abusive sergeant.
I feel that gives up some secret power and early game but makes my mid game extremely scary. Dr 6 takes out all of the secrets from your deck so it makes it very very very likely that you draw into something bad ass like lotheb or a blessing of kinds which will let you finish the game almost right after dropping mysterious challenger, assuming he lives.