Hearthpwn

Hey hearthstone people. I'm Aether Lackey, a casual non-terrible player, and today I want to share a 15/2 win-rate deck that just scorched me through rank 11 to 6 in a couple of hours.  Games covered a good variety of decks, never felt hopeless. Handlock is the hardest match and rendered me one of the losses, the other one was due to the only unplayable hand in the series, against a mage.

No big whoop. Zombie Chow into Shielded Minibot into Muster for Battle is still good, no need for fancy secretkeeper and bad secrets for this deck to roll. Murloc Knight also joins the party, as it has proven itself a top tier card in my opinion. 

The main twist in my list is Silver Hand Regent. Granted, he is not nearly as powerful as his murloc comrade, but I've noticed that together they make for incredible board presence establishers. You won't get to see them alongside very often, even so they do a good job by themselves. Together they're pretty insane.

The deck runs a good deal of heals in the form of 2x Truesilver Champion, Guardian of Kings (I like this over healbot for the body and over Tuskarr Jouster for the reliability) and finally Lay on Hands.  Might not look like much, but given that the deck focusses greatly in board control, you should never have your life points too threatened at the point you can cast Guardian of Kings and Lay on Hands.

Attempt at synthesizing the common sense rules for this deck:

1. Your main objective is to control the board for as long as you need, generally until you can finish your opponent off. In order to do so;

a. Make a big effort to have your minions survive at least one combat, get the "freebies" as much as possible in the early game, this will enable you to safely enter the midgame and overwhelm your opponent.

b. Avoid leaving minions in "sweep" spell range. Even if you don't know if your opponent has Holy Nova for his turn 5 or Swipe at the early 2-5 turns, play around it IF POSSIBLE. Even if this means not using all your mana this turn, or playing a targetless Aldor Peacekeeper. If you're starting your turn without minions and your opponent has one, you're doing it wrong.

c. "READY FOR ACTION". Just tap that damn thing. It is very likely better to have a turn 3 zombie chow + hero power than a naked Silver Hand Regent. The 1/1 tokens make for perfect "minion finishers", enabling you to trade favorably using your turn 1-2 minions that survived to finish off a turn 3-5 opponent minion.

d. As long as "b" is being taken into consideration and the board allows it, use your mana efficiently. That means planning at least one turn ahead. Instead of casting two 1-drops on turn two, consider using your hero power now and casting one of those 1-drops next turn, along with a 2-drop or another hero power. Just remember to check the board and try not to allow your opponent to kill off one of your minions without losing any, that's our job.

e. Don't be afraid to smash your face against minions, as long as you maintain board control things should work out. Also don't waste Truesilver Champion charges on your opponents face, unless you're going for lethal or if Tirion Fordring is about to die. Harrison Jones is not showing up as much lately, so it should be safe to keep 1 charge around.

2. Outside of very specific corner-cases, a.k.a. when you have no other option at all, treat Silver Hand Regent as a 5 drop and Murloc Knight as a 6 drop (+ hero power). Your objective is to keep the board under control until you can unleash these guys.

3. If you identify a favorable circumstance, abandon board control and go face. When doing so, make sure you are ~90% safe your opponent can't do stuff like Azure Drake + Swipe and clean your board, as it might be hard to recover if you overextended hoping to avoid a board clear.

4. Mulligan 4+ cost away on the play. Keep stuff like truesilver and consacration when you feel they will be relevant on the draw IF you have at least a 2 plays for the first 3 turns. I wouldn't keep 5+ stuff, not even harrison against warrior. One of the strengths of this deck is having very strong options at the start to counter those of your opponent, if you keep late-game stuff on your opener it will be harder to answer their threats properly. 

As for the card choices, I enjoy the swing cards, thus the Big Game Hunter and Harrison Jones. Master Jouster has not been winning most of the jousts, but it still has a nice body for trading or just face-damage. Only one [card]Quarternasters/card] feels like the perfect amount. 

If you were to substitute some of them, I'd recommend keep the curve as is, it feels very balanced when I play.

Oh, did I mention this? THE DECK IS FUN. Feels liberating not to play Shredder.