+1
Favorite this Deck

Buffadin

  • Last updated Apr 1, 2016 (Explorers)
  • Edit
  • |

Wild

  • 21 Minions
  • 6 Spells
  • 3 Weapons
  • Deck Type: Ranked Deck
  • Deck Archetype: Unknown
  • Crafting Cost: 7880
  • Dust Needed: Loading Collection
  • Created: 11/14/2015 (Explorers)
View Similar Decks View in Deck Builder

  • Battle Tag:

    ezz#1234

  • Region:

    US

  • Total Deck Rating

    32

View 29 other Decks by ISBPathfinder
Link:
BBCode:
Export to

Since I first saw them, I really liked the Lightbane / Darkbane sisters design. In general a 3/4 for 3 is a good stat to cost margin and it dodges a lot of the baseline removal that costs less than or as much to cast as they do. With the release of The League of Explorers, I became increasingly interested in designing a deck to utilize them as we had Djinni of Zephyrs and Summoning Stone also introduced.

My first version of this deck came out as an aggro deck that tried using all of these effects. I then shifted to trying to play control as it fit Summoning Stone a little bit better and I wanted to see how that card functioned for me. Eventually I decided through a lot of testing that Summoning Stone was a trap as it was sort of a multi card assembly that was just decent value if I could set it up. I shifted to midrange and dropped Summoning Stone because it was a stat trap in that it dies easily and doesn't do much potentially if just slow rolled into play.

OPENING HANDS:

My standing rule for opening hands is that if it costs 5+ or is a buff its going out. My ideal cards kept tend to be 1-3 mana minions. I ideally like the minions that dont support other minions if you have the option. Argent Protector for example is a great minion but I dont really want to just drop him as a 2 drop if I can help it so its also possible to throw back minions dependent on other minions or you can if you want run them out as they are still not bad stats for the mana in a pinch.

Ideal cards in opening hands tend to be Shielded Minibot, Eydis Darkbane, Fjola Lightbane, Shade of Naxxramas, Muster for Battle, and Piloted Shredder. Ideally speaking what you are looking for is non responsive minions if you can get them. Minions like Zombie Chow, Leper Gnome, Sir Finley Mrrgglton, Worgen Infiltrator, Haunted Creeper, Knife Juggler, Loot Hoarder, and Nerubian Egg all resemble the type of minion who can be dropped into an empty board state just was well. Ideally in opening hands you are looking more for proactive minion drops  and less for reactive minion drops.

Mentality of the Deck:

Ideally try to get immediate value when you go to cast a buff spell. I rarely buff a creature and go for the face as too often there is not enough value from that. Keep in mind if you buff a creature and then have it removed you just got 2 for 1ed so try to keep buffs as a combat trick to make a bad trade become a good one. We have a limit to our buffs so outside of a hand that is very buff heavy I wait for important momentum shift situations to use them. Play your creatures and control the board with what you already have primarily.

Keep in mind with buff effects that its similar in general to having a charge minion. Whats great about buff effects though is its not just a charge minion but you super charge that minion so often times you can just beat your opponents defenses they just set up where it looks like you couldn't when your opponent passed turn. It doesn't just allow us to kill opposing minions but pass back to our opponents with a much larger threat which is hard to combat if your opponent cannot completely remove your board presence.

Card Overview:

  • Creatures:
  • Zombie Chow - amazing vs aggro, just sort of ok everywhere else. He is great in opening hands regardless of who you are up against but when drawn later against a lot of decks he falls off. I run one still because I feel he is really good against the aggro decks. If you see a lot of aggro run a second copy or if you just want a little more early game it can be decent.
  • Ironbeak Owl -  I run this card as a means of countering Ice Mage's Frost Nova + Doomsayer. I could not come up with another answer for pally to really interact with that combo and its really rough because its a full wrath that stalls and steals essentially a full turn of yours otherwise. It can be handy against control decks too but generally speaking I try to find them against mage currently. I would say something like 1/5 of the decks I have been facing recently have been frost mage which is enough to justify some hate for them.
  • Loot Hoarder - Generally speaking your opponent will always spend just as much mana as you did to clear this guy. They trade decently and they draw a card on death which things your deck. Its a potential buff target and it will draw removal which is great. It might seem small but he is moving you through your deck faster while giving good early game presence that doesn't fall off much later.
  • Shielded Minibot - He is sort of the bread and butter early game. He has a lot of value and picks up buffs very nicely as well as being somewhat hard to remove. If you play him on curve and dont see opposition, buffing him with a Blessing of Wisdom can run you away with a game. He picks up buffs well and gives lots of early game value.
  • Loot Hoarder - what I like about this guy is that your opponent almost always spends the same amount of mana as you did to get rid of him and if they dont it leaves you with a minion that can be buffed or traded with. Zombie Chow is one of the few things that deals with him well and he thins your deck setting you up and giving you early game presence that is solid throughout the game.
  • Deathlord - I will call this guy out specifically for a few reasons. There is a lot of removal in this game that does not directly kill this guy. Dropping him on curve vs an aggro deck can be a huge shift in momentum and midrange decks often have to rely on dropping a bigger creature to try to defeat him. Against aggro and midrange decks buffing this guy can be a huge blow out. Keep in mind what sort of tactics you are seeing though as a warrior Execute can feel like about one of the worst things ever.
  • Eydis Darkbane - she is a 3/4 for 3 mana which is a good stat stick on her own. If and when you buff her she starts throwing removal around. The hardest part of her is if you drop and buff her immediately or drop her and see if she is still there next turn. She is almost always good on curve where there are few things that trade without being 2 for 1s into killing her. She is a little more questionable in the mid game where you might need to drop and pump her to make her relevant. Keep in mind with her ability that your opponent and all of their creatures are potential targets. You can use this to your advantage by killing off small chaff creatures beforehand with attacks if you dont want them to be an option of her buff target or you can just spin the wheel.
  • Fjola Lightbane - similarly to her sister she is a 3/4 for 3 mana who is very good on curve. The big difference between the sisters is that I feel that Fjola is better against one large creature and Eydis tends to be better against a swarm of smaller creatures. Fjola is a better target for effects like Blessing of Might and Blessing of Wisdom where as I like Eydis more when it comes to Seal of Champions (as she doesn't default gain divine shield). If you were to ask me which of the sisters are generically more playable I think my answer is Eydis. In this deck I enjoy both in different situations though.
  • Piloted Shredder - Shreadder is always fairly good value. It gives you two creatures if not silenced and has good base power. It can be removed by quite a few of the normally used removal effects but he comes with a friend. Its good value and its often messy to clean up in one go. He defines what the power curve of 4 drops looks like and should be considered when looking at 4 drop minions. Because we get two bodies out of the deal he is robust vs sweepers and helps maintain board presence to put out buffs.
  • Summoning Stone - I played this creature for a very long time. What I can say about it after having it both in and out of the deck for a long while is that the problem with this creature is that it has no attack and it costs 5 to drop while incentivizing killing it. This means that you will have to have very good control of the board already when you drop it or you will have to combo it with other cards in one turn to try to get your value from it. I tried pushing it for a long time and even with the option of buffing it in the same turn I found in the end it ends up being too expensive and or too situational of a creature to really validate playing. I have resolved a lot of Lay on Hands into amazing game ending 8 drop creatures but even with that I will say that many of the times that this card has worked for me have been situations I already had the game under fairly good control. If it had picked up a little better stats I think I could say otherwise but for the mana and the body it comes with it requires a turn of comboing or it becomes somewhat of a winmore effect. 
  • Djinni of Zephyrs - remember with him that he is still a 4/6 and a lot of the time that is enough to draw some fairly major removal. If you drop him in and he eats a Fireball that is still fairly good as they paid almost as much as you did to remove him. As a 4/6 he can still make an easy 2 for 1 against your opponent so dont be too shy about just dropping him in and seeing if your opponent panics. You dont need to buff him immediately to get good value.
  • Sludge Belcher - he is very strong against a lot of aggro and midrange tactics but a little slow in. His biggest downside is that it takes a while to get into play as a 5 drop but he does all sorts of work when he hits play assuming he doesn't eat a silence. The fact that he pops into a smaller taunter is great on death too because if they cant immediately kill the smaller taunt you get a chance to buff his small taunt and beat up on your opponent additionally. His biggest downside is that he isnt that impressive against 5/5 minions or bigger and a lot of control has decent removal for interacting with him so he is definitely an anti aggro and somewhat of a midrange tactic style of minion.[/spoiler]
  • Tirion Fordring - he blocks the way quite nicely and his equipment he gives on death is extremely powerful for closing out the game. He is vulnerable to Polymorph effects as well things like Entomb but outside of those effects he tends to be a tough guy to remove. I usually dont worry too much about getting value from him outside of his normal effects but he is a very powerful finisher.
  •  Spells / Equipment
  • Blessing of Might - Its just a power buff so often times it will result in a two for one trade on your end unless you are not generating extra value from it somewhere or putting it on a minion with Divine Shield. It generates good value on minions like Shielded Minibot and Fjola Lightbane because they will generate additional value from it. Its also good with Djinni of Zephyrs where you can possibly drop the Djinni and buff another creature which will result in a 2 for 1 but you get the extra value out of the Djinni making it acceptable. In general, its not a very good buff for Summoning Stone because random one drops are mostly miserable. It becomes more viable to run more copies of this if you are going for a more aggressive approach using Echoing Ooze.
  • Blessing of Wisdom - its an amazing card because at a minimum its a targeted spellcast that almost always draws you a card unless you are buffing before you can attack which sometimes comes up with the sisters but generally speaking it will be a targeted buff that will give you another card and can generate more value.
  • Muster for Battle - it gives great board presence against aggro. It also gives a lot of bodies for if you need to put a buff on a creature as in a lot of cases against aggro at least one will survive the turn. Its not a card that has a ton of synergy with this deck but it gives bodies to buff, an equipment for small removal, and a decent trigger for Summoning Stone.
  • Seal of Champions - this car is so much value when you can get everything to aline correctly. You can take a smaller minion and ramp them up to kill a larger minion while living through the process and having a bigger stat set afterwards as well. Deathlord, Sludge Belcher, and Eydis Darkbane are some of my favorite targets for this effect. We have a lot of somewhat small minions in deck that just kick big guys aside when you buff them with the Seal. It works really well with Djinni of Zephyrs and Summoning Stone as well. People dont really expect a Summoning Stone to pick up some power and smash into their creatures generally speaking.
  • Truesilver Champion - I like it for the size of the removal I get as well as having two uses and mitigating some of the damage you are taking with its lifegain. In general its a very good general use equipment. Pally doesn't have a lot of removal so its nice having some reach with this equipment.
  • Blessing of Kings - its nice that this buff gives so much power and toughness at the same time. Use it to have big beefy minions and do profitable trades. I can generally get a 3 for 2 or at least a 2 for 2 out of this effect and it usually.
  • Lay on Hands - it gives some lifegain I otherwise am not running in the list currently as well as a bunch of cards to hand. It has great synergy with Summoning Stone as most of the time if you can resolve a Lay on Hands with Summoning Stone in play you will be swimming in so much value that your opponents just sort of die.
  •  Test Wishlist
  • Clockwork Gnome - he gives spare parts and is super cheap to drop. He usually takes more mana to remove than he costs while giving us a minor use spell cast in his part. I would say just over half of the parts are good and the other three are somewhere between situational to just meh.
  • Annoy-o-Tron - he protects from two attacks generally speaking and could be a good buff target. I like him with Blessing of Might quite a bit as a theory but thats a card that I normally dont like as much and only run one copy of. He might be better in a more aggro focused list.
  • Nerubian Egg - it pumps well and its something people generally dont really like to deal when when it drops. It gets better though if I also run taunt enabling and or temporary buffing. It seems strong with essentially any of the pally buffs though and it could be really good with Coghammer as well. It needs a few things to really be good but I think it has potential.
  • Defender of Argus - it shares some buffing across a few creatures + gives me some additional taunt. I like the amount of power and power spread as well as the capability of slightly bumping two creatures at the same time.
  • Keeper of Uldaman - I like that it can be used on either side of the field so I can buff creatures or bring creatures down for removal. This card has some good interaction with the sisters but I have a lot of creatures that would still have issues with a 3/3 without buffing up. There arent a lot of creatures I would want to turn into 3/3s on my side outside of the pally recruits either.
  • Murloc Knight - good value over time but I worry about dropping it early and seeing if it lasts. Its got potential but its easier to work with Piloted Shreadder generally speaking than getting the extra mana to get a value generator when I seem to have enough value generation currently.
  • Antique Healbot - some of the tempo / aggro decks can catch up if you have a bad hand or they get a really good one. For me it comes down to that I dislike his size when it comes to vs control matchups. He sits in hand for a long time and has a bad set of stats when he does get played against control.
  • Tuskarr Jouster - it comes in as a question similarly to the Antique Healbot. I like its stats but the uncertain lifegain seems concerning. I like this a lot more than the healbot vs control but if you are going to run the lifegain I feel its goal is for vs aggro where the healbot is more reliable.
  • Loatheb I like the fact that if I drop him I probably keep him through the turn. As far as the stats for the mana he is good. I keep meaning to try to make room for testing him.
  • Hogger - Its 6/6 worth of P/T that generates value over time if your opponent cant kill him outright. He demands being removed quickly while generating taunters to block for you. Both he and his token would probably take pally buffs nicely.
  • Toshley - The parts work well with the Lightbane / Darkbane sisters and he has a decent body with triggers that support the sisters well.
  • Arch-Thief Rafaam - Its interesting to think about the powerful artifacts since you get to explore them it means pick the one you want. I like that he gives a good power / toughness minion who has a crazy good follow up turn. Its very late game but the control match has been a bit tricky for me against heavy control. Both Lantern of Power and Mirror of Doom sound like powerful effects.