Hearthpwn

Hello! This is my first deck ever posted to Hearthpwn. I am not a good player by any stretch of the imagination, but I love Hearthstone (having only just started playing this year - 2015!) and I especially love the League of Explorers expansion. I was so charmed by the cast of characters that, once I completed the Solo Adventure, I decided to build a deck around them!

Named for Uncharted 2, another game about treasure hunters, this deck was built around two ideas:

• Have fun with the 5 legendary heroes from League of Explorers, at the expense of not including other legendaries in the deck
  • Sir Finley Mrrgglton
  • Brann Bronzebeard
  • Elise Starseeker
  • Reno Jackson
  • Arch-Thief Rafaam
• Build this on the cheap - like I said above, I'm a relatively new player, and have only shelled out money for the expansions. Money well spent, but I didn't want to chase a deck that I'd have to pay for - especially a deck that would lose as often as this one does. When it loses, it's ridiculous. But when it wins, it's so sweet. 

The main gist of the deck is to stay alive long enough to get Elise Starseeker to get Map to the Golden Monkey to get the Golden Monkey, at which point fame and fortune will surely be yours.

To stay alive long enough to fish this combo out, the deck uses cheap taunt, lots of bounce, a little removal, and a flagrant disregard for your own life total. Attack minions all you want! Assuming he shows up in the nick of time, Reno Jackson will save the day. Know what's better than saving the day once? Do it again! I love using Shadowstep and/or Ancient Brewmaster to fetch Reno back, ensuring that no matter what the other player does, I can fill my tank back up to full, even if (ESPECIALLY if) your deck is out of cards. (You can use those same cards with Kidnapper to keep a really problematic enemy minion off the board, too.)

One of the things I love about this deck is that, between Sir Finley Mrrgglton allowing you the option of switching out your base power and Brann Bronzebeard enabling double-Discovery from Jeweled Scarab and Tomb Spider, you can wind up with a lot of early-game options that turn the deck into a middlingly-successful Aggro machine. (If the deck seems like it's in it for the long haul, I like giving Valeera Armor Up!, to better ensure that she's better defended against aggro and direct damage. Alternatively, Life Tap becomes another piece of the card draw engine, especially if you've got Tournament Medic out.) Burgle is also a good way to get some diversity in your hand of cards.

Plenty of games have ended with the Golden Monkey no-where in sight, but with Arch-Thief Rafaam carrying the day. I'll almost always opt for Timepiece of Horror, since it's almost always a way to wipe the enemy's side of the board, or put an enemy player within the kill range when they weren't expecting it. Want to REALLY blow your partner's mind in the bedroom? Make sure you've got a Summoning Stone out before you use the TImepiece - I'll get Deathwing nine times out of ten, with none of the drawbacks of summoning him!

If the Monkey procs, you'll wind up with a handful of legends, at which point you've already won, regardless of whether you've dropped your opponent's life total to zero or not. Look at all these shiny toys! Dragons and demons everywhere!

Here's something to watch out for: if you've got Brann Bronzebeard out already, maybe think twice before using Elise Starseeker. On the one hand, you'll get two Maps. Great, right? Except that cancels out Reno Jackson's ability! Caveat emptor!

Brann's ability also has the amusing effect of making Finley's ability-swap happen twice, which means your first pick doesn't much matter. It also makes the Golden Monkey proc twice, which again, can have the odd effect of handing you exactly what you needed and then taking it away - but the reverse can happen, too! (You can also request a re-do from either of those modifications by using Shadowstep to bounce either of them back, if you don't need it for Reno.)

That's the long and the short of it. Happy adventures, explorers!