Jackker's TOP 15 Legend Secret Paladin
- Last updated Jul 7, 2016 (Old Gods)
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Wild
- 19 Minions
- 9 Spells
- 2 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Aggro Paladin
- Crafting Cost: 3840
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 6/25/2016 (Old Gods)
- Jackker
- Pro Player
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Country:
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Tournament Decks:
0
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Ladder Decks:
4
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Submitted By:
Introduction
Hello guys, my name is Jackker (Twitter: ONE_Jackker | Twitch: JackkerTV | My organization: Sector One) some of you might remember me from my Top 4 EU Legend in depth Secret Paladin Guide a couple of months ago. Here I am again bringing you my newest creation: a secret paladin deck so strong it makes the old gods shiver. I used this deck at Dreamhack Summer 2016 and although I didn’t get through the swiss it performed really good in both the main event and the side event. With a total scoreline of: 11-2.
Secret Paladin used to be very strong before WoTOG and a few weeks after the expansion was released I was wondering why it wasn’t played anymore. I’ve always loved playing this archetype of paladin because I believe Mysterious Challenger is still one of the strongest cards in the game. It’s also my favourite card because of the simple reason that people instantly concede after a perfectly timed ‘Well Met!’.
Before Standard came out the deck was so strong because it basically ran ‘The Doctor’ for every mana cost. Meaning that it had the strongest card every possible turn apart from turn 1. (Shielded Minibot, Muster for Battle, Piloted Shredder, Loatheb, Mysterious Challenger, Dr. Boom and of course Tirion Fordring) Although this is not the case anymore the deck still has some tricks up its sleeve.
So what did standard change?
With the addition of Steward of Darkshire to the paladin collection some new synergies were created. Noble Sacrifice and Redemption are buffed because having a Steward on the board when secrets get procced will trigger the divine shield effect! Making the board more resilient to AoE effects and making Competitive Spirit stronger.
High Legend Proof
My teammate Mitsuhide got rank 15 Legend with the exact same decklist, here you have a screenshot of him hitting rank 35.
General Strategy
A lot of people might have the impression that this is an aggressive deck because of the low mana cost cards and the double Divine Favor but this is a common misconception. The deck actually shines most in the mid-game because of the combo’s you can do with Steward of Darkshire.
In the early game you just want to control the board by making value trades. For example: using Abusive Sergeant on Argent Squire or killing their minions with your Rallying Blade.
Bilefin Tidehunter might look like a good 2-drop but you should prevent using it and go for a Hero Power instead. The card is just too good when you can immediately give it a divine shield with Steward of Darkshire. The key to winning with this deck is:
- Making a lot of tokens
- Applying pressure with buff cards such as Blessing of Kings
- Baiting board clears
- Utilizing Divine Favor to refill your hand or develop a Mysterious Challenger
If you are able to keep the board until turn 6 and you play Mysterious Challenger on curve you will almost never lose. This because you filtered the ‘bad cards’ out of your deck and put them directly in play, resulting in an insane tempo advantage.
Versus Aggro
By aggro we mean decks that have a really strong early game, this being mostly zoo and shaman.
Secret Paladin might look like it has a good chance but this is not the case. The single copy of consecration and the fairly weak early game minions have problems competing with cards like Tunnel Trogg, Totem Golem and Imp Gang Boss.
In these matchups you absolutely need to heavily mulligan for Argent Squire, Abusive Sergeant and Rallying Blade.
You need to try to make favourable trades and keep their board as small as possible until you can play all your mid-game cards. Don’t try to play too much on value but play full on tempo, don’t be afraid to just equip a Rallying Blade even without any minions on your side of the board if that means you can kill one of his minions. Or even drop a Steward of Darkshire on turn 3 if that’s the only way to keep your opponent’s board under control.
Versus Midrange
By “Midrange” we mean decks that fight for the board as heavily as we do and don’t care that much about face damage but more about value. These decks are really strong in the mid game just like ours.
What you want to do in these kind of matchups is to get more value out of your cards than they get out of theirs while not completely giving up tempo. A Blessing of Kings on a divine shielded minion to make a trade into one of their minions is very powerful. You now only lost a divine shield while they lose a minion. With silence-cards being so sparse, buffed minions can’t really be answered that easily anymore. In the later stages of the game your aim should be to play your low value cards, like Bilefin Tidehunter and Selfless Hero together with Steward of Darkshire to make a board that’s incredibly hard to deal with.
And while they’re struggling with these small, sticky minions you just drop threats like Mysterious Challenger and Tirion Fordring If they decide they want to make a powerplay with a big minion instead of dealing with your board you can punish them really hard by turning their threat into a 3/3 with Keeper of Uldaman. Try to fight for the board as long as possible but don’t hesitate too much to push damage at a point in the game where you don’t think they have the resources to deal with your board.
Versus Control
By control we mean decks that are really slow and perform best in the later stages of the game because they are greedy enough to out value any other deck. These kind of matchups are where this new secret paladin deck shines a lot.
Control decks give you a lot of time because they don’t really have pressure-plays. They have lots of answers but apply next to no pressure. This gives us the opportunity to make plays that are really hard to answer. Use your hero power as much as possible in the early stages of the game. By turn 4/5 you want to make a powerplay like using Blessing of Kings on your divine-shielded minion to trade away one of their big threats or a huge value play like using Steward of Darkness with a card that gets buffed. The turn 6 play should be really obvious, followed up 2 turns later with our big boy Tirion Fordring. At this stage of the game your hand should be empty so you can play a nice Divine Favor for at least 4 cards. Now that your hand is full again you try to make as much tempo as possible and try to push face damage to finish the game.
Against control also try to be greedy on your Keeper of Uldaman, it is very often better to ‘shrink’ one of their big boys than make a 3/3 out of your 1/1. Unless this can result in a very good trade of course.
General Mulligan
No Coin
- Always keep Argent Squire and Selfless Hero and never keep secrets
- Consider keeping Rallying Blade in slower matchups.
- Keep Mysterious Challenger,Abusive Sergeant, Argent Protector and Rallying Blade if you have a 1-drop otherwise mulligan it away.
Coin
- Always keep Mysterious Challenger, Argent Squire, Selfless Hero and Rallying Blade.
- Keep Abusive Sergeant and Argent Protector if you have a 1-drop otherwise mulligan it away.
- Consider keeping Keeper of Uldaman in slower matchups.
Class Specific Mulligan + Tips
- Consider keeping Keeper of Uldaman and Blessing of Kings
- Against ramp druid you want to try setting up a divine shielded minion to take advantage of it the following turn by using Blessing of Kings on it to trade away one of their big threats.
- Ramp Druids also have a hard time dealing with big boards with many minions so try to make a full divine shielded board with Steward of Darkshire and they will be having a hard time clearing all of these minions
- When making a big board try to always play around Swipe, this is the only druid spell you have to keep in mind
- Against Shaman you can’t play the value game because they will pressure you to hard
- You can keep Bilefin Tidehunter and Abusive Sergeant in order to keep up with their tempo
- Try to hold back your Keeper of Uldaman, as you’ll most likely need it for their Flamewreathed Faceless.
- Priest is the slowest class in the game so you can mulligan really greedy
- If you have a good hand also keep Divine Favor
- Try to play around their AoE cards like Holy Nova, Excavated Evil and their Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combo by keeping your divine shields up.
- Rogue does not run a lot of healing and is quite vulnerable when getting rushed down. Play as an aggressor but keep Fan of Knives in mind.
- Against Hunter you keep Abusive Sergeant because it contests their 2 mana minions like King's Elekk and Huge Toad
- Don’t play too much around Unleash the Hounds because people only run 1 or 0 copies of the card
- Try to fight for the board in the early game, but when entering the mid-Game you want to start applying pressure
- Against Zoo it’s the same as against Shaman you can’t play the value game because they will pressure you to hard.
- You can keep Bilefin Tidehunter and Abusive Sergeant in order to keep up with their tempo
- Controlling the board is key in this matchup, try to make every favourable trade you can
- Always keep Divine Favor when you are 100% sure it’s renolock
- Try to apply as much pressure as you can
- Always play around Hellfire
- Keep Twisting Nether in mind so don’t over commit if you don’t have to
- Keep Whirlwind and Ravaging Ghoul in mind but sometimes you can’t play around it.
- Don’t overextend too hard into Brawl. When being already ahead just hero power, instead of throwing out another minion ready to be brawled.
- Remember Cone of Cold positioning (keep your strongest minions on the outer sides of the board). If you know for sure it is freeze mage, keep Divine Favor.
- Kill Flamewaker as soon as possible, and try to play around Flamestrike.
- The reason why Secret Paladin performs so well against N’Zoth paladin is because they give you a lot of time to get your Steward of Darkshire combo
- Try to play around Equality + Consecration by making a board with divine shielded minion because Equality + Consecration doesn’t kill divine shielded minions.
Tips & Tricks
- Focus on board control first, face when you are ahead
- When playing minions try to play your most valuable minion first. This is important in a scenario where your board get’s cleared by AoE, as Redemption will be proc on the minion that was sequenced first.
- Blessing of Kings on divine shielded minions allow for some crazy trades
- Play Repentance when your opponent is about to drop something big
- Sometimes just Steward of Darkshire with a Noble Sacrifice can be a good turn.
- When you can choose between a Argent Squire or a Silver Hand Recruit to trade in choose the recruit because the Argent Squire will be useful with Redemption later in the game
- Try to combine Argent Protector with Blessing of Kings
Replacements
Possible cards to cut : Argent Protector, 1x Divine Favor, Consecration, Argent Horserider
Possible cards to add : Ragnaros the Firelord, Truesilver Champion, Knife Juggler, Stand Against Darkness, Leeroy Jenkins, Dragon Egg, Defender of Argus
I love the shield + secret pally build. i made a video demonstrating it against zoolock which got raped throughout the game against the build. But yes like you mentioned, it's not easy against zoolocks when it's spam after spam for minions. Only way to beat that is to wrestle control of the board from them while takings pot shots at their face from time to time. Using that strategy i won the game as shown in the video i recorded.
One thing i did differently from your build was use a secret keeper on the off chance i can get some good value from her if i do end up pulling secrets; it also acts as a soft counter for opponents that use secrets as it will deter them from using them when i got a secret keeper in play to add more pressure on them.
dude i enjoy the deck too but the build need an upgrade urgent!, im current at lvl 4 with the deck and with the upgrades from karazhan from the other decks im having troubles to continue ranking up.
its easy until rank 5 then start the real test , and this deck right now its not being competitive
Sorry actually i have just very most recently switched to an updated/enhanced version of jackker's build but by someone else who based their initially off his build. i'm using this which is similar but uses the new cards from karazhan namely barnes and moroes
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/582009-now-with-moroes-and-barnes-secret-steward-paladin
I also am using the higher upvoted shield pally alternative, that unusually has far fewer secrets (making people wonder if mysterious challenger is even needed), also lacking 2 cost minions.
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/594034-secret-shields-paladin-legend#c47
Anyway for karazhan patch i recommend either of these 2 for now.
any updates from kazarhan?, maybe the new taunt?
long version
moroes can be kept stealthed, and summon an infinite number of 1/1 stewards at the end of your turn. if used with steward of darkshire to set it up prior, you can build a board of shielded 1/1 enemy waste a turn killing them, or else the board builds up for you to later draw a rallying blade to buff them up for a full board of 2/2. then again maybe it's too slow, and problematic especially against hunters with trap and hounds, and don't forget aoes :{ ? Also this all hinges on darkshire being able to be alive for many rounds for buffing enough of them to even be considered a threat. a darkshire + bilefin hunter combo, or with any other low cost 1-2 cost minions seems to be more preferable since it can done sooner for more immediate effect before darkshire gets taken out.
Barnes can summon a 1/1 of a random minion in your deck. if that 1/1 happened to be a clone of tiriong fordring, that will be a free shielded taunter, with a nice weapon. or a steward would be nice as well. chances of pulling either a tirion fordring or steward seems slim, also it's only these 2 cards in this build worth pulling for using barnes, the rest all wouldn't make much difference having a 1/1 clone of them.
prince malchezaar can add legendary minions to your deck if you have no room to fit them in, maybe worth a card slot for increased cards that most likely could be useful? however this deck build lacks many big minions other than tirion and mysterious challenger, since it's mean't to be shielded aggro to build momentum early on. in that sense probably detracts too much for what this deck is about.
avian watcher, 5/7 taunt if you have a secret in play ? relies on a secret being in play to be used. However we are already relying on bilefin + darkshire as well as defender of argus for low cost taunts that have good value already. We also have tirion for later as well, so not sure we need a 5 cost taunt on top of this, especially considering card slots are already limited to begin with in order to get the most out of shield + secret build to work using low cost minions to work with darkshire.
or alternatively for taunt, can use the curator. in this case this current builds only murloc is bile hunter. so maybe after casting curator to taunt, it can also forcibly pull out bile hunter. so the curator can taunt stall a turn, so next turn you can combo a steward of the darkshire with bile hunter to get another taunt in play that is shielded, so you can then start building up the momentum using steward to spam out more shielded minions. but problem is his cost 7 ... the deck is meant for winning early on if possible, and to finish off using tirion. so maybe adding another 7 cost card will be counter productive for what this deck is about...
short version
moroes - maybe too slow to be useful
barnes - nice if your lucky and pull out a tirion or darkshire steward. If not it will be subpar (as in i rather be using keeper of uldaman to buff up dragon eggs or argent squires, or as a soft debuff against enemies instead).
prince malchezaar - probably detracts from what this deck is about. nice but the only big minions you need is mysterious challenger and tirion. everything else is for early game and to control board, and i'm not sure if another high cost card will help with that even if it's nice.
avian watcher - doesn't sync well with this build as 5 cost too high and doesn't combo with darkshire steward efficiently to get as much value from it compared to say darkshire + bilefin combo, or dragon egg + defender of argus + darkshire steward combos... and steward + noble sacrifice ....
curator - i feel this would work better than avian because you can follow it up on the next turn as explained earlier. with limited slots i'd take this over the avian imho. but still not sure we need this for this deck build due to high cost, and the fact we have many taunting options as well as tirion already.
Bottomline
I don't really see any of these cards being essential for the build as it is right now. it doesn't quite replace any of the cards with a clear winning replacement as far as i can see :/
you can see the karazhan cards here
http://www.hearthpwn.com/guides/1548-one-night-in-karazhan-a-hearthstone-adventure#new-cards
Worth adding Arcane Anomaly from Karazhan? I assume the secrets would trigger his effect and buff his health up.
Weak deck! Against zoo/aggro you're pretty much screwed,because of the lack of consecration or any kind of removal... not to mention that if you don't draw divine favor quite quick...
Legit deck. Dropped one Divine Favor for a Truesilver Champion since 2x Favor was clogging my hand occasionally.
i had a different experience. i felt that i was spending cards too fast, in that sense divine favor helped when i overspend which i often do. also having 2 of them increases the likelihood of drawing it.
Dude this deck is THE SHIT.
i didnt play very much at the beginning of the seasons and i escalated from rank 20 to rank 6 with this deck in a couple of weeks
pls continue refining the deck
I just gotta say thanks for posting this deck, I've been playing here and there all month and have currently hit rank 11, I'm using the deck before you changed it but it's great for me, I've rarely lost and usually stomp most opponents, the deck really is great so again thank you!
you should change some of your description about argent protector since its not in the deck anymore (unless you keep it for people who decides to put it in)
Ok been playing this deck for a couple of days now, 45-16 to rank 5 and now about 10 games between rank 5 and 4. Past rank 5 I seem to be struggling, which is probably due to the meta for the most part (EU). Getting stomped by Druids mostly (both token and ramp), and warriors with a good draw. They just have so much removal which makes it impossible to play around. Token Druids usually get me by turn 8..
Now have to think of what will be a good deck to grind further.
I've added a Shifter Zerus instead of a Selfless Hero. And just had a Al'Akir the Windlord + Abusive Sergeant finisher, boy that felt good.
I tried playing this with -2 Dragon Egg, + Acidic Swamp Ooze, + Leeroy Jenkins, and it's giving me great results. Got me to rank 2 so far, hopefully I can shoot higher.
I seriously have to thank you. For the past month, I've been trying to find the solution to why my standard secret pali wasn't working. I was running a less aggressive early game and trying to do something with stand against darkness and Knife jugglers. Yeah, long story short is that it didn't turn out so great and I kept getting creamed... Until I found your deck that it.
Upon testing it out I noticed maybe a handful of problems with it, but interestingly they were the EXACT OPPOSITE of the problems I found with my own version. So I did what any good HS player would: I compared the lists. I found that with a few cards swapped around, that I could actually COMBINE both of our secret pali's into this weird franken paladin deck, one that would potentially cover the weakness inherent in both decks. And guess what? IT FREAKIN WORKED.
First off, and this may be a more controversial opinion but, I don't think cards like selfless hero are good in this current meta. Notice the "Cards Like". By that I mean a 1 drop that tries to, in some way, setup the cards played after or around it. That means Selfless, Young Priestess, Zealous Initiate, Ect. They just don't push for pressure and can far too easily be played around or ignored. Selfless especially has some of the WORST synergies with the core cards of this play style (Egg and Steward) that it's almost comical. Long story short, I game up making that route work and went with something a tiny bit more stabilizing from my old deck:
-2x Selfless Hero, +1x Competitive Spirit, +1x Dire Wolf Alpha
Next is the Divine Favor problem (IE, having two divine favor's in your hand at ANY POINT is always a bad thing). Simply cause I know how that always plays out and seeing as I don't always NEED that extra draw push I decided to drop it down to 1 instead. But then what do you do when your down and need to quickly gain board back? Simple: Stand Against Darkness. It's a silly 5 mana spell that no one plays around, combo's INSANELY well with Steward on turn 8 or earlier, turns competitive spirit into a POWER HOUSE of a secret (remember that comp won't trigger if no minions are on board...), and, perhaps most importantly, makes your opponent NEED to spend one more board clear against a deck that, quite honestly, they won't have enough for already. It's all about knowing how to time it to trip the opponent up: Got a strong combo in hand which you're afraid you'll lose? Already seen the Ghoul / Consecrate / Lightning Storm dropped? Or maybe you want to setup your challenger with an instant board to Comp Spirit to? Play Stand Against. You won't (usually) regret it.
-1x Divine Favor, +1 Stand Against Darkness
Last change is a simple one: I... Don't have Tirion. Yeah, It's sad but true. But Big T is and always has felt... slow for this style of deck. Sure he can save a game in a pinch, but if your at turn 8 and don't already have a strong board setup, you're usually toasted anyway. Plus, outside blessed minions, this deck doesn't have much in the way of polymorph/sap bait. IE, it's VERY LIKELY that the Tirion that you NEED TO SURVIVE will be very swiftly removed by certain classes (the ones you ALREADY do pretty poorly against, mind you) before you have the chance to blink. So know that though I actually do not own Tirion, I'm still not certain he's the best fit for this style of deck anyway, and have instead opted to run the traditional zoo go-to of Sea Giant in the meanwhile. I don't think I need to explain why sea giant works here (Egg, Stand Against, Bilefin) but it does, coming out usually a lot sooner than Tirion would, being noticeably less terrifying to watch get answered, and often leaves the opponent scrambling handle your entire board, since unlike Tirion, Sea Giant rarely works alone...
-1x Tirion, +1x Sea Giant
And On the great Truesilver Debate, I honestly get why people would add it in (Pain, thy name is Flamewaker), but I don't think it's absolutely necessary and I DEFINITELY wouldn't drop egg for it. Egg is the thing that makes this deck even remotely viable without consecrates in the aggro match-up, and there is still enough Zoo-Lock and Hunter and Shaman dominating out there to require a heavy investment on the early game answer side of the coin. Remember that Tempo mage, more so than most decks, needs an incredible amount of luck to pull it's dirty tricks off (read as: Goes second) and can burn out of answers fast if it doesn't manage to pull flamewaker on time. plus, a boosted egg ALREADY counter's old flamey hard (sans fireball), so consider saving up for that instead of just playing into the typical mage curve.
I do agree with Selfless Hero is kind of lackluster in this deck, I switched out one of them for Truesilver Champion
I think the thing you are getting wrong about Tirion Fordring is that this is not an aggro deck, it's a tempo deck. Your goal is to control the board and pose a threat Tirion Fordring's divine shield and taunt made it really difficult to remove, it usually requires at least one minion or spell to trade into divine shield and another removal to kill it (only exceptions are Hex, Entomb, and Polymorph, and we barely see priest/mage on ladder). And you still got a 5/3 Ashbringer, which they need another Harrison Jones or Acidic Swamp Ooze to get rid of. You might be able to get Sea Giant out faster but he just dies to any removal. Your deck would be more of a divine aggro with a few secrets here and there, instead of a secret tempo paladin
I really liked your changes.. The deck feels more consistent and versatile.. I added a knife juggler instead of the second competitive spirit though.
I disagree.. After playing close to 40 games, Tirion usually is a win more or lose anyway card since turn 8 is a bit late.. I might be wrong though
And you think Sea Giant isn't a win more card? Tirion Fordring have taunt and divine shield so he can absorb more dmg and gain more board control, while your opponent can compeletly ignore Sea Giant if you lost the board. This is a tempo deck, and if you can't control the board you've already lost, maybe lord yogg is the only one that can save you. Sea Giant is not a bad card in this deck, but if your plan is to flood the board with divine shield minions and Sea Giantthen you should probably just play divine aggro paladin instead