Hearthpwn

Aye aye, matey! Mapleblade here to help you escape the watery depths of rank 20 with budget aggro pirates! This deck is geared towards beginning players, but if you want to upgrade the deck, there are notes at the end discussing new additions.

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Table of Contents 

 

 

What does this deck aim to do?
Despite popular belief, Aggro decks don't always hit face. While the goal is to inflict constant damage to the opposing player's health, that isn't optimally acquired by ignoring the enemies minions. Efficient trading of minions is sometimes necessary when facing aggressive decks (see: Who is the Beatdown, an important fundamental) or when an important threat enters the board. Weapons provide lots of pressure as well, threatening to eat minions that would trade favorably with your smaller minions, or representing large amounts of damage multiple times. Finally, when resources are finally exhausted, hopefully enough pressure has been put on the opponent that they have to take a risk with a low health total, in which we finish the game with burst damage such as Charge, weapons, or spells.

[I] Removal and Burst

 

Burst damage is usually defined as cards that can do tons of damage by themselves, such as weapons, damaging spells, and charge minions. While these cards are mostly reserved for taking away a last bit of health. However, there are some minions that need to be dealt with so that we may succeed.

Weapons are the most common example. Fiery War Axe is the weapon most likely to be used for trading, because it is essentially free removal. The power of weapons is that for their initial mana cost, you get the first hit right off the bat, establishing tempo and protecting your minions, and then you get the second hit for free the next turn. Other things you want to prioritize with your weapon are taunt minions obviously, but also minions that present a recurring threat of prolonging the game, such as Priest of the Feast or Armorsmith. The main use of trading with face is to protect your minions, because your minions represent recurring damage as long as they live. If you're worried about losing due to taking a lot of damage, your health is actually safer than your opponent's, since they need to focus on your minions rather than your health total, and in later states of the game, your floating mana goes to your hero power.

Cards like Mortal Strike and Heroic Strike are pure damage. They aren't as safe to use as weapons to remove threats, but they can be used in a pinch if something needs to be gone immediately.

Charge Minions are a special case somewhere in between weapons and damage spells. If they have low health, they are effectively spells. Specifically, I'm talking about trading with Kor'kron Elite. Usually when trading with it, it will have 1 HP left, meaning it will get killed for free most of the time; therefore, analyse based on the type of cards your opponent has (charge, spell damage, hero power) and how free they'll be able to eliminate your 4 mana card.

 

[II] Against Aggro

 

As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, one should understand how efficient trading works in terms of pure Aggro Vs. Aggro match-ups. But to clarify, one should trade with minions when the opposing minion can be taken down for free (i.e. Bloodsail Cultist trades well with Southsea Deckhand.) or when they threaten lethal for sure. 

As an aggro deck with many efficient weapons, you have an advantage over other aggro decks. While it may seem counter-intuitive to make your face hit minions when your opponent's trying to hit your face with their minions, know that by protecting your minions from unfavorable trades, they create more damage over time.

Furthermore, this deck has built-in aggro protection in the form of Ravaging Ghoul and Frothing Berserker, the former blowing away 1 HP minions and the latter being beefy enough to demand many minion's attention or even eating up a high-damage spell or weapon. These cards make the opponent's cards less valuable.

 

[III] Against Control

Remember all that I said about trading? Forget about that.

Just kidding! But you will want to concentrate on face a loooot more. In the Aggro match-up, we looked to making our opponent's minions be worth less due to our superior trading, and in the control match-up, that is what our opponent is going to try to do to us. A lot of this is going to be for two reasons: minions with higher HP, and efficient spell removal.

 Trading is generally a bad idea against Control, since their minions are much higher quality than ours; as such, only high danger threats that heal or block the way to face are our concern. Weapons, however, can be used if they can cleanly take down minions that gobble our small minions for free. 

As for spell damage and battlecry-based damage, refer to this chart to see what turns to keep in mind against different classes. Remember that popular +spell damage minions like Azure Drake and Bloodmage Thalnos can further increase the threshold of removal, and that a held The Coin decreases the turn count by one.

[IV] AOE / Spell Damage Turn Chart

 Other than knowing when to burst down a threatening minion, keep Execute for minions that must be gone ASAP; it may be tempting to use it on a high value minion with lots of HP, but remember that they are not the priority. Frothing Berserker is also an important tool for pushing early damage: your opponent will try to remove it no matter what, so try making it awkward for your opponent to remove it. Avoid situations like droppingFrothing Berserker when you have a lot of one health minions against Druids.

[V] Tips and Tricks

 

[VI] Upgrades

Sir Finley Mrrgglton: Changes your defensive Hero Power into one much more suited for an Aggro deck. Usually, you want Steady Shot, but in some specific cases (REALLY needing to kill a minion, needing more draws), other Hero Powers will be appropriate. However, since I see the question "which Hero Power should I choose if I don't get Steady Shot?," I have included a tier list of Hero Powers. Other than changing your Hero Power, 1/3 for 1 mana is premium stats.

Tier list for Mrrgglton hero powers

Patches the Pirate: While a 1/1 seems rather underwhelming, the fact that it is literally free is what makes it so great. It isn't just 1 damage, it's 1 damage recurring until your opponent finds a way to kill it, and as early as turn 1, they most likely won't kill it for free. In fact, Patches represents on average about three damage, and thins the deck, meaning that you're more likely to draw whatever card you need. (For Yu-Gi-Oh! players, imagine Upstart Goblin, but instead of healing your opponent, it damages them instead.)

 

This is a bit off-topic, but I feel that there's a general feeling of unease when players with a small dust budget thinks about crafting a Legendary minion that's small, likes Patches or Bloodmage Thalnos. This is most likely because they feel that such cards don't offer such a large impact as bigger, higher mana cost minions such as Ragnaros, the Firelord. However, I'd like to suggest that despite the difference in power at first glance, all Legendary minions that offer a unique power are worth their cost, just at different states of the game.

 

Leeroy Jenkins: He's a Fireball on legs. I mean.... He's a simple man, he sees Charge, he presses like, y'know?

Upgrade!: Ironically, our final card in the "Upgrade" section is Upgrade! This card allows your weapons to trade more favorably, or (more importantly) hit face multiple times for higher damage. 

 

 

I love answering question! Fire away, captain!