Top 20 Legend DK Tempo Warrior Guide
- Last updated Aug 31, 2017 (Frozen Throne)
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Wild
- 17 Minions
- 8 Spells
- 4 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Tempo Warrior
- Crafting Cost: 7560
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 8/16/2017 (Frozen Throne)
- Theo
- Pro Player
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Country:
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Tournament Decks:
8
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Ladder Decks:
30
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Submitted By:
Hey all, I’m Theo and you might know me from my previous guides or from HGG where I got top 8 with The Netherlands. I’ve finished top 100 every season of Un’goro and so far I’ve also had success in the KFT meta reaching top 50 with this deck. Besides Pirate Warrior there is barely any Warrior deck on the ladder, so I thought it would be great to have a bit more diversity in Warrior decks on the ladder.
If you want to see me play this deck, you can watch me daily on twitch at twitch.tv/theohs_ where I’ll stream this and other decks at high legend! Also I often post successful decks on my Twitter.
UPDATE: Had a great stream and improved my rank to #16 on EU! Here is the vod of me playing in top 50 the whole time and reaching top 20! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/167478774
Tempo Warrior was originally made over a year ago after WotOG was released, but has since not really had a place in the meta. However, with KFT there are a few new cards that helped it get viable against such as Blood Razor, Bonemare and Scourgelord Garrosh.
This is definitely one of the more fun decks to play right now. There are a lot of different combo’s and requires a lot of thought to play optimally as you are often faced with several viable plays. Also it is able to beat every deck as it doesn’t really have any lopsided matchups that a lot of other decks do have.
Mulligan
Without coin, don't keep more than one 3-drop as you want to curve into a 4-drop. Also if you already have some of the cards in your mulligan you need, for example Fiery War Axe and Frothing Berserker against midrange, you can keep Bloodhoof Brave because it fits your curve.
Vs Aggro: Armorsmith, Fiery War Axe, Ravaging Ghoul, Blood To Ichor (with coin) Blood Razor (With Coin)
Vs Midrange: Armorsmith, Fiery War Axe, Frothing Berserker, Blood To Ichor (with coin)
Vs Control: Fiery War Axe, Frothing Berserker, Acolyte of Pain, Battle Rage (only if you know 100% it’s control) .
Cards
Blood To Ichor: Great when going second to counter your opponent’s 1-drop. Can also easily fill your curve in the midgame or enable one of your spells.
Armorsmith: Can contest the board early on, helps you enable your Battle Rage and gives you survivability.
Battle Rage: Cheap draw card that often draws two or more, great to keep you going so you don't run out of steam.
Execute: Not as strong of a tempo play as it was at 1 mana but still decent, especially in a slow meta as there currently is with a lot of good targets to hit.
Fiery War Axe: Fiery Win Axe, great at everything.
Slam: Helps clearing off minions while cycling, nothing special but just solid overall.
Acolyte of Pain: Combines very well with all the whirlwind effect and like Battle Rage lets you keep pumping out threats. Also great if you can use Bonemare on it.
Frothing Berserker: Broken card can win games by itself, especially strong against slower decks that don't have a board early as they need to have an answer or they just lose.
Ravaging Ghoul: Solid body with a great effect that synergizes with the deck and is great vs token decks.
Blood Razor: There are never enough whirlwind effects in this deck. Does everything what you want from a card in this deck.
Bloodhoof Brave: Solid 4-drop that is hard to remove and synergizes well with whirlwind effects.
[card]Kor'kron Elite[/card]: Charge is good. Can push damage or trade favorably.
Elise the Trailblazer: Pretty slow for a tempo deck, but another card that lets you keep playing threats continuously in the late game.
The Black Knight: Great tech card in the meta with a lot of Lich King’s, Bonemare’s, Druid’s and other big taunts around.
Bonemare: Tempo card in a Tempo deck, what’s not to like. Great with high health minions.
Grommash Hellscream: Your finisher. Can be played as early as turn 8 without coin with Blood Razer up and even if it doesn’t win the game instantly it still is often hard to deal with for your opponent.
Scourgelord Garrosh: Underrated card. Weapon gets your board control and basically prevents your opponent from ever playing more than 1 minion. Also more whirlwind effects is never bad.
Replacements
I feel like this list is close to optimal so I wouldn't change too much unless the meta changes. Don’t have all the cards for the deck? Here are some that you can replace them with. Make sure they make sense so you don’t suddenly have too many lategame cards as this is still a tempo deck. Note: haven’t tried these cards myself, so if they don’t work make sure to try other cards out!
Pirate Package: 2x [card]N'Zoth's First Mate[/card] + Patches the Pirate. Great for the early game as you aren’t doing that much in the first 2 turns. Weaker later on due to anti-synergy with whirlwind and the possibility of having too many weapons.
Forge of Souls: Only want this card once but having 2 weapons early on can help a ton to gain board.
Stranglethorn Tiger: Deck has only 1 5-drop and this is probably the most solid 5-drop you can play in this deck.
Cairne Bloodhoof: hard to kill and lets you keep control of the board.
Malkorok: The original 7-drop in Tempo Warrior. An extra weapon is great but can be overkill. Probably don’t want to run it with Scourgelord Garrosh.
Hogger, Doom of Elwynn: Synergizes quite well with whirlwind effects and the taunt minions can help you protect your board.
Rotface: More synergy with whirlwind effects. Must get at least 2 whirlwind effects off on this to get enough value. Can make turns for your opponent awkward as they can’t really play small minions.
The Lich King: Play this if you want to have a bit more lategame and another threat that has to be dealt with immediately.
General Strategy
Vs Aggro: Your main goal here is to stabilize. Lategame you should have enough taunts/clears but early game you can get overrun if you don’t manage to draw your weapons. Make sure you spend your mana efficiently as you often don’t have enough time to play all your cards. For example don’t be too afraid to use your execute on small minions if that is needed to regain board.
Vs Midrange: Versus midrange you generally have to fight for board as much as possible. You usally want to make the best tempo plays to get a head and from there you can snowball with your lategame cards while you keep playing threats due to all the draw this deck has. Try to recognize how much lategame your opponents deck has and if you can either outvalue them or that you have to win before they outvalue you.
Vs Control: Versus control you often want to keep playing threat after threat in the mid and lategame. Play around their boardclears but don’t be too scared and play around everything as you generally have a weaker lategame. Drawing is very important and you have often drawn 10 more cards in the lategame. Even though you might have less value, if they don’t have time to draw it they will run out of threats and removals in the end.
Conclusion
Tempo Warrior is viable again after a long hiatus. Like I said before, it’s very fun to play and I suggest everyone to at least try it out. It might not be the easiest deck as you often have to decide between tempo and draw but it is definitely very rewarding once you master the deck. Thanks for reading and hope to see you at my stream at twitch.tv/theohs_!
If you are interested in more of my guides, I just made a new guide for Big Priest!
Videos
Getting top 20 on my stream:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/167478774
KiiwiNbacon Deck Showcase:
TheSynch:
I don't know. This deck is weak to the three meta decks but there aren't really any cards that help those matchups a lot. Only thing for sure is that you don't wanna play black knight anymore.
Is this still viable after Fiery War Axe nerf?
I'm not sure, the fiery war axe nerf hits really hard because now you often pass t1 and t2, which means you fight from behind and that is not something the deck does really well. Anyway, haven't played it but if I have to guess, I don't think it is really good anymore :(
Its not just this deck that will be killed, its literally every Warrior deck that uses Fiery War Axe. Every Warrior deck has Fiery in it, and now the nerf just absolutely killed all early game tempo....unless you go 2nd and coin out Fiery
THAT would have been the best possible change. For pretty much every Warrior deck, except Pirate Warrior, you never use Fiery War Axe to hit face unless its to kill them. The only reason they nerfed the best card Warrior has was because of Pirate Warrior.
Is Fiery War Axe replacable in this deck?
Sorry for the late response, but probably not. There isn't any other card that gives you tempo like this early, so this deck will take a big hit and on top of that more priests will also be bad.
Pretty powerful deck. Replaced Grommash Hellscream and The Black Knight with The Lich King and Rotface. Both are amazing value cards when played right.
Goodbye Fiery War Axe, goodbye Warrior :(
I don't blame you lol. This nerf was so uncalled for
This deck is fantastic and really beats up the current meta on ladder. It's also super fun to play. Bloodhoof brave is definitely the MVP.
What would be more important to craft first, Carine or from last? I have lich king and Leroy and others to sub in if needed.
If you mean Cairne Bloodhoof or Grommash Hellscream, i'd say Grommash is more important to craft.
would King Mosh be a good card in this deck, atleast until i get either lich king or scougelord
The only way you can reliably combo it is with is Blood Razor so it's pretty hard to get. Also it kills your own minions and generally you want to have minions on board and if you don't have minions turn 9 or later you often are in a pretty bad spot anyway.
really loving this deck but i see what you mean, i tried it and it just sorta sits in my hand, im only about 50 dust away from a legendary but im torn between crafting scougelord for this deck or crafting lich king because its just good in general, would this deck work as well with lich kind instead of scougelord?
I'd say The Lich King would work well in this deck, although slightly worse than Scourgelord Garrosh. So The Lich King would be a better craft as you can play it in more decks.
If you're talking about wild, I have no experience there, but this is indeed the kind of deck that would work with patrons. Probably you would run Whirlwind or Inner Rage too, but can't help with that more than that.
I opened Scourgelord Garrosh in a pack last day of August season, so I'm going to try this deck at the start of this season (Garrosh was the only card I was missing). I'm currently playing Cobalt Scalebane instead of Cairne Bloodhoof (missing him) and one Mountainfire Armor instead of one Slam to better counter aggro in early ranks.
This deck is good btw, fresh and really fun to play. I will continue my testing to see if it can do well in higher ranks too since I enjoy playing it. Ty!
I've never played tempo Warrior before, so it took me like 15 games to get a feel for the deck.
Once I figure the deck out I crushed from rank 10 to rank 4 at a 70% win rate on the last day of the season.
Thank you very much for the decklist. I love how much card draw this deck provides and Blood Razor is even better than I thought it could be.