Ticking Mindbreaking Fatigue Warrior
- Last updated Sep 21, 2017 (Evergreen Nerfs)
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Wild
- 10 Minions
- 17 Spells
- 2 Weapons
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Fatigue Warrior
- Crafting Cost: 7620
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 9/11/2017 (Frozen Throne)
- nichocolates
- Registered User
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- 7
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- 29
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Battle Tag:
Pachinto#2116
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Region:
EU
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Total Deck Rating
451
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*Update 2
After the nerfs, I haven't really seen many jade druids at all actually, at the moment "hunter' and "Priests" are now dominating. While priest was already a favourable matchup, hunter was a relatively unfavourable one. After testing for a while I decided to make the priest matchup even more favourable, while simultaneously turn the unfavourable hunter matchup into a favourable one as well. I did this by removing the tech card "skulking geist" and lnstead of it's place I added "mindbreaker". Keep on reshuffling these into your deck until they cannot remove them anymore and watch them cry because they can't shoot you in your face with their machine gun : ) And hunter's can't make no zombie's anymore. I found that it was most effective to play 2 ticking's and 1 mindbreaker, however you can also try 1 ticking and 2 mindbreakers, whatever suits your taste.
*Update 1:
I have been experimenting a lot with the addition of "Rotface" in this deck, and while the random legendary it summons can be swingy, it does function as an extra win condition (and it's fun), the win-rate is still above 55%. The fatigue warrior list including "Rotface" is different enough to be warranted to be counted as a complete new deck, find it here -->
Hi fans of the fatigue warrior play style,
First of all, this deck does not contain any of the cards that will be nerved. So for those who choose to invest their time in mastering this deck, it will probably stay relevant until the next rotation. It will not get weaker after the patch and might get even stronger on the contrary. Games usually average around 10 minutes per match, so it is by no means fast with laddering.
I am an avid player of fatigue warrior, and I have over 1200 wins just playing fatigue warrior on ranked. A very long time ago I have written a guide which was well received on hearthstone on the exact same play style, when LOE was just released.
The most exciting thing that happened for me this expansion was the creation of the card "Dead man's hand" and "Bring it on". I have been brainstorming a lot about these two cards because in my opinion it has immense potential, yet I couldn't quite figure it out how to mend it all together... Until pro player "Dog" made a template of his fatigue warrior available to the masses which he brought to rank 10 legend. This is when it all came together, I have been playing his list a lot and actually like it very much, however something was missing, and after play testing for days I have finally found the answer.
I present to you my refined list of the Fatigue warrior, and the only difference is the removal of 2 armorsmiths and 1 public defender for 2 ticking abominations and 1 dirty rat.
Before we get into the playstyle, here is a shoutout to Windfury aka kiwi'nbacon for making a deck showcase video for this deck. While he made a lot of questionable plays :), he did win the game and it showcased the power of "ticking abonimation" on messing with the general game plan of the opponent and stalling his plays as well as the power of the additional dirty rat in stopping aggro and acting as a pseudo armorsmith.
Playstyle
The playstyle of this kind of deck is like survival mode in an arcade game. Your main objective every game is to survive as long as possible while staying as healthy as possible, until you either remove all of your opponents threats or gathered all required cards to "bring it on" and cycle infinitely.
There is however a slightly different set of rules against each of the classes.
I will write the matchups against some of the most popular ones right now on ladder, and if this receives more upvotes I will add the rest as per requested.
Important note: I see a lot of players playing this deck, making the mistake of only shuffling deadman's hand when you can go infinite. This type of decision making is what makes this kind of deck have a high skill cap of play. In most of the matchups you do not need to go infinite, perhaps I can say that going infinite might be your last win condition like "jade idol" is for druid. Your main win condition is just having multiple garrosh, executes, bring it on's in your hand, ready to deal with every situation your opponent can throw at you, and when that does not work, you go infinite with cycling.
1. Vs Jade druid
Mulligan : Skulking geist, acolyte, ticking abonimation, bloodrazor, battle rage, sleep with the fishes, garrosh
Goal : Kill them all
Your goal is plain and simple in this matchup, you just need to kill all 10 or less jades in the most efficient way. Use your dirty rat to fish out their jade elephant,aya or jade golem. You do not need to go infinite in this match up. Use your deadman's hand once you have 2 executes bring it on and some cycle in your hand. Remember to use bring it on in a smart way to bait.
Strategy + gameplay on hsreplay
2. Vs Razakus priest
Mulligan: Whirlwind, battle rage, blood razor, ticking abonimation, acolyte of pain,garrosh
Goal: "Bring it on" Armor up till you are out of range
Your goal here is to cycle as fast as possible. Only use acolyte in combination with an immediate whirlwind effect and/or battle rage, otherwise it will end up in free card draw for the priest. Save your dirty rats to fish out prophet velen, most of the time you will know when it is saved in the opponents hand according to his/her playstyle. Raza/Kazakus will be played immediately but they always save prophet velen to try to do a sick burst. If you see the opportunity to mill him of 1 - 3 cards with your cold light, don't be afraid to do it, once you discard raza or the DK , the game is as good as over, even if you do not go infinite. If the opportunity does not come, all you have to do is bring it on until you have around 50+ armor, then they can do whatever they want, it will end up in a failure because they won't have enough damage to kill you. Even with thoughtsteal, elisepacks etc all accounted for.
Strategy + Gameplay on hsreplay
3. Vs Exodia mage
Mulligan: Whirlwind, battle rage, blood razor, ticking abonimation, acolyte of pain
Goal: "Dirty rat out their antonidas and sorcer apprentices" or Mill it
Your goal here is to cycle as fast as possible, don't be afraid to overdraw yourself. The most important card in this game is dirty rat. Any moment you have 2 dirty rats in your hand, always use deadman's to shuffle them into your deck. Any time the mage has 9 cards in his hands, use your cold lights to mill him. Once 2 sorcerers are fished out or his antonidas, the mage will rage quit. Also something worth noting here, is that it removing his minions "arconologist" etc is not a top priority, you can just leave it on board a few turns instead of making less efficient plays, because that does not win them the game, the combo does.
Strategy + Gameplay on hsreplay
4 vs Big Priest
Mulligan: Whirlwind, battle rage, blood razor, ticking abonimation, acolyte of pain, garrosh
Goal: "Remove them all"
Big priest list of minions = 1 Ysera, 1 Ysharaaj, 1 Lich king, 2 Obsidian, 1 barnes, 2 eternal servitudes , 2 shadow essences.
Big priest always has an almost full handsize when playing against fatigue warrior, because we have nothing for him to remove, so letting that ysera with only 2 net damage a turn sit their a few turns does not matter that much to us.
I watched Day9's stream yesterday using dog's fatigue warrior, and he went up against big priest 4 times in a row and he lost all 4 while in a very favourable position. Except for a lot of misplays using the deck, the most essential factor causing this loss is his timing of using deadman's hand. Against deck's like big priest who run limited amount of big minions, all you really have to do is be really really greedy with your executes and shuffle your executes back into your deck as soon as possible. You do not have to wait for 2x deadman's hand in your hand before shuffling, just 2 executes or 1 execute with some cycle is enough for you to pull the trigger. If you can choose between hitting for example "Lich king" with a weapon + fishes to remove, vs an execute always choose to save the execute for later in the game. Remember that as a warrior you can afford to take a few hits, so letting that yshaarj hit you in the face for 1/2 times is not the end. What is more important is how you deal with it, when big priest summons yshaarj for the first time it is great to let it pull out additional big minions + dirty rat one from his hand for a very nice brawl.
Big priest strategy and gameplay
5. Vs Fatigue Warrior MIRROR MATCH
Mulligan: Ticking abomination, blood razor, acolyte of pain, garrosh, battle rage
Goal : "Remove your whole hand except for deadman's hand and cold lights ASAP, then put immense pressure on opponent and proceed to mill away their dead man's hand"
This is truly the skill matchup with this deck. You have to cycle as fast as possible, while preventing yourself from getting milled by the opponent. If you overextend with your acolytes etc, prepare to get milled. If you only have cold light oracles left as the only minion in your hand, prepare to get dirty ratted. This is truly a matchup of skill , some luck and wit. What you want to do is dump your entire hand. Do you see no minions on board and you have sleep with the fishes? Use it. Your opponent does not have a board but you have 2 minions? Use brawl. Your opponent play a 0/7 statted public defender? Execute that shit. No matter what you do, dump your whole hand, including bring it on's (later in the game) and only leave coldlight and deadman's hand in your hand. Then what you want to do is keep on drawing until your opponent mills their wincondition.
Example matchup video on hsreplay: Mirror matchup
6. VS Aggro/midrange DK hunter
Mulligan: Ticking abomination, acolyte of pain, blood razor, dirty rat, garrosh, battle rage
Goal: "Kill the hunter by hitting face while controlling board efficiently".
It's time to switch gears. Against hunters, especially those who get their DK out early, it's no use in playing the value game and stalling because they will have infinite zombeast and it will only be a downhill road. Somewhere in the middle of the game when you have a nice enough hand with garrosh in it, you will want to deadman's hand and start smacking face. Garrosh on it's own has 12 points worth of face damage. Garrosh x2 is 24 points of face damage. Combine that with a hit or 2 from dirty rat or one hit from ticking abonimation and that's game. Hunters biggest problem is that they have no healing, so once you think you have enough damage for the push to kill him, you go for it. Always ensure you have enough cycle in your hand.
Vs DK hunter On hsreplay Gameplay strategy.
7 Vs. Aggro Druid
Mulligan: Ticking abomination, acolyte of pain, blood razor, dirty rat,sleep with the fishes, whirlwind, bloodmage
Goal: "Survive, Remove them all and then bring it on"
This matchup is pretty straight forward, you will want to have sleep with the fishes in your hand and a whirlwind effect. Ticking abomination is great against druid of the swarm and cryptlord. Remember they have a few waves, wave 1 = shitty minions like fireflies etc, wave 2 and 3 are living mana's so be sure to be prepared for that. For the rest just remove efficiently and cycle and you should be fine!
Gameplay and strategy on hsreplay.
The difference makers
Ticking Abomination
Ticking Abomination, yes the well known meme card of KOFT. While the stat line is insane and great tempo for 4 mana, nobody has actually thought that it would be useful in any deck... because it destroys your own board and prevents you from developing one....well guess what guys... Fatigue warriors doesn't care about their board and we will also never have a board. All we care about is surviving and cycling our deck in the most efficient way to infinity and beyond, and Ticking abominations are MVP for that purpose.
Ticking abomination allow for great battle rage activations, 2 for 1 trades and allows you to still activate your acolyte of pains, when you do not have any cycle effect cards in your hand. It also forces your opponent to deal with it asap because they know all you care about is cycling as fast as possible while surviving. Most of the time it will eat 1.5 removal from your opponent. They cannot leave it up because they will die in 6 turns, they cannot not kill it because it helps the fatigue warrior by leaving it up. Unlike amor smith who just gets removed most of the time, the turn you play it while gaining you a negligent amount of health with unfavourable trades. If you slam this down on turn 4, you can be sure your opponent will have lose a lot of their tempo dealing with it, which makes all the difference in getting to your win condition of having answers to everything your opponent plays.
Ticking abomination also saves the fatigue warrior a lot of resources a la removal, and will prevent you from using removal inefficiently. Think of the times when you executed your opponents "Raza", "Elise", " Jade behemoth", "mediocre jade","hydra", "crypt lord", "druid of the swarm" on turn 5 because you cannot leave it up. Well with this abomination up on the board it trades with their raza/elise/jade behemoth, saves you your removal, and it still stands there for another trade or your opponent has to sacrifice tempo to get rid of it.
Try it out, you will love it, and you will ask yourself why you haven't thought about this :)
Dirty Rat
In most cases, public defender has been useless for me. So instead of public defender I have opted for an extra dirty rat. Dirty rat is great and 2 dirty rats are even better. It really is MVP and a must in this kind of deck.
Dirty rat greatly improves your match ups against "Jade Druids" by eliminating an additional jade summon.
Dirty rat greatly improves your match ups against "Exodia mages" by pulling out their win conditions in the form of antonidas and sorcerer apprentices. Remember you cycle much faster than the mage, and shuffing additional dirty rats into your deck for more pulls is great.
Dirty rat greatly improves your match up against Razakus priest, by potentially pulling out Raza or Kazakus.
Some win rates of this deck in the current meta from hstracker app:
I run the same deck under different names, so you need to look at them both combined. It looks favoured against a lot of decks, especially druid and priest.
Example matches:
Here are some of the matches + strategy (on hsreplay) I played just now on ladder:
-vs Jade druid --> Strategy + gameplay
-Vs Razakus priest --> Strategy + Gameplay
-Vs Exodia mage -->Strategy + Gameplay
Conclusion
All in all dirty rat is great, ticking abonimation is great , and this list is great, and it is great fun to play. Thank you "dog" for coming up with the initial version! By learning this list, you will never feel like you have an unfavourable match up, every game will feel winnable, and the games you lose will either be against a godlike curve or something you could have prevented yourself. I hope this arch type will get popular enough to see tournament play, because I for sure feel it belongs at least in TIER 1 and it still has immense potential for further refinements. In addition, all the cards played in this deck are free from the recent nerfs announced, so it can only get stronger instead of weaker.
Let me know in the comments below, what you think about the changes and how they are working for you, and I hope you enjoy this deck as much as I do.
You can sub in loot hoarder, but it won't be as effective in clutch situations. We have enough removals in this deck, making shield slams a bit over the top in my opinion. Also geist will destroy our own shield slams, making it weird.
I went from 20 to 5 using a variation of this deck, it is a FUCKING GRIND because games are LOOOOONG, but definitely possible, the changes he propose actually make the deck better for climbing the ladder.
Well, this is simply not correct, actually I climbed to rank 3 by only experimenting with fatigue warrior in standard...
It is by no means a fast climb, but you will get a lot of win streaks and the last time I checked any decks with winstreaks can get you to rank 5 easily. Also it will be an enjoyable climb because you will feel like the decisions you make actually matters unlike some other decks.
Read the section under ticking abonimation.
This isnt your version,Dog made the exact same changes,except instead of a second dirty rat he kept defender,LOL
Trying to take credits for a deck that isnt yours..
If you actually learn to read, I have mentioned dog's name numerous times. Furthermore dog does not run ticking abomination last time I checked.
Don't worry about Unknown27. He wack AF.
Where's the mirror match-up guide? This deck is already pretty high skill, but the mirror matches are impossible for me and HIGHLY frustrating. They take like 20-30 minutes or until the turn limit and it just pisses me off. Kinda why I hope this deck gets nerfed/dies off because it's the most annoying deck on ladder.
No offense to this deck at all, its fun to stomp druids and exodia mages but it feels almost too good to me. After the nerfs I'm positive this deck will see more play and that scares me.
Or I'm just overreacting because I only have 100 games with this deck, and there is a surefire way to beat the mirror. And stomping out druids/mages is just variance. But I like to think I still have some sanity :D
I just whooped a mirror matchup on ranked. I will start on writing a general strategy for it right now. It's just that I did not expect there to be mirror matches issues this soon already haha
Edit: Added the mirror matchup section with hsreplay video.
i already faced a mirror with this deck, the priority should be to cicle the fastest as you can and hold your rat,since the deck is very low on minions, you should try to rat the oracle, and try to setup ur deadmans so ur hand be: Deadmans,coldlight,Brint it on.
No, any priest deck is the most annoying deck there is. They steal all your cards. I once faced a Big Priest with my version of a Control Warrior, all in all, he got 6 Obsidian Statue, 2 Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound (1 from Barnes), 2 The Lich King and Grommash Hellscream. After he played his The Lich King he got Death Grip AND STOLE MY The Lich King. And you want to know what he got from that? AnotherDeath Grip. And you want to know what minion he stole from me this time out of the 5 remaining in my deck? F'ING Grommash Hellscream. And then I lost cause he stole my 2 biggest minions....
I love the look for this deck, only missing Bloodmage Thalnos
I was playing a N'Zoth variation and felt the same way about Armorsmith wasn't strong enough to stop aggro and didnt do much in the late game, Im definitely crafting Thalnos and trying this out, i love fatigue warrior
Hi, I am glad that you are giving it a try! For this deck, while bloodmage thalnos is better because of 2 dmg aoe board clear with whirlwind effects/slam. I think loot hoarder can generally be played as well, with only a small drawback. You can try out loot hoarder first for the general feel, and then decide whether or not you want to craft thalnos! Have fun!
I understand, i currently play another version like i said with N'Zoth which uses Loot Horder and so many times ive missed that extra spell damage so itll be useful there, plus Thalnos is used in so many decks cant even count lol
Hey man, I like how you try to break the wall and to come up with something original. I would love to try out your deck, sadly I lack the epics. I would also love to see your deck on the front page. Show those reddit mods who's boss ;)
Congrats on getting garrosh! The most BM DK hero!
Yes, I know exactly what you mean : )
I have played control warrior religiously with 2 brawls in the deck list since forever, however you will notice that with deadman's hand it never feels like you only have 1 brawl. You can choose to have 2 brawls, 3 brawls or even infinite brawls (if misplayed) to your own liking depending on the matchup. Also with DK garrosh, his weapon + hero power is essentially 3 brawls. So having 1 brawl won't affect us badly.
abominations are odd, ill give it a go and see if its good. the problem I see is that its easier to combo armorsmith with whirlwinds+battlerages, etc.
Let me know what you think, I am very curious towards the experiences of others towards the change. I am always happy to see Abonimation in my starting hand nowadays.
so far 9 games, abominations ate up 3 kill commands and 2 jade lightning. The times it wasn't removed, it almost always went 2 for 1. Also another big bonus is that abominations could be a win condition assuming you cant hold on to your coldlights. You can just dead mans abominations and slowly beat your opponent. Make sure to only play 1 at a time though.
For example I ran into a raza priest and noticed he had 9 cards. I desperately wanted to mill his deathknight, because both my dirty rats failed at pulling velens and I didn't have time to cycle it. I decided to use my last coldlight and luckily milled both the deathknight and lyra. Unfortunately, I had no win condition, so decided to dead mans my abominations and it worked out well - after a slow and brutal chipping of 5 health a turn, I finally won. It should be noted that the priest had 2 thoughtsteals and managed to thoughtsteal my deadman twice. Luckily not at the same time.
still not sure if its better than armorsmith, because its a bit clunky sometimes, but its definitely a strong replacement.