Hearthpwn

Come in and Warm your Frozen Boots by the Fire!

 

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gunnolf, and I am originally from the Land Down Under a.k.a. Australia. I am an avid gamer that has acquired a real passion for card games, which originated from my humble beginnings as a Yu-Gi-Oh collector and eventually grew from my dabbling in Cardfight Vanguard and Buddyfight, until we reached the game we know as Hearthstone.

I've played Hearthstone since the days of classic, with multiple accounts on both EU and NA servers. Despite having reached the Rank of Legend and my own personal mentality of equating 'having fun' with 'winning', I am not really a fan of meta power-grinding & net-decking, not that there is anything wrong with that. Therefore, I enjoy thinking about new, cool and fun deck ideas that push boundaries while also allowing you to win and those are what I want to share with you guys every-time I post a decklist.

I have presently become a contributing writer to WILDHS and will be posting articles there on a semi-regular basis, regarding deck-archetypes the status of the meta as well as how to get the most fun out of this game even if you aren't a big spender. If any of this sounds interesting, then I highly recommend that you check out of the website, as the writers and the owner himself are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet with great in-game knowledge (link to be website can be found HERE). You can also follow me on Twitter for latest updates.

If you genuinely like my content and would like to see me produce more of it, then please consider supporting me on Patreon. This is by no means necessary but it will definitely help me out in the long run. Thanks for Reading ^^

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Deck Introduction

Greetings travelers and welcome back to another legendary deck reveal. Unlike my other legend viable decks that have been posted so far, this particular one is not a true combo deck despite having my personal signature OTK element  (which can be found below in the section marked as 'Alternative Deckbuilding'). Now, although this is a tempo/midrange deck it does have a decent learning curve. However, it should not take you nearly as long to master in comparison to my other OTK Combo decks. So without anymore gilding the lily and with no more ado I present to you my Wild Corpsetaker Secret Paladin with a potential lurking OTK.

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Card Choices and Deck-building Explained

In this section, I will explain some of the card choices I opted for and the reasoning as to why they were included over potential counter-parts.

1) Hydrologist: Is an overall really solid card that provides you with great secret discovery options on average. As a bonus since they are randomly generated, it makes it much harder for your opponent to accurately predict exactly what they will be and as such makes playing around them a tad more difficult.

2) Divine Favor: This is an actual God sent card-draw engine against control or combo style decks as it draws you anywhere from 3-7 cards for just 3 mana. Only one copy has been included since we this really isn't an aggressive hand-dump style of deck and therefore a second copy would be dead most of the time.

3) Dr. Boom: Although Bonemare was a real consideration for this deck, on average I found that the good old doctor provided overall more consistent and aggressive value. As such he fit the 7-cost slot quite nicely.

4) Stormwatcher: This card has been included because it provides Corpsetaker synergy, which can very often snowball with windfury and just win you the game if they stick for long enough. The main reason storm watcher was included over a card like Grook Fu Master was due to its stat-line (mainly the 4 attack element ) and that it enables a possible OTK (which will be touched upon below)

5) Crystalsmith Kangor: Boomsday gave this deck a nice lick of support with this new legendary. While the game plan remains unchanged against control, the fact that we are able to hit lifesteal more consistently with our Corpsetakers now is a huge boost to the deck.

(At the present time, only a few cards have been listed but I will include more if questions pop-up within the comments section regarding substitutions and why other cards were included.)

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Possible Card Substitutions

A really big part of winning with this deck came from identifying the pocket meta of each rank (i.e. Razanduin Priest, Aggro Druid, Big Priest, Aggro Shaman, Big Druid) and specifically targeting them with some well suited tech choices.

-2x secret keeper | +1x Equality & +1x Consecration: In the eventuality that you choose to not run Hydrologist in the deck at hand, then cutting secret keeper is possible since you will always want to be mulliganing away your secrets to increase the value given to you by your Mysterious Challenger. As such you can include some cards that will allow you to come from behind and re-establish your board dominance.

-2x Righteous Protector | +2x Aldor Peacekeeper: This change is only particularly relevant if you're facing an onslaught of Big Minion centered decks or some Tempo variation. In such cases the aldors would regain you tempo and allow you to push for damage or initiate trades while retaining your board at a healthy life total.

-1x Dr. Boom | +1x Bonemare: Although, as stated above, the doctor was considered to be more of a favorable choice for the deck, there were quite a few occasions in which the instant 4 damage from the Bonemare was more relevant to the game, especially when slapped on a windury Corpsetaker or Stormwatcher thus allowing for devastating bursts of damage.

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Flex(ible) Slots

This deck, although quite rigid when concerning the bulk of its list has considerable flexibilty in the 2 mana slot. Specifically, Hydrologist can be replaced by the following cards that although offer a different dimension to the deck still do not impact its main win condition:

1) Knife Jugglers: Is a great aggressive card which if left alive by your opponent can snowball your board control even further, especially if followed up by a card like Muster for Battle.

2) Haunted Creeper: An old favorite of mine and a card I keep going back to occasionally switching out Hydrologists just because of the sheer value that it provides in the early game (in terms of stats) and how it combos so nicely with Sunkeeper Tarim with the appropriate setup.

3) Crazed Alchemist: This card will be covered below, in the OTK Combo segment of this deck. However, looking past its relevance to the combo it is also a fantastic minion which allows you to push damage or protect your board by killing Doomsayers and potentially assisting you in removing cards like Crypt Lord when you would be hard-pressed to do so.

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Alternate Combo Win-condition Explained

Ok so for the following win-condition to be viable, then you need to make the following changes to your deck which are actually quite prevalent in aggressive/tempo pockets of the meta or when Razanduin priest seems to be quite prevalent. Specifically:

-2x Hydrologist, -1x Loatheb & -x1 Dr. Boom | +x2 Crazed Alchemist & +x2 Spikeridged Steed.

The combo requires a one turn setup in so far as playing storm watcher on the board. In the vast major of cases, you will have board control due to the simple nature of the deck and as a result unless your opponent has a stall mechanic or direct removal, they will be unable to interact with this new threat. The combo is as follows:

Play Stormwatcher and pass your turn -> assuming your storm watcher is in perfect health or close to it, you cast Spikeridged Steed on it and then flip its attack and health with a Crazed Alchemist, allowing you to hit your opponent for a grand total of 28 damage, potentially 31 damage if you have a Rallying Blade equipped.

(Although I only managed to pull off the combo about a handful of times, it was a real game changer when I did ~ well obviously since I won haha. Including this combo is perfect for counterqueuing as your opponents never see it coming ^^)

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Guide & Match-ups

Yay, even more reading! Well, I am sure you are sick of this at this point but please do keep going as it is quite important to recognise the match-ups as doing so should significantly increase your winrate.

Vs Freezemage (favored 4-2) | Reno Mage (Favored 5-3): This season was quite odd in so far as I faced very few mages on ladder when playing this paladin deck. No matter what the match-up though, they were generally extremely in my favor as most of the time they just couldn't keep up with the amount of damage I was capable of pushing turn after turn after turn. Coincidentally, quite a few of my wins against mage occurred when I had Crazed Alchemists teched in thus rendering their Frost Nova + Doomsayer combo obsolete.

Vs Razanduin Priest ( 42-29 Favored) | Inner Fire Priest (2-4 Generally 50-50 | Big Priest (9-8 Generally 50-50): Razanduin priest was usually not a problem with this deck as they very often died well before they were able to play Shadowreaper Anduin. The other two versions of priest however were a slight pain to deal with and winning or losing was very dependent on draw rng. In generally if you managed to get ahead and stay ahead on board victory was assured.

Vs Evolve-Token Shaman (6-1 Favored) | Aggro Shaman (5-2 Favored): You are generally favored against these decks due to the quick tempo nature of the deck at hand as well as the huge swing turn provided by Mysterious Challenger.

Vs Jade Druid (7-4 Favored) | Aggro Druid (15-10 Slightly Favored): It is no secret that I generally dislike facing druid. However, with the current decks the match-ups aren't so bad. it is extremely important to tempo out against both decks and take value trades when you can. It is important to note that when playing against Jade Druid, playing around Spreading Plague is often the correct option. Therefore killing off your dudes and making one large minion with your buffs is often the best way to secure a win.

Vs Dude Paladin (9-3 Favored for experienced players): Tis really a rare match-up (for EU at least) but it does occur from time to time. Since we aren't running any come-from-behind mechanics like Equality or Consecration, it is very important to get ahead and stay ahead on the board. Always value trade when you can and make sure yo use your health as a resource. Winning this match-up is very skill dependent and heavily relies on your experience with this deck and decks like it.

Vs Pirate warrior (15-3 Heavily Favored): Not really worth mentioning. All opponents were bots and gave away easy wins. Only lost three times because of bad draws. Maybe if I get human opponents, I'll be able to write a decent guide for this match-up.

Vs Giants Hunter (4-2 favored): Tempo out, hit your opponent in the face and you shall win. Since Giants Hunter doesn't really interact with the board until turns 3-4 you have ample time to get plenty of chip damage in and finish them off since when they do eventually play their giants it is too late.

Vs Demon Renolock (5-2 Favored) | Keleseth Zoolock (3-3 Draw dependent): It is very much a tempo game and winning is mostly based on your first five turns and how much damage you are able to push before cards like Siphon Soul become relevant that can threaten to kill your large Corpsetaker. The zoolock warlock deck although technically favored can be very prone to overrunning you with a turn 2 Prince Keleseth buff as you are no longer able to trade on your own terms or really build up a threatening board.

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Are you Free to Play (F2P)?

Are you maybe a Free to Pay player that doesn't have a lot of dust and can't craft all the necessary cards for this deck? If that is the case, then please try out my F2P Secret Paladin list, which can be found below. It is nothing fancy and it is a deck comprised of only Rare and Common Cards, absolutely Zero Legendaries and Epics, (excluding Mysterious Challengers as they are obviously essential to the viability of secret Paladin) but it packs quite a punch and to be perfectly honest I still use it to this day.

[F2P] Gunnolf's Wild Secret Paladin Secret Paladin Deck by Gunnolf - Dec 21, 2016 View Deck String Export to BBCode Export to Cockatrice Export to MarkDown Export to Html Clone this deck
Minion (18) 2x Mysterious Challenger 1x Aldor Peacekeeper 1x Grimestreet Protector 2x Knife Juggler 2x Secretkeeper 2x Sludge Belcher 2x Haunted Creeper 1x Keeper of Uldaman 2x Piloted Shredder 2x Shielded Minibot 1x Stormwind Champion	Ability (10) 1x Competitive Spirit 2x Muster for Battle 1x Redemption 1x Repentance 2x Avenge 1x Blessing of Kings 2x Noble Sacrifice	Weapon (2) 1x Rallying Blade 1x Truesilver Champion
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I hope the deck brings you as much joy as it did me when I first started playing the wild format and was short on dust. :)

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Author's Notes

As always, please take your time to familiarise yourself with the intricacies of the list at hand. It truly isn't an easy one to master and requires a decent amount of games played on ladder to know the match-ups. Also take into careful consideration, the tech possibilities as they can win you games if you are able to properly recognise the pocket metas of each rank (an element of laddering which can be crucial to a very high winrate).

I enjoy deck-building a multitude of interesting decks that are both entertaining and Legend viable (with some odd Free-to-Play lists mixed in). So if you like this deck (or anyone of my other ones) consider leaving a thumbs up, as it really helps in the long run! :)

Thank you guys for all your support and if you have any suggestions, let me know. 

 

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