Hearthpwn

Aren't Hunters running at least 2 Ironbeak Owls as well? I suppose it's not an excuse for not playing with the card at all, but I see Silence effects in just about every aggro deck on ladder. Also after testing it, I think you're definitely right about Ironbeak Owls being better than Spellbreakers, you want to dump as much of your hand as you can before a Divine Favor.

Quote from FinalFortune »

There are better versions of this deck on ladder, you're missing the Wild Pyromancer, Equality combo and Tinkmaster Overspark for one, and I think establishing board control with Light's Justice is better than with Noble Sacrifice.

This should have superior board control and staying power, you don't want to play any spells unless they do something a character can't; Blessing of Kings for example is just a bad Dark Iron Dwarf. If you need substitutes for the epics and legendaries then Consecrate and Aldor Peacekeepers are decent enough.

But man a Paladin deck without Equality is like a Mage deck without Fireball, I have won so many games thanks to Equality and Silverhand Recruit telling Ysera to piss off.

Abusive Sergeant × 2
121Leper Gnome × 2
121Light's Justice × 2
114Bluegill Warrior × 2
221Equality × 2
200Ironbeak Owl × 2
221Knife Juggler × 2
232Wild Pyromancer × 2
232Arcane Golem × 2
342Divine Favor × 2
300Tinkmaster Overspark × 1
322Wolfrider × 2
331Dark Iron Dwarf × 2
444Leeroy Jenkins × 1
462Truesilver Champion × 2
442Avenging Wrath × 2
600

Dark Iron Dwarf over Blessing of Kings is not completely unreasonable, but this deck often values the extra 2 "Charge" damage from BoK pretty highly. I also think Tinkmaster is decent in this deck and am trying him out myself.

I do, however, completely disagree with Wild Pyromancer and Equality. Equality always requires another card in order to remove a minion, meaning it will frequently put you in awkward situations where you have to use a Wolfrider or other valuable minion to kill the Taunt you just Equality'ed. You don't mind this in a control deck since you play significantly more removal or can take another turn or two to have a Recruit make the trade. A good aggressive deck doesn't have the time to set up these situations. Not only that, but Equality is sometimes a completely dead card. It's less than lackluster against aggro decks and can't be used to actively win the game on its own. Wild Pyromancer's merits mostly rest with Equality. Without Equality, he's mostly just a 2 mana 3/2 in Paladin. He also has the unfortunate side effect of burning your Wolfriders, Recruits, and others which can limit some of your plays. You mention removing Ysera with Equality + Recruit. This deck shouldn't care about Ysera. I love when my opponent's play Ysera because it means they took a turn to basically do nothing and I have an extra turn to get them dead.

Light's Justice is just incredibly low impact and awkward along with your other weapons.

Quote from FinalFortune »

There's obviously more than one viable Paladin aggro configuration, but the problem with your Paladin aggro configuration is that it loses to Druids because it doesn't have the ability to clear the board with Equality. Cards like Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might are only really good when they're combined with Divine Shield so you can get effective trades out of them, otherwise you want cards like Dark Iron Dwarf because they give you a multi-pronged threat. Blessing of Kings gives Silence too much value, there went your 7/6 Divine Shielded Knife Juggler ...

I think I may be wrong about a few of the card choices tho', Lepper Gnome, Arcane Golem and Leeroy Jenkins may be a little too "all in" compared to Argent Squire and Aldor Peace Keepers, Spellbreaker seems to be a better drop than Ironbeak Owl and Redemption may be better than Noble Sacrifice or Light's Justice if you can get the synergy off of it.

You really, really need to play Tinkmaster Overspark tho', if you use his ability judiciously then he's either a Blessing of Kings on a Silverhand Recruit, a Silence vs Druid of the Claw or you'll get the "fizzle" on Silverhand Recruit or the Polymorph vs Druid of the Claw for 3 mana. I understand if you don't have the dust for him, but he is a fucking amazing minion.

I may be a little more "control-ish" with how I play the deck, but I think too many people are falling into the "compare everything in Hearthstone to Magic" trap and their aggro decks are too linear. If you don't get out of the gates with a very aggressive start, a deck like mid-range Druid is just going to laugh and roll over you.

I've also seen other people making some more interesting subs, for instance Aldor Peacekeeper instead of Dark Iron Dwarf and Blessing of Kings or Faceless Manipulator instead of Argent Protector which I think are really creative ideas to deal with cheesy bullshit like Magma Gaint and Sunfury Protector. 

Try changing your deck up a bit or playing against Druids and you'll see what I mean about the deck being too linear to have a late game.

Druid is definitely a bad match-up, but it's mostly because of Swipe and Taunts, not because the deck needs a way to clear the board. I wouldn't play this deck with a lot of Druids being played. I'm personally playing Shaman right now, but will be back on this deck as soon as Druids see less play.

I don't think what you're talking about is so much a question of linearity as just the fact that Druid is a bad match-up, and it's unfortunate for this deck that Druid is so popular right now. You very much want your aggressive decks to be linear, otherwise you will not have the consistency you need to open well and close out games. You will lose a large number of games with the changes you suggest just due to the inconsistency of the deck. You will beat Druid more, but you'll sacrifice a lot in other match-ups. If you really want to beat Druid while using Paladin, play control Paladin. All the suggestions you make are moving the deck more and more toward control. Having half your deck be Leper Gnomes and the other half board clears will not work out.

Quote from Simba93 »

Cards like Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might are only really good when they're combined with Divine Shield so you can get effective trades out of them, otherwise you want cards like Dark Iron Dwarf because they give you a multi-pronged threat.

I strongly disagree with this one, I think blessing of kings is fantastic even without divine shield. big minions are much harder to deal with for many classes (mainly druid) than for example the dark iron dwarf, so I would prefer to have one big minion rather than two smaller ones. another advantage is that it goves you a stronger board presence without overextending on minions wich makes you less vulnerable to AoE and the retarded UTH thats around atm.

Spellbreaker seems to be a better drop than Ironbeak Owl

Also disagree with this one, I think the owl fits better into aggro deck as it leaves you with more mana left the turn you play it, also most classes can easily deal 3 damage wich makes spellbreaker much less relevant than most people think.

I generally agree with these comments, especially regarding Owl. You usually want to play Owl and a Charge minion in the same turn. Spellbreaker makes this much more difficult.

One thing I forgot to mention regarding the Blessings/Divine Shield is that the point of them isn't to trade minions, it's to do significant damage to your opponent and make it difficult for your opponent to remove your minion. Yes, Silence is good against this, but you've already gained some value from the Blessing by dealing damage.

Is Light's Justice any more of a "low impact" card than Noble Sacrifice? I've been looking at Worgen Infiltrator as a possible way to consolidate the aggro and the board control rolls of Lepper Gnome and Noble Sacrifice. I really think what you consider ":focus" is what I consider ":linear," in a perfect, aggro mete where we're targetting the opponent with our Chargers and we're playing our Arcane Golems and Leeroy Jenkins as our finishers, but our our opponent's have a say in the world too and if we can't compete vs the most common control deck with a linear strategy than we should try to adapt instead of abandon the deck. I mean what match ups does this deck have that are better than the match ups Hunter aggro has? Because Hunter aggro does not roll over to Druid of the Claw, and neither should this deck if possible. I really look at Reynad's Warrior deck for inspiration regarding aggro, because that decks seems to place in ladder while only playing cheap, durable beat down creatures without any Charge. I understand the "sligh" philosophy and people's desire to polarize their deck towards dealing damage, but I think Hearthstone is a little more complicated than that and if a deck that puts up maximum aggression folds vs a deck that absorbs impact then the obvious evolution should be "aggro-control."

Yes Equality requires another card on the board, but that argument is irrelevant because so does Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Abusive Sergeant and Argent Protector and yes Wild Pyromancer has "anti-synergy" with 1 drops and Chargers, but your opponent's should be aggressively trading their minions for yours in order to reduce their damage intake so I think if you accurately time your Pyromancers then you'll get cost effective board wipes. I kind of think of the deck as Hearthpwn's equivalent of "The Rock" if you're familiar with MTG.

Quote from FinalFortune »

I've been looking at Worgen Infiltrator as a possible way to consolidate the aggro and the board control rolls of Lepper Gnome and Noble Sacrifice.

I run Worgen infiltrator in my non-control pally deck for that reason.  Playing a worgen early almost always works out well for me, I've found it to be a very consistent card.  I prefer it over the other 1 drops because it's immune to turn 2 hero hero power.  It counters a lot of 2 drops.  If they drop a hard counter (squire) you can let it sit.  If they waste an AoE early because it makes them nervous then that's great.  Or you let it sit around for a few turns and buff it with something.  Arcane missiles counters it hard, but mages are usually an easy matchup for my deck.

Worgen is one of those cards that lets you dictate the direction the game goes.  And that's what winning in HS is all about.

Quote from ForceOf »

Quote from FinalFortune »

Blessing of Kings for example is just a bad Dark Iron Dwarf.

 

Just for multiple PoV pourpose I feel that blessing is actually very different from Dark iron. The pro side of bok is that you play it on a minion already ready to attack givin you back momentum where dark iron just give a small buff at the same minion strength in a probably suicide attack scenario. Then you have to w8 a whole turn to attack rendering it susceptible to removal.

Given the high cost of Paladin cards in general, and how difficult for this reason is to swing momentum when under siege, I'm comfortable to say that bok is far more viable (and useful) than another 4 mana minion like Iron.

GL HF

 

PS. Also a good finisher =)

Blessing of Kings is an amazing card. I run one in a control Paladin. Needless to say, it's amazing in aggro as well for the later stages. 

Quote from FinalFortune »

There's nothing wrong with the card, it's 4 damage before Truesilver and does roughly the same job as Noble Sacrifice, Redemption etc. at immediately establishing board control on T1 vs other aggressive decks like Warlocks or Hunters in order to protect your two drops like Knife Juggler or Wild Pyromancer. A lot of cards function pretty equivalently in that slot - right now I'm looking at Worgen Infiltrator - but your comment about Spiteful Smith or Wisp and Angry Checken just make you come off as an ignorant ass.

@Simba,

You may very well be right, I'm not certain whether or not a 4/3 is much better than a 2/1 and a 1/1 right now, I'm just trying out the subs. Yes big minions are hard for Druid to deal with, but Blessing of Kings doesn't make a big minion, it makes a big Silence target. Those Druid decks that run Ancient Watcher with Keeper of the Grove and Ironbeak Owl will make you strongly reconsider your opinion IMO.

If you swing for the face and for at least 5 damage then get to draw out a silence and/or removal... I'd call that a win. In any deck actually.

Also, if you're running 2 of each (Blessing of Might & Blessing of Kings) that's ALL of their silences. 

Also someone said these buffs are only valuable when placed on a divine shield minion - that's ridiculous. There are SO many times when buffing a token and swinging for the face will force the opponent into an unfavorable trade. 

I think the Divine Shield comment depends on the match up, a deck with a lot of spot removal like Warlock turns Blessing of Might into a "Lightning Bolt," but considering you've done 3 damage plus gotten them to trade with a token it's by no means awful - with that I agree with. What I don't agree with is that Blessing of Might draws Silence, opponent's will just hero power it, Swipe it, Wraith it etc. on a token and it's no where near the Silence magnet as Blessing of Kings is.

I have no problem with Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might in theory, I just think a metagame of Druids running 2 Keeper of the Grove and 2 Ironbeak Owl for Ancient Watcher makes it a bit more risky. I'm probably trading my tokens more aggressively while you guys are going for the kill more aggressively, which I think would explain why we have slightly different card preferences.

@Tpib5

Yeah, I think I like cutting Noble Sacrifice, Blessing of Might, Leper Gnome, Arcane Golemn and Leeroy Jenkines for Worgen Infiltrator, Equality, Wild Pyromancer, Aldor Peacekeeper and the second Dark Iron Dwarf right now and going for less damage two to face and to more board control.

I still think the OP should look into replacing Noble Sacrifice with some sort of more pro-active equivalent.

Quote from FinalFortune »

Is Light's Justice any more of a "low impact" card than Noble Sacrifice? I've been looking at Worgen Infiltrator as a possible way to consolidate the aggro and the board control rolls of Lepper Gnome and Noble Sacrifice. I really think what you consider ":focus" is what I consider ":linear," in a perfect, aggro mete where we're targetting the opponent with our Chargers and we're playing our Arcane Golems and Leeroy Jenkins as our finishers, but our our opponent's have a say in the world too and if we can't compete vs the most common control deck with a linear strategy than we should try to adapt instead of abandon the deck. I mean what match ups does this deck have that are better than the match ups Hunter aggro has? Because Hunter aggro does not roll over to Druid of the Claw, and neither should this deck if possible. I really look at Reynad's Warrior deck for inspiration regarding aggro, because that decks seems to place in ladder while only playing cheap, durable beat down creatures without any Charge. I understand the "sligh" philosophy and people's desire to polarize their deck towards dealing damage, but I think Hearthstone is a little more complicated than that and if a deck that puts up maximum aggression folds vs a deck that absorbs impact then the obvious evolution should be "aggro-control."

Yes Equality requires another card on the board, but that argument is irrelevant because so does Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Abusive Sergeant and Argent Protector and yes Wild Pyromancer has "anti-synergy" with 1 drops and Chargers, but your opponent's should be aggressively trading their minions for yours in order to reduce their damage intake so I think if you accurately time your Pyromancers then you'll get cost effective board wipes. I kind of think of the deck as Hearthpwn's equivalent of "The Rock" if you're familiar with MTG.

The reason I like BoM, BoK, Sergeant, etc and not Equality is because those cards actively win you the game and can serve as removal in a pinch while Equality does nothing to progress the game on its own. I'm not running Blessings for board control either (they're terrible for controlling the board). I'm running them because they do a lot of damage for the mana they cost. BoK also happens to make trading really awkward for your opponent.

I mostly think this deck is directly better than Hunter aggro. This deck crushes other aggro decks and most other decks that don't run much Taunt. The only bonus Hunter really has is the ability of the Hero Power to do damage even if there are Taunts.

Noble Sacrifice is one of the weaker cards in the deck, but you need a 1 drop and I felt it performed fine. I tend to prefer it over a card like Worgen Infiltrator because Sacrifice also protects your minions from Rogue and Druid Hero Powers.

"The Rock" is essentially a mid-range control deck. I'm not really sure how this deck is similar.

Quote from ForceOf »

Quote from FinalFortune »

Blessing of Kings for example is just a bad Dark Iron Dwarf.

 

Just for multiple PoV pourpose I feel that blessing is actually very different from Dark iron. The pro side of bok is that you play it on a minion already ready to attack givin you back momentum where dark iron just give a small buff at the same minion strength in a probably suicide attack scenario. Then you have to w8 a whole turn to attack rendering it susceptible to removal.

Given the high cost of Paladin cards in general, and how difficult for this reason is to swing momentum when under siege, I'm comfortable to say that bok is far more viable (and useful) than another 4 mana minion like Iron.

GL HF

 

PS. Also a good finisher =)

Well said.

Quote from saadatorama »

Quote from FinalFortune »

There's nothing wrong with the card, it's 4 damage before Truesilver and does roughly the same job as Noble Sacrifice, Redemption etc. at immediately establishing board control on T1 vs other aggressive decks like Warlocks or Hunters in order to protect your two drops like Knife Juggler or Wild Pyromancer. A lot of cards function pretty equivalently in that slot - right now I'm looking at Worgen Infiltrator - but your comment about Spiteful Smith or Wisp and Angry Checken just make you come off as an ignorant ass.

@Simba,

You may very well be right, I'm not certain whether or not a 4/3 is much better than a 2/1 and a 1/1 right now, I'm just trying out the subs. Yes big minions are hard for Druid to deal with, but Blessing of Kings doesn't make a big minion, it makes a big Silence target. Those Druid decks that run Ancient Watcher with Keeper of the Grove and Ironbeak Owl will make you strongly reconsider your opinion IMO.

If you swing for the face and for at least 5 damage then get to draw out a silence and/or removal... I'd call that a win. In any deck actually.

Also, if you're running 2 of each (Blessing of Might & Blessing of Kings) that's ALL of their silences. 

Also someone said these buffs are only valuable when placed on a divine shield minion - that's ridiculous. There are SO many times when buffing a token and swinging for the face will force the opponent into an unfavorable trade. 

Also well said. You really don't want your BoK minion getting Silenced, but you've gotten most of what you want if you get a hit in.

It depends on what you mean by cards that help you actively try to win, if you're playing "Sligh" then you're concentrating on disregarding the board and burning down your opponent, but the problem is the deck tends to studder a bit as soon as the opponent establishes a board presence like an Innervated Chillwind Yet or Druid of the Claw or runs into a situation where it gets attritioned by cards like Loot Hoarder, Novice Engineer, Harvest Golem, Imp Master, Keeper of the Grove, Azure Dark, Argent Commander etc. or god forbid an Ancient of War, Ironbark Protector or Cenarious. That's where Equality actively wins games, it stops gold fishing and allows you to deal with their value cards and "board stabilizers" with a two card "Pernicious Deed" 

Regardless, if you're going the "burn them down" route, I really think you should look into Worgen Infiltrator and Tinkmaster Overspark in the Noble Sacrifice and Millhouse Manastorm/King Mukla slot. Also I don't think either of those legendaries are playable by the way, you give your opponent free Swipes or double Wild Pyromancer activations and you are going to regret it.

I think I'm going to give Blessing of Kings another try tho', it's another spell for Wild Pyromancer which I've really been at a loss for.

Quote from FinalFortune »

@Tpib5

Yeah, I think I like cutting Noble Sacrifice, Blessing of Might, Leper Gnome, Arcane Golemn and Leeroy Jenkines for Worgen Infiltrator, Equality, Wild Pyromancer, Aldor Peacekeeper and the second Dark Iron Dwarf right now and going for less damage two to face and to more board control.

I still think the OP should look into replacing Noble Sacrifice with some sort of more pro-active equivalent.

I might not have been clear in my post.  I was talking about worgen as a 1-drop instead of noble sacrifice.  Worgens can be buffed, and you can control when they are used.  Noble sacrifice can't be buffed and your opponent controls when they are used.  They have slightly different uses to fit several play styles though... to each his own.

Taking out all of the aggro cards and replacing them with control cards makes this totally a different deck and I think that's another discussion.

I also agree with Varranis and others that BoK is amazing.  As long as you swing once to the face you've gotten most of the value out of it.  If it doesn't get silenced then your'e at a big advantage.  One of my favorite openers is turn 1 worgen (keep stealthed), turn 2 faerie, turn 3 coin BoK on the worgen (3/2 and a 6/5 ready to swing on turn 3).  Nasty.

IMO equality is great for a control deck, and bad for an aggro deck (as others have stated).  It has no place in this deck.  Aggro decks should not have to clear the board, because they should be ahead on the board.  You can go through taunts with minions.  Inefficient trades into taunts isn't a big deal because you can make it up with divine favor.  Tons of taunts (imo more than three) are an issue, but those games/decks are rare.

Again, it's just different play styles.  My personal preferred play style is to try to dictate the flow of the game and to not have any "dead" cards in my hand.  I want a deck that can aggro (to the face) if needed, and control (trade) if needed.  The OP's deck sacrifices a little too much board control for my tastes, I run a completely different style (non-charge) aggro pally deck.  But I defiantly get how this deck would be very strong and I want to try out a tweaked version of it sometime soon.

I think the problem regarding playstyle is that we're at different ranks by playing different decks on ladder, I'm seeing a shit load of Druids with anywhere from 4 to 6 Taunts like Druid of the Claw and Ancient of War or Druid of the Claw and Argent Defender or Druid of The Claw, Argent Defender and Sunfury Protector for Ancient Watcher or that disgusting Warlock Magma Giant deck or Priest Taunt into Legendaries deck.

There is a point where what you guys are trying to do will either stop working or rely entirely on Divine Favor. I don't think what I'm doing is an entirely different deck to be honest, there's a bit of convergeance and the way I look at it is that Equality is honestly the highest damage dealing card in the game. I'm pretty damn happy to Equality my way thru' a Druid of the Claw with a Silverhand Recruit.

What cards are you playing instead of the Chargers and Aldor Peace Keepers? I've tried Harvest Golems and Imp Masters and liked them quite a bit as well. Are you going for the Scarlet Crusaders or Shattered Sun Clerics? I find Bluegill Warrior and Wolfrider pretty irrepleacable myself, you need stuff that gets Patrick Nagle and Manatide Totem off the board pronto.

Quote from FinalFortune »

I think the problem regarding playstyle is that we're at different ranks by playing different decks on ladder, I'm seeing a shit load of Druids with anywhere from 4 to 6 Taunts like Druid of the Claw and Ancient of War or Druid of the Claw and Argent Defender or Druid of The Claw, Argent Defender and Sunfury Protector for Ancient Watcher or that disgusting Warlock Magma Giant deck or Priest Taunt into Legendaries deck.

There is a point where what you guys are trying to do will either stop working or rely entirely on Divine Favor. I don't think what I'm doing is an entirely different deck to be honest, there's a bit of convergeance and the way I look at it is that Equality is honestly the highest damage dealing card in the game. I'm pretty damn happy to Equality my way thru' a Druid of the Claw with a Silverhand Recruit.

What cards are you playing instead of the Chargers and Aldor Peace Keepers? I've tried Harvest Golems and Imp Masters and liked them quite a bit as well. Are you going for the Scarlet Crusaders or Shattered Sun Clerics? I find Bluegill Warrior and Wolfrider pretty irrepleacable myself, you need stuff that gets Patrick Nagle and Manatide Totem off the board pronto.

Yeah, it's hard to balance viewpoints from everyone.  But that's the fun of having the discussion on the forums right?  I've personally picked up a few good points from the discussion in this post.

I think equality is an amazing card.  But as I see it, the purpose of this deck is to finish before it's needed.

The DKMR deck made it to legendary, so it's played at a high level.  Personally, I settle out in ranks ~6-8 on the ladder.  That's partially due to lack of time though, I'm sure I could grind up much higher if I had the time.  I play more tournaments then ladder.  I got 5th in the last friday night swiss (Booma) if you want to check out a version of the deck I run.  And I run a completely different type of aggro deck than DKMR.  It's more "waves of swarm" than aggro.

Personally, I run into quite a bit of watcher/druid taunt.  I haven't run into many lock giants lately.  I can usually get through the watcher/druid taunts with some combination of minions/consecration/bubble/peacekeepers/sword/BoK (2-3 taunts at least) and the locks are usually dead before they get the giants out (gotta play it smart).  My deck has enough control and is fast enough to beat "to the face aggro".  Most of my games are over around turns 8-9.  I can imagine the DKMR deck is even faster.  Again, draws for you and your opponent factor into the games too.

It sounds like we're facing the same Druid decks and comming to different conclusions, I've found mid-range Druid decks to be a serious problem because they empty their hand so fast with Innervate into a Chillwind Yeti or Violette Teacher depending on their flavor of mid-range for Divine Favor and attrition to be of much use.

Mind PMing the list? I've been looking into Aldor Peace Keepers and Consecration as well so it looks like we're close to each other's game plan of sustained aggro. I just can't get behind Lepper Gnome, Arcane Golem and Leeroy Jenkins and the "finisher" approach, I'm losing too many to accelerating my opponent and disregarding board position.

Blessing of Kings has been pretty decent tho', I needed another spell for the Warlock/Murloc match up to activate Wild Pyromancer.

The deck I've been using:

The basic play style is:

Early game:  By far the most important part with my deck.  Turn 1: worgen or squire or coined faerie dragon.  Turn 2: faerie dragon or coin SoJ or coin peacekeeper an innervate or use a shield to kill their drop.  I try to get a 2 creature board advantage or a SoJ out by turn 2 and then keep that advantage throughout the game.  From there it's just making the plays that allow you to trade or face punch to your advantage.  I typically trade against aggro and push against control, but each game is unique.

Midgame:  I almost always have an advantage early game, in the midgame they will wipe your board or throw taunts up.  If they wipe the board I usually dump my hand to instantly regain board control (if I have a divine favor).  I use minions/consecration/bubble/peacekeepers/sword/BoK to get through taunts.  I try to send out "waves" of creatures in one turn and then slowroll recruits between the waves.  I save knife jugglers for late midgame.  Around turns 6-7 knife jugglers plus a few small guys really start to work well.  SoJ is a monster midgame when you put out 3-4 buffed creatures in a turn.

Late Game:  Most games usually don't get to late game, but if it does I have them low on health and I use Rag, Tirion, truesilver, or another swarm to finish.

Overall, the deck has 14 +1/+1 buffs and 5 weapons.  Those add up over time and it's really hard for your opponent to get and maintain board control.

The deck does somewhat rely on divine favor, but usually it's not needed till turn 5-6 and odds are you'll have one by then.  It also helps that most people assume it's a control pally deck and by the time they realize it's not it's too late.  It's also nice that this deck can ignore things like nat pagle, mana totem, etc.  Draw for them = draw for you too.  They waste tempo and you can get solid board control and punch to the face.  It is common that I'll get a 5+ card draw with divine favor against control decks.

The deck does well against all 3 lock decks, druid control, both rogue decks, "whats yours is mine" priest, hunter control, mage giants, mage aggro, murlocs.  It's just too much to handle for most control decks.  It's 50/50 against UtH hunter (depends if you can get taunts up), pally control (depends if they draw heals or avenging wrath), watcher priests, and charge decks (depends on speed and if you draw taunts).  It struggles against shaman (they have too many waves of taunt/AoE).  It also struggles against the frothing berzerker/armorsmith warrior deck if they get weapons early.  The 4 health minions are too much to get through early game (Maybe I'm playing this matchup wrong?).  I haven't played against much miracle rogue or against the current "OTKish" decks, but I assume it would be favorable.

Quote from Tpib5 »

The deck I've been using:

Deck Export to BBCode Export to Cockatrice Export to MarkDown Export to Html Clone this deck
Minion (21) 1x Ragnaros the Firelord 1x Tirion Fordring 2x Aldor Peacekeeper 2x Defender of Argus 2x Knife Juggler 2x Argent Protector 2x Argent Squire 2x Faerie Dragon 2x Harvest Golem 1x Southsea Deckhand 2x Worgen Infiltrator 2x Shattered Sun Cleric	Ability (5) 2x Divine Favor 1x Blessing of Kings 2x Consecration	Weapon (4) 2x Sword of Justice 2x Truesilver Champion

The basic play style is:

Early game:  By far the most important part with my deck.  Turn 1: worgen or squire or coined faerie dragon.  Turn 2: faerie dragon or coin SoJ or coin peacekeeper an innervate or use a shield to kill their drop.  I try to get a 2 creature board advantage or a SoJ out by turn 2 and then keep that advantage throughout the game.  From there it's just making the plays that allow you to trade or face punch to your advantage.  I typically trade against aggro and push against control, but each game is unique.

Midgame:  I almost always have an advantage early game, in the midgame they will wipe your board or throw taunts up.  If they wipe the board I usually dump my hand to instantly regain board control (if I have a divine favor).  I use minions/consecration/bubble/peacekeepers/sword/BoK to get through taunts.  I try to send out "waves" of creatures in one turn and then slowroll recruits between the waves.  I save knife jugglers for late midgame.  Around turns 6-7 knife jugglers plus a few small guys really start to work well.  SoJ is a monster midgame when you put out 3-4 buffed creatures in a turn.

Late Game:  Most games usually don't get to late game, but if it does I have them low on health and I use Rag, Tirion, truesilver, or another swarm to finish.

Overall, the deck has 14 +1/+1 buffs and 5 weapons.  Those add up over time and it's really hard for your opponent to get and maintain board control.

The deck does somewhat rely on divine favor, but usually it's not needed till turn 5-6 and odds are you'll have one by then.  It also helps that most people assume it's a control pally deck and by the time they realize it's not it's too late.  It's also nice that this deck can ignore things like nat pagle, mana totem, etc.  Draw for them = draw for you too.  They waste tempo and you can get solid board control and punch to the face.  It is common that I'll get a 5+ card draw with divine favor against control decks.

The deck does well against all 3 lock decks, druid control, both rogue decks, "whats yours is mine" priest, hunter control, mage giants, mage aggro, murlocs.  It's just too much to handle for most control decks.  It's 50/50 against UtH hunter (depends if you can get taunts up), pally control (depends if they draw heals or avenging wrath), watcher priests, and charge decks (depends on speed and if you draw taunts).  It struggles against shaman (they have too many waves of taunt/AoE).  It also struggles against the frothing berzerker/armorsmith warrior deck if they get weapons early.  The 4 health minions are too much to get through early game (Maybe I'm playing this matchup wrong?).  I haven't played against much miracle rogue or against the current "OTKish" decks, but I assume it would be favorable.

Why do you run 2 Sword of Justice? Just curious... when I ran aggro Paladin, I found it to be more common a case where I have 2 SoJ sitting in hand and no use for it...

Quote from saadatorama»Why do you run 2 Sword of Justice? Just curious... when I ran aggro Paladin, I found it to be more common a case where I have 2 SoJ sitting in hand and no use for it...

I've found I burn through them quickly with so many low cost minions.  It's one of the main early game engines for my deck.  I try to get SoJ out ASAP and pick off a one health minion with it.

There is the occasional game where I end up with 2 SoJ in my hand, but that's just the luck of the draw.  I'd rather have the option of playing two instead of not drawing one.  The odds of having 2 SoJ in my hand and not being able to rapidly play them are low.

Plus if the first one gets oozed you have a backup.  It's a tempo loss, but this deck can generate tempo extremely fast, so that's not as big of an issue compared to the control pally deck.

My deck isn't a pure "aggro" deck either.  I take time to set things up (when the match allows it).  I often play it as control in matchups till about turn 4-5.