Hearthpwn

Cards like sabotage and assassinate are worthless. They are way too slow and you can't just spend an entire turn killing 1 minion when late game his hero power generates a huge minion for free on top of playing 1-2 other big minions. If anything, you should use bgh because it's cheap and you can return that with vanish/shadowstep and keep killing stuff.

The deck works better running early removals, backstab, deadly, SI, evis. since once you start chaining coldlights, you need ways to dump your own hand to not mill yourself.

try this one

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/385323-guaranteed-easy-win-heroic-giantfin-patron-warrior

Decided to make my own list after trying and failing with the freeze mage ones. Currently 2/2 on NA and EU so give it a try.

Try my patron deck. Probably one of the easiest heroic wins. Much more consistent than the freeze mage decks imo.

Easy win with patrons. 100% success rate guaranteed.

Don't really understand soulfire in a deck that relies on tapping and getting card advantage. PO does basically the same thing and synergizes with both shadowflame and Sylvanas.

I feel like competitive spirit is the weaker secret compared to repentence. In constructed, you basically know every card your opponent plays in their deck so you can easily time the repentence to hit on a crucial turn. And if they somehow sniff out that it's repentence and decide they want to play a shredder and float mana, that's still tempo advantage for you.

Whereas I find it's usually difficult to get competitive spirit value. Your opponent is doing everything they can to contest your board on every turn so if you can somehow manage to get the secret off on 3+ minions, you were probably in a dominant position anyway. Most of the time, you're like "oh I'm gonna muster and competitive spirit and get value on a bunch of dudes" then all but 1 gets cleared and you just get +1/+1 value.

I'm talking from the standpoint where you actually draw these particular secrets and have to play them manually of course because if you get them from MC, then whatever, they were free anyway. Although spirit does also end up putting your MC in bgh range which is what you try to avoid by having at least 2 minions so avenge isn't always going on MC.

Thoughts?

Kolento never got rank 1 legend with this deck

What's your opinion on the usefulness of armorsmith in control warrior? In most of my matchups, it doesn't contest anything on turn 2 except vs face hunter and is usually killed for free. Late game, it doesn't gain that much armor either unlike in patron where you can gain a ton from whirlwind effects and bouncing patrons off everything with 1 or 2 armorsmiths up. It just seems like if it's not contesting the board early and since control warrior now has justicar to stack tons of armor for longer games, it's better to replace for a more impactful card.

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Mysterious challenger may be a very strong card, however there are cards that are designed to beat secrets that could be teched in to beat secret decks like flare and mystic.

In a way, Mysterious Challenger buffs these cards to make them more viable, which I think is a positive thing.

Mystic is completely and utterly useless against challenger. 

 

 

Not at all, decks that run mysterious challenger are bound to draw their secrets before they play the challenger. It happens almost every single game I am against a challenger deck. At least 1-3 secrets are played before he comes down. This is where kezan mystic becomes a viable option. When the opponent goes 3/4 drop into a 1 mana secret for example to fill out their curve, your mystic then gains significant value, and you have just swung the tempo in your favor, therefore making it a viable card. The times where a secret heavy paladin does not play a secret before 6 is very unlikely, so you cannot statistically factor that into your evaluation.

It is also worth noting that since hunter, mage, paladin and warrior are the top played classes (currently) it is likely that you will play a secret class with mystic above 60% of the time on average. Mystic was sometimes being run with only 2 legitimate secret classes, now there are 3, and mysterious challenger is debatably the most common class (in legend ranked where I am able to observe), mysterious challenger becomes more viable, and is therefore buffed.

To reinforce my previous statement, flare mid range hunter could be more common if this meta continues

Mystic is an ok tech but is useless vs paladin. It won't swing games in your favor as it does with mage or hunter because a single paladin secret by itself is completely useless to you especially when your opponent knows which one it is. Just think about what the secrets are and the types of minions the paladin plays and you will understand.

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This is probably the best summary for this card.

No, not really. The card almost always has a huge impact when it is played and the early game for secadin tends to be extremely strong.

I have no idea if the deck/card is OP or not, but that particular post clearly tried to obfuscate both the strength of card and the strength of the deck it is usually played in.

 

You do not seem to have read the initial post at all. The whole point of the post was that the card offers great value in a secret themed deck and thus does indeed have a "huge impact" and nothing has been said to argue with that. The problem that has been described in the post is something completely different. 

I was talking about the conceptual problem of having to run a multitude of weak 1 mana cost spells in order to make an otherwise mediocre card actually good and how a deck that is filled with those inefficient cards does not have the level of consistency or strenght that is needed to surivive in the current meta. 

The critizism was not aimed at the Mysterious Challenger but rather the circumstances he needs to be played in and that is something people do not seem to understand. The context of a deck is an important factor in the evaluation of a cards strenght especially one that relies so heavily on synergy.

What you don't understand is that the 1 mana cards give you 1 mana worth of value. You're not putting 1 mana cards that do nothing into your deck, even when drawn, you are paying 1 mana to get 1 mana worth of something on the board. So the fact that you are forced to play these cards is not reason enough to say Mysterious Challenger is not OP.

You may then ask "well if these cards are so good, why weren't they played before?". The answer is that, by themselves, they didn't provide enough value because you can only play so many 1 mana cards before you ran out of steam which is what mysterious challenger has changed.

If I filled my deck with shitty 1 mana cards but could have all of them in my hand at the start of the game so that I can use all my mana every turn and never run out of steam, then I would still beat decks that used more valuable cards simply due to the sheer volume of cards I'm playing. 6 shitty 1 mana cards being played on turn 6 probably provides more value and tempo than my opponent playing a single valuable 6 mana minion.

This is essentially what mysterious challenger has allowed a deck filled with these 1 mana secrets to do. You're playing this low curve deck with lots of 1 and 2 mana cards and around turn 5/6 you're running out of steam. Then you drop a mysterious challenger which basically drew you 5 cards and played 5x 1 mana cards all while putting a 6 mana 6/6 on the board. The tempo and card advantage from that 1 turn is insane enough to win you the game.

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I think it is funny when people talk about "watch Trump or Kolento". I mean these are some of the best players in the world of course they will do well with good cards (Challenger is great but I don't think OP). I have watched Many of the top players in the world do well with crazy decks that no one argues are OP (hell Dog hit legend this month with mech druid).

Challenger is a great card but like said before its not OP as it forces you to use below average cards to make it great. Everyone talks about how hard it is to remove all of the secrets but if you don't have a board and the paladin has several minions your already losing anyway and would be in almost as bad of shape if he had played a sylvanis or emperor.

The big draw back like Derivative mentioned is although the secrets are OK if you play them early they certainly don't have the value of most other early game cards (or they would be used on their own) and it can cause you to fall behind. Also since most people run 2 of these it is very likely that the 2nd one will have very little value and playing a 6/6 for 6 is fairly dreadful.

Patron Warrior is very powerful because of the 1 turn KO something this deck doesn't have and it still requires one specific card but without the stall or draw mechanics of Patron. Really it is just another cancer deck with a twist and from what I see playing against it and watching others play it good players will have a +50% win rate and will climb the ladder but you can say that about almost every other cancer deck. I think it will get slightly worse as people actually learn to play around the secrets (something you cant really do against Patron).

This is one of several new decks that could bring back removal such as polymorph. Most decks with removal can play around this well if done correctly and ping classes fair even better.

Yes the card is strong and yes the deck seems good at least for the time being but we don't need to scream OP every time something new comes up that is good.

When I say "watch Trump or Kolento", I don't mean watch them beat up some noobs on ladder. I'm talking about watching them use the deck in a tournament against other good players. So of course, if the deck is dominating other decks played by other great players, then it's clearly incredibly strong.

It's also extremely naive to say "if you don't have a board and the paladin has several minions your already losing anyway and would be in almost as bad of shape if he had played a sylvanis or emperor." Losing on the board vs aggro decks is pretty much the norm. What mysterious challenger does is make it impossible to come back and stabilize which is what control decks aim to do vs aggro. And if you are somewhat even on the board, mysterious challenger puts the paladin way ahead as you lose complete board control and tempo to deal with the secrets for 1 turn.

The deck doesn't need value from a 2nd mysterious challenger because as long as they are ahead or even on the board when they play the 1st one, it straight up wins them the game. The only reason to run 2 is to have it on turn 6 almost guaranteed, not because they actually need to play it twice.

This deck is already tier 1 and dominating the meta and it's not even refined and it's all because of 1 card.

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You don't have to go through all the scenarios, just don't use the most unlikely one where the paladin has 0 board allowing you to easily bgh his mysterious challenger. 

The deck has no problem having early board control even with a bunch of secrets. Its early game is very similar to aggro paladin. Even if you draw your secrets, avenge, noble sac, redemption are all decent enough to play for 1 mana. Avenge and redemption in particular make your opponent not want to trade with your minions because they can't immediately deal with a buffed minion or a revived creeper/minibot/harvest golem/shredder. This pretty much ensures you will have board going into your mysterious challenger turns.

If you want to see how much early board control this deck can have despite filling your deck with "shitty" secrets, just go watch Kolento play it in ONOG.

I don't need your snark: I've played this deck quite a bit myself. The secrets are crappy, I seriously don't know what else to say. When you draw any of them other than maybe avenge, your board game is suffering heavily since your opponent gets to draw good cards like Piloted Shredder and Spectral Spider and and what have you.

We're more or less reiterating our positions here, so unless something new comes up in your reply I'll probably disengage this line of conversation.

If I end up doing that, I hope you'll continue to have a nice day. /DP

Just go watch Trump and Kolento. They are both playing it in the tournament right now and you get to see how dominant it is and how much the game swings around when mysterious challenger is played. Who cares how much you have played it. For all I know you are rank 20.

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Well that assumes the paladin has no board whatsoever going into turn 6 which is a good joke because the deck plays nothing but sticky minions that you can't fully remove unless you draw into the perfect hand to counter them.

So what, I have to go through a bunch of different scenarios on how to play around Mysterious Challenger based on what the board looks like? Might as well write a book at that point: "How to counter Mysterious Challenger".

Secret Paladin does not contest the board better than any other deck that tries to control the board, since your deck is diluted by crappy secrets. So yeah, control Warrior cries in a corner while you plop down Mysterious Challenger turn 6, get 3-4 secrets and have a board. But that's like your best matchup.

Once again, the card is not much different than Savannah Highmane: it more or less wins you the game if you're ahead on the board.

You don't have to go through all the scenarios, just don't use the most unlikely one where the paladin has 0 board allowing you to easily bgh his mysterious challenger. 

The deck has no problem having early board control even with a bunch of secrets. Its early game is very similar to aggro paladin. Even if you draw your secrets, avenge, noble sac, redemption are all decent enough to play for 1 mana. Avenge and redemption in particular make your opponent not want to trade with your minions because they can't immediately deal with a buffed minion or a revived creeper/minibot/harvest golem/shredder. This pretty much ensures you will have board going into your mysterious challenger turns.

If you want to see how much early board control this deck can have despite filling your deck with "shitty" secrets, just go watch Kolento play it in ONOG.