After playing this deck for three days straight, I can confidently say that it's trash tier when it comes to climbing past rank 5. It only truly counters slower stuff, and against faster decks, it either highrolls, or falls flat with no chance of recovery.
Barnes is unbelievably bad in this list. In about 80 games, he summoned The Lich King or Cairne Bloodhoof once each. On average, it's a worse Chillwind Yeti, since this deck cares about individual high-health minions a lot.
I've initially taken out one Golakka Crawler for a Dirty Rat, but then put it back in instead of Defender of Argus, and still kept losing to tempo rogue and warlock with Prince Keleseth because the damn crabs just sat in the deck, ruining other matchups. Sure, it's great to destroy their Southsea Captain, but it's not even close to game-winning great; and considering how much more often it's just a useless 2/3, you start to question this deck's gameplan.
I crafted a golden The Lich King specifically for this deck (no worries, I have plenty of dust, just felt like my chances of getting him from arena rewards were getting very slim), but he's bad in it too. Well, not bad, but not great either. In almost every game, you truly only want three cards out of his pool of eight: Death and Decay, Death Coil and Obliterate. The others either do nothing or actively hinder you.
Overall, it was a fun climb to rank 5. But past that, no, just no. It loses to decks that are way easier to pilot and have more reliable win conditions. I've spent the entire day at rank 2, and I'm giving up. Once again, the HS ladder reminds me why I play arena and not climb every month: braindead, starightforward decks are the way to go, and I just don't enjoy rolling the dice.
2
Mulligan for aggro decks (token druid, hunter face) ?