Old Guardian's Budget Run to Legend - No Epic or Legendary Cards, Full Decklists
Old Guardian decided it was time to experiment with budget decks since the Rise of Shadows meta has stabilized, here's what he came up with!
These decks were piloted from Rank 4 to Legend and all make use of no Legendary or Epic cards which makes them very approachable to newer players. If you don't have the dust and want to rack up those wins, your answers may lay below. If you want to learn more about each deck, click on the deck itself to see the deck guide (video format).
Here's what Old Guardian said in his reddit post.
Quote from Old GuardianWith Rise of Shadows a few weeks old, the meta has stabilized enough to start building some long-term budget decks. To get a proper climbing experience, I timed my budget deck building to the start of the May season, and it took me a total of 10 days (22 hours played) to reach Legend with decks that do not use any Epic or Legendary cards.
I played and tuned each class until I felt confident that the deck works, or until I had no ideas on how to improve the class on a budget, after which I switched to another class. I played eight of the game's nine classes during the climb (did not get to Warrior), and managed to build Legend-capable budget decks for six of them.
Sometimes I landed on a good archetype right away, and it was just a matter of fine-tuning, and sometimes it took me some time to find even the archetype. For Paladin, for example, I ventured through Secrets and a Secret-Mech hybrid until landing on a pure Mech build.
For two of the classes, Rogue and Mage, I could not find a Legend-capable solution without any Epic or Legendary cards: cards such as Preparation, Waggle Pick, Edwin VanCleef, Myra's Unstable Element, Leeroy Jenkins, Mountain Giant, and Mana Cyclone seem to be pretty important for those classes right now.
I started from rank 4, because I was in Legend last season.
Overall, I am 70-49 (59%) this season. This includes testing and building these decks.
My season history:
- Zoolock experimentation from 4 to bottom of 5 (not featured) to rank 5 and full stars (featured)
- Hunter from 5 to 3 (featured)
- Druid experimentation on 3 (not featured)
- Priest experimentation on 3 (not featured)
- The good Priest from 3 to 2 (featured)
- Druid from 2 to 1 (featured)
- Rogue and Mage from rank 1 and 4 stars to bottom of 2 again (literally all the way to 0 stars, not featured)
- Paladin experimentation and finally breakthrough from 2 to 1 (featured)
- Shaman from 1 to Legend (featured)
Bomb Hunter
|
|
|
|---|---|
Minion (28)
|
Ability (2)
|
| Loading Collection | |
Mech Paladin
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
Minion (22)
|
Ability (6)
|
Weapon (2) |
| Loading Collection | ||
Token Druid
|
|
|
|---|---|
Minion (16)
|
Ability (14)
|
| Loading Collection | |
Silence Priest
|
|
|
|---|---|
| Minion (17) |
Ability (13)
|
| Loading Collection | |
Murloc Mech Shaman
|
|
|
|---|---|
Minion (24)
|
Ability (6)
|
| Loading Collection | |
Mech Zoolock
|
|
|
|---|---|
Minion (26)
|
Ability (4)
|
| Loading Collection | |
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 14, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)The boring part is that if u wanna play budget its all zoo, rush, aggro go go go.. God for 5 min games on the subway but boring AF for the rest of players and the e-sport side. U dont even have to know basic math to play all your cards on turn 1,2,3 and just win. Just to compare, they will never just change the rules of chess and invent a rush mechanic like move your bishop twice and that game has been around a couple of years and still intrigues players. There are aggresive and defensive openings to that game to but no turn 10 comeback just to promote agression. If blizzand want s a moneymaking bussride game just digitalize rock, paper, scissor..And if they still want to keep it liker it is then lets to like in chess, make it 70 sec thinking time for one ladder, 35 for another and 5 for another. No scrub with no knowledge will go below lvl 24 on the 5 sec ladder and fuck the animations, noone is here for the perfect gfx... Sorry about the speeling im not a redneck from the south.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 15, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)You can't compare it to chess, because you don't start with just pawns, since all the first line is rares epics and legendaries. You start with full set no matter if you paid for it or are playing just on street corner.
Also, don't forget that there are very little good budget control cards. Most of those are rares epics and legendaries. So they made the best they could with commons and that is aggro, zoo, rush etc. Even if they could include rares doubt they would manage to do anything ladder worthy that would be competitive and efficent enough compared to aggro.
Also, don't quite get you idea behind disliking all the "aggro" and making the fast chess like game of 5s in the highest ladder. In those 5s you wouldn't be able to pull off some of the combos, hell, a full board of minions might even be hard to trade between itself. For example some people are getting cought of guard and make mistakes by just playing nozdormu and you want to almost half that time. Just incase you didnt notice currently the turn time is 60s so its already faster than your third suggested time.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 14, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)That's quite interesting, I was almost sure the time of F2P legend is over and no one would do it again, it's nice to see that enough dedication (130 games over 10 days, most months I myself don't even get to 50) and skill gets you there, if only to prove all the people calling Hearthstone P2W wrong.
Kudos!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)Been watching OG on YouTube and have to say I find him the best to watch. Really chilled and knowledgeable, explains things well and none of the gimmicky stuff other content creators can be guilty of. Have a lot of respect for people who make guides etc like these, takes time, effort and patience. Thanks for putting all this together, I'm sure plenty of people particularly those on a budget will really benefit from these
Keep up the great work!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)Budget decks that actually win? been awhile and its nice to see
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)Never heard the name Old Guardian. Now I guess I never will forget it....
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)Excellent deck guides videos, instructional streaming, and overall achievement/goal in rank 5 to legend.
Thanks Old Guardian - keep up good work mate.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)Really cool to see Old Guardian featured here. His content is so good for learning how to analyze and make better plays. And obviously a stellar achievement with this budget climb!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)Respect, really.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)He is the nicest guy and explains every single decision he makes, so very good guy to watch.. he streams and have a youtube channel, so go for it if you wanna learn a lot..
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)very that
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)That's a pretty remarkable achievement: to be honest I don't know who this guy is, but props to him!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 13, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)in summary mechs are good
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 14, 2019 (Rise of Shadows)As long as there is a body on the board, Magnetic is simply charge in disguise ..!