Showmatch Week 4 - Deck Techs With SmashThings and YelloRambo

Hello, HSP-ers!

SmashThings’s Wailing Roar Druid

I’m not going to say too much about the Druid here, and that’s mostly because I have already written a premium guide on it.

The basic idea is to draw cards with Coldlight Oracle (most Druids, have to wait until a turn 7 Ancient of Lore), and hopefully get a few discards in the process; drop a bunch of minions, Silence them with Wailing Soul, and then win the game with Savage Roar + Force of Nature.

SmashThings’s Redeemer Paladin

For the longest time I have been a huge fan of the vastly underused Redemption. Since GvG, more cards have been released that work really well with it (e.g. Piloted Shredder, Shielded Minibot, Sneed’s Old Shredder etc). The deck is basically built around this one card. Notice, however, that the synergy is not ‘gimmicky’ since all the cards are strong on their own (e.g. Sludge Belcher, Shielded Minibot etc).

The downside to Redemption, however, is that it doesn’t work very well with Muster For Battle (hence the deck doesn’t run it) and the Paladin hero power. In the match [Warning! minor spoiler ahead], you can see me on several occasions pass turns without summoning a Recruit. This has two obvious drawbacks (1) I’m not using my hero power! (2) Not using the hero power basically telegraphs the secret.

Redemption is not an easy card to effectively use, but when it does work, it can be great. In the last game of the series [Warning! minor spoiler ahead], I didn’t get great value out of the secret when it finally triggered but that’s largely because YelloRambo played around the card well. Of course “playing around” the card meant that YelloRambo’s turns were disrupted and he had to make some awkward plays such as: not attacking, not popping divine shields, and not using board clear. That is the beauty of the spell!

SmashThings’s Mid-Range Warrior

So, my idea for this deck was to take the ‘tanky-ness’ of Control Warrior (e.g. Shield Block, Shieldmaiden), and throw in a bunch of decent early game minions to trade and soak up damage. My plan was to make a deck that would counter aggro decks, but would still be able to pull out wins against some of the control decks as well.

Commanding Shout is an interesting card choice. Personally I think it’s a little gem of a card that is quite underrated. Since it cycles, you don’t really need to get much out of the ‘can’t die’ ability of the card in order to justify using it. The basic idea is to drop a few small minions, and then use it to make some really efficient trades. You can then sometimes follow up with Battle Rage for some huge card draw as well!

If you want to play Control Warrior but don’t have the dust to build it, then I would recommend giving a deck like this a quick spin. The deck needs Grommash Hellscream, but the other legendaries are replaceable.

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Greetings! I’m YelloRambo, the man who has definitely brought the more boring decks to this week’s showmatch. I decided to go with a slower Mid-Range Paladin (the deck I’ve almost exclusively been playing in the last few weeks ), a Mech-based Warlock and a Ramp/Combo Druid. Let me explain my choices in more detail.

YelloRambo’s Mid-Range Paladin

Even though GvG has finally made my favorite class into one of the strongest competitors on ladder, I’m still upset about the loss of control potential in Mid-Range Paladin. I miss the days when playing against a Warrior or a Priest was a guaranteed fatigue win. This was one of the main reasons why I decided to eliminate all tech cards from my Paladin deck and replace them with a copy of Ragnaros the Firelord.

I decided that I didn’t need a Big Game Hunter because some players got rid of all 7+ attack minions and because I can usually just deal with Dr. Boom and other threats by taking board control and never letting it go. Double Zombie Chows, Shielded Minibots and Muster for Battles usually let me outpace control decks and keep up with aggro opponents. If I fall behind, Mind Control Tech rarely accomplishes anything sufficiently swingy to get me back in the game. I just play a tempo game in the first few turns and build from there.

Oh, and another note about Ragnaros: it completely shuts down Mech Mage. With a consistent early game, I actually recorded a 93% winrate against Mages on a particular day and regularly maintain 60+% against them since I started keeping track of this Paladin deck around two and a half weeks ago. As an added bonus, it can be a complete monster against control decks as well once they use their BGH on your Dr. Boom. While everyone focuses on the good Doctor in the metagame, the Firelord can win you games once the smoke has cleared.

As this was the primary deck I played with on ladder in the last week or two, I was planning to 3-0 with this if I had to. I consider it to be an improvement over the regular Mid-Range Paladin decks – still very consistent, but also sturdier against control decks – just the way I like my Paladin.

Yellorambo’s Ramp/Combo Druid

This is a very standard Druid deck apart from the fact that I stubbornly refused to take some of the latest metagame developments into account when putting the list together. I’m not particularly proficient with the class anyway, I just thought that it would be a good jack-of-all-trades deck to scout with in the first game of the series before I let it go forever.

Notable card choices include Cairne Bloodhoof, who may not have as high an attack as the Piloted Sky Golem, but is more reliable, and The Black Knight. Even if the current metagame doesn’t feature that many Taunt heavy decks, Druid is a class that struggles with regaining board control, which is the reason I almost always include The Black Knight when I play Druid. I wasn’t expecting much from this deck, but it got the job done.

YelloRambo’s Mechlock

This is a funny little one. It all began with Gazlowe. I understand how that card is meant to synergize with Spare Parts, but it also got me wondering: which class has the most useful one-cost spells? I decided on Warlock and went nuts from there. I’m also in love with Fel Cannon. It may not be as explosive as Goblin Blastmage, but if you secure board control it is almost impossible to get rid of without overpaying; it has 5 health and constantly whacks down your opponent’s attempts to climb back into the game. I initially had a 65% winrate with this deck in a Druid-infested metagame. While Zoo is traditionally good against Druid anyway, I found this to be even better. It has more burst potential and better ways to take down Ancient of Wars. Apart from being an entertainingly weird deck, I mainly brought it to take down my opponent’s Druid if he brought one to the match. His deck choices turned out to be less standard than expected, which meant that this deck didn’t get to showcase its full potential (especially because I never managed to draw into a single Fel Cannon) but it still performed an admirable job.

Gazlowe is simply a refueling station for a deck that has a tendency to run dry in the late game, and Toshley is a card that provides some extra fuel while also providing a decent body that can take a hit from the Fel Cannons if things go wrong. The only other non-Mech minions in the deck are Flame Imps and Cogmasters, which usually die by the time the non-Mech-killing cavalry arrives.

Why Soulfire over Darkbomb? Not only is it another one-cost spell, it is also a slightly bigger burst at a lower cost. The lower mana being helpful in the early game battles for board control, and the latter giving me my only burst chance against Handlock. As much as I enjoy playing this deck, it is not really viable on ladder unless there’s an extremely high amount of Druids.

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Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed the Showmatch Series. If you haven’t already, go check it out here.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition featuring two more of Hearthstone Players’ best!