I absolutely love the flavor of Wailing Caverns in Hearthstone, so it’s time to look at some decks! Several of these cards will no doubt start showing up in decks, or bring some classic cards in the Standard meta back! While at first glance, some of the cards might not seem powerful or useful, when used in conjunction with others, amazing combos come to life. For example, Against All Odds is really neat, since it destroys all minions with Odd Power ratings. Very restrictive, right? Then we set this up with Wave of Apathy (Priest spell) to set all enemy minions’ power down to 1! Not so bad now! 

It’s important to note that these are decks that are only a few days old at best. Whether they’re going to stand on top of the meta remains to be seen. We’ll come back to it later in the month to see exactly if any of these concepts stood tall. Buying the bundle is frankly a pretty good deal if you ask me. If you’re lacking dust, and aren’t really sure what to play, now you have access to the mini-set! 

There are sure to be many fun decks for Hearthstone, thanks to Wailing Caverns. Even if it’s one new card to shake up a deck, I’m really excited about it. But I still think my favorite card in the mini-set is Mutanus. The potential to suddenly have a massive creature without much work done! I love that kind of silliness. It feels like quite a few Heroes have been shaken up through this set and that can only be a good thing. Shaman get a ton of love too from Primal Dungeoneer. A ⅔ for 3, its Battlecry has you draw a spell, and if it’s a Nature spell, you also draw an Elemental. It’s brilliant and will help Shaman rise to prominence.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about Big Demon Hunter in a while. That’s with Fel Summoner in the mix. However, there’s a really fascinating new demon that may help us ruin people’s day. Fel Summoner, as we know, has us summon a random Demon from your hand when it dies, and it’s an 8/3 for 6. There are some seriously gross demons in the deck too. 

For example, we can use this to hopefully get a Pit Commander into play, the 7/9 Taunt demon. It summons a demon from your deck each turn. That’s already brilliant. But what I really want to see as early as possible is Taintheart Tormenter. Any card that slows down my opponent makes my day, and that’s not a surprise to anyone who reads my MTG Arena blogs. He’s expensive, so we want to play him for free. 

In theory, we could draw a Fel Summoner on turn 1. That’s a theory at least. Now, we wouldn’t be able to play it, but we’d have access. We want it so we can summon a random Demon from our deck. All of our demons are horrifyingly strong. I want to talk about the new one first though. Taintheart Tormentor is an 8-cost 8/8 with Taunt. It makes your opponent’s spells cost 2 more mana than normal. Everything is suddenly much slower. What other disgusting demons do we have? Illidari Inquisitor is an 8/8 with Rush, and after your Hero attacks an enemy, this hero attacks it too. We want to partner this with Ace Hunter Kreen. It makes your other characters Immune while they’re attacking.  It’s also a 3-cost minion, so we can put it into play whenever we want (when we have the card).

Pit Commander is the most expensive card in the deck, as a 9-cost Taunt with 7/9 for stats. At the end of your turn, he summons a Demon from your deck. If we don’t get him from Fel Summoner, we can get him with Tael Fordring upon his Deathrattle. This draws our Highest Cost Minion. Fel Summoner summons a random demon from your hand, so we want to make sure one of the three is in our hand in the first place. 

Through our Deathrattle, we can thin the deck out and draw into more cards. We have so many Deathrattle cards that are useful though. If we could use any of them to summon Fel Summoner early. Death Speaker Blackthorn, for example, summons 3 Deathrattle minions that cost 5 or less from your deck. Our only chance to get Fel Summoner from a Deathrattle is the Tuskpiercer though or perhaps Loot Hoarder. It draws a card when it dies. Frankly, Blackthorn is a late-game card alongside N’Zoth to fill our board with threats to seal the deal.

We can use Razorfen Beastmaster as a 3-cost, that summons a Deathrattle minion from your hand when it dies (through its own Deathrattle). The Felrattler is a 3/2 Rush with Deathrattle too, and it deals 1 damage to all enemy minions when it passes on. The deck is built around frustrating Deathrattle effects until we get the combo set. 

Devouring Ectoplasm is a new Deathrattle for 3 mana, and is a 3/2. When it perishes, it summons a 2/2 Adventurer with 2/2 stats and has a random bonus effect. In case things aren’t going as planned, we can use Raging Felscreamer as a 4-cost. It makes our next Demon we play cost 2 mana less. If for some reason we hit turn 10 and we need a demon, we can play this alongside Illidari Inquisitor or Taintheart Tormentor. 

You have to be careful about your Deathrattle-summoning cards that summon from your hand. You have to make sure you have the options open to summon. The ideal situation though is we can Fel Summoner a big demon. If we can hold Ace Hunter Kreen until we’re ready to start attacking, we can partner that with Illidari Inquisitor to eliminate threats on the board. That way he takes no damage from the combat. 

From this point, when we get Fel Summoner into Big Demon, we’re going to swing on the opponent’s face as hard as possible. Most of our early game is built around getting cards in hand, holding the other player off with cheap Deathrattle threats that give us more threats. It’s not all that different from the standard fare Deathrattle decks. We pick the other player off with threats that feature Deathrattle and blast them with huge demons out of nowhere. It’s a fun curveball!

Decklist

Trueaim Crescent (1) x2

Tuskpiercer (1) x2

Loot Hoarder (2) x2

Razorboar (3) x2

Ace Hunter Kreen (3) x1

Devouring Ectoplasm (3) x2

Felrattler (3) x1

Razorfen Beastmaster (3) x2

Raging Felscreamer (4) x2

Renowned Performer (4) x2

Taelan Fordring (5) x1

Fel Summoner (6) x2

Death Speaker Blackthorn (7) x1

Illidari Inquisitor (8) x2

Taintheart Tormenter (8) x2

N’Zoth, God of the Deep (9) x1

Pit Commander (9) x2

Deck Code

AAECAea5AwTj1AOb2AO/7QOoigQNg8cD4c4D2NMDyd0Du+0DvO0D/e0D/u0DqO8Dr+8DgIUE1J8EoaAEAA==

Even if things aren’t necessarily going your way and you’ve lost some minions, you can get them back potentially, with N’Zoth, God of the Deep in the late game. It resurrects a friendly minion of each minion type you have. So in this case, a generic, beast, quilboar, and demon! While I’m a fan of this deck as a concept, I’m not so sure it’s going to stand on top of the pile later this month. But I love the combo of Fel Summoner + Taintheart Tormenter though. It’s going to completely shut some combos down when they can no longer afford their big cards.

Another deck that features Ace Hunter Kreen? Oh yeah! We’re going from Demon Hunter to regular Hunter, and keeping that card in the deck! There’s no big surprise though. If we can flood the board with creatures that have Rush, and then they’re Immune on top? We’re going to have some really serious threats and then just push damage onto the other player’s face. I appreciate the way we can make a Rush minion also into a bomb by making it Poisonous. How frustrating is it to finally play your humongous, game-winning creature, only to have a 1/1 creature put it into the ground?

That’s an option we have in this deck! It’s even better if we can swarm with Hyena minions, and Parade Leader gave them all +2 Attack? It’s a nice, easy, aggressive deck. We’re using a similar Face Hunter deck as the last time. So we’re still using Warsong Wrangler to draw into Wolpertinger, Trampling Rhino, or Zixor, Apex Predator (and Zixor Prime)! But we have some new cards to make the deck a little meaner, a little faster. The new Hunter cards are pretty solid. We’re using two out of the three in the deck, only lacking Venomstrike Bow. 

It’s still a neat card, but I don’t think we really need it in the deck. Instead, the Trueaim Crescent is a better bow that does more for less. We’re going to hit the other player in the face with some angry minions, and that’s all it takes. So let’s talk about some cards!

The end game is to hit the other in the face quickly. We’re still using the traditional cards like I said. Adorable Infestation and Demon Companion so we can start attacking quickly. We’ve also got Tracking to Discover a card in our deck. There’s no telling what it can be! It could also be great after Zixor, Apex Predator dies. If we could just pull Zixor Prime out of the deck? Beautiful. I kind of want to start playing my Hyenas until I have access to Parade Leader. He grants +2 Attack to any Rush minion we summon. Hopefully, we can keep this in play for a while, but I see it being a target.

We want badly to play Zixor, Apex Predator early. A 3-cost Beast, it has Rush and Deathrattle. Getting it with Parade Leader then makes it a 4/4 Rush! But we want Zixor to die. When it dies, it shuffles a Zixor Prime card into the deck. In the interim, we want to play the new card, Sin’dorei Scentfinder. A little pricey, it’s a ⅙ for 4 mana. But when it takes damage, its Frenzy triggers, and it summons four 1/1 Hyenas with Rush. 

That’s why I want Ace Hunter Kreen. He makes them Immune while attacking! We want to combine that with a 0-cost spell, Serpentbloom. A friendly beast gets Poisonous. We can use it on a Hyena, or. . . Trampling Rhino. Consider this combo, if you will. Trampling Rhino is a 5/5 Rush, and when it attacks, excess damage goes through to hit the enemy Hero. Now I think the first point of damage would be enough. Trampling Rhino is still the best way to win though. In theory, we Warsong Wrangler in a Trampling Rhino. The ¾ Battlecry minion Discovers a Beast from your deck, and all copies of it gain +2/+1 wherever they are. Then, we cast Dire Frenzy for 4 mana, giving a Beast +3/+3. Now, Trampling Rhino 10/9 Rush. Finally, throw Poisonous on it for 0 mana. We slam into the weakest thing we possibly can, and hit for about 8-9 damage while also killing a minion. Now we also have buffed extra copies in our deck!

Then we have more fodder for Selective Breeder for 2 mana. It Discovers a Beast in your deck. Now we have more powerful Beasts to find! Or we can get Scavenger’s Ingenuity, which draws a Beast and grants it +2/+2. Though you know what’s great with that too? Wolpertinger. Now we get a 3/3 for 1, and its Battlecry summons a copy of it.  Suddenly, we have two angry 3/3s to hit with! 

Kolkar Pack Runner helps early on too. A 2-cost creature, it summons a 1/1 Hyena with Rush when we cast a spell. We spend a lot of the early game casting spells to make minions anyway. Most of this deck is affordable too. Heck, we can cast a turn-5 Barak Kodobane to gain a 1, 2, and 3 cost spell in this deck. We only have one 2-cost spell: Scavenger’s Ingenuity. Sadly, no 3-cost spells, unless Mankrik counts. Love Mankrik though, he’s fantastic. 

Our spells and minions can grab Beasts out of our deck, we can buff them, and just swing in heavy. Especially if we can play a Trampling Rhino, dump tons of damage with it, and then just play another one right after. We’re going to swing on the opponent’s face any chance we can with big numbers. We can constantly harass their minions with Hyenas too. If we wipe their board this way, just hit the enemy face again and again until finished.

Decklist

Serpentbloom (0) x1

Adorable Infestation (1) x2

Demon Companion (1) x2

Tracking (1) x1

Trueaim Crescent (1) x2

Wolpertinger (1) x2

Wound Prey (1) x2

Kolkar Pack Runner (2) x2

Parade Leader (2) x2

Scavenger’s Ingenuity (2) x2

Selective Breeder (2) x1

Ace Hunter Kreen (3) x1

Mankrik (3) x1

Zixor, Apex Predator (3) x1

Dire Frenzy (4) x1

Sin’dorei Scentfinder (4) x2

Warsong Wrangler (5) x2

Barak Kodobane (5) x1

Trampling Rhino (5) x2

Deck Code

AAECAR8Ig7kD49QD6ukD5u4D5e8D5/ADqZ8EvaAEC/+6A6LOA+HOA4LQA7nSA7PeA4biA5/sA/DsA9vtA+fuAwA=

This deck hasn’t changed too much, in my opinion. It’s still a solid, powerful deck. The new Sin’dorei Scentfinder is amazing, and it allows us to flood the board with Hyenas that have Rush. All we need is the ability to buff them, and they can just smash things. We don’t even need that though! They’re great because they can immediately work on eliminating threats. We can also just hold them, and swing on the other player’s face next turn. 

Then the other player has to respond to our little beasts or keep taking damage, while we set up the bigger, meaner threats. Like a whole board of angry, buffed Zixor Prime minions! Zixor Prime is a Beast after all. We can use Dire Frenzy on it to make one of the Zixor Primes into 7/7s, and shuffle 3 of them into the deck! I love this as a possible combo just in case things go bad. Then we can keep summoning more boards full of Zixor Prime. Is it necessary? Probably not. But fun? Oh yes. As far as the decks go for Wailing Caverns in Hearthstone, it’s certainly one that got an upgrade.

Celestial Alignment is a really cool deck concept, that’s for sure. It lets you play some massive cards for 1 mana. It’s a 7-cost spell that makes each player be reduced to 0 Mana Crystals. Then, all cards in hands and decks become 1-cost. From there, you need to figure out a way to start playing cards again, because you still have 0 mana. But what if you have some Mana Ramp cards left over, and you have Lady Anacondra? Suddenly, life is very good. She’s a new card that could be useful in several Hearthstone Druid decks, thanks to Wailing Caverns.

She costs 6 mana and is a 3/7, which is okay. But she makes all of your Nature spells cost 2 mana less! This means all of your Nature spells now cost 0 mana. Depending on when this happens, you might have C’Thun, the Shattered in your deck, making him a 1-cost also. It’s a deck you’ll want to mana ramp at the beginning, and again once you’ve played Celestial Alignment. 

As is the tradition in a Druid deck, we want a lot of mana really fast. It’s not as fast as it used to be though. We can cast Nature Studies to make Wild Growth and Overgrowth a tiny bit faster. Wild Growth gives us one Mana Crystal and Overgrowth gives two. In a pinch, we can drop a 0-cost Lightning Bloom to give 2 Mana Crystals for the turn, and then Overloads 2 next turn (so we have two less mana).

We want to play Celestial Alignment, the 6-cost spell as soon as possible. But you want to have cards in hand worth using. There’s no sense in casting it if you can’t do anything. You’re going to want to be able to add more mana to your pool, and refresh it if possible. Lightning Bloom and Nourish help you get the temporary mana you need (or permanent, in the case of Nourish). 

Then we can cast a few spells, and cast Forest Warden Omu. He refreshes the mana crystals you have so you can keep casting things. You also want to cast the new Lady Anacondra! Making your Nature Spells cost 2 less makes them free. What could we possibly want after this? Cenarion Ward! Now it’s a 0-cost spell that grants 8 Armor and a random 8-cost minion. Gadgetzan Warden really helps this deck. Anytime we cast a spell, draw a card. So we Celestial Alignment, get him out, and start casting away. It also assists us in getting pieces of C’Thun cast, making it easier to summon our game-ending god.

Every card in both players’ decks now cost 1 mana for the game. Extra cards added don’t though. That’s why we can hopefully get our shards of C’Thun cast beforehand. If not, that’s fine too. When the game starts, four cards get put into the deck, and they all cost 5 mana. Body, Eye, Heart, and Maw of C’Thun. Frankly, getting these after Celestial Alignment is easier. 

We can just cast our other Alignment to make C’Thun cost 1! He’s a fantastic game-winning bomb. C’Thun deals 30 damage split randomly split among all enemies. So if we can use our creatures to wither the field down to nothing, we win! The Shards are very powerful though, and for 1 mana, it’s better.

• Body of C’Thun: Summon a 6/6 C’Thun’s body with Taunt.
• Eye of C’Thun: Deal 7 damage randomly split among all enemies.
• Heart of C’Thun: Deal 3 damage to all minions.
• Maw of C’Thun: Destroy a minion.

These can easily set up victory for you too. They do pack a lot of control on the board. Our opponent gets slowed down too after all, but they’re likely to lack the mana ramp we do. We will hopefully be able to just combo tons of cards into play. Another valuable card to see as soon as we cast Celestial Alignment is the 4/12 Malygos, the Spellweaver. He draws spells for you until your hand is full. C’Thun’s one of our game-winning bombs, and so is the Solar Eclipse + Cenarion Ward combo does it too. It should completely push our opponent out of the game and give us lots of damage to win with.

Decklist

Innervate (0) x2

Lightning Bloom (0) x2

Nature Studies (1) x2

Guess the Weight (2) x2

Lunar Eclipse (2) x2

Solar Eclipse (2) x2

Fungal Fortunes (3) x2

Wild Growth (3) x2

Overgrowth (4) x2

Forest Warden Omu (6) x1

Lady Anacondra (6) x1

Gadgetzan Auctioneer (6) x2

Nourish (6) x2

Celestial Alignment (7) x2

Cenarion Ward (8) x2

Malygos the Spellweaver (9) x1

C’Thun, the Shattered (10) x1

Deck Code

AAECAZICBKPRA7/gA+TuA7WKBA3lugPougObzgPw1AOJ4AOK4AOk4QPR4QPA7AOJnwSunwTanwSgoAQA

There are lots of combos in this deck. If you have enough cards, you can do almost anything. Gadgetzan Auctioneer sure makes that easier too. I don’t know if Lady Anacondra makes this a top-tier deck, but I think she’s going to help bring it back into playability. The ability to cast our Nature spells for 0, and our other cards for 1? Oh it’s absolutely brilliant. I’m a big fan of Lady Anacondra, but I do wish she didn’t cost 6 mana. It’s probably a balance thing though, and that’s fine.

Stealer of Souls is amazing. It will be incredibly powerful in settings like Wild too, but for Standard? You could in theory do some really horrifying combos with it. The ability to just expend Health instead of Mana on your cards? You don’t have to ramp as hard. Your only limit is how much Health you can expend, and that’s beautiful. Suicidal Zoo is a really cool concept, and I think it’s a very powerful deck. It’s changed a lot over the months, and Stealer of Souls in particular really adds some beef to an already strong deck.

However, we aren’t using the other two new cards. Unstable Shadow Blast has too much of a chance to hurt our chances of winning. After all, we need high Health until we play Stealer of Souls in my estimation. We do have a few cards that hurt us, and one that restores our mana when we take damage (Darkglare). Our big damage dealer is Flesh Giant which costs 1 less each time our life total changes over the course of the game. So using our Hero Power, getting healed, casting spells with Stealer of Souls, all manner of ways. We can pretty easily drop it for 0 mana. We’ve also got Kanrethad Ebonlocke / Kanrethad Prime, who can also help us deal damage.

I’m not as much of a fan of Zoo Lock as I am Control Lock, but I like the concept. It’s a deck where we play some low-cost demons and allies in the early game and reduce our life through card draw. Flesh Giant is something we can potentially play very early, depending on how many times our life changes. Bear in mind that also counts heals. We don’t have much healing in the decks, but Man’ari Mosher can help. 

They are a ¾ Demon for 3, and it can give a friendly Demon +3 Attack and Lifesteal for the turn. You don’t want to use it on themselves though, because it can’t attack when it comes in. Instead, we’d like to use it on an already-played Void Terror. Void Terror destroys the minions adjacent to it, and gains their Health and Attack. That means you need to plan carefully what you play. If you can get Kanrethad Ebonlocke, this is a great way to see him off the board. 

He lets you play Demons for 1 cheaper (for 2 mana), and when he dies, he shuffles Kanrethad Prime into your deck. Kanrethad Prime comes in as an 8-cost 7/6 Demon, and he summons 3 friendly Demons that died this game. We’ve got some time between losing Kanrethad and finding Prime, likely anyway. Our early game demons are like the 2-cost, ⅕ Taunt Midway Maniac the 1-cost Flame Imp which comes in as a 3/2, and the Man’ari Mosher. 

Ideally, we’ll surround the Void Terror with the above two imps, and then play Man’ari Mosher. In this situation, Void Terror comes in as a ¾, and gains (from Flame Imp and Midway Maniac) becomes a 10/12 with Lifesteal for the turn. Then he’ll return to a 7/12, and will still be a horrifying monster. This also allows us to control what allies die. We can then cast Raise Dead and get them back for 0 mana, or wait until later, and bring potentially other, bigger units back. We’re also using Animated Broomstick to hopefully give our allies Rush, which is helpful. Another combo in the deck is Nightshade Matron, the 5/5 Rush Demon for 4. We have to discard the highest Cost card in our hand, which is hopefully Hand of Gul’dan. That way we get to draw 3 cards for no effort!

Whenever we can get Stealer of Souls out, we want to do so. This new demon is a 2/6 for 4 and changes the cost of our cards from Health to Mana, whenever we draw cards. It doesn’t affect cards already in our hands. Now we can play cards without spending mana, which is nice. We’ve got quite a few really hard-hitting demons in the deck, so when we get big Void Terrors, you’ll want to swing hard on face. Same with getting a Flesh Giant or two. You’ll want to play as aggressively as possible with Void Terror, so you can resurrect them with Kanrethad Prime. Let your opponent take them down on their own.

Hopefully, we can revive a Void Terror and a Man’ari Mosher so we can buff at least one of them. It will be a sudden barrage of damage. It’s a neat concept for sure and allows us to play pretty boldly. Since our opponent has to get rid of Stealer of Souls to stop us from constantly playing spells, we give them a very important target. They might think they can ignore it, but with the Mosher, we can steal a bunch of life back via big, powerful demons.

That’s our end game to me. Between the big creatures, we’ve got Wriggling Horror to buff some allies, Spirit Jailer to throw some Soul Shards into the deck, and also draw cards from Backfire. It also deals 3 damage to you, but it also helps with Flesh Giant. You can get an early, strong Void Terror and just bully someone around, but we’ve got other tools at our disposal.

Decklist

Raise Dead (0) x2

Animated Broomstick (1) x2

Spirit Jailer (1) x2

Tour Guide (1) x2

Wriggling Horror (2) x2

Flame Imp (1) x2

Darkglare (2) x2

Midway Maniac (2) x2

Kanrethad Ebonlocke (2) x1

Backfire (3) x2

Man’ari Mosher (3) x2

Void Terror (3) x1

Nightshade Matron (4) x2

Stealer of Soul (4) x2

Hand of Gul’dan (6) x2

Flesh Giant (8) x2

Deck Code

AAECAYkGAta5A4GgBA61uQO2uQPLuQOVzQObzQPXzgPB0QPM0gOT3gOW3gPK4wOT5AOK7wOEoAQA

It’s a really interesting deck. Some players will definitely climb high with it (like Orange, who designed this particular version). I don’t know if I like it as much as Control or Handlock, but I really like that one card can charge this deck up this much. There are a few ways to build Soul Stealer Zoo Lock, but it’s not at all bad. I’d like to see Stealer of Souls make its way to the top of the meta, but I don’t know that the deck is fast enough to do that. Time will tell though. It’s one I want to look at later, and see how it’s updated.

I’m a big fan of Control Warrior if I can be honest. Rush Warrior is neat, but it’s not really for me. Control Warrior is a thing I understand better. In particular, we’re using a lot of Legendaries in this deck. Eight legendaries, to be precise. So this is not a cheap deck to run. But let me tell you, it’s powerful. We’re going to be using three of the new legendaries as well. Kresh, Lord of Turtling, Archdruid Naralex, and Mutanus the Devourer. We’ve got a lot of power, and a lot of ways to get armor so we can fort up.

Or should I say, Turtle Up? Okay, okay, sorry. We can do absolute mountains of damage, and can completely clean the board up with cards like Lord Barov. The Lord Barov + Bladestorm combo is here, and it’s real. I tend to avoid doing it when I have powerful legendaries in play (unless they’ve already served their purpose). Our end game is Kargath Prime or simply overwhelming people with Ysera and C’Thun. After all, if the board is empty, C’Thun, the Shattered will simply deal 30 damage right to our opponent’s face, and there’s pretty much nothing they can do about it.

We’re not really pressed for dealing damage, really. We can, and probably will, but in the early game, don’t be shy about using Armor Vendor. They grant both Heroes 4 Armor, but we’ll be constantly stacking the stuff and they likely won’t. Towards the mid-game, Kresh, Lord of Turtling will also be helping, since it gives us 8 Armor upon its Frenzy trigger. As a 3/9 for 6, he’s still a bargain. When Kresh dies, he’ll also give us a ⅖ Turtle Spike weapon, via Deathrattle. Make sure you don’t have a weapon or armor piece on though.

So you’ll probably want to make sure you’ve already worn out your Bulwark of Azzinoth. It’s a terrific way to slow people down in the early game. Whenever we would take damage, it loses 1 Durability instead (out of 4). Amazing because it doesn’t say “For each point of damage”, so big chunks of damage still only remove one point. We have one weapon in the deck though, and it’s a card drawing machine, Outrider’s Axe. A 3/3 for 4, it draws a card whenever our hero attacks and kills a minion.

It’s very very easy to kill minions in this deck too. We’ve also got Corsair Cache to draw a weapon and grant it +1 Durability. We can do lots of damage through abilities like Bladestorm, as well as Minefield, which is a 2-cost spell and it deals 5 damage randomly split among all minions. If we have no minions, only the opponent’s cards are hit.

While in the early game, we also have a card that remains Dormant for 2 turns and adds a Dream card to your hand at the end of your turn (while Dormant) – Archdruid Naralex! He’s one of our new cards. He has the same power as Ysera, in essence. He has access to the same Dream Cards Ysera does, but he only generates two. You can see the full list here. These are very powerful effects and can help you slow down your enemy, or simply get a lot more damage for one turn. What I’d like to do, is cast Kargath Bladefist, and then cast the Dream card Nightmare. It grants a minion +4/+4 for the turn, and at the start of our next turn, it’s destroyed. That’s great, because we shuffle Kargath Prime into your deck! So we swing with an 8/8 that dies right when we want.

He’s our only Rush card in the deck, him and the regular Kargath. That’s when we want to cast Stage Dive. You draw a Rush card from your deck and if Corrupt, grants it +2/+1. You still have to cast the 8-cost beast, but he’s a 10/10 Rush, and whenever he attacks and kills a minion, you gain 10 Armor. You just build up an unstoppable wall. He’s not the only star of the deck either. Mutanus the Devourer’s Battlecry eats a minion in your opponent’s hand and gains its stats. 

Now, that’s a bit of a gamble. What if they have no minions in hand? Archdruid Naralex and Ysera can help. The spell Dream bounces an enemy minion back to the opponent’s hand. That way, we’re guaranteed a target! We need to actually control the board though. We’ve talked about Lord Barov/Bladestorm before, so we’ll keep it brief. Barov is a 3/2 for 3 and sets all other minions Health to 1. When he dies, he deals 1 damage to all minions. Or we can cast Bladestorm to deal 1 damage to all enemies. It costs 3 mana and deals 1 to all minions and repeats until someone dies. However, we wiped the entire board with one spell (except Barov)! 

Easy wipe. We also have Brawl to destroy all minions but one, and Coerce to destroy a damaged minion (or combo to destroy any minion). If all the enemies are weak, we can cast Rancor for 4 mana to deal 2 to all minions, and gain 2 Armor for each. This also works great with Lord Barov if you have the mana. Since there are so many powerful legendaries in the Neutral camp right now, we also have N’Zoth, God of the Deep to resurrect friendly minions, and Ysera the Dreamer to give us all the Dream Cards.

Other than simply battering someone’s brains in with powerful minions, we can also just keep the board clear, cast the fragments of C’Thun the Shattered, then cast him to deal 30 damage right to the enemy player. That’s all it takes for a quality victory! We can stack so much armor, our opponent can never break through it all.

Decklist

Armor Vendor (1) x2

Shield Slam (1) x2

Stage Dive (1) x1

Corsair Cache (2) x1

Minefield (2) x1

Archdruid Naralex (3) x1

Bladestorm (3) x2

Bulwark of Azzinoth (3) x1

Coerce (3) x1

Lord Barov (3) x1

War Cache (3) x2

Kargath Bladefist (4) x1

Outrider’s Axe (4) x1

Rancor (4) x2

Southsea Scoundrel (4) x2

Brawl (5) x2

Scrap Golem (5) x2

Kresh, Lord of Turtling (6) x1

Mutanus the Devourer (7) x1

N’Zoth, God of the Deep (9) x1

Ysera the Dreamer (9) x1

C’Thun, the Shattered (10) x1

Deck Code

AAECAQcOvrkDwLkD+cIDitADk9ADm9gDtt4Dwd4Dv+ADju0Dj+8Dpu8DyO8DtIoECLi5A82+A5LkA//nA4/tA5TvA4igBImgBAA=

I love this version just like I loved all the other versions of Control Warrior. You have easy ways to stack tons of armor, can draw right into your Rush legendary, and start stomping people out with him when you can cast him. There’s plenty of slowdown, lots of powerful legendaries, and control spells. You have quite a few options to defeat people with and I think that’s just beautiful.

Control Priest makes the game last as long as humanly possible. Through powerful spells, we individually eliminate threats, draw into more powerful spells, and borrow some power from our opponent’s forces. It’s a deck archetype that has existed all throughout Hearthstone, and it’s one of my personal favorites. It’s only gotten more interesting as time has gone on. As far as the new Wailing Caverns cards that have gone into these decks for Hearthstone, we’re using one! Just the very weird Against All Odds. I’m really torn on this spell. 

It’s a potential great board wipe, and it can backfire and hurt you. It’s a 5-cost Holy Spell that destroys all odd-Attack minions. You can just build your deck for minions that have no odd attack power ratings. Mutanus could easily become odd-Power too, so be aware of that. Yes, we’re definitely using Mutanus, because he’s one of the best neutrals in the expansion, and I won’t apologize for it. It can only help you and seldom harm you. We’re going to drag things out as long as humanly possible to win. It’s possible to win via damage, and resurrection (N’Zoth, God of the Deep) but more often than not, it’s another path.

This is a deck all about value. We can use what our opponents use to put ourselves into better positions. We’re aiming to outlast any deck. Against aggro decks, we’re going to want to remove threats as often as possible. We don’t want them to ever get a leg up on us. Control decks, on the other hand, we’re going to be a little more cautious, so we don’t waste important cards. The early game is all about us getting value, as much value as possible. 

Draconic Studies will Discover a Dragon (and the next one costs 1 less), for example. For 1 mana, that’s brilliant, and there’s no telling what you could get! Malygos maybe? Or Ysera? Next is Wandmaker for 2, which adds a 1-Cost spell from your class to your hand (so Priest of course). For 3 mana, we have the Poisonous beast, Venomous Scorpid. It will Discover a spell for you. That’s plenty of value, even if you have no control over the actual value of what you get. You can use them wisely for sure. 

This also helps you get some minions on the board to fight with if need be. You need a nice heavy hand of options, so not casting tons of stuff in the first few turns is nice. However, the best early-to-mid card for my money is Sethekk Veilweaver. Anytime we cast a spell on a minion, we gain another Priest spell. This includes enemy minions, so it doesn’t have to be buffs. We also have Southsea Scoundrel to Discover a card in our opponent’s deck. The downside is that they draw theirs as well.

However, this can be to our benefit later in the game. If we draw them into a huge creature, we can instead cast Mutanus the Devourer the next turn and eat it. That’s very restrictive though. It would have to be something they can’t or don’t want to cast yet. We can get the jump on ‘em that way. But what if the opponent does cheat out a huge creature ahead of us? Do we have a solution?

We have the perfect combo to make someone’s dreams of victory crumble into dust. Wave of Apathy is a 1-cost spell that sets the Attack of all enemy minions to 1 until your next turn. We could then just wipe the board with Against All Odds. Or if we have one target in mind, we cast Cabal Acolyte first. For 4 mana, it’s a 2/4 Taunt which also has Spellburst. When you cast a spell (Wave of Apathy), you gain control of a random enemy minion with 2 or less attack. This is best used when they only have one minion up, or a few very useful ones. That way, we don’t steal some pointless cruddy Murloc or Imp.

Then their power resets soon enough and we have all the power! We have a much safer way to board wipe compared to Against All Odds though. Xyrella! She’s a 4/4 for 4, and if you’ve restored Health on the turn she was cast, deal that much damage to all enemy minions. So you just have to heal something. You can cast Renew, for example, to restore 3 Health, Discover a spell, and then AOE all enemy minions for 3. If we picked up other Heal spells from other sources, say from Sethekk Veilweaver, that could help.

Finally, Apotheosis on a strong minion can also get us the heal we crave. It grants a minion +2/+3 and Lifesteal. In the late game, if you need, you can also use Lightshower Elemental (6-cost Elemental) with Xyrella. Well, you can do this any turn after you cast the Elemental. This 6/6 Taunt Restores 8 health to all friendly characters, which you can then cast Xyrella for maximum efficiency! That will settle just about all enemy boards. 

Speaking of Apotheosis, it’s also great to use on Blademaster Samuro. He’s a ⅙ with Rush for 4 mana, and when he takes damage, his Frenzy triggers. Then he deals damage to his Attack to all enemy minions. If we have that, and maybe some other kind of free buff from early, we can whittle away at our opponents no matter how strong they are. Should we find our board empty, Soul Mirror can also settle the score for us. 

Through the game, we should receive plenty of free threat removal options too. Once our allies have perished, we can bring them back with Raise Dead, and then also N’Zoth, God of the Deep. He resurrects a friendly ally of each type, so the more variance we have, the better. Ultimately, we win by simply running the other player out of options. We can late-game N’Zoth, resurrect our allies and get a win through damage too. Otherwise, we leave the other player in a position where they have no way to win. 

A card I want badly to find room for is Mindrender Illucia. She’s a great card to use against control decks for example. Swapping hands and decks with your opponent for a turn is beautiful. This is a deck where you gain by understanding what the opponent can do. If you can tell when someone is setting up a powerful minion combo, you can drop Mutanus, for example to steal it before they get going. Play patient, play calm, and overcome.

Decklist

Raise Dead (0) x2

Draconic Studies (1) x2

Renew (1) x2

Wave of Apathy (1) x2

Wandmaker (2) x2

Sethekk Veilewaver (2) x2

Apotheosis (3) x2

Venomous Scorpid (3) x2

Palm Reading (3) x2

Cabal Acolyte (4) x2

Blademaster Samuro (4) x1

Southsea Scoundrel (4) x2

Xyrella (4) x1

Against All Odds (5) x1

Lightshower Elemental (6) x2

Soul Mirror (7) x1

Mutanus the Devourer (7) x1

N’Zoth, God of the Deep

Deck Code

AAECAa0GBsi+A5vYA/voA9Tt/PuA6bvAwyTugObugOvugPezAPLzQPXzgPj0QP+0QPi3gOW6AOa6wOU7wMA

You really have to rely on the deck to grant you extra cards, and in normal cases, that worries me. But with Priest, we have so much healing and removal, that we’re pretty much guaranteed to have cards to stop threats. The hard part is figuring out exactly what you have to stop in the first place. That feels like trial and error, unless you’re paying careful attention to the meta, and what is likely to be in a deck. I think this deck will certainly stick around in the meta.

Now personally, my favorite Shaman builds involve Murlocs. But, if I can’t have that, the next best thing is the Elemental rushdown. We have so many ways to buff these and swing hard and swing often! We also have Overload spells that, while they do reduce the amount of Mana Crystals you have for the next turn, the benefits are not to be underestimated. For example, Serpentshrine Portal is a 3-cost spell that does 3 damage, and summon a random 3-Cost minion! At the cost of Overloading for 1, we get damage and a minion. There’s no denying it’s useful. 

It’s a pretty aggressive deck, but it’s more midrange than aggro. We’ve got a lot of 3-cost cards here, so for the early game, you’re likely only going to play one card at a time. Towards the mid-game though it opens up. Since we have no 4-Cost cards, we can utilize the mighty Kazakus, Golem Shaper. Also, all of our spells are Nature, the new Primal Dungeoneer also will always be great. Its ability to draw a spell, and also draw an Elemental (because we only use Nature spells) cannot be underestimated.

Most of our minions are also Elementals, and many of them are ferocious. We’re going to batter people with constant elementals, and probably an occasional totem or two. The few things in our deck that aren’t Elementals still wind up being very useful.

It’s a deck just filled to the brim with Elementals and Nature spells. We just nickel and dime people down with aggressive cards. We’re using two of the new cards for sure in this deck. Wailing Vapor I’m hoping to get relatively early and keep it out. It’s a ⅓ for 1, and after you play an Elemental, it gains +1 Attack. It’s also great in the mid/late game when you can just spam cards into being. The other new card is the Primal Dungeoneer as we already pointed out. You could in theory turn 1 this ⅔, if you Lightning Bloom it into existence. I don’t know that I’d want to do that though.

One of our non-Elementals is Novice Zapper, who is also a 1-cost creature. A 3/2 that grants Spell Damage +1, which is nice. If we can hold this in play for a while, we can cast Lightning Bolt for 4 instead of 3, and the same for Serpentshrine Portal. As both of those are Overload cards, we want to get Unbound Elemental first. He’s a ¾ for 3, and whenever you play an Overload, it gains +1/+1. This allows us of course, to just push more and more damage on someone’s face. Speaking of Overload, Landslide does 1 to each enemy, and if we’re Overloaded, it deals 1 damage again! Just some food for thought.

That’s what we’re after, pushing damage onto someone’s face whenever we can. Our spells can target either the player or a minion if there’s something particularly oppressive out. Personally, I tend to lean towards just splashing damage onto the other player and making them fight my minions. I don’t have too many that I desperately want to keep out. 

If we’ve got a few Elementals in play, we can summon Cagematch Custodian, which draws a weapon in the deck (in this case, Whack-a-Gnoll Hammer). That weapon grants a random +1/+1 to an ally when we attack with it. So we buff something each time. If we have a turn where we play an Elemental, the next turn we can try to play Arid Stormer. It gains Rush and Windfury on a ⅖. A fine follow-up to this is the 5-cost Mistrunner. It grants a +3/+3 bonus to a minion when summoned. Suddenly we have a ⅝ with Rush/Windfury! That is a lot of damage. We’ll be using the Mistrunner again hopefully, later on. 

Though my personal way to win with this deck is to set up a strong board with Elementals, and then follow up with Kazakus, Golem Shaper. We can win before that with sheer damage, but making a 10/10 golem on turn 10 is amazing. You get a lot of options, which you can find here. I’m going to go with, typically, a 10/10 with Stealth or Lifelink (depending on the situation), and Wildvine or Gromsblood. This depends on board state. Wildvine gives all other minions +4/+4, and Gromsblood summons a copy of this card. It’s pretty much over at that point unless the opponent has major board removal.

When turn 10 arrives, we want to cast that big Golem. However, we can’t attack with it. So instead, we wait until the next turn, and cast Mistrunner. Now, one of those Golems has a bonus +3/+3. If we ran with the Wildvine, that’s still fine. If we used Gromsblood, only one of them gets the bonus. Provided our foe has no Taunt minions, we can hammer for them for the neighborhood of 24 damage at least. We just keep the pressure on as often as possible in a deck like this.

We also have Fire Elemental for 6 mana, which does 4 damage upon summoning via Battlecry and is already a 6/5. So as you see, we can pour on damage turn after turn, keeping the other player on the back foot. 

Decklist

Lightning Bloom (0) x2

Lightning Bolt (1) x2

Kindling Elemental (1) x2

Novice Zapper (1) x2

Wailing Vapor (1) x2

Cagematch Custodian (2) x2

Landslide (2) x2

Arid STormer (3) x2

Instructor Fireheart (3) x1

Primal Dungeoneer (3) x2

Serpentshrine Portal (3) x2

Unbound Elemental (3) x2

Kazakus, Golem Shaper (4) x1

Whack-A-Gnoll Hammer (3) x2

Mistrunner (5) x2

Fire Elemental (6) x2

Deck Code

AAECAaoIApzOA/zoAw7buAPw1AOq3gOr3gOI5AOJ5APq5wPg7APh7AOt7gPj7gOMnwT5nwT8nwQA

I’m getting to like this deck more than before. I didn’t at first, but it’s really grown on me. I like forcing people to play at my pace and counter my moves instead of the other way around. We can ping away at them with spell damage, and push damage at our pace, and then out of nowhere, we just hammer someone down into the ground with massive Golems! It’s so enjoyable.