One of my favorite parts of a card game is watching the meta shift. New expansions always mean new ways to approach the game. A new expansion means we have new cards to consider in our favorite decks. Will we still be playing Priest Control the same way? Will the new Rogue cards make Rogue Aggro more powerful than before? Are Galakrond cards/decks still going to be relevant? These questions and more I intend on answering – or at least, I’m going to try! Hearthstone’s latest expansion is Scholomance Academy, and there are some wild, fun decks coming to life. I feel we’re going to see plenty of mainstays like Kael’s Sunstrider making combos easier.

I’m going to mostly be looking at decks that have climbed into the highest tiers in the last week. I will be looking at what makes them work and what makes them interesting decks in general. It seems like a few decks have come out on top, like Druid Guardian Animals. It’s such a great spell, and if we can cast it for 0 mana, more’s the better. It’s not consistent, but it’s powerful. I prefer Gibberling Druid. If you don’t see a class here, don’t fret! I’ll update this over the next week or add more fun decks to the list.

There are some real surprises! A deck once thought to be a meme and nothing more comes out of the gates with all vim and vigor! Not to mention, it’s my favorite class to play (Paladin), so I’m quite excited to see this deck in action. One thing I’ve noticed is that Demon Hunter Aggro doesn’t seem to have changed too much. That’s disappointing, quite frankly. We may come back to Demon Hunter in this blog after some time has passed. For a peek behind the curtain, it usually takes several days to write one of these. I come back to things and try to peek at what’s changing/interesting as I write.

I will also focus on decks that feature new Scholomance Academy cards, as much as we humanly can. Sometimes decks don’t change. To me, that’s more of a negative than a positive. A deck that never changes in a Standard meta just means it was probably too strong in the first place. That or it was incredibly weak. Nobody was playing it in the first place. The only class I don’t see myself focusing on at this time is Shaman. Sadly, it seems they’re in the worst place out of the other classes.

Most of the Hero Classes in Hearthstone have new versions of decks thanks to Scholomance Academy, at least. Right now, it’s a very positive thing to see. We’ll have to see what the future holds for Blizzard’s card game.

I suppose we should cut the fat and get down to business! We’ll start with a meme because it’s just the best. Pure Paladin is back and better than ever! Well, it’s less than that and more. It’s good now! No, that’s not a joke! Pure Paladin has a place in this meta! Really!

This is a deck I expected to see come out of nowhere, but here we are. LiquidOx, in particular, has shined with this deck. The card that makes this the most interesting is Lightforged Crusader (and to a lesser extent, Lightforged Zealot), and that’s why it’s a Pure Paladin deck. We don’t want outsiders (neutral cards) in the deck. Dual-Class cards are fine, but they have to be Paladin cards for this to go off the way we want to. The downside to Zealot is again. We can’t use Neutral cards. There are so many great neutrals in Hearthstone.

Originally, that meant you had to settle for mediocrity in your deck instead of having something good and useful. The deck could win, but it was neither fun nor enjoyable. Scholomance Academy changed that for the better. Why is that? Because out of the 14 cards in Scholomance Academy for Paladin, we’re using 10 of them. Does that tell you how weak Pure Paladin (and Paladin in general) was? This is a deck that can win in the early game if everything falls into place, but it feels more like a Tempo/Mid-Range deck if you ask me.

The real question we have to ask is, “Is this better than Libram Paladin?” I don’t have the answer, but I think the answer is possibly “Lord yes.” We’ll see what shakes up in the meta, but for now, this is got to be one of my favorite Hearthstone decks to come to life as a result of Scholomance Academy. This deck only exists at all because of this expansion! Sure we’re still using our Prime (Murgur Murgurgle) and other older cards, but a pure third of this deck is new tech.

This is a little bit Libram, a little bit Pure Paladin. We’d be foolish not to run the good libram on offer (Hope, Wisdom, Justice). Though on that note, I really want to add Blessing of Authority to this deck. By the time I get to the decklist, I may slot one of the Libram cost-reduction spells out of the deck. Pure Paladin runs some of my favorite cards that I mentioned in the spoiler article like High Abbess Alura. She’s powerful, but she’s not the star of the show. She could be if she wants, though! Though speaking of Blessing of Authority, another reason to run it (in addition to Alura) is Lady Liadrin!

She creates copies of every spell we have cast on our allies this game in our hand. So, before we look at what creatures we have to offer, what buffs are we running?

Get Buff:

The first up is Hand of A’dal, which gives a Minion +2/+2 and lets us draw a card (for 2 mana)! That 2-mana cost is brilliant for a buff and a free card. However, my favorite in terms of usefulness is probably Libram of Wisdom. This is even better if you can out a turn 1 Aldor Attendant (reduce Libram costs by 1 this game).

Libram of Wisdom gives a minion +1/+1 and Deathrattle: Add a Libram of Wisdom spell to your hand. This means the spell will simply keep replicating, while also buffing your minion of choice. There’s really no bad choice for this, even minions you don’t want to die. They will likely be targets, so get something out of it!

Next up is Pharoah’s Blessing (for 6 mana). This gives a minion +4/+4, Divine Shield and Taunt. I’d love to slap this on top of High Abbess Alura when we cast her. That would make her a 4/10! If we cast another buff on her, then her Spellburst procs for another like this? Whew. She’s suddenly a mighty force of nature. So we have a few fun buffs, and I highly recommend finding room for Blessing of Authority if you can. It gives +8/+8, and the only catch is that you can’t attack a hero with them this turn. Just make sure they have a Divine Shield to protect them from heavy damage (because now they’re an immediate target due to how tough they are).

Pure Paladin? Really? You sure?

The Lightforged cards are what make this a Pure Paladin deck. We’re running two, Zealot and Crusader. Lightforged Crusader is a 7-drop 7/7 with the Battlecry that makes the deck run. If we have no Neutrals in the deck, you add 5 random Paladin cards to your deck. The earlier option is Zealot – a 4-Mana 4/2 with a Battlecry: If your deck has no Neutrals, equip a 4/2 Truesilver Champion. So, in the early game we get this and start swinging on the other player.

We have a few really solid early game options, particularly First Day of School (0-cost spell). It adds two random 1-cost minions to your hand. You really can’t go wrong with that just in general. We’ve got our Librams and the Aldor cards (Attendant and Truthseeker), which have a variety of stats, but in particular, lower our Libram costs. This is great to get on the table for when we Lady Liadrin. So, we spend the early to mid-game buffing minions with Librams and other spells, then drop her in the mid/late game.

As many Aldor as possible is key: We want to be able to cast the Libram of Hope as cheap as possible. After all, it gives us 8 Health and summons an 8/8 Guardian with Taunt and Divine Shield. There really isn’t a wrong target for buffs, except for Lord Barov. We want him to die. A legendary 3-cost Paladin, when the 3/2 (for 3 Mana), the Battlecry sets all minions down to 1 life. His Deathrattle deals 1 damage to all minions. I try to only play him when we have little to no important minions in play. Alternatively, we have Libram of Justice to turn all enemy minions health to 1, and gives us a ¼ Weapon. That means we can kill whatever threatening minion we need to (but their attack remains the same, so be careful).

He’s an amazing board-clear option, so play him at the right time. He’s there for when you have a bunch of minions you want to drop after he dies. This deck has a few Divine Shield options too, so we can afford to be pretty darn aggressive. We’ve talked about the buffs that offer it, but there’s more! One of our new cards, Goody Two-Shields, gets Double Divine Shield! He comes into play with it, and your next spell will proc Spellburst, giving it to him again! So you swing with him, buff him, and give it to him again!

Our other big hitter is Devout Pupil. He costs 1 less for each spell we cast on friendly minions this game, with a base cost of 6. We can really drop this down low as the game progresses. He comes in as a ⅘ Divine and Taunt. So if we can drop him for 0/1 mana, follow-up with Lady Liadrin and then buff him, between him, High Abbess Alura, and Lightforged Crusader, we’re going to hit the other player in the face hard.

One of the keys is Lady Liadrin, though. We want to use her to get all those powerful buffs back and cast them on our late-game game-winners. Most of our minions can fit that role, so there’s no must buff character. Use the ones you have, and just start battering the other player in the noggin as hard as you can. One card we don’t have in the deck that pairs with Lord Barov is Consecration (deal 2 damage to all enemies). If you find that aggro decks are showing up more and more, slot it in! It’ll put them in their place. Though a really fun minion to buff, especially when the other player has a huge minion (that we’re about to nerf) is Argent Braggart. His Attack and Health becomes the highest on the battlefield when he’s summoned. So he either becomes whatever we buffed on our side, or we use him to become something big on the other side! He’s a fantastic minion at any stage of the game.

Decklist

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Deck

First Day of School (0) x2
Aldor Attendant (1) x2
Argent Braggart (2) x2
Hand of A’dal (2) x2
Libram of Wisdom (2) x2
Murgur Murgurgle (2) x1
Aldor Peacekeeper (3) x1
Lord Barov (3) x1
Goody Two-Shields (3) x2
Lightforged Zealot (4) x2
High Abbess Alura (4) x1
Aldor Truthseeker (5) x2
Libram of Justice (5) x2
Pharaoh’s Blessing (6) x1
Devout Pupil (6) x2
Lady Liadrin (7) x1
Lightforged Crusader (7) x2
Libram of Hope (9) x2

Code

AAECAZ8FBo8Jw6QD/LgDhMEDk9ADw9EDDJuuA5yuA8q4A/24A+q5A+u5A+y5A8rBA57NA8DRA8rRA+DRAwA=

Cost

10,920 Dust

If I’m going to remove anything for Blessing of Authority, I’d get rid of Aldor Peacekeeper. It’s a decent card, changing an enemy minion’s Attack to 1, but I’d rather have the buff if I’m honest. It’s a meme deck, sure. But now it’s a good meme deck! We have so many options for damage and survival. Comeback mechanics, buffs, tons of damage. I love that this is a deck again and that it’s actually good! We even run Murgur Murgurgle for extra disrespect and shenanigans! We don’t have to, but we may as well! It means more minions to buff in the mid-late game. I don’t think there are going to be a ton of decks that this has a bad match-up against.

Wait, that’s the wrong card game. Sorry, been talking about Yugioh in my downtime! Many people say that Druid is the best deck in the game right now. One of the biggest Hearthstone talking points is “Is Druid OP?” or “Druid can be beaten with the right deck” – which just means it’s too strong! That second point is the talk of someone that runs Druid, let’s be honest with ourselves. Though we’re not ready to talk about Druids yet! I’m still torn on what I think is the best build (but I have some ideas).

No, we’re here to talk about Mage decks and what they bring to Hearthstone, thanks to the Scholomance Academy expansion. There are some very complex decks in the Mage arsenal, but since those are still in need of tinkering and refinement, let’s look at Tempo Mage! In particular, two legendary minions showed up thanks to Scholomance Academy. I immediately wanted to see how they interact together. It’s Lorekeeper Polkelt and Mozaki, Master Duelist. Every time we cast a spell, we gain +1 spell damage and stacks forever? That means we aren’t going to run very many minions. But every single one has to be important.

This deck runs 6 total minions – 2x Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Novice Engineer in addition to the legendaries. This is the deck I wanted to see in Mage! Not tons of annoying minions, no weird combos. No, we want to cast spells until the other player’s brain has turned into custard via powerful magical bolts of doom.

There are quite a few varieties of Tempo Mage going around, but this one has to be my favorite. Why? Here’s why. Not my words, the words of Simon Miller.

So, the two legendary cards make this deck go with an intense amount of speed. Simply getting both of them into play might mean the end of the game in short order. So let’s talk about what this deck does. Our deck has 23 spells/abilities, and 6 minions. Oh, and a weapon because it doesn’t really do damage. Lorekeeper Polkelt doesn’t need to stay on the board. Once he’s done his duty, that’s it.

Our other two minions vary in importance. Sorcerer’s Apprentice is incredibly valuable, in that it lowers the cost for all of your spells by 1 mana. Getting both would be amazing. The card doesn’t specify it can’t lower them to 0, so I imagine it probably can. Then Novice Engineer only exists to give us some card draw. Once they’ve done that, they’ve served their purpose.

The Lorekeeper reorganizes our deck, putting all the cards in order, from highest cost to lowest cost. Our highest cost cards? Blizzard (x2) and Mozaki, Master Duelist. So Polkelt makes it very easy to get our game-winning card. The Blizzards should slow the other player down too, inflicting Freeze on all enemy minions and hitting them for 2 damage. So why is Mozaki, Master Duelist so darn great? I mean, she’s a 5-drop, so at best, we can cast her on turn 4, and that’s if we’re lucky!

Our Win Condition:

They were one of the cards I was highest on in my reveal blog. After you cast a spell, regardless of its cost, you gain Spell Damage +1. Most every spell in this deck is 1-3 mana, so it’s not like you can’t just dumpster them out. If you don’t like the spell you have coming up and have Sphere of Sapience, you can look at it during the start of your turn, and choose to put it on the bottom of your deck (lowering the weapon’s durability by 1).

Getting Mozaki out is the key to winning. From there, we just want to blast the other player with as many spells as possible. Sadly, our Hero Power isn’t affected by this. But we do have Frostbolt, which we can ping the other player with. We could also obliterate someone with that and Arcane Missiles. It deals damage randomly split among all enemies (baseline 3) for 1 mana. But remember, we want to cast lots of spells.

The hardest part about this deck is keeping Mozaki safe, and tactically playing our spells. You don’t want to randomly cast them. Consider what each spell you have can do before you drop it. But there are also some really sneaky, rude things we can do. Cram Session, for example, is a 2 mana spell and lets you draw 1 card. But this is affected by Spell Damage, so the more +Spell Damage we have, the more cards that are drawn!

Mozaki is one of the reasons I considered Solarian Prime for this deck. After all, having 5 spells random cast, and target the enemies if possible, we could win off of that chain alone! It casts them back to back, and each time, our Spell Damage goes up again. Mozaki doesn’t specify using cards in our hand, after all.

We have plenty of spells to control the board. Not all of them are about wiping the board. Let’s talk about how we control the game once Mozaki is in play. Each spell we play makes that +Spell Damage go up, so let’s consider what our options are.

Spells, Spells, Everywhere:

Ray of Frost is one of my personal favorites since it has Twinspell. That means we get another copy in our hand immediately, once cast. It’s a 1-cost spell, so we’ll likely have the mana to drop the next. Ray of Frost freezes a minion, but if it’s already Frozen, you deal 2 damage instead. So before that, we cast Blizzard, once we have enough mana to do both in one turn. Blizzard freezes all enemy minions and hits them for 2. This is a great way to kill big minions and prevent them from doing anything about it.

Blizzard is also a good way around Stealth. Magic Trick is a 1-cost that gives us a spell that costs 3 or less, so hopefully, it gives us yet one more damage option. If you want to Freeze things for Ray of Frost, you can also cast Frost Nova instead – that’s a 3-mana “Freeze all enemy minions” option. No damage, but it’s a great set up, and again, more +Spell Damage. Brain Freeze is also incredible for damage/freeze. It’s a 1-cost that Freezes a minion, and if you cast a spell before it, the Combo triggers, dealing it 3 damage.

Devolving Missile is another great pick to weaken another player. We shoot 3 missiles at random enemy minions, and it transforms them into something that costs 1 mana less. Now, this could help them, but it’s not too likely. Finally, there’s Icicle, which deals 2 damage to a minion, and if they’re Frozen, draw a card. Why end with that? Because we also need to talk about spells that draw cards.

Card Draw, More Damage:

With Mozaki in play, even spells that don’t do damage are going to inflate our mighty power. So we consider card draw to be even more important than normal. Cram Session is probably our biggest card draw spell. It’s affected by +Spell Damage, so for 2 mana, we could, in theory, draw a full hand of cards. Then we just dump them again. Arcane Intellect gives us 2 cards for 3 as well.

Finally, there’s Evocation. It’s a 1-cost, and it fills our hand with Random Mage spells, that are discarded at the end of turn. This is what we cast when it’s time to win the game. Hopefully, we’ll gain nothing but low-cost damage spells to overwhelm the other player. That’s what our end-game is. To build so much +Spell Damage that we can ping the other player down with a few measly spells. The more we cast, the better it is.

On top of that, Mozaki, Master Duelist is a ⅜. She’s going to be very hard to kill. I feel like Frostbolt is going to be the big banger for damage, though Evocation could literally hand us anything to win. That’s what makes the deck so strong. Mozaki stays around, and we can build 10, 12, even higher Spell Damage. It’ll be cake to get to the 4-6 range. We have so many low-cost spells to drop. We get our two key legendaries, and hopefully at least one Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and then the Pain Train takes off. It has no brakes – only Spell Damage.

Decklist

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Deck

Evocation (1) x1
Devolving Missiles (1) x2
Brain Freeze (1) x2
Magic Trick (1) x2
Ray of Frost (1) x2
Arcane Missiles (1) x2
Sphere of Sapience (1) x1
Novice Engineer (2) x2
Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2) x2
Icicle (2) x2
Cram Session (2) x2
Frostbolt (2) x2
Frost Nova (3) x2
Arcane Intellect (3) x2
Lorekeeper Polkelt (4) x1
Mozaki, Master Duelist (5) x1
Blizzard (6) x2

This deck is so filthy. You just have to set up and wait for turns 4 and 5. If you can get Mozaki on time, the game becomes your oyster. Just beware of people killing her. You can still win without her, but it’s going to be a slow, plodding affair. So, you need to play her, keep her safe for a turn, and unload as many spells as you can humanly drop. You have lots of card draw, and you have Evocation for yet another spell bombardment.

All you have to do is play safe and learn what order to cast your spells. That’s going to vary moment by moment. So just be smart, play slow, and when it’s time, stack, stack, stack, stack, BOOM! Lorekeeper Polkelt isn’t really necessary, but he makes it much easier to get your high-cost stuff out of the way. Either way, I like him here. You could substitute him for Astromancer Solarian if you wanted. If you could manage to get Solarian Prime out, he casts 5 random Mage Spells and brings another Spell Damage +1. That just depends on how you feel about the Lorekeeper. You could really go either way. It’s nice to see a Tempo Mage deck that isn’t focused around still dropping big Elementals. This is a bit riskier of a proposition, but it’s one I like a lot.

What a fun deck this is! As soon as I saw Flesh Giant, I felt this was going to be a better Warlock card than a Priest card. Why? Because of Painlock! Painlock is a style of Warlock deck where we want to discard and deal ourselves damage to secure combos and other annoying stuff. Sadly, Flesh Giant is not a Demon. If only it were, Kanrethad Prime would be way more devastating. However, this deck is filled with lots of little combos to make other spells proc, not to mention to help us set up our major damage source: Flesh Giant!

It’s an 8/8 for 8, but its cost goes down by 1 for each time our Health has changed during our own turn. We have so many different ways to harm ourselves. However, it’s not for nothing. Many of our cards give us some kind of benefit for taking damage. The only thing I think it’s missing is more lifegain. But that’s still possible too, thanks to the flow of minions from Diseased Vulture. Our key way to win is by constantly swinging with Flesh Giant, or bringing them back if they die (hopefully).

We ultimately want Flesh Giant to be as consistent as possible, but also have other damage options (Void Drinker is a fine example). After all, we want to take damage to make Flesh Giant as cheap as possible, but we don’t want to die in the process! So we combine features of Zoolock, Discard, and Painlock into one annoying package. In normal situations, we don’t want to discard the Flesh Giant through our discard engines; but it’s not the worst idea. After all, who doesn’t want to wind up with two 8/8s for virtually nothing?

This isn’t a terribly difficult deck, so let’s get to it!

Flesh Giant is our primary damage engine, but we can also use Void Drinker, provided we have a Soul Fragment in the deck. That will give us a ⅞ to also swing with, that also has Taunt. So let’s talk about those Soul Fragments because that’s a new feature. There are certain cards that will add Soul Fragments to your deck (if you’re a Demon Hunter/Warlock). For us, that’s Spirit Jailer. When it comes into play, we shuffle 2 Soul Fragments into the deck. Oh, and Soul Shear! It deals 3 damage to a minion and then puts 2 Soul Fragments into our deck! A great way to remove a threat and also put more fun stuff in the deck.

Then we have cards that destroy those Soul Fragments, whether it’s a spell effect or a Battlecry. Shadowlight Scholar is one of ours, which destroys a Soul Fragment to deal 3 damage to a target. In most situations, we’ll hit ourselves to lower our Flesh Giant’s cost. Second, there’s Void Drinker, which destroys a Soul Fragment to give itself +3/+3.

If we get Kanrethad Ebonlocke into play first, that will be even better. He makes your Demons cost 1 less, and it will help us get Ebonlocke Prime into our deck once he dies. We want to get him in and out of play as soon as possible. He will make all of our Demons that much easier to put into play. Kanrethad Prime will bring back 3 Demons that have previously died this game (on our side) as an effect. If your Darkglare dies, it may show up again, same with Void Drinker. Also, it could potentially bring back our Spirit Jailers, so we can get even more Soul Fragments. Consider this: Soul Fragments, when we draw into them, are a 0-cost that gives us back 2 Health. So they can also be used as a sort of mini-comeback mechanic.

We also have a useful minion-destroying tool! Brittlebone Destroyer, one of the dual-class cards has a Battlecry that destroys a minion if our Hero’s health has changed this turn. So with a little setup, we can use him to obliterate something that offends us.

Flesh Giant Damage and An Army:

In addition to Flesh Giant, we have another set of cards that help us for taking damage. Diseased Vulture may be my favorite. After our hero takes damage on our turn, we summon a random 3-Cost Minion. We can just use our Hero Power, Lifetap, to take that damage and get a card. If we have some other cards in play, we can do even more. Because next is Darkglare!

Darkglare is a new Demon, which is a ¾ for 3. After our hero takes damage, we refresh 2 Mana Crystals. If we’ve popped Kanrethad, we can Lifetap for 2 mana, trigger our Diseased Vulture, get another creature, and pay 0 Mana for a Flame Imp. He’ll hit us for 3 damage, and so we gain another 2 Mana Crystals and another minion.

That vulture can keep us in plenty of minions and could help with Kanrethad Prime in bringing back more useful demons than the ones we’re running. So as long as we keep taking damage, we make Flesh Giant cheaper and also get more mana to cast spells on the same turn. If they’re cheap/free demons, more’s the better! Neferset Thrasher also deals 3 damage to us whenever we attack with it, so that’s even more mana on the same turn and another minion!

This is a very powerful early game, and with luck, our 5th-7th turns will let us play at least a Flesh Giant, and perhaps a Void Drinker, making them huge and annoying. But remember when I talked about discard? We should go into that at least briefly. It’s going to be important for us getting lots of cards. We can just keep flooding the board with stuff as long as we keep regenerating our Mana.

Discarding and You:

We’re running a few very useful discard options. For the most part, they’re here to help us discard Hand of Gul’. If we cast or discard it, we draw three cards, and that’s amazing. So why pay 6 mana if we don’t have to? Our best discard card, in my estimation, is Expired Merchant. She’s a 2/1 with Battlecry/Deathrattle. When we cast her, we discard our Highest Cost Card. When she dies, you add 2 copies of that card to your deck.

In theory, we want to use this on Hand of Gul’ dan, so we get 2 extra copies of it. With Expired Merchant, we can also discard Flesh Giant. This gives us a little more time to make him even cheaper, not to mention when she dies, we get two Flesh Giants. If by this point, he’s a 2 or less, we can combine Darkglare and any self-damage option to make sure we get both of them into play on the same turn.

We also have Nightshade Matron to discard with. She’s a 5/5 Demon for 4 (3 with Kanrethad). She also has Rush so she can immediately throw hands. Her Battlecry discards our Highest Cost Card, which should hopefully be Hand of Gul’ dan. But if we want to make those Flesh Giants a bit stronger? Do we have an option for that? Why yes, yes we do! Imprisoned Scrap Imp, when it stops being dormant (2 turns) gives the minions in our hand +2/+1. So if we’re holding all our key monsters, they get much bigger.

Conversely, if you aren’t sold on the Imps, you can swap them for Pen Flinger. It’s being used in quite a few Painlock decks after all. It’s a 1/1 for 1, and it’s Battlecry deals 1 damage to a target. We can use that to get 2 Mana Crystals and a minion. Plus, when we cast our next spell, Spellburst triggers, and we return Pen Flinger to our hand.

I would use one of the Expired Merchants on Flesh Giant, and the other on Hand of Gul’ dan. That way, we can get extra copies of both and play our Nightshade Matrons at the right time. Heck, there may come a time when you can cycle so much self-damage, you’ll have the spare mana to hard-cast Hand of Gul’ dan, and it won’t slow you down!

Ultimately we want to hit them in the face with Flesh Giant. If we can hit them with our other creatures too, that’s great. Thanks to Diseased Vulture, if we can keep that on the field, we always have creatures to attack/defend with. You can also get that Kanrethad Prime out faster with at least one Darkglare in play. Keep in mind that his ability stacks, if you have two of them in play. We also have two copies of Tour Guide if we need extra mana on one of our turns. It gives our next Hero Power a 0 cost. So we combine that with the Darkglares and et cetera to deal ourselves a little more damage for no mana, and set up even more cards to cast.

The purpose of Darkglare is to get more mana, so we can keep casting spells on the same turn. Don’t burn the self-damage if you don’t have cards that are worth playing. If you can drop two Flesh Giants on a turn though? Go for it! That’s the hard part of this deck, learning what situations you need to harm yourself, and when you need to hold off.

Decklist

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Deck

Flame Imp (1) x2
Spirit Jailer (1) x2
Expired Merchant (2) x2
Imprisoned Scrap Imp (2) x2
Kanrethad Ebonlocke (2) x1
Soul Shear (2) x2
Darkglare (3) x2
Neferset Thrasher (3) x2
Shadowlight Scholar (3) x2
Brittlebone Destroyer (4) x1
Diseased Vulture (4) x2
Nightshade Matron (4) x2
Void Drinker (5) x2
Hand of Gul’dan (6) x2
Flesh Giant (8) x2

This is a deck that makes me nervous to use. If you overdo the self-damage, we don’t have a ton of defensive/removal options. You’d have to rely on your flow of 3-cost demons to kill the other player’s board. But it’s still fun to hit the other player for 8+ damage over and over. It’s a deck where you really have to balance how much life you have left, versus what cards are in hand. It’s very satisfying to win with, though. But what if I told you that Warlock has an OTK right now? It’s a little hard to pull off, and you need a very specific set up.

I’ll provide a brief descriptor of what it can do and a decklist, but to see it in action, here’s a handy video. I had no hand in this decks creation, but I was curious to see if an OTK/infinite existed involving Pen Flinger. Turns out, there is!

We combine the power of Darkglare x2, Pen Flinger, and Rin, the First Disciple. We want two Darkglares, and then we make a third via Prince Taldaram. Since there are no more minions in the deck that cost 3 Mana, we turn him into one (Darkglare). That gives us 6 Mana Crystals anytime we take damage. So, we Darkglare x2, Prince Taldaram. We want to sacrifice/kill off Rin, the First Disciple, so we get The First Seal. So the trigger goes Pen Flinger, Cast Our Next Seal, Pen Flinger, Seal, Pen Flinger, Seal, Pen Flinger.

From there, we Dark Pact, double-cast Sacrificial Pact on some of our Demons, Pen Flinger, Seal, Pen Flinger, Seal, Pen Flinger, and then cast Azari. This will destroy the other player’s deck. Now we have a 10/10 that destroys the enemy deck. Game’s over, they have no chance.

Optional Decklist

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Deck

Sacrificial Pact (0) x2
Dark Pact (1) x2
Pen Flinger (1) x1
Kobold Librarian (1) x2
Plague of Flames (1) x1
Darkbomb (2) x2
Defile (2) x2
Dark Skies (3) x1
Prince Taldaram (3) x1
Darkglare (3) x2
Lesser Amethyst Spellstone (4) x2
Abyssal Summoner (6) x2
Rin, the First Disciple (6) x1
Khartut Defender (6) x2
Siphon Soul (6) x1
Lord Godfrey (7) x1
Valdris Felgorge (7) x1
Twisting Nether (8) x1
Voidlord (9) x2
Bloodreaver Gul’dan (10) x1

RATTLEGORE!!!! Sorry! I was hoping to see this in some manner of a deck or another in Warrior, and boy howdy, was I not disappointed. This is one of the more exciting decks to come out of the Hearthstone Scholomance Academy expansion. It uses cards that I knew would see play (Rattlegore), and cards I wanted to see play (Reaper’s Scythe).

This is a deck that uses a little trickery and a lot of board control to wait out our huge dudes that are going to swing for lethal damage. We have a few fun ways to do that, and tons of options to just murder minions. We aren’t going for the “Stack millions of points of armor with damaged minions” strategy, sadly. We can hold out until the time is right, or we can get lucky, go ham early, and start mashing the other player into a paste.

This is not a heavy minion deck, which is good. We have some spells to help us fetch them out of our deck, and we want as high a chance as possible to get our beat sticks: Deathwing, Mad Aspect, Rattlegore, and Scrapyard Colossus. We’re going to hold out, wipe the board as often as possible, and bully the other player until it’s time to hit them for all of their life points. We can do it. We have the technology.

This is “Big Control Warrior” for a reason. Virtually everything in this deck is colossal. Every minion in the deck, but one is a massive source of non-stop damage. And even that lone exception (Archmage Vargoth) is wildly powerful for his own reasons, which we’ll get into.

This deck’s end game is pretty simple. We’re going for damage after we’ve cleared the enemy board over and over again. All of our minions are pretty darn expensive, so we have to find sneaky ways to get them into play. One of the most important parts of the deck though, is to only have useful minions in the deck.

None of those Armor/Smith minions that reward us for damaging minions. When we damage minions, we want to obliterate them. But before that, let’s discuss what our winning options are. Most of our minions are wildly expensive, after all. Rattlegore is a 9-cost, Scrapyard Colossus is a 10-cost, Deathwing is an 8-cost, so is Troublemaker. Kargath Prime clocks in at 8 Mana too, while his first form is only 4 mana. But we want Kargath Bladefist to die quickly.

Despite not having “armor minions,” we do want lots of Armor either way. If we have 20 armor, the other player has to eat their way through that before even getting to our life. So use your Hero Power anytime you have the ability to do so. We’ll also cover our Armor options. But first, this is a Control deck.

Dominator of the Universe:

Alright friends. We need to make sure the other player never gets to keep minions on the board. They can cast them, sure. But are they allowed to keep them? Of course not! We’re the only player that gets an army of jerks. We have Shield Slam to deal damage to a minion for each point of armor we have. That’s what makes cards like Shield Block amazing in the early game – it gives us 5 Armor and lets us draw a card. Heck, it’s good at all points of the game. Combine that with our Hero Power (gain 2 Armor), we can demolish virtually any single target.

Sword and Board is in that same boat. It deals 2 damage to a minion (doesn’t have to be ours) and gives us 2 Armor. One of our most powerful board clearing abilities is potentially Bladestorm. It’s a 3-mana spell, and it deals 1 damage to all minions over and over until one dies. Consider this: If all the minions on the board have the same life points, they’re all going to die. Or you can just use Brawl to destroy all minions in play except one.

Hopefully, by the time we cast this, we have Kargath Bladefist in play. When he dies, Deathrattle triggers and puts a Kargath Prime in our deck. Coerce is one of the new dual-class cards, and only costs 3 mana. It destroys a damaged minion, but if you cast something before this, Combo procs, and lets you destroy any minion.

We can also combine Corsair Cache (2 mana) and our Reaper’s Scythe as options for board control. We only have two pieces of gear in the deck, and one is a Legendary (Bulwark of Azzinoth). The other one, the one we want to clear minions with, is Reaper’s Scythe. If we summon it with Corsair Cache, it comes into play as a 5/3.

Sadly, it’s effect is a Spellburst, so we’ve got to cast another spell to get it, and it only happens for one turn. That Spellburst effect makes it damage adjacent minions as well. So you find a minion with high health with weaker ones around it and hit all three for 5 damage. When it wears out, you can cast this again by drawing it, or a Corsair’s Cache and do it again.

Bulwark of Azzinoth is also important, though. We also want to see this with Corsair Cache. That would make it a ⅖. It reads, “Whenever your hero would take damage, this loses 1 Durability instead.” You combine this with a lot of Armor, and cackle as they do nothing but break their bones upon your body. Kargath Prime is also a 10/10 that gives us 10 Armor anytime he kills a minion, so he will make it even harder for the other player to stop us.

Finally, Archmage Vargoth is a major control option. At the end of our turn, we cast a spell we’ve cast this round (but the targets are random). So if we only cast one or two spells a turn, it’s not going to be hard to see the results. This can be used to cast another Bladestorm, another Sword and Board, to get another minion via Athletic Studies (Discover a Rush minion, your next one costs 1 less). Vargoth also plays into the next section.

Cheating Life, Stealing Death:

We want to get our big creatures out of the deck as fast as possible. If we only have a handful of them there, it makes it a little more reliable. What do we do to get minions out faster? We need Archmage Vargoth to make it as amazing as possible. Commencement is a 7-Cost spell that summons a minion from our deck and gives it Taunt and Shield. If this is the only spell we cast this turn, we’ll get two huge minions from the deck, and are both very hard to kill.

Our other option is a 10-cost spell, Dimensional Ripper. It’s not going to be a quick trip to get these into play. But casting this (hopefully twice a turn) will summon two copies of a minion in our deck. It would be a little silly for this to pull Deathwing, Mad Aspect, because then they’ll both attack all other minions, and will likely both die. We don’t want that. However, getting Troublemaker wouldn’t be so bad. He’s going to give us 2 3/3 Ruffians (4 if we have two of him) that attack random enemies. I believe this can also go face, so it would hit the other player.

But what we want is Rattlegore and Scrapyard Colossus. Either spell would be amazing, to be honest. Especially since it would cast again with Archmage Vargoth. So I suppose we should talk about why these are in our decks in the first place. Let’s start with Rattle.

We aren’t going to focus on the cost, because that’s what we’re going to try to use these spells to avoid. But Rattlegore is a 9/9 for 9. Its Deathrattle reads “Resummon this with -1/-1.” So, it comes back again as an 8/8, a 7/7, 6/6, etc. So, it’s all but unkillable. The other player has to put in extreme amounts of work to stop it. We just keep swinging with him until the other player is dead. If we can get this with Commencement or Dimensional Ripper, the other player is going to be mighty salty.

Scrapyard Colossus has a similar bit of skill to him. He’s a 7/7 for 10, with Taunt. But he also has Deathrattle: Summon a 7/7 Felcracked Colossus with Taunt. So we can use it as wildly as we want, and when it dies, we can do it a second time! So the faster we can make those two spells pop off, the better. And if we can clone them with Vargoth? More’s the better! However, he’s not the only great option.

If we have a board empty of all minions, or perhaps just one weak one (thanks to Brawl), getting Deathwing, Mad Aspect from Commencement would be absolutely filthy. That would give us a 12/12 that attacks all other minions (including ours), but it would also have Divine Shield and Taunt. If we get Kargath Prime into our deck, both of these spells are even more amazing. If we can get two Kargath Primes, that’s 2 10/10s, that give us 10 Armor each time we attack and kill a minion. We’re never going to run out of Armor.

Decklist

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Deck

Athletic Studies (1) x2
Shield Slam (1) x2
Sword and Board (1) x2
Corsair Cache (2) x2
Bladestorm (3) x2
Coerce (3) x2
Bulwark of Azzinoth (3) x1
Shield Block (3) x2
Kargath Bladefist (4) x1
Archmage Vargoth (4) x1
Reaper’s Scythe (4) x2
Brawl (5) x2
Commencement (7) x2
Deathwing, Mad Aspect (8) x1
Troublemaker (8) x2
Rattlegore (9) x1
Dimensional Ripper (10) x2
Scrapyard Colossus (10) x1

What a wild deck this is! Rattlegore’s so great, so I’m glad he’s in the deck. He doesn’t even get shut down by Deathwing! He’ll still come back, as long as he doesn’t die as a 1/1. We just hit the other player with Rattlegore over and over until the game is over. As you saw, we have plenty of ways to stop the other players’ creature moves. One of my favorite things to do is to use Brawl and follow it up with Deathwing, Mad Aspect, on back to back turns. He also kills off your Kargath Bladefist so you can set up Kargath Prime. You may have to play another creature removal though or attack something directly. If we can get Deathwing out before our other summoning options, we can easily laugh and hit the other player for 30-40 damage.

This is easy to pilot, and super satisfying when you start swinging for tons of damage for no effort. The hardest part is getting your board wipe and using them at the right time to maximize your ability to demolish things. If you’ve been stacking Armor, you may be able to hold off and take hits before dropping Brawl at the perfect time.

“My blood will be the end of you!” Magtheridon, January 9th, 2007.

Sure, Demon Hunter aggro is easy and will continue to be easy. But what about. . . Demon Hunter Control? How’s that sound? Way more fun, right? Well, I think so. This deck uses a plethora of frustrating cards, in conjunction with the mighty Lorekeeper Polkelt. Once again, he comes through to put our most expensive (mana-wise) onto the top of our deck to get to them easier. We’re also running the typical Demon Hunter tools to hit people in the face as hard as possible.

We want to find a way to do so much damage, the other player can’t cope. What’s the solution? An early game Magtheridon, hopefully! We aren’t running tons of minions, but they all serve very important purposes. For that reason, we won’t want to play Kayn Sunfury until Magtheridon awakens and kills everything on the board.

That way, we can use him on turns that come next. It’d be a right shame not to swing Maghteridon right through any defenses the enemy player puts up. This deck will probably look mostly familiar. It uses many of the tools we already had at our disposal. That’s because those cards were already great. We just enhance it with fun new Soul Fragment techniques. Aldrachi Warblades getting +5 attack for a turn? That way, we hit someone for 7, and it has Lifesteal? There is no way that that could be construed as a bad thing.

We’re going to make people feel mighty bad about themselves for not running Demon Hunter! Now, to play Demon Hunter, remember to do the solo adventure to unlock it! It will be worth it. This is a deck that’s not going to get weaker anytime soon; we don’t think.

There are two solid ways to win in this deck: We can hit the other player with melee strikes until dead. More likely, we’re going to wear them down this way, and they obliterate them with Magtheridon and Soulciologist Malicia and her gang of sexy 3/3 Souls. Because for each Soul Fragment in your deck, she summons a 3/3 Soul with Rush. How many can we possibly get? 12! We can get 12 3/3s out of this at most. Of course, that won’t happen. There’s a limit to how many minions we can have out at once.

We’ll be likely shattering a few of those Soul Shards, because of Soulshard Lapidary. She’s one of the best Soul Fragment cards in the game. When she comes into play, we destroy a Soul Fragment and give our Hero +5 Attack until the end of turn. If we have Marrowslicer equipped, that means we hit for NINE this turn. If you have Aldrachi Warblades instead, it’s 7 damage and Lifesteal. So you want to hold that Lapidary until you have a weapon equipped for maximum effect.

Lorekeeper Polkelt is here to make our getting expensive cards faster too. One of the beautiful things about this deck, we aren’t running a ton of high-cost cards. Soulciologist Malicia is a 7-cost, Skull of Gul’dan is technically a 6-cost. But when we draw into it, it will get the Outcast effect, making it a 3-cost spell that draws 3 cards. That will give us our next Skull of Gul’dan (unless we drew one earlier).

This puts us much closer to the other key cards of this deck. Magtheridon and Soulshard Lapidary. It also puts us close to the Marrowslicer and Kayn Sunfury! How much damage can we do in one turn? We want to set up Magtheridon and get rid of all his minions as soon as possible. This can be done easily with Soul Fragments. Just play Shardshatter Mystic, he’ll destroy a Soul Fragment, and do 3 damage to all other minions. That summons the mighty Magtheridon from his slumber, and he’s a 12/12.

From there, we want to equip Marrowslicer and swing with it if you’d like. However, next turn, we want to, if at all possible, cast Soulshard Lapidary (+5 Attack), Twin Slice (+2 Attack), Chaos Strike (+2 Attack, draw a card), and finally, our Second Slice that came from Twin Slice (+2 Attack). This will net us roughly 28 damage in one attack. This is all hinging on having the right cards, of course.

We want to bring out Magtheridone, buff our Hero, and start hitting them right in the noggin. Of course, we need to get far enough into the game to make this happen. Do we have any other control cards? You better believe it! They’re all low-cost, too!

Get in Control, Stay in Control:

Some of our “Get a Soul Fragment” cards count as control spells. For example, Soul Shear deals 3 damage to a minion and gives us 2 Soul Fragments to put into our deck. We also have Blade Dance to deal our Hero’s Attack Power to 3 random enemy minions. If we have a weapon, that’s a great way to cleave people down.

Again, Shardshatter Mystic is a great pick to blow up the early board. We want to wait for Magtheridon if at all possible. That way, we cast Magtheridon, he summons 3 ⅓ minions. Then we play Shardshatter Mystic, he kills all of those (and anything with 3 or less health). Then Magtheridon awakens, and he destroys every other minion in play. That’s why it’s a control deck in my estimation. He can destroy everything the other player (and you) have on the field.

From there, most of our control options are direct damage. Eye Beam hits for 3 damage on a minion, but if it’s Outcast (Left/Right-most card in our hand), it costs 1 instead of 3. That also has lifesteal, which is another plus. We can also use the various Twin Slice/Blade Dance cards we prepare for the end-game in the early game (because we run two of each) to hold someone off. We also have card draw! Skull of Gul’dan we already discussed. Manafeeder Panthara has a Battlecry that gives us a card if we used a Hero Power this turn.

Vulpera Scoundrel is just an interesting card in general. When you cast it, the Battlecry Discovers a spell, or you can pick a mystery choice. I like the mystery choice because it sounds like it could be just about anything. It just means it’s a card you didn’t have access to, but now you do! Soulciologist Malicia is technically a control choice if we need her to be. She creates a 3/3 Soul with Rush when her Battlecry triggers. So we can use those to beat someone’s face in on the next turn, or if we don’t have Magtheridon, we can just use those to beat up moderate minions the other player has. Lorekeeper Polkelt can be considered a control card too.

He can be a double-edged sword. He puts all our highest-cost cards on top of our deck and the lowest on the bottom. If we don’t have the low-cost cards we need in hand already, we’ll have to wait for them. So one of the hardest things about him is figuring out when you need to play him. Keep an eye on your hand, and when you’re comfortable doing it, drop him.

Then you can start using Skull of Gul’dan once or twice to draw 3 cards a cast, and that will thin your deck out. We want to keep the board under control just enough to get Magtheridon, blow up the board, and start setting up the end-game.

Kayn Sunfury is so important to this deck. He has charge, so if we have him already in play for our combo/damage, that’s 3 more free damage. All friendly attacks of ours ignore Taunt while he is in play. So even if the other player starts building back up, we can still hit them for 12 (Mag), 3 (Kayn), plus whatever we get out otherwise (Malicia’s goons, our weapon).

Once that’s set up, the game will likely not last more than another turn or two unless the other player has amazing board control. Worst case, you always have weapons and weapon buffs. Don’t be afraid to start buffing yourself and equip a weapon. We can cleave through someone’s health in no time that way, and it’s not even cost-prohibitive!

The tl;dr: control the board, get Mag, blow up the board, start going face on them immediately. The more of those cheap buffs we can drop the better. Combine those with Kayn and Magtheridon (and Soulciologist, why not, she’s a 5/5). We can destroy someone in one turn of combat.

The other player, they will not be prepared.

Decklist

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Deck

Spirit Jailer (1) x2
Twin Slice (1) x2
Blade Dance (2) x2
Manafeeder Panthara (2) x2
Chaos Strike (2) x2
Aldrachi Warblades (3) x2
Vulpera Scoundrel (3) x2
Eye Beam (3) x2
Shardshatter Mystic (3) x2
Kayn Sunfury (4) x1
Lorekeeper Polkelt (4) x1
Magtheridon (4) x1
Marrowslicer (4) x1
Soulshard Lapidary (5) x2
Skull of Gul’dan (6) x2
Soulciologist Malicia (7) x1

Code

AAECAea5AwTaxgO1yQPP0gP21gMNpaEDh7oD17sD4LwDx8YD2cYD/MgD0c0D+84DzNIDzdID1NID99UDAA==

Why Magtheridon, though? Because he’s a 4-cost, that’s why! And he blows up the board! The other player may decide to be less aggressive and try to hold off killing your minions (the 1/3s). That way, we can be aggressive and force a situation the other player doesn’t want to be in. Another great thing about this deck is the Dust Cost. It costs 9,200 Dust at the most, and that’s amazing. So many of the best decks are wildly expensive—this one’s very easy to put together, and satisfying to see pop off.

It’s a fun Demon Hunter deck, and you can, of course, change it up if you want. It wouldn’t be too hard to turn it into the standard Demon Hunter aggro deck. But I like it this way, nuking the board with Magtheridon when they’re feeling proud and ready to win the game. With Soul Fragments in the deck, you could drop this combo on turn 7 (or 6 with The Coin), and nuke whatever combo they had set up to try and win with. I’m glad to see Demon Hunter is still very valid, and incredibly fun/easy to use.

I’ve never been a big Rogue player in Hearthstone or World of Warcraft. Heck, I don’t even play it much in Final Fantasy XIV. At least those become Ninja, which are rad. But I never got into the playstyle of the earlier Hearthstone decks, except Stealth. Stealth is a mechanic in Hearthstone that makes a minion untargetable until it attacks. Now, it can be hit by AOE spells, but other than that? It can sit there and wait until the time is right.

Consider that this is an aggro deck. We don’t want to wait to go and hit face (hitting the player directly). Our strategy is to do that quickly and often. As early as turn two, we can start setting up infuriating combos, and of course, we’re running our prime: Akama Prime. Akama Prime has permanent Stealth, so we can harass the other player and poke them in the eye until they relent.

This is a deck where we don’t have to trade with the other player. We aren’t scared of the other player’s deck because we output more damage than they have time to deal with. They are going to be too busy backpedaling to deal with our constant slaps to the face.

Of course, if they decide to start dropping Taunt minions, we have solutions to that. Direct damage, Flick Skyshiv, and we can always start punching them in the tender bits. This is a deck that goes fast, has wild, frustrating combos, and is one of the top decks in Hearthstone right now for Scholomance Academy.

However, saying a deck is Tier 1 does ultimately, not mean too much. You can build a deck, understand it, understand the match-ups, and still lose. You aren’t always going to synergize with every strategy and deck archetype, and that’s fine. Play what style works for you! But we’re going to talk about these decks to give you some ideas hopefully.

One of the only real drawbacks to Stealth is that not a lot of Stealth units are also going to pack Charge/Rush. This means your strategy is going to be very obvious. So when we drop that turn 1 Spymistress, they know what’s likely on the way after. Turn 2 will likely feature Ashtongue Slayer, which means 6 damage on turn 2. It’s the best starting combo we have in the deck.

Spymistress is a 1-cost minion with Stealth (3/1), and Ashtongue Slayer has a Battlecry that gives a Stealthed minion +3 Attack and Immune this turn. This is wildly powerful, and it also plays nicely into one of our other ways to win the game. Potion of Illusion is a dual-class skill that makes 1/1 copies of all the minions we have in play in our hand. They also cost 1 mana.

The secret behind this? We use this on our various Deathrattle/Battlecry minions, to make sure the useful abilities pop off a second time. Ashtongue Slayer would be amazing to stack on top of Akama Prime. That would make him, for that turn a 9 damage, Stealth/Immune monster. It could also be great for our Deathrattle minions, Infiltrator Lilian and Cursed Vagrant. We have a 1/1s that, when they die, create a 4/2 that immediately attacks a random enemy, and a 7/5 Shadow with Stealth. While that’s all well and good, let’s talk about the overall big picture.

In the early game, we want to see the Spymistress/Ashtongue combo to make as much noise as possible. It hits the other player for a lot of damage. Hopefully, we see Akama in the early game, too, so that he can die. He’s a ¾ with Stealth, and when he dies, he shuffles Akama Prime into our deck. We want to get him in and out of play as fast as possible.

My way of doing that is constantly hitting the other player with that ¾ until they decide to kill him. We also have another possible early-game Stealth option with Transfer Student. Sadly, their ability is based on what board you’re playing on (and you have no control over that). Our early game consists of playing our low-cost Stealth minions and abilities on the curve to keep the damage going strong.

Skyvateer is another great one because it’s a ⅓ with Stealth and Deathrattle. When they die, we draw a card, and that’s never bad. If we can play a low-cost card, Backstab, we can follow it up with Hooked Scimitar. If we Combo the Hooked Scimitar, it gains +2 Attack, making it a 4/2 for 3. The Backstab hits an undamaged minion for 2 for 0 mana, so it’s an immediate value.

These aren’t our only awesome Stealth minions. Worgen Infiltrator for another turn-1 play (2/1 Stealth) and Wasteland Assassin, while 5 mana, is great. It’s a 4/2 with Stealth and Reborn! It will die, come back again with Stealth, and get one more hit out of it!

You can also combo that further if you have 2 mana. Follow it up with Eviscerate to drop an extra 4 damage on the other player (or anything you need). Eviscerate’s also a terrific way to win the game. If you put someone into kill range, cast a spell, and then cast Eviscerate, get that sweet Combo effect of 4 damage instead of 2.

If you have a Stealth card you haven’t used yet or Akama Prime, we can use Greyheart Sage to terrific effect. If we have a Stealthed minion, we draw 2 cards. Sadly, he doesn’t already have Stealth, but that’s okay! In the mid-late game, if we’re about to have an empty hand, don’t stress!

There’s the magical Secret Passage, which is a wildly busted card. For 1 mana, we swap our hand for a fresh set of 5 cards. Even if we have 1/0 cards in our hand, we’ll get a fresh set to play with for a turn. Do this when you have plenty of mana. This is a great time to play cards like the Scimitar, or Burrowing Scorpid, which deals 2 damage to a minion. If the minion dies to the damage, the Scorpid gains Stealth. If you don‘t care about it getting Stealth, use it to hit the other player right in the face.

Consider this as another way to try and fish for Akama Prime. He’s a 6-cost though, so make sure you possibly have enough to cast him, if that’s what you’re after. By that time, we’re shifting into the late game. If we haven’t won yet, it’s not the end of the world.

This is when our bigger minions start to shine. Vectus, for example, gives us two 1/1 Whelps via his Battlecry. Each one will gain a Deathrattle from minions that have died this game that we controlled. Don’t play him until you’ve had at least two Deathrattle minions go though. Hopefully, this is where the Lilian and Cursed Vagrant have already been played.

If Infiltrator Lilian destroys the last minion in play and dies, that’s not a big deal! Her Deathrattle will give her a 4/2 to come into play that immediately fights an enemy target. If the enemy player is all that’s left, that’s what they’ll hit for sure!

You could also score the Mega Jackpot, get Akama’s Deathrattle and play Akama Prime again! Proper timing of Vectus can do some brilliant things, even if it’s just giving us a few more cards to play with. But hopefully, we hit that Cursed Vagrant for another huge Stealth monster to use.

That’s ultimately our strategy. We want to hit the other player with Stealth as fast and often as possible. Buff them when we can, and don’t be afraid to send one off to die against other minions if you need it. If it is a race for damage, we’re probably going to win it.

Flik Skyshiv is one of our most versatile cards. Especially if the other player is using a lot of cards with the same name. It destroys a minion and every card in play, no matter where they are – graveyard, hand, deck, all destroyed! This is great to deal with Taunt minions or floods of minions that have the same name.

One of the best parts of this deck is that it’s very mana efficient. More than half of the deck is 2-3~ Mana Cost. This lets us stay ahead of the curve, and keep dropping combos and Stealth minions every single turn. It won’t take us long to carve the other player down. I tend to ignore their minions and always swing face unless things get hairy. Then take care of the key minions giving you the most grief, and then swing lethal!

As long as your starting hand has handy low-cost minions, you can start ahead of the game, and pin your foe down like a butterfly with a dagger. Spymistress, Ashtongue Slayer, and possibly Worgen Infiltrator are arguably our best starts.

Decklist

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Deck

Backstab (0) x2
Secret Passage (1) x2
Worgen Infiltrator (1) x2
Spymistress (1) x2
Transfer Student (2) x1
Ashtongue Slayer (2) x2
Eviscerate (2) x2
Skyvateer (2) x2
Akama (3) x1
Greyheart Sage (3) x2
Hooked Scimitar (3) x2
Burrowing Scorpid (4) x2
Infiltrator Lilian (4) x1
Potion of Illusion (4) x1
Vectus (5) x1
Wasteland Assassin (5) x2
Flik Skyshiv (6) x1
Cursed Vagrant (7) x2

What a disrespectful deck! We tend to ignore the other player’s forces and keep hitting them over and over. The only real hard deck for me to match against is a heavy board-control one. Even then, we can keep playing Stealth minions, and we’ll get them down eventually. This is one of the strongest decks in the game right now for a very good reason! I’m personally not sold on the Transfer Student. I have no idea what to replace it with. Maybe another Potion of Illusion?

Even with that, it’s so strong and disrespectful. Just be brave, sneaky past their defenses, and place a few well-timed daggers right where they need to go in the other player’s life points!