Author’s Note: This article was written before the nerfs to Undertaker and it would be irresponsible for me not to talk about that development.

According to Blizzard, Undertaker will be changed from its current form to only receiving +1 attack whenever a minion with Deathrattle is summoned. I believe that this is a very good change to make. The problem with Undertaker, particularly in Constructed where you can ensure that you are going to trigger its abilities, is that it was often a 3/4 for 1 mana. That effectively made it the absolute best 1 mana minion in the game and one worth bending entire decks and metagames around.

With the change, I believe it will still be good enough for aggressive decks to play but it won’t be as punishing for the metagame. At multiple points in time since Undertaker was released, you just couldn’t play a deck that can’t answer a turn 1 Undertaker. Worse, there were often no good alternatives to Undertaker if you wanted to play a good aggressive deck.

As far as impact goes, changes to Undertaker may mean a return to a more beast-centric Hunter deck that’s less all-in on attacking life totals at the exclusion of all else. Part of Undertaker’s problem was that in a deck like Hunter, an early Undertaker essentially made the game un-interactive for one side; Hunters had every incentive to ignore what you were doing, content on letting you answer their ever-growing threat. Eventually you would be low enough that their hero power was going to finish you off. This may still see play in its changed form for the Face Hunter-type decks, but it will be much fairer to deal with.

For aggressive Warlocks decks however, I can see them finally dropping this. The difference here is that Warlock aggressive decks actually do want to control the board and Undertaker — with its ever-growing toughness — was an all-star.

Time will tell what the changes will do the metagame, but I am all for it. Now, enjoy the rest of the show 🙂 – Brightroar

A large part of what I love about strategy card games is the puzzle-making component of creating a strategy and finding the right cards to make that strategy come true. The other large component of course is winning.

Then of course there is the third component called having fun… usually through winning.

As I said last week, I recently came back from a long hiatus away from Hearthstone. Of course, one my first actions since coming back was to let go of all my earthly possessions and disenchant most of my collection to create a Shaman deck.

(A quick aside: Most of the comments on last week’s article ranged from: “Thank you for this budget deck for beginners like me,” to “OMG you’re crazy for DE’ing your legendaries!” While you’re probably right on the second one, let me just explain real quick what this series is about: Free to Win is about using minimal resources to create and play decks that do manage to provide both enjoyment and wins in Ranked Play. While I can understand that some people really abhor the idea of disenchanting their legendaries, it is certainly not my intention to tell you that you should disenchant them. I simply did so to simulate being a new player. I could have started a new account true, but then I wouldn’t be able to craft new budget decks week after week.)

Playing the Shaman on ladder was a satisfying experience, especially since winning a bunch with a bag of commons is always so validating. I managed to get to level 10 before I started running into every Shaman’s worst nightmare: Paladin.

With the inclusion of value cards in Muster for Battle, Quartermaster and Shielded Bot, Paladin is in a great place to match most midrange strategies pound for pound. The problem here is that the rest of Paladin’s cards are naturally great at late game stabilizing. Cards such as Tirion Fordring are very good at playing catch-up.

This is a problem for Shaman as the class’ mechanic — Overload — works as a way of securing immediate advantage to trade for late game reach. This is especially a problem in last week’s list. Without Al’Akir to close out games quickly, most Muster for Battle decks have plenty of time to wrest control from our motley crew of commons.

So after dropping all the way to level 16 (!!), I decided to look a bit elsewhere to continue my ladder climb with minimal dust. What I found was a fun little gem from the game’s other under-appreciated class: Rogue.

Mechanizing Tempo

Since the Goblins versus Gnomes release, both Shaman and Rogue have been placed at the bottom of the metagame list. Nerfs to Gadgetzan and Leeroy really took a lot of power away from Miracle Rogue decks, while the the more minion-based Backspace Rogue decks that centered on efficient trades and late game burst damage via Cold Blood were being outclassed by Mech Mages and their busted openings.

Still, I found a few things in Rogue that could solve my current ladder problem. If we can make a Rogue deck that ran efficient and hard-to-remove minions early game, we can use Rogue’s bevy of spells to handle both their value cards in Muster and their lategame plans in Tirion Fordring.

For my list, I went with Sylvan Hunter’s Mech Tempo Rogue.

What I liked from this list was the sheer amount of hard-to-remove early game creatures. Mechwarper continues to enable overpowered board openings because of the discounts it provides. Combining a creature play with a removal spell as early as turn 3 is sure to unbalance all but the sickest of openings from any class.

But by far my favorite interaction in the list was the combination of Iron Sensei and Arcane Nullifier. A single buff to an untargetable Nullifier is such a big game against other midrange decks because it allows you to efficiently trade with most of their cards using only a single card. This puts less pressure on your direct damage spells, allowing you some leeway on your Eviscerates.

However, since I did not have enough dust, I made a few modifications to the list:

I added in the Cogmasters, Golems and Technicians in order to have a better early game damage output against decks like Face Hunter and the like. I found that having the blade flurries and second Iron Sensei was not enough when faced with an early Undertaker.

For players who managed to crack open Naxxramas, I replaced Dr. Boom with Kel’Thuzad for a different lategame approach. I found that while we do want to end the game quickly, having a Kel’Thuzad in play once your board becomes outclassed allows you to wrest control right back through aggressive trading. While I did test out Dr. Boom in the early stages of the build, I found that other people were too prepared for it, often having multiple copies of Big Game Hunter. Having the two 1/1 Boom Bots were simply not much use to our gameplan in anyway.

After playing this extensively, I found that the priority cards to craft once you start racking up gold are the Arcane Nullifiers. They simply do so much work, especially at Ranks 13 through 11 where there are a lot of Face Hunters hanging around with their Hunter’s Marks and Kill Commands. Eventually, dropping an Iron Sensei will pull the game out of reach for the aggressive decks.

The Game Plan

You’re a tempo deck: your goal is to use your spells and minions to delay the opponent’s ability to deploy their own minions on the board. You want to stall them long enough for you to create a single threat to take them from 30 to 0.

Cards like Annoy-o-tron, Harvest Golem, Piloted Shredders and Nullifiers do double duty of helping you manage your opponent’s creatures and serving as your actual win conditions. By using your Backstabs and Eviscerates aggressively to open up a turn where any one of those minions survive long enough for you to drop an Iron Sensei, you can essentially ride a single buffed threat to victory.

A 3/4 Divine Shielded minion or a 4/7 untargetable monster is usually enough of a clock that you can start suiciding your guys and creating unfavorable trades just to keep them on the field longer. Eventually, opponents do manage to mount a comeback. Hopefully, they are low enough that a Sprint for a finishing combination of Eviscerates, Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil and Blade Flurry will be enough to finish the game.

As a back-up plan, dropping a Kel’Thuzad allows you to salvage a losing board state from superior minions as you can now start running your guys into theirs without drawbacks. This is a grindy way to end the game, but because Kel’Thuzad is not as easily answered as Dr. Boom, it tends to happen much more frequently than you’d think.

Of course, that does not mean that you should always run your guys into the thick of things and ignoring good trades. When faced with the chance of killing off opponent’s minions for minimal to zero loss, you should still look to do that and develop your board state like a normal aggressive deck.

Oh, did I mention that you also win games just by dropping Mechwarpers into your whole hand by turn 4 or 5? Yep, totally a fair card.

But what about Paladin?

Remember my earlier problem? Turns out, the list I used still struggled with Paladin. The problem stemmed from not having ways to deal with Muster for Battle (I’m a slow-learner). After a few tweaks, I managed to reach Rank 10 with this list:

I shaved some of the more situational cards like Goblin Auto-Barber to make way with bruisers at the 5-drop slot. Auto-Barber felt awkward to play a lot of the time and only really served as a way to make a really big Blade Flurry turn. The problem was that against Paladin decks, a Blade Flurry turn usually expended too much resources and you still needed to to get through their Shielded Bots and Sludge Belchers. I retained the 3-drops and increased Iron Sensei however, as I found that a Mechwarper into any 3-drop opening is usually hard for Paladin to deal with.

By adding Spectral Knight, I found that Paladin’s ability to gain board advantage through Muster for Battle was severely nerfed. The combination of high toughness and 4-power meant that Muster wasn’t a good enough value play, while most of their own 5-drop minions were more manageable.

From this list, I’m looking to focus my dust into crafting another Arcane Nullifier. I may also consider adding in Azure Drakes in the future, but the way this list is evolving, it feels like Azure Drakes want to be in another kind of Rogue deck. We don’t have nearly enough ways to take advantage of the extra spellpower and the body is merely ok for its casting cost. At the most, it’s a way for us to keep up with card draw as we lay down creatures, but I think we can do without it.

Is Mech Rogue a bad Mech Mage?

Strictly speaking, it sort of is. At the heart of it, both Mech Rogue and Mech Mage have the same early game plan in dominating the board through Mechwarper, then using their powerful class spells to close out the game. Where Mech Mage excels however is in the fact that, compared to Rogue, being able to lean on both Dr. Boom and Antonidas ensures that they can reliably take the game into the later turns.

Contrast that with Rogue. With Mech Rogue, you are a true tempo deck; you have to mulligan aggressively for a strong board presence and you have to use your spells to disrupt your opponent’s plan even at the cost of losing a card if it means you can end the game sooner rather than later. In my experience, you don’t have much options going into the late game as Dr. Boom is so popular that most every deck is able to answer him in some fashion. Your best bet going late is in a combo-finish with Eviscerates, a buffed up Arcane Nullifier and/or a giant Blade Flurry.

In my list, the Kel’Thuzad serves as my personal late game plan but even I have to admit that it is a worse route when compared to the Mage’s Antonidas. While Kel’Thuzad dodges Big Game Hunters and brings us back from losing board states, it does require that you use your newly resurrected minions to go for the kill sooner rather than later instead of repeatedly using them to trade.

While these are not bad lategame options, they are for the most part reliant on maintaining a dominant board position. With Antonidas, Mages can still close out a game even if they lose the battle on ground, as spare parts are sure to give them enough reach for a direct damage finish.

Welcoming our Robot Overlords

I’m having a ton of fun with Mech Rogue and I think with a few more tweaks, it can become good enough to break through into the deeper rungs of the top 10, if not make a dash for legendary. I’ll certainly be trying. If you’re looking to play this list, here are a few suggestions:

1. While Eviscerates have a killer flair for ending the game, in this deck you’ll need to use them aggressively to keep the opponents board clear. Your main goal is to disrupt their board through removal so that an Annoy-o-Tron, a Harvest Golem or an Arcane Nullifier can live long enough to receive a buff from an Iron Sensei. One buff can usually seal the deal against most decks, as then you can start throwing cards away at their board and protect your one, giant robot death machine.
2. Against Paladins, looking for an early Mechwarper into any 3-drop is usually a safe bet as they have little ways of stopping you from getting a few turns of discounts from Mechwarpers. A quick Mechwarper opening usually neuters their Muster for Battle plan as those require multiple turns to set up in order to be truly effective.
3. In the lategame, look for ways to inch the damage in and finish the game with Eviscerates or Blade Flurry. When facing a losing board position, Kel’Thuzad is an out if you have even a paltry board.
4. When in doubt, mulligan for a Mechwarper, Mechwarper, Annoy-o-Tron, Piloted Shredder hand and enjoy playing the game with a totally fair card.

I’m going to be battling the rest of the week and next with this deck as I genuinely love it! Shout outs to the Sylvan Hunter for the cool deck concept. Hope to see a relatively under-performing class do better in Ranked Play soon!

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