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If you've red my articles in the past, then you've seen the crazy outlandish decks I've started from. Sometimes I end up in Death Knight decks that started Mage, others Alliance decks that began as Horde. Others are somewhat civilized, and I know what the key cards are in the deck. It's more about looking for the supporting cast of cards to build a cohesive deck shell capable of winning games. Then there's others where you have no idea how good a card really is, and the only way to find out is by playing some games, and for me that card was [Feeding Frenzy].
I started playing around with [Feeding Frenzy] in Limited after I saw a few different guys at our local drafts open and play with it. The card seemed sweet in theory, but every time I saw them play it I was not impressed, and I knew that the card had to be better than what I was seeing. A buddy of mine, Adrian Gallardo, started working in the same direction, a Horde Rogue deck that was fairly aggressive with the powerful weapon, but as is usual for Adrian and his decks, he had some cards I thought were crazy to be playing with. [Poison the Well], [Black Heart of Flame], and [If You're Not Against Us. . .] were all in Adrian's deck, and I couldn't imagine them being cards in my version of the deck. Problem was, Adrian was winning games, and not being a great deck-builder, I need to actually play with the cards to see their potential, so I got to work.
After a couple of attempts of writing up decklists with [Feeding Frenzy], I literally had pieces of paper scratched out everywhere. Some lists had [Slaughter] and [Poison Bomb], others had [Gerwixicks] and [Baxtan, Herald of the Flame]. The decks were all over the place, and each list looked worse than the one before it. When decks look like that to me, I don't even build the deck because I'd be wasting mine, and more importantly, my dad's time who ends up re-sorting the cards afterward. Thus, there I was staring at pieces of paper with no deck until I finally wrote the shell of the deck I wanted:
Hero: [Joleera]
Allies: 11
4 [Jadefire Scout]
4 [Rosalyne von Erantor]
3 [Deathguard Ashleigh]
Abilities: 6
4 [Sinister Strike]
2 [To Arms!]
Equipment: 14
4 [Feeding Frenzy]
4 [Blackout Truncheon]
4 [Maimgor's Bite]
2 [Smite's Reaver]
I knew these 31 cards were making the deck I would eventually put together no matter what. I used to do this when building decks for North American Continental Championships when our team was smaller, and more importantly [Tuskarr Kite] was around, because every one of our decks had [Tuskarr Kite], so each deck we considered was focused around [Tuskarr Kite]. We'd write down most of the lists to remember what we had tested before.
Finally, I wrote a decklist that looked playable. And even though I changed around 10 cards while actually pulling the cards out of our sorting system, I still felt like the deck had some potential. Here was the deck I was looking it:
Hero: [Joleera]
Allies: 26
4 [Jadefire Scout]
4 [Rosalyne von Erantor]
4 [Wysco]
4 [Jex'ali]
4 [Sava'gin the Reckless]
3 [Deathguard Ashleigh]
3 [Edwin VanCleef]
Abilities: 15
4 [Sinister Strike]
3 [Prey on the Weak]
2 [Poison Bomb]
2 [Bully]
2 [Slaughter]
2 [To Arms!]
Equipment: 14
4 [Blackout Truncheon]
4 [Feeding Frenzy]
4 [Maimgor's Bite]
2 [Smite's Reaver]
Locations: 3
3 [Kor'kron Vanguard]
Quests: 2
2 [Thieving Little Pluckers]
I'm not the deckbuilder for my team, that's Kyle McGinty's job, so give me a break. Yeah, the deck sucked the first time around, but that's a good thing. When I build decks, if the first version succeeds a large portion of the time, it generally means the format is easy to figure out, and we're in for an extended period of mirror matches. That scenario played itself out for the World Championships in 2009 when Mage was clearly the best class thanks to [Blizzard], [Mana Ruby], and [Everlasting Cold]. My initial deck that time had around 50 of the same cards I played at Worlds over three months later. This deck on the other hand had potential, but was definitely not great, which meant there was room to improve. Most of the games I played with it were versus the [Amaxi the Cruel] deck as it seemed like the one the most people were talking about going in to the European Continental Championship on Facebook, and generally in initial building I only play against a single deck. I was pleasantly surprised when the deck was able to win some games, but they were a lot closer than I felt they should have been.
The [Amaxi the Cruel] deck has a severe inability to fight equipment. [Fire and Brimstone] just doesn't cut it on the efficient level, as most of this deck's threats can do their job in the first turn or two that they're in play. The problem was not dealing the damage to either kill Amaxi or the deck's threats, but actually paying to strike with the weapons. [Blackout Truncheon] and [Smite's Reaver] are awesome, but having to pay two resources to strike with either of them is a giant burden. Between [Wysco], [Deathguard Ashleigh], and [Maimgor's Bite], the deck could really pump up its weapons quickly, but it would lose to its own design because it could strike with one of the larger weapons. It honestly felt as if I should just be playing solo Rogue and wait to slam a [To Arms!] into play to kill my opponents with this deck, but that would mean eliminating the [Feeding Frenzy] concept entirely.
That did seem like an option though as [Feeding Frenzy] did nothing but disappoint. It was extremely difficult to keep allies in the graveyard, but realizing it was a necessary card to eliminate opposing threats allowed me to keep the [Feeding Frenzy] dream alive. The only thing that changed however, was that I needed a way to fight through protectors, and really needed weapons with lower strike costs. Thankfully, Rogues have access to some cheap weapons, and were able to hook me up with some nice changes after cutting the “ambitious” cards as I like to call them.
Hero: [Joleera]
Allies: 23
4 [Jadefire Scout]
4 [Rosalyne von Erantor]
4 [Wysco]
4 [Jex'ali]
4 [Sava'gin the Reckless]
3 [Deathguard Ashleigh]
Abilities: 12
4 [Sinister Strike]
4 [Prey on the Weak]
2 [Bully]
2 [To Arms!]
Equipment: 19
4 [Balanced Heartseeker]
3 [Stained Shadowcraft Tunic]
3 [Venerable Mass of McGowan]
3 [Feeding Frenzy]
4 [Maimgor's Bite]
2 [Smite's Reaver]
Locations: 3
3 [Kor'kron Vanguard]
Quests: 3
3 [Thieving Little Pluckers]
This is the deck I'm at now, and it runs surprisingly well. No longer is [Feeding Frenzy] the key part of the deck, but it is still the card that got me to this point. Even though I was looking for an ally heavy deck that would rely on [Feeding Frenzy] to act as a free removal spell each turn, that doesn't mean it's where your deck has to end up. Sure, [Feeding Frenzy] fills that same role of killing opposing allies now, but it is not the centerpiece of the deck. This version of the deck is all about pumping up your weapons to kill the opponent. [Wysco] is awesome when beating down, pumping up all your weapons to help kill allies in the early game to hold tempo. Whereas [Deathguard Ashleigh] gives the deck a combo element, allowing you to dump a grip full of equipment into play, killing the opponent in a single turn when striking for insane amounts of damage.
The card that really salvaged the deck's strategy was [Stained Shadowcraft Tunic]. I went searching for [Balanced Heartseeker]s because they're free to swing with, and in the same box stumbled upon a reusable way to give my hero Stealth. The other option was to play [Distraction Technique], but it was one of the cards I continually scratched off my list as too weak to actually put in a deck and test out. With [Stained Shadowcraft Tunic] I was getting a fair price of two armor for two resources, the keyword to get past [Sardok]s, [Pygmy Pyramid]s, and [Daedek the Gravebourne]s, and it helped turn on the deck's quest, [Thieving Little Pluckers]. The deck actually started running like a real deck, and shows some real promise as it aggressively kills allies, and can quickly close a game, two things I find very important in this current format.
I haven't played many games with the deck against other things yet, but the Hunter matchup is a struggle. [Viewless Wings] combo can definitely just kill you, but you can strike back with a pair of weapons at the token allies if you have that luxury. Your best bet in most matchups, but especially against the [Viewless Wings] decks, is to put yourself in a position to kill them if the deck helps out. Between [Deathguard Ashleigh] and a single [Maimgor's Bite], you're a weapon away from dealing tons of damage to the opponent. Playing a [To Arms!] into an open board can lead to great rewards when drawing weapons off the top as well. You have to be willing to go broke with this deck sometimes by putting your cards in play because you have access to powerful pumps.
I wrote this to help show exactly how I go about building decks. My creations are very seldom clean and fancy on the first time through, and frequently yield funny looks from Kyle McGinty, although he hasn't seen this one yet. I really recommend writing your ideas down as well! Even if you're working solo, having all your work recorded, and what cards were good and poor in certain matchups, can really save time when trying to figure out what should be in a deck .
That's it for this week. Next week we're going to analyze some of the decks from the EUCC which went on this past weekend, and we'll see how that will affect the metagame heading forward in the weeks before DMF Indianapolis at Gen Con!
-Corey
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