These 3 Hearthstone Decks Are Cheap and Competitive

[The Wykydtron]

Not gonna lie, I almost immediately stopped reading the second the article advertised Face Hunter. I tried Face Hunter once. Once. It was sickening, I don't know how you people live with yourselves. I got the enemy to easy lethal AKA 2 HP with Stupid Shit ready then conceded before I disappointed myself further.

At least you balanced it out with Patron Warrior because that is the funniest thing in the game.

I'm running Dragon Paladin right now, the early game can be pretty hard unless you draw both Fairy Dragons and/or Mustard and/or Blackwing Technician. The 3/5 effect will always proc because there are so many freaking Dragons in the deck, you'll have at least one by turn 3 for sure. I'm certain that Coin into Technician turn 2 then second Technician turn 3 is fucking broken if your opponent doesn't have an immediate answer. Then you Consecrate or Truesilver turn 4 for board control or drop Hungry Dragon.

I love Dragon Consort too, it's a turn 7 Ysera for free wins, a turn 7 Alex to turn Face Hunter around, a turn 7 Nefarian just for fun and hell even a turn 8 Deathwing because Deathwing is fucking cool.

I got to Rank 12 last season with incomplete Dragon Paladin, double Ice Block/Barrier full survival mode Majordomo deck and a full Secret Mage deck. GG netdeckers.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

Crime: Spreading Face Hunter heresy of the first degree.

Verdict: Guilty.

For the crimes against Hearthstone, you are sentenced the curse of RNGesus. From now on, all of your RNG effects will provide unfavorable results.

I can deal with Face Hunter (BTW, I'd swap out Tracking for Hunter's Mark). I'm just glad none of those decks were Priest decks. Fuck Priest.

But looking through these decks, I would like to suggest also looking at Mech Mage; another fairly cheap, yet effective deck with lots of room for tweaking. There are also a few things I'd suggest changing about your Patron Warrior deck; namely dumping out your Slams for Inner Rage, and your Gnomish Inventors for Sludge Belchers. With all the self-damage you have, you won't be lacking for card draw with Acolytes and Battle Rage, and you don't want to overdo it with Mill Rogue being popular these days.

Still, these are all pretty good decks for new players. Nice article!

Even the antonidas-boom version of mech mage is kind of shit on ladder right now. Professional players are having trouble climbing with it.

Cant imagine an average player making it past rank 8 with the budget version really.

Its still probably the fastest way to farm 5 wins.

I havent really seen mill rogue on ladder, are you playing on EU?

 

[Norithics]

I havent really seen mill rogue on ladder, are you playing on EU?

I've seen Mill Rogue plenty. Either it's not great or it just interacts poorly with my shaman deck, because the burst-milling and vanish nuke are cool tricks, but then you just, uh. Die. Mill Druid without the survivability.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

I havent really seen mill rogue on ladder, are you playing on EU?

I've seen Mill Rogue plenty. Either it's not great or it just interacts poorly with my shaman deck, because the burst-milling and vanish nuke are cool tricks, but then you just, uh. Die. Mill Druid without the survivability.

Most people who play it are pretty bad.

If youre confused about how its supposed to work, it beats aggro by healing a whole lot with Heal Bot and it beats control by comboing with coldlight oracle and drawing into all your stall, and then playing 3 of them in a row with gang up. Control warriors, priests and face hunters get absolutely destroyed by it.

The deck is actually good, and around 40/60 against shaman - depending on the deck of course. Worth noting that it gets absolutely destroyed by doom hammer though, really any heavy damage combo is bad. Im pretty sure mech shaman is a below average matchup as well. Its certainly miles and miles above mill druid, which was always incredibly clunky and a tier 4 deck at best. Id say it has a whole lot more survivability then mill druid if you define survivability as stalling, because you can certainly do that.

The problem with it is that for the aggro matchups you need to draw into Antique Heal Bot, and for the control matchups you need to draw into Coldlight Oracle. Thanks to gang up you can put draw into it now which means you accomplish that like 70% of the time. As long as you can do that you basically autowin against everything except mech mage, midrange hunter and combo druid.

Its always going to be a tier 2 deck at best just because of how bad the matchup against druid is and how much people play druid. Druid really wrecks mill/fatigue in general.

 

[Norithics]

Most people who play it are pretty bad.

That was my thought. I know the concept and it seems like it's fairly decent, I just never see it work out in practice. Like you said, either the trick doesn't work fast enough or the heals don't come often enough. Then again as far as I can tell Shaman's card draw is its weak point on purpose, so something that alleviates that as its core mechanic might have a hard time. I don't really play other classes with any regularity so my experience is probably skewed. I also play for fun and have been to, I think rank 12?

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

Most people who play it are pretty bad.

That was my thought. I know the concept and it seems like it's fairly decent, I just never see it work out in practice. Like you said, either the trick doesn't work fast enough or the heals don't come often enough. Then again as far as I can tell Shaman's card draw is its weak point on purpose, so something that alleviates that as its core mechanic might have a hard time. I don't really play other classes with any regularity so my experience is probably skewed. I also play for fun and have been to, I think rank 12?

The HS ladder is really unrewarding and the fact that it resets every month just kills my motivation. The best I've ever made is rank 6 just because I cant be arsed. And guess what rank I was when the next season started? 18 or something. The star reward system is really a joke.

I love playing arena though, I have a whole lot of cards now that I've learned to go infinite on it.

 

[rdaleric]

My current Rogue deck with weapon based buffs and mechs is pretty fun and cost very little

 

[Calcium]

I ran a marginally different Zoolock last season that got me up to rank 8. I wish I'd played more, as I still had a good win record, but ladder anxiety was creeping in.

Rather than Leper Gnomes I used Void Terrors, with a second Power Overwhelming instead of that Clockwork Gnome. The dream is to go Flame Imp > Nerubian Egg > Void Terror. Even without such a crazy start, with all the tokens that Imp Gang Boss and Imp-losion spawn, your Void Terrors are basically 3 mana 4/4s.

Still, I kinda miss my pre-Imp-losion zoolock. Everything else was the same, but it ran an Acidic Swamp Ooze and Lorewalker Cho. It was less reliable, but Cho can cause a lot of memorable games.

This season I'm wanting to use my own decks rather than meta variants. Probably going to switch between Face Warrior and Control Hunter. They're not solid decks, but they're fun, and people have no idea how to play against them.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Also Face Hunter and Zoolock fall off in effectiveness by rank 15.
Patron warrior is kinda gimmicky.

Gonna have to disagree. Zoo and Face Hunter are some of the easiest ways to climb to legend. Sure, you'll run into some people who have counters, but I find it's actually less common to run into those at the higher ranks since more and more people are playing control. Not only that, the games you win are usually going to be quite quick so you don't have to worry about the morale hit that other players may experience after losing a half hour game.

Patron Warrior probably isn't quite consistent enough to be up there with the meta decks, but it's good enough and it encourages a different play style for newer players to learn instead of, like you said, hit face over and over.

Honestly, Zoo is also great for new players since it's less about hitting face and more about making effective trades and controlling the board to maintain tempo. These things are crucial for any player to learn so I actually think Zoo is the perfect starting point for a new player.

I'd still say building their own decks and learning what works is better than zoo for new players. If they are netdecking they probably know all about trades, value and stuff from guides anyway. Copying a deck and playing how you're told to doesn't help you get better at hearthstone even if your rank goes up because of it.