Freohr’s Top-20 Legend NA Tempo Warrior Deck List Guide

Thanks to Freohr (check him out on Twitter) for allowing us to re-host his guide!

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Hello again /r/CompetitiveHS! I’m Freohr, back from a many month hiatus from competitive play due to the stale meta paired with (mainly) just losing a lot of my free time since I started working. Not that anyone’s very likely to recognize me but if you do it’s probably for my old control paladin. I know there was a topic about tempo Warrior here awhile ago, but it’s a deck I really love and that’s pretty absurd right now imo so I wanted to throw in my perspective and maybe try to go a little more in depth.

Before going too far, here’s proof, and (some) stats updated with more games included. Unfortunately my computer is not in excellent shape and crashes a lot, and I don’t remember to reload trackobot pretty frequently 🙁 So I’m missing my whole stretch from ~200-20 which included a 6 or 7 game winstreak at the end. These games also include 6 games of C’thun control Warrior where I went 3-3, so it’s definitely pretty far from good recordkeeping >< Hopefully still gives a little bit of an idea, overall if I had to guess I’ve been at a touch above 70% with the deck.

Revision/Update: I played more games while I was in the middle of writing this still, hit rank 11 but quit there because I’m a coward and I’m hoping that’s enough to hold for top 25: http://i.imgur.com/EWIb5uY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/y85DHg0.png

The Deck and its Strengths

My love of tempo Warrior comes well before WotOG, it’s a deck I played a lot of as soon as TGT hit. Most people were trying to ram Varian Wrynn into a control Warrior but I thought he seemed way crazier if you’re pulling out chargers and belchers and shredders, so I did what I could to make that deck work. It did, but not really at a top tier level (I think the highest I ever managed with my version running double kor’kron, double argent commander, and piloted sky golem was ~120 legend)

So what changed in whispers? A whole bunch actually, Warriors got 4 really strong cards that fit that playstyle really nicely. The big 2 that imo made most of the difference are Ravaging Ghoul and Blood To Ichor.

The benefits of these two cards are many, but the primary ones are that 1) they allow you to run Battle Rage and draw off of it very consistently and 2) they give you extra (efficient) Execute activators which the deck very desperately needed, tempo Executes are one of the strongest pulls of the deck but before you really had Slams, Death's Bite‘s whirlwind and not much else (I ran Cruel Taskmaster previously out of necessity but it was never very strong).

They also make for very good early game tempo plays, especially Blood To Ichor + Fiery War Axe on 4 health minions. And pushing you to run battle rage gives you the excuse to run whirlwinds which help shore up your Aggro matchups which are what my old, slow version had a hard time with (it crushed priest and Warrior, did pretty well vs Druid and got eaten alive by Zoo).

But Warrior got even more! Bloodhoof Brave isn’t quite a Piloted Shredder, but it’s a defensive card that you can use to aggress very strongly, and since nobody has shredders that actually leaves Warriors with one of the better 4 drops. Just be careful of Stampeding Kodo in relevant matchups 😀

And last of all, Malkorok. In tempo this guy is insane, as long as you get an average weapon he’ll often just about win the game on the spot. Gives you more stuff to swing at face, or to control the board so you can swing a 6/5 at face instead. Good stuff all around.

So all in all the deck got a lot better at anti-Aggro, and can still use those anti-Aggro tools to fuel draw against control. Bloodhoof Brave is a fantastic example of the flexibility the deck brings, he pushes a ton of damage with something like a Ravaging Ghoul + Execute behind him.

So recognizing some of those core cards to the gameplay, I’ll try and justify my particular list (which is by no means definitive, I’m not sure it’s even quite optimal but I think I can pretty confidently say it’s maybe one or two cards off from that. I think the core of Tempo Warrior is very straightforward and you don’t want to stray too far, there are some tech options though for sure).

Important note: I did make the change to swap second Whirlwind for Harrison Jones during my second climb since I was seeing relatively little Zoo as compared to Rogue/Warrior/Shaman, and I’ve been quite pleased with its performance overall. Just for full disclosure.

It’s my belief there are relatively few cards up for debate in this so I’ll go over the ones that are and explain why I run what I do in those slots. Bear in mind these are the slots you could reasonably change so if you don’t like one of them and want to run a different card for a different matchup instead, by all means do.

Whirlwind x2 – Lots of lists have cut down to 1 copy, which is totally reasonable if you’re aiming to prey on control-midrange more than trying to tech against Zoo and Aggro. I like 2 because one is generally going to find a situational use then the second can squeeze in a battle rage. That and because Zoo is scary as hell, especially since it’s super unsafe to prep a turn 2 Fiery War Axe against high legend Zoos (which are unanimously running Acidic Swamp Ooze). And you’re threat dense enough that it’s usually not too much of a problem against control matchups

Blood To Ichor x2 – To be honest I kind of consider this core, but I know I’ve seen a number of lists cut this down to 1 copy as well. I really don’t like that change personally, there are so many 4 health minions in the game right now that 2 copies seems super important for getting a grip on the gamestate in turns 2-5.

Acolyte of Pain x1 – I tried 2 for awhile but found my deck was running out of threats faster than I could kill control decks sometimes. With Varian Wrynn drawing too fast can be an issue, I swapped the second for a second copy of Fierce Monkey instead (which is pretty much standard now) and never looked back.

Kor'kron Elite x2 – This card is sooo good I wouldn’t drop one for anything right now. Double Kor’kron lets you pressure Rogue and Hunter like crazy, and as I mentioned before there’s a ton of 4 health minions in the game right now. Lots of 2/3s, 2/4s, 4/4s and 5/4s that it can either trade down or up for, and any of those cases are usually pretty strongly in your favor. And if you’re running Varian Wrynn they get even better since a charge effect is obviously strong off his battlecry in letting you interact with the board on your 10 mana turn.

Varian Wrynn – Perhaps surprisingly this is probably one of the most cuttable cards in the deck right now. He’s very slow in a very fast meta-game. However I’m very hesitant to cut him because he’s pretty much the only card in the game that lets Warrior win the board in a single turn. This is absolutely enormous in many cases against classes that can’t deal with large boards especially since those classes usually need to be winning the board to stay in control of the gamestate. The classic example would be that he’s usually game winning if you can play him against Druid, but more recently he’s been more impactful for me against Midrange Shaman. Since you’re desperately fighting to keep the board under control in the early-mid turns to keep cards like Flametongue Totem, Mana Tide Totem, and Thunder Bluff Valiant from overrunning you, if you can just make it to turn 10 you can oftentimes just drop Varian to choke down on what used to be a fairly even/empty board on both sides, and use your immediate board advantage to keep them from ever winning back the gamestate. The same is mostly true of the mirror; if you can drop Varian against a Tempo Warrior it’s extremely difficult for them to climb back in the game. However, he’s pretty markedly underwhelming in matchups like Aggro Shaman, Midrange Hunter, or Rogue, where he generally comes down far after the game has been decided.

Good cards that I’m not running section

*Harrison Jones – This is easily the card I want the most to be able to fit into this list. And maybe I still will. Honestly, he might be better than Varian for ladder right now just because weapon classes are very prevalent and turn 10 isn’t. So for ladder I would definitely think that’s a reasonable swap. For tournaments where I’m not expecting as much Zoo as I am shaman/Warrior, I’d probably be more inclined to drop the second whirlwind for him instead, but that’s still a meta call especially with how popular Zoo has been.

*Just kidding, I’m totally running this now because the meta I’ve been running into justifies it. Very happy with it atm.

Arathi Weaponsmith – Really strong for early board control, but as I went over in the Kor’kron section I just think that card is very strong currently and serves a better purpose than weaponsmith in basically every matchup that isn’t Zoo. Weapon density doesn’t seem to be much of a problem so this seems fine in that regard, and I tested one copy but just found I wanted it to be a Kor’kron instead more often than not. It’s also worth noting that Kor’kron gets a bit of a boost in Varian variants since it’s a much, much better pull than a flat 3/3. If you want to really tech against Zoo by all means throw in a weaponsmith too.

Arch-Thief Rafaam the Supreme Archaeologist – I know Sjow ran this for awhile, and while I haven’t personally tested him I’ll give my perspective from the other side of the matchup, and in general, which is that it seems not great. I know he ran it because it’s really good in the mirror (it is, maybe moreso than Varian- I did notice that I would almost inevitably lose to a t9 Rafaam because I couldn’t Execute it and play Varian in response meaning I either don’t get a full board to deal with mummies or I left a 7/8 to eat what’s usually the biggest body on the board for free). And in super slow matchups like control Warrior where mummies take the hit on a brawl instead of 3 cards worth of minions, it’s good too. And against priest it gives you a finisher with 10 damage. But almost everything else it’s just really really reallydifficult to get the space to spend 9 mana then 10 to populate your game winning board, instead of 10 mana on one turn. So I’m not a huge fan but again, it’s a meta call. If you see lots of Warrior in general (both tempo and control) it’s probably a solid pick

Hogger, Doom of Elwynn – Actually I’m not sure if this is good or not I’ve done literally zero testing but I ran into one player who was running it and it seemed pretty strong so I think this is potentially a contender for the list. Just wanted to add it on as an honorable mention since I haven’t really seen it in action much or given it a fair shot myself. Matchups Ok here comes the long part. I’m not planning on structuring these particularly intelligently right now, so it’ll probably be kind of freeflowing in the general pattern of mulligan->early turns->how you win the game->things to be careful of.

So currently there are roughly 3 archetypes of Warrior. There are actually like 5 or 6 but they mostly overlap between those 3 being Aggro/pirate, tempo, and control. Tempo is the most common (split between standard tempo and dragon) and essentially shares the mulligan with the control matchup, so I usually start under that assumption.

So to start with, I think the MVP of this matchup as long as you’re playing against tempo or control is always going to be Cairne Bloodhoof. Getting hit by pirate Warrior can definitely punish an autokeep, but it’s so insane in the other matchups that I want to play it on 6 essentially 100% of the time. Personally I tend to only ever ditch it if I’m on the play (so only 2 other cards to mull) and I don’t have an early game play like Fiery War Axe or Fierce Monkey.

Other than that keeps are pretty normal: War Axe and 3 drops. If you have War Axe you should keep Blood To Ichor since it lets you kill Frothing Berserker or Monkey (or Armorsmith which is also ok but not terribly efficient). You should throw away Armorsmith since it doesn’t trade with anything and keeps you from drawing a card off yourself with Battle Rage.

As with most matchups Frothing Berserker is your fastest win condition, but there are no 3 health targets for Warrior to let you curve War Axe->Frothing, and even if you did you’re open to losing it to Ichor+War Axe. Generally you want to get it behind a taunt if you can because in the early game your opponent won’t be able to Shield Slam it without also having Shield Block, and forcing either that or Execute on a 3 drop opens up your later big creatures to get a lot of damage across. If you can have a War Axe up and a Frothing Berserker behind a taunt and at most one other creature, you can keep buffing it with weapon swings/Slam and keep increasing your pressure without commiting into a brawl. And if you’re against tempo you can just keep developing and removing and the Frothing will kill him even faster.

Gameplan vs Tempo: The perfect curve is not as important as card efficiency and (secondarily) protecting your life total imo, you want to play your threats when they’re able to get value or threaten a lot of damage and you want to deny your opponent the same. The best cards in the matchup are the brutally efficient ones like Cairne (trades with basically everything in the list multiple times over) and Malkorok, as well as Frothing which can force an awkward Execute when you play it at the right times. Every chance you have to draw you probably should even at the cost of some tempo (obviously this is only situationally true; pay attention to your opponents clock and be wary of turn 9 grom) because this ends up being a card advantage battle more often than a race in my experience.

Usually I win by outdrawing my opponent or at least extracting value better (by keeping Cairne for instance, or forcing an Execute on Frothing), so I’ll have stuff on the board to keep him off a good battle rage and push continual damage. If you go into full race mode it’s not unlikely you’ll get blown out by Armorsmith+Whirlwind/Ghoul putting your opponent forever out of range followed by a battle rage while you look sadly at your one card in hand and no additional ways to combo for draw.

Gameplan vs Control: The main goal is to pressure consistently with either 2 or at most 3 solid minions on the board at a time, and otherwise pass turns/stockpile cards to allow you to keep your fuel going with strong battle rage turns (usually you want to aim to draw 3 cards with it instead of 2, or even 4 cards if you’re burning an extra resource for it like Whirlwind or Ghoul. In which case it’s nice to be able to combo with Execute for a really efficient tempo/carddraw turn). As long as you’re pressing more than 2 a turn (or 4 with Justicar) you’re chipping the Warrior down so don’t rush yourself too much, at least as long as you have ways to deal with his big threat plays (either Execute or efficient trades, you should generally have strong enough draw you can keep fuel going as long as you make smart value plays).

If you see him play an awkward brawl pretty early, a lot of times that means he’s pocketing a second and doesn’t have as strong of single target answers because of it, so you should usually try to pressure with just a couple targets until he’s forced to use the second in that case. After second brawl you can obviously drop Varian with no fear, but alternatively if your opponent’s not super deep into his deck and his first brawl didn’t seem like it was weak or awkward (aka you actually forced him into it knowing you have the Varian reload available, hopefully in addition to another threat or two beyond), you can oftentimes put him on not having the second yet and aim to win with an early Varian turn (assuming you can reasonably put him on not having the second which is a read that comes with a fair bit of experience in the matchup). And as mentioned before, smart use of a protected Frothing Berserker can really swing the matchup, if you force a bad brawl with one or a Shield Block/Slam combo you set yourself up for your bigger threats later to potentially live an extra turn or two and win you the game that way. And of course, alternatively, if your opponent can’t deal with it you could always just win on the spot 😀

Gameplan vs Pirate: You have 2 ways of winning this matchup, which you go with depends pretty much entirely on what tools you happen to have in the midgame. Obviously you do what you can to prevent damage from early minions in the first few turns with War Axe, Slam, blood to Ichor, and liberal Executes (since there are basically no targets for it in the deck), but once you stick one minion to the board your only realy concern needs to be weapons/chargers and heroic strike. Pirate Warrior has a lot of damage over consecutive turns with Heroic Strike and Arcanite Reaper in particular, so if your hand doesn’t have either a) Armorsmith+a whirlwind effect you can combo on a big enough board or b) a taunt or multiple taunts strong enough to prevent a lot of weapon swing damage, you actually can’t plan to just run them out of cards and outlast them with hero power.

If you instead have tools like Kor’krons or Ragnaros, your plan should instead be to churn out as many minions as possible to set up a couple turn lethal while you’re still high enough to take a few solid weapon swings. Forcing armor up every turn is often very detrimental, because face Warrior has much more damage potential than you can hope to out-Hero Power if they even just hit a single Arcanite Reaper. Instead you should be setting up as early of a clock as possible, and protecting yourself from your opponent’s potential damage as best as you can while maintaining that accelerated clock.

Excluding control type Shaman like Dragon Shaman or N’Zoth Shaman (because you will most likely never see them), the two decks to worry about here are full Aggro shaman and midrange/totem shaman. I didn’t have a super good winrate even though I think the matchup is generally pretty good,partly because 2 of my 3 disconnects in this period were versus shaman (both were unloseable if I hadn’t lost a turn). Midrange is much harder to beat than Aggro, because you literally only have to worry about the first couple turns there before you win through taunts/armor or just killing them. Midrange requires you to constantly keep the board under control while not commiting overhard into a really big storm.

Gameplan vs Aggro: Manage not to lose in the first 5 or so turns. Mulligan foremost for War Axe obviously, but if you have a good setup like being on the coin for t2 Slam on trogg on curve, then t3 Ghoul (contests his t2 totem golem) then you should keep it. Basically just visualize T1 Tunnel Trogg into T2 Totem Golem, see if you a good answer with what’s in your hand and keep the pieces that set that up. Blood To Ichor is really good in combination with War Axe obviously, but also really strong in general on the coin because it contests the T1 Trogg from Shaman. If you have an activator and feel it doesn’t make your opener too weak I’d generally also keep Execute for the 7/7 (or later on the 5/5 in the case it is midrange). But setting up early turns is far more important

Once you make it through those first couple of turns you only need to think about Doomhammer. Try and set up a Battle Rage to get Armorsmith/Whirlwind combo or just a buttload of taunts to keep him from smashing your face every turn. You’ll eventually reach Ragnaros the Firelord and/or Grommash Hellscream or Kor'kron Elite or something and just kill him eventually, it’s very uncommon that I’ve had to deliberately choose to race (this will sometimes happen though, when you don’t have the Armorsmith or taunts and your opponent gets the doomhammer or threatens winning in a turn or two with one)

Gameplan vs Midrange: This is a lot harder, you want to always have something on the board to kill totems for free while also having enough removal/minions to kill his next threat. But if you win hard in the early game it’s very very hard for shaman to recover, so you basically play this out similarly to how you would against Aggro. Be careful not to commit too many 3 health bodies to get stormed away. Using Blood To Ichor to create a 2/2 is very often the correct play, don’t value the 1 damage too highly because you need board really badly, similar to Zoo (more extreme even). Varian is obviously a terrible keep but if you get to him around turn 10 and you haven’t lost horribly yet, shaman has no way to come back from it and you should never lose control of the board again. Usually you’ll win through value because you have really efficient removals for their stuff as long as they aren’t winning the board hard and you can shut down Mana Tide Totem immediately, but sometimes you can hit a weak hand and go for a Grommash Hellscream lethal setup + praying for no taunt totem.

Everyone I talk to seems to think this is a really bad matchup and a lot of people brought rogue to prelims specifically to target tempo Warrior, but I’ve had the opposite experience in general. Not to say that this deck is a strong counter for rogue, but it seems to me it’s definitely at least even if not favored (with this list) and I’ve been crushing a lot of really good rogue players with it.

The thing with Rogue is it’s always kind of shaky, every turn you’re basically crossing your fingers saying “gee I hope this Rogue doesn’t have the exact perfect answer for this turn (there is always a potential exact perfect answer from rogue) and then finally winning once they have the exact perfect answer one too few times. But, in general, you win the matchup by being extremely aggressive and putting them in a situation where they have to find the answer for what you’re doing instead of sitting around and trying to find a way to play a removal game. Forcing out early saps on awkward minions like bloodhoof is really good because it means cairne or rag will stick later, or in the lategame you can stick another taunt and be pretty safe from leeroy. Obviously Fiery War Axe is about the biggest swing card in the matchup since it eats the early 3/3s and eats the 4 and 5 mana 5/4s and 4/4s with the help of Ichor or ravaging Ghoul.

The other mvp of the matchup is Kor'kron Elite, I actually usually keep it on the draw because it’s so good at pressuring the rogue and forcing awkward overuse of removal (even the “clean” answers of deadly or Backstab + Dagger mean taking 8 so that’s generally a win). Plus it can trade into everything that isn’t Violet Teacher or Edwin VanCleef in a pinch. It’s really important that you use your Executes for tempo rather than necessarily hoarding them for removal later, Rogue doesn’t have any big threats it’s good for other than van cleef so if you can remove their creature with Execute and play another minion as well to put you ahead on tempo, that’s usually a really big win that can force a sap a lot of the time.

For a little while N’Zoth paladin was pretty popular but more recently it’s been the Aggro variant. Neither are very common right now it seems, but N’Zoth is obviously the harder matchup so I usually mulligan for that one.

Gameplan vs N’Zoth: Biggest/strangest card I’ll keep is Ragnaros which is an absolute nighmare for N’Zoth to deal with outside of 2 combos (Aldor Peacekeeper/Humility + Stampeding Kodo assuming no other <3 atk minions on board or their usually one of Keeper of Uldaman + Truesilver Champion). You play as aggressively as possible without overextending into a loss to an equality combo, if you always have a couple minions pressuring them their 20 damage heals don’t really do that much (especially with threat of 10 damage Grommash Hellscream). It’s a hard matchup but far from impossible, you just have to make removing all of your threats awkward and keep a reload available, if you give them the opportunity to play their own game you’ll just lose when you give them 10 mana to play N’Zoth. The other important thing is to pray they never draw Tirion Fordring, because that guy is hard as fuck to deal with.

Gameplan vs Aggro: Play ravaging Ghoul. Literally doesn’t even matter that you kept a rag off the mull, congratulations you’ve succeeded in hard countering this deck with one card. (Obviously just keep the Ghoul on the mull since it’s a fine card against n’zoth paladin too)

Pretty much the only hunter deck being played right now is midrange, which is generally a pretty fine matchup as long as you are winning going into t6+. I feel like this matchup maybe should have been a little more favored than it ended up being for me, but that could just be me overestimating how often you’re able to dominate the early game. If you’re not pressuring and your opponent drops a Savannah Highmane or Call of the Wild, you’re basically going to be dead in two turns because you have no way to cleanly deal with either without already having minions on the board. Luckily War Axe alone pretty much demolishes their early game, and Blood To Ichor/Ravaging Ghoul make it possible to deal with animal companion cleanly with the War Axe as well. Turns 4 and 5 usually tend to be weak or slow from Hunter, so if you’ve curved War Axe into 3 drop you can usually take the opportunity to start pushing some damage before the highmane turn. Then you can ignore the highmane and have him be the one needing to make trades, as long as you’re still dropping a minion or two every turn it’s really hard for the hunter to deal with when you’re ahead, and even if he makes it to t8 for call of the wild it’s actually not a big deal if you’re far enough ahead on board/in the race.

For mulligans you really want to prioritize the War Axe because that’s what wins you the game, I usually wouldn’t even keep armorsmith on the mulligan against hunter right now because it trades so badly into their early 3/2s and animal companion. Keeping a 3 drop is generally fine though as long is it’s not Ghoul because it’ll trade for a 3/2 and live, barring a good ping from hungry toad (and you can usually influence this by playing out another minion by trade since hunter will never take the unsure 50% trade themselves since they don’t really have any way ping as a backup plan unless they’re running on the hunt)

The vast majority of the Druids I’ve played have been ramp or C'Thun (which play out pretty similarly) with a small number being token/J4ckie’s Druid and just 1 or 2 beast Druids. I know J4ckie’s Druid is going to be a lot more popular now probably and it seems really strong so that’s something worth factoring in but I don’t think it changes your mulligans much as you probably don’t want to do anything crazy like holding a Ravaging Ghoul in case of Violet Teacher/Wisps of the Old Gods/Living Roots when you don’t have another way to make use of it like Execute. Execute I’d almost always keep, especially if you do find a Ghoul or a Slam because it deals really cleanly with innervate plays, as well as keeping War Axe (ofc) and frothing (preferably, monkey is alright too basically you don’t want to pass t3 ever)

Gameplan vs C’Thun: You want to take the board early as usual with War Axe (much better against C'Thun than mostly any other kind of Druid because of 2/3s and 3/4s) and Ichor, and stick a 3 drop (preferably frothing) and go to town removing their bigger stuff with Slam+War Axe or an Execute play or just ramming a kor’kron into the big dude (War Axe+kor’kron is fine to clear an arakkoa especially if you get the +3 damage across from it buffing a frothing). Try not to use the second Execute in case of C’Thun, but sometimes you’re forced to if you’re really behind (then just hope he never draws C’Thun). There aren’t really as many great targets for it against C’Thun Druid anyway so it isn’t usually problematic, if your opponent hits twin emperors the game gets a lot harder though unless you already have a frothing on board and Execute in hand (especially if you have ravaging Ghoul for the extra target a lot of times you’ll just end the game with frothing damage on t7 after busting through the emperors using an Execute)

Gameplan vs Ramp: This plays out on your end pretty much the same as C’Thun Druid, you want to stick an early frothing, get a tempo Execute on their first big taunt and push a bunch of damage before they can drop their whole hand of expensive minions. The good news is your big stuff is really hard for them to deal with if you’re ahead as well, so even if they do start chaining their big drops a lot of times you can just continue Slamming malk/rag/varian and be able to keep up with them alright. The Execute turn is what decides the game, if you Execute something they spent 6+ mana for and drop an extra minion when you already have say a frothing on board, you have a lot more power on board to work with and bust through their big stuff even if you never find the second Execute (in which case hopefully you found your big stuff)

Gameplan vs Beast: I have played this one extremely little, but your earlygame should usually be a little better than theirs at least if you find the War Axe. You want to leverage that to keep them from ever getting ahead on board because once they do it’s really hard to recover since they’ll be the ones taking the favorable trades, especially with stuff that helps on that front like mark of y’shaarj or even wildwalker. Execute is a good answer for their Mark of Y'Shaarj once they do play it, otherwise their minion will probably get 3+ trades on your own (a 4/7 firehawk for example, if left unchecked, absolutely destroys your early-mid because it trades so ridiculous well into your 3 drops and kor’krons). They seems to run out of cards really fast though, even though mark cycles the minions themselves aren’t super efficient or bulky or anything so you should eventually win the value game since you have so many more ways to draw

Gameplan vs Token/J4ckie Druid: I’ve only played this once, maybe twice so far? So it’s hard to have a good grasp on yet, it seems like a very difficult matchup though. It seems like you have to win pretty early to keep them from having the time to create an unclearable power of the wild board, if they only commit to 1x power you can sometimes double whirlwind and Execute the teacher (if there is one) and recover but then you’re still kind of on the back foot since your hand will probably be pretty empty. Honestly this deck is kind of terrifying and I hope it doesn’t get too popular or else I don’t know if tempo warrior will be a good pick, the deck just can’t deal with minion flood that has more than 1 health. So obviously your mull will basically be the same as any other Druid, the only way I would play it much differently is not using any whirlwind effects frivolously or to draw just an extra card or two with battle rage unless you’re getting additional value from it, because if you can help it you want to be able to clear a bunch of 2/2s with double Ghoul/WW at some point.

The vast majority seems to be Zoo and the rest either Reno combo or Reno C’Thun. Zoo’s a pretty good matchup, the other decks not so much. Problem with Zoo is that a lot of better players have been teching in an ooze which makes the matchup much much scarier because you can’t necessarily put up a War Axe against a squire/villager and safely hold it. All the same it’s still not too bad and generally it’s probably best to just play as if ooze doesn’t exist

Gameplan vs Zoo: Get a War Axe, get a 3 drop, and hopefully win. Good Zoo players will try to bait a mediocre Ghoul so be sure it’s worth it and make sure you don’t lose to boardfull of tentacles next turn. Probably pretend like ooze doesn’t exist in the matchup for the most part unless you’re playing someone you know runs it (Muzzy pls don’t queue into me any more ;_;). On the mulligan if you’re going second Blood to Ichor is usually quite good on its own, it demolishes a t1 vw and trades even with a t1 flame imp. Also beats the t1 one-of squire unfortunately it’s awful against villager which is the more common of the two. Bloodhoof Brave is really good in this matchup, it forces a lot of minions to run into it as long as you keep the gang bosses/councilmen under control. At some point you need to start prioritizing face damage especially as you run out of your board control options like Zoo, if you try to play a 100% board focused game you’ll usually lose it to Lifetap unless you draw like Cairne or something. Knowing when to hit face vs trading takes a bit of practice but generally the biggest factors you want to consider are “do I get screwed by argus” and “does making this trade make him sink an awkward amount of minions in trades on his turn (keeping in mind potential for abusive/PO”. Another big one that’s easy to miss is “can I get screwed by Gormok”. So yeah try to win early with War Axe, make trades when you need to, and push face when you can. Keep in mind every 2 damage you can afford to push is a card less you have to deal with during the game.

Gameplan vs Reno: This matchup is a lot harder, there are a lot of minions you want to Execute but only 2 Executes. T4 Twilight Drake trades into basically every card you can play, and the warlock runs a lot of big efficient threats like that that require either an Execute or a bunch of minions thrown into it. They also run lots of board clears and while you usually have enough refills it hurts a lot if they slow you down to where you have a bad turn then get a threat down also. At that point you can’t really try to press face any more and your minions will just die one by one to the board they’ve established. Your best chances as with most control matchups is to push a lot of damage early, tempo Execute and try to set up a turn where it’s impossible to both play Reno and clear the board. That way if they play Reno to prevent lethal you get to take half their health the next turn anyway, and if they play the clear you have the chance to refill and set up the same situation next turn. But a lot of times it feels like the Renolock just has everything, I’ve lost a number of games where it basically went “I win if he doesn’t have Power Overwhelming + Shadowflame this turn” -> ok well I guess I still win as long as he doesn’t have Twisting Nether after that -> well I can still squeeze lethal here as long as he doesn’t have Reno I guess -> … 🙁

Builds were completely all over the place, if I had to guess my games were probably like 40% tempo/Yogg, 20% freeze 20% Reno 10% malygos/Reno Freeze 10% Purple playing a C’Thun Mage. Most of those matchups felt favored except maybe the malygos Mage and Purple’s Mage (those might’ve been my 2 losses actually I know Purple was one of them). But those are the least common variants anyway so I wouldn’t be too worried anyway.

Gameplan vs Tempo/Yogg Mage: Same as any other tempo matchup you want War Axe and 3 drops, if you can avoid taking a million damage from wyrms or flamewaker long enough to drop like Cairne or something the Mage isn’t going to be able to stick any more minions and won’t be able to straight burn you with spells through your armor gain. Unfortunately if you draw poorly (never hit battle rage while you have minions to work with for instance then continue topdecking Blood to Ichors and such) the Mage can win the value game with Azure Drake/Ethereal Conjurer/Cabalist's Tome. Yogg is also really scary because he can take a game that seems unloseable and then give the Mage a bunch of cards, secrets, and clear your board at once. You can’t really play around him at all though, so basically you just close your eyes until its over and once it is maybe throw a finger at Blizzard’s card design (I thought Elise Starseeker was bad enough I can’t believe something this dumb ended up being strong in competitive… but I digress). I think it’s generally right to go with the value approach though Mage is normally very weak when topdecking so you just have to hope they don’t hit a god Yogg.

Gameplan vs Freeze: This matchup is really good for you because you can really easily win on two different fronts, you should prioritize pressure which will force the Mage to use burn for removal (Frothings often eat a fireball), and even if your aggression doesn’t pan out you have Armorsmith and whirlwinds and a Mage with signficantly less burn in his deck. Just be aware of how you can deal with Doomsayers, and past that into the lategame how you’ll remove Alexstrasza/Archmage Antonidas (pretty much the only way they win through armor is one of those threats living). Rag’s the best card in your deck here since he’s almost impossible to remove without burning icelances or something; Varian’s really good too.

Gameplan vs Reno: This list everyone’s running plays both ooze and harrison which is a real pain but as long as you don’t play into either really stupidly it should be fine. Beware of Kodo (don’t play an unenraged Bloodhoof Brave or an acolyte you didn’t get a draw off of until it’s been played) and Mind Control Tech. The Mage’s only real win conditions against you are Rag and Antonidas, make sure you save Executes for those two. And don’t overflood the board, even with really big creatures, because you can lose to Flamestrike or a Blizzard chained into Flamestrike (or just Frost Nova Doomsayer). Remember there’s only 1 copy of everything, so if he plays t2 Doomsayer you don’t have to worry about nova+doom or blizzard+doom. And once Doomsayer, blizzard, and Flamestrike are all used you can start flooding. Key is to pressure with a couple minions without overcommiting, if you can pop his block before he is able to Reno you also get to threaten serious reach with Grom (as opposed to popping him at 10 and losing to Polymorph/Flame Lance). I think this matchup is pretty favored for you but you really need to know the list and what cards are still left that you need to be afraid of.

These hardly exist so I’ll keep it short. The only list I’ve been seeing is N’Zoth priest, which is an okay matchup if you get good cards like Cairne and Varian on time, and a very very bad matchup if you don’t. You can’t really beat a N’Zoth turn so you need to beat them before then, luckily lightbomb is gone so you can extend pretty far as long as you’re careful of exposed evil and auch+circle. Kor’kron’s a really good card in helping you pressure as well. If you can get the priest to death/entomb stuff like Frothings or malkorak you can also sometimes get Rag to stick and win off of that. When you can, set up your Frothings with 4 attack on the turn you play them that way you threaten doing a ton of damage or killing them with Whirlwind effects next turn.

Edit: Since two people asked me to elaborate on this here’s a snippet I took from one of those responses that hopefully adds a little bit:

There are a couple key notes that are pretty significant against priest: 1) don’t overextend into circle, just keep 2-3 beefy minions on the board at a time 2) set Frothings to 2 atk when you play them (except turn 3) so that they’ll live and you threaten pushing a lot of damage with Whirlwind the next turn and force a death/entomb after 3) never play an enenraged Bloodhoof Brave after priest has 6 mana. You can force the deaths/entombs on a couple bad targets like Frothing and Bloodhoof Brave, if they try to hold those removals they’ll just keep taking consistent damage every turn until you can kill them with weapons/kor’kron/grom.

End of Guide Stuff

That’s about it. I threw this together pretty free-form so sorry if it’s a bit too ramble-y, but hopefully someone at least finds it interesting or useful. Good luck everyone on ladder, just please don’t pass rank 12 I don’t want to have to play any more games this season ;D

Not sure if I’ll be answering stuff for awhile but I’ll definitely check back for any questions either later today/tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for reading!