The Glorious Army of Silver Hand Recruits *UPDATE*

The Silver Hand Recruit army is storming the wild Un’Goro Crater!!!

*WARNING – designed to be a fun deck!

This deck is a fun aggressive deck that tries to zerg down the opponent with an absolutely overwhelming amount of small minions. I put it together late at night whilst trying to complete my Paladin-related quests and I ended up having so much fun and getting decent results with it so I wanted to share it here.  

The playstyle is pretty simple: 

Step 1 – You want to find a combination of Silver Hand board fill + synergistic minion and play them together max value and greater chances of keeping your army alive

Step 2 – Play a Silver Hand buff card to make your army fearsome

Step 3 – ????

Step 4 – PROFIT!!!

***

“Reporting for duty!”

This card is an amazing new addition that holds up the deck’s theme in the early game!

(Now, as the great conquering King you won’t have to taint your noble army by hiring those old broken early-game mercenaries like Shielded Minibot. We are men, and we will conquer!)

Your additional board fills (Muster for Battle and Stand Against Darkness) get progressively more intense and harder to deal with without multiple big board AOEs. There’s something so satisfying about dropping Stand Against Darkness, getting your board cleared and proceeding to drop it again! Beware of CHEAP AoE removal that deals with your board cost-efficiently like Maelstrom Portal, Arcane Explosion or Ravaging Ghoul + late-game removal like Primordial Drake. Knowing when it’s optimal to fill your board is key to success. 

Board fill + synergy minion combos include:

Great on turn 3 – Knife Juggler + Lost in the Jungle 

Great on turn 4 – Steward of Darkshire + Lost in the Jungle 

Great on turn 5 – Knife Juggler + Muster for Battle

…You get the point.

Once your Silver Hand Recruits are on the board you’ll ideally want to follow up with Lightfused Stegodon / Quartermaster / Sunkeeper Tarim to buff your little dudes. 

NB. – PUT YOUR FAITH IN THE LIGHT!

Don’t be too greedy and do not fear to just dump your Silver Hand Recruits naked (without any buffs) because this deck thrives on filling up the board over and over again!!! Turn 1 Lost in the Jungle – into – t.2 Knife Juggler / Hero Power – into – t.3 Muster for Battle or Coghammer is not a bad line of play at all, and sometimes you just can’t afford to hold all your resources back for value. 

But speaking of value… 

An amazing draw engine in this style of deck.

Even if by turn 4 you haven’t drawn any buffs for the Recruits, you can drop this down and sacrifice your soldiers to accumulate resources. In most cases, by turn 4 it can probably draw you 2 to 3 cards at least.

This card is also amazing, as it enables you to get through any large minions with little to no detriment to your board of 1/1 Recruits!!! (watch those 8/8 Jade Golems crumble)

The buff on a Recruit is crazy good for tempo and protects your other useful synergistic minions! (Also, it finally gives meaning to Leadrin saying “my hammer burns with holy fire”)

Un’Goro no longer belongs to the Titans, and the Sunkeeper has joined the army of men! But seriously, this card is insane in this deck, because not only can it make the 5 Silver Hand Recruits from Stand Against Darkness into 3/3 minions on curve, it also most likely cripples your opponent’s minions and furthermore, benefits from a follow-up Quartermaster to make your Silver Hand Recruits into 5/5s!

It’s almost a ‘build-your-own-Rogue-Quest’.

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“Hans, bring the Flammenwerfer”

If you find yourself in need of a more aggressive board clear, Wild Pyromancer can be combined with the traditional Equality or Consecration and now with the new Adaptation if you’re lucky enough to find the poison buff! 

What I think makes this deck fun and kind of successful in my opinion is the inclusion of new flexible Silver Hand Recruit buffs beyond Quartermaster‘s now banal stat increase.

Enter…

and the insane mass application of this effect on your army thanks to Lightfused Stegodon (**MVP alert**)

Most of the adaptations can be used phenomenally:

Poison is really good in many scenarios where you’re facing big minions or if you want your 1/1s to have a ‘MUST KILL’ status.

(watch those 8/8 Jade Golems crumble… again)

+3 Attack is best chosen when the Silver Hands are inside their divine shields for big face pushes

Divine Shield, +1/+1 and +3 Health are all decent survivability options! If you have the Quartermaster follow up on turn 5, Divine Shield is your best pick by far!

Windfury is a massive ‘win-more’ choice that gets max value if your Recruits are already 3/3s!! 

Deathrattle: Summon 2 1/1 Plants is another odd choice that’s sometimes remarkable and other times just garbage. On the one hand, if you have the Knife Juggler, Steward of Darkshire or Sunkeeper Tarim available to play, sacrificing your Silver Hand Recruits and summoning a bunch of wimpy plants can get amazing value! On the other hand, the plants don’t have synergy with Warhorse Trainer, your other copy of Lightfused Stegodon or Quartermaster so I usually would prefer making the Silver Hand Recruits stick than giving them a reason to die.

Stealth is particularly niche. In cases where you are certain that the opponent can’t clear your board with AoEs, or all your minions are in a divine shield, Stealth could possibly be picked to ensure a guaranteed follow-up buff. However, you probably won’t want it most of the time!

Taunt isn’t great because again, you want your opponent to ignore the weak looking dudes instead of forcing him to deal with them. But, it can be chosen as a desperate ‘stay-alive’ option if need be.

Liquid Membrane is undesirable in my opinion. It’s just useless most of the time when the minions are 1/1s. It doesn’t address their main weakness which is AoE. Don’t pick this, there must be a better option.

For even more ridiculous combos or simply useful techs, you can try:

1)

However, I found SoJ to be just too slow and ineffective in dealing with the board state. The 1 less attack is quite significant and I always end up feeling bad using its durability on attacking the opponent, or alternatively, I don’t even get to attack because after coin-ing out Stand Against Darkness the whole weapon will be used up anyway. 

2)

Warhorse Trainer has just slightly better stats than Hobgoblin for a 3-drop, but what convinced me to run the Warhorse was the fact that it provided a great tempo-swing on 3 by giving what Recruits were already on the board +1 attack. Hobgoblin is slower and combo-focused, not to mention I don’t find his benefit in the 3-mana slot better than the Steward of Darkshire‘s, so there just seems to be no space for the epic goblin in the deck.

Sometimes I’ve been able to play out the dream scenario:

Turn 1: Coin + Knife Juggler on empty board

Turn 2: Play 2 copies of Lost in the Jungle and clear enemy 2-drop with the juggles

Turn 3: Enter Warhorse Trainer, your minions get buffed and can efficiently deal with the enemy 3-drop whilst keeping the Knife Juggler alive!

This won’t always happen, but what seems to be more frequent is top-decking Warhorse Trainer with anywhere between 3 and 5 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits on the board allowing you to push for lethal. 

One way or another, I don’t own any copies of Hobgoblin so I didn’t really face the dilemma.

3)

Both cards have a random element to them, although I think that the Stegodon is slightly more flexible in that you get 3 options to chose from, not to mention all the Mechano buffs are potential adaptations anyway.

Oh, and I also don’t own a single copy of this GvG epic either… lol

5)

If you don’t own Sunkeeper Tarim and can’t be bothered to craft him (even though he’s a staple Paladin card at the moment)…

“Don’t worry loves, the cavalry’s here!”

This potentially useful tech can either protect cards like Steward of Darkshire / Knife Juggler / Cult Master by making 2 sturdy taunts on a single Recruit, or it can protect your face while you draw more board fills!

5)

In case you find yourself in need of extra card draw you could run a copy of this classic aggro Paladin companion! Maybe replacing a Wild Pyromancer? I’m really not too sure about this one.

I hope you try and enjoy playing this deck 🙂 I can guarantee you’ll certainly experience both moments of glory and failure, but victory will certainly taste sweet. 

Big update lads! Since this deck got way more success than I would’ve possibly expected…

…I just wanted to share another cool idea for those cases where the opponent has a heavy control deck and the game carries on for too long. The issue I’ve encountered in those situations is that I’m usually stuck with a bunch of Silver Hand buffs in my hand, I’m holding them for value, but my Silver Hands didn’t live long enough to get themselves buffed! I always though.. damn, if only there was a way to bring them back from the dead…

GENIUS

This was so obvious, should’ve thought of it ages ago. Nobody sees it coming, everyone goes “Wow,” “Amazing,” “That’s Incredible!” “Well Played” or “That was an error” stuff like that.

Basically, if KT brings back some dudes, your opponents will get all scared and do whatever they can to kill KT! You then slam a Quartermaster and gg. 

Anyway, thanks so much again to everyone for checking the deck out xx