Pure Paladin Deck List & Guide – Darkmoon Faire – December 2020

Check out alternative versions of this deck on our Pure Paladin archetype page!

Pure Paladin Mulligan Strategy & Guide

Vs Aggro Decks

Higher Priority (keep every time)

• Aldor Attendant – If Hearthstone has taught us anything, keeping one-cost 1/3 minions against aggro opponents is definitely one of the most reliable ways to win the game, and Pure Paladin is not an exception in this case. Putting three health on the board as early as possible enables several 2-for-1 trade options.
• First Day of School – A smooth curve filled with minion options is imperative to keep board dominance against aggro, and First Day of School helps a ton with that.

Lower Priority (keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Libram of Wisdom – Only keep this if you hold Aldor Attendant.
• Hand of A'dal – Only keep this if you hold Aldor Attendant or First Day of School.

Vs Control Decks

Higher Priority (keep every time)

• Aldor Attendant – Keeping this against control is not so much about board control and more about early damage – so get it in while you can!
• First Day of School – Random one-cost minions can cause quite a headache for control opponents and bait out early board removal.
• Murgur Murgurgle – Early Divine Shield minions are the bane of most control decks, and this Murloc is no exception to that – especially if you have buffs cards to beef it up.
• Shotbot – Similar to Divine Shield, minions with Reborn are harder to remove and thus can do more much-needed early damage.

Lower Priority (keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Goody Two-Shields – As already said, Divine Shields in early game situations can do terrible things to your control opponent – especially if they reappear through Spellburst. Only keep this heroic female dwarf if you have enough early threats in hand already.
• Libram of Wisdom – Only keep this if you hold Aldor Attendant.
• Hand of A'dal – Only keep this if you hold Aldor Attendant or First Day of School.

General Strategy

In theory, Pure Paladin’s game plan looks fairly simple: Establish board dominance, buff up, and destroy. However, there is more to it than that, especially when it comes to the Libram package.

With Aldor Attendants and Aldor Truthseekers, this list can decrease the cost of Librams by a total of six mana. You won’t hit the total discount in most games, but just a two-mana discount is enough to smoothen out your curve and, crucially, make Libram of Wisdom free.

Libram of Wisdom provides the biggest amount of value of all Libram cards. Try to use the card as often as possible, especially when it’s discounted to zero mana, which should happen in almost every game. All minions are designed with their base stats in mind, and buffing them up even by a mere +1/+1 can change everything. If you have a wide board of small minions against bigger opponents, you can buff each one of them before trading to give your overall board a lot more power.

Next in line is Libram of Justice, also known as Equality on a literal stick! It is actually far better than Equality because it does not reduce the Health of your own minions, so it is not easy for the opponent to answer your board after you have cleared theirs with Libram of Justice and Consecration, or even with the 1/4 weapon that you get from the spell.

The third and last Libram is Libram of Hope. The pure strength of this spell when discounted is unmatched, and while you surely should try and get the most out of its heal effect to either increase your survivability or enable value trades, the fact that it produces an 8/8 with Divine Shield in the mid-game more often than in the late-game makes this a great tempo swing card to play on curve.

The next featured group of cards lines up perfectly with the advantages of Paladin Librams. Pure Paladin’s Divine Shield package contains Murgur Murgurgle, Goody Two-Shields and High Exarch Yrel. Goody Two-Shields, for example, can turn into a menacing mid-game threat, not least thanks to its Spellburst effect. Early face damage is vital to Pure Paladin’s game plan against control opponents, and going face with your Divine Shield minions often rewards you with both damage done and enemy minions and spells being used to trade.

Talking about bolstering your minions, the buff package is another important group of cards in Pure Paladin’s toolkit.

Ashes of Outland’s Hand of A'dal, which is actually named after a famous player title in World of Warcraft, is just a really good card on its own, and as we already know, only gets better when used on Divine Shield minions – not least because of the much-needed card draw.

Blessing of Authority may be one of the most interesting Paladin cards in terms of design. For just one more mana, it doubles the buff effect compared to Blessing of Kings, with the only restriction of not being able to go face. While the restriction sometimes hurts, Blessing of Authority is great for setting up value trades and almost always results in a huge minion staying on the board and asking the opponent whether they have the means to remove it.

Next in line are the two “Pure” minions that gave Pure Paladin its name in the first place. Lightforged Zealot has to be one of the strongest value four-cost cards that ever existed in Hearthstone, and despite the fact that we have tons of weapon utility in this list already thanks to Libram of Justice, it should always find its way in a Pure Paladin deck.

Lightforged Crusader serves as the main card generation engine for our list. It can produce a ton of additional buff, removal, and survivability cards, as well as discounted Librams. Pure Paladin has limited amounts of card draw, so adding some card generation to the mix helps it maintain pressure against slow decks.

Another important minion in the card generation department is Lady Liadrin. Remember when we said to use Libram of Wisdom as often as possible? This blood elf is the main reason for it. It copies each individual spell cast on friendly characters, which almost always results in a hand full of Librams. Quite often will you find yourself in a situation where Lady Liadrin will reward you with enough buffs to reach lethal levels of damage, and you should always treat her not only as a hand refill minion but also as a late-game finisher!

The dual-class legendary High Abbess Alura brings incredible tempo potential: its Spellburst effect can be activated with Libram of Wisdom or First Day of School for as low as zero mana, and the deck is full of spells that you’re happy to cast directly from your deck for free. Turn four can quickly become your opponent’s nightmare.

All in all, Pure Paladin just happens to rise up in the right place at the right time. It serves as a perfect example of an archetype that received ongoing development support which eventually paid off big time, and its ridiculously high base power level combined with multiple strong tech opportunities turns the archetype into one of the best choices in the early Madness at the Darkmoon Faire meta.

Vs Aggro Decks

To survive the early game, First Day of School should always be your highest priority card – not only because it provides actual board presence, but also because it can provide phenomenal tools against strong aggro openers, for example in the form of a Risky Skipper.

Most of the time, you are the control deck in aggro matchups, trying to shut down their threats and survive long enough to get a major swing from Libram of Hope or High Exarch Yrel.

How well you are able to survive depends not only on your own play but also on the opponent’s deck: transformation, silence, and bounce effects such as Blackjack Stunner, Revolve, and Devolving Missiles are major problems for a deck that relies on Taunt minions and buffs. If you expect your opponent to have such effects available, try to spread out your buffs to play around most of them.

Sometimes, you are also able to take on the beatdown role if you can get some good buffs going. In such cases, you need to consider how likely it is that the opponent has transformation, silence, or bounce effects because those can stop your assault and turn the tide against you.

Vs Control Decks

Against control opponents, Pure Paladin’s patience is key. Balancing out the urge to deal early damage and to not overplay the board certainly turns out to be much more complicated compared to aggro matchups, but it is where Pure Paladin’s design really shines.

Good players will focus on building up threats based on their opponents – may it be a board of two or three big minions against Warrior, a wide board against a Rogue, or just a straight-out ridiculously buffed individual minion against Druid. Don’t hesitate to get greedy once you’ve identified the strength of your opponent’s hand in terms of board removal.

When properly rationed, you have threats for days, and can just grind most control decks down over time.

Pure Paladin Card Substitutions

Because Pure Paladin is limited to using Paladin class cards only, there are limited ways to build the deck. Furthermore, many of the potential replacements are Epic cards themselves, so budget replacements can be difficult to find. That said, there are several things you can do to build a Pure Paladin deck a little cheaper.

• Shotbot is the best two-drop available to Paladin. Unfortunately, it is gated within the Galakrond’s Awakening adventure, so not all players have easy access to it. Air Raid is a serviceable replacement: it is from the same adventure, but it is from the free first chapter.
• Murgur Murgurgle is both a good two-drop and an additional late-game win condition. Replacing it is not easy, but you can try with Air Raid or Argent Braggart.
• Hammer of the Naaru is one of the strongest new Paladin cards. Potential replacements are other Epic cards: Lightforged Crusader, Devout Pupil, Underlight Angling Rod, and Argent Braggart.
• Lady Liadrin is a strong value engine. It can be replaced with another Lightforged Crusader for a similar effect: one that is more surprising but less immediate.
• High Exarch Yrel is the new pure synergy Legendary. If you’re concerned that Pure Paladin has limited lifetime left, you can replace it with Lightforged Crusader, Devout Pupil, or Argent Braggart.