Beatdown Recruit Warrior [Guide] (May 2018)

Introduction

Hey all! Thanks for taking the time to check out this deck. Before I go into how to play this deck, know that this is probably not going to be solid, viable option for climbing the ladder (although I will be doing my best to refine it to make it competitive). It is more of a fun deck that can actually still maintain a positive winrate (at least at lower ranks). The surprise factor, the sheer amount of value available, and the insane RNG pulls that are basically auto-wins make this deck a really fun way to rank up a little bit and to enjoy playing a crazy archetype.

I really enjoy playing Warrior, especially the control archetypes. Tanking hits with my face, smashing minions with hard single target removal, destroying the opponent’s gameplan/board, and playing big stuff has always appealed to me. This past year was pretty rough for Control Warriors, with incredibly high value decks such as Cubelock and control killers such as Quest Rogue running rampant. However, that changed somewhat in the Kobolds expansion, when we were introduced to the brand new Recruit mechanic and got two shiny Recruit cards for Warrior: Gather Your Party and Woecleaver. This new “Recruit Warrior” archetype really appealed to me, so I started messing around with some different decklists. It turns out it was pretty bad at the time. It simply couldn’t compete against it’s competition. Now, in Witchwood, players are having much more success with the deck, with several professional players piloting it to high Legend (here is Fr0zen’s decklist if you want to take a look at it: http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/fr0zens-legend-big-recruit-warrior-may-2018/). However, upon trying this decklist, it didn’t feel like it contained enough value. At the end of the day, there are only 5 minions in the deck, and if they died, there was no real way to win the game. Granted, there is a copy of Dead Man's Hand in his decklist, but you can’t really shuffle a bunch of minions back in if you recruited them already. I was messing around with variations of this deck when I had the idea to include more minions and more recruit mechanics and take out some of armor gain and single target removal. Scrolling through my collection, I saw Bright-Eyed Scout and decided that it would be the core “Recruit” mechanic that would make the deck function. After some tinkering and some test gameplay, I came up with this decklist. It probably isn’t optimal yet, but this list has performed the best thus far. Alright, enough about how I came up with the idea. How the crap do you play this?

Gameplan

This deck plays a lot like a Ramp Druid. You want to play the big stuff as soon as possible, through whatever means necessary. But instead of gaining extra mana to play crazy expensive cards, you either just add cheap, big minions to your hand and play them early or you move them from your deck directly onto the field of play. Against Aggro, you simply summon big Taunt minions. This deck has ALOT of big Taunt minions solely for this purpose. Counting the Direhorn Matriarchs from the Direhorn Hatchlings, there are a total of 11 taunt minions in this deck. Aggro simply hits the wall of taunts meaninglessly or dies to your board clear. Control decks are just overwhelmed by the massive amount of minions and strong board clears in this deck. You will lose some games to almost any archetype, as this deck does depend on a small bit of RNG. But it is a pretty solid answer to just about anything. Let’s start by explaining the mulligan strategy.

Mulligans

The most crucial RNG factor is this deck’s opening hand. You obviously are not going to be playing card after card on turns 1-4. This is why we have to mulligan extremely hard for the cards we want. Mulligans for this deck are actually quite easy. Following a few basic rules sets you up for success (assuming RNG is in your favor). Let’s start with the two crucial rules:

First off, if you have a Bright-Eyed Scout, always, always, always keep it. Getting rid of a Bright-Eyed Scout in your mulligan is like having Prince Keleseth and two Shadow Steps and mulliganing them away. Even if you have two Scouts, keep them both. These are the game-winners and are two of the three cards in this deck that you do not want to get pulled onto the board from Recruit mechanics.

Secondly, always keep one Shield Block if you get it. You get some armor, something to do on Turn 3, and you get to look for board clear or your Scouts. Never keep two of these, even if you are on the coin. You generally want to save the coin for getting a big minion out a turn earlier.

Next, you will want to take a look at your opponents’ hero. If you see a Paladin, Hunter, or Rogue, you keep Warpath. If you are playing against any other class, and you should probably mulligan it away.

Only keep Gather Your Party if you already have a Bright-Eyed Scout. Turn 4 Scout into Turn 5 big minion pulled with Scout or a Direhorn Hatchling into Turn 6 Gather Your Party is an incredibly strong play, but only if you already have a Scout.

In the very, very rare scenario where you get two Gather Your Partys in your opening hand AND you are on the coin, you can keep both of them regardless of whether or not you have a Scout. The gameplan here is to Turn 5 coin Gather into Turn 6 Gather.

And those are the mulligan rules. They are pretty simple, and if you follow them, then RNG will generally fall in your favor.

Gameplay:

The gameplan is pretty much the same for most decks. Beating Aggro doesn’t take a much different mindset than beating Control. There are a few exceptions I will go over, but first, I will give the general rundown on how to play this deck.

Basically, if you are following the above mulligan strategy, then you have a pretty high chance to have at least one copy of Bright-Eyed Scout in your hand. The goal in just about every scenario is to play Scout on turn four and the big minion you (hopefully) got from Scout on turn five. From there, you start recruiting more minions with your other recruit cards and use board clears as needed.

The early game is pretty simple. You literally have almost no cards to play, so the first three turns of every single game should look like this:

Turn 1: Pass

Turn 2: Armor Up

Turn 3: Armor Up or use Shield Block if you have one.

After this, you should have a Scout and be able to play it on turn 4 to get a discounted minion/boardclear/Woecleaver on turn 5. After turn 5, you generally want to play Gather Your Party and 7-cost minions in your hand. Dropping big stuff turn after turn will eventually wear down the opponent. You can only destroy so many massive minions.

A word on the coin: Try and save it to coin out an 8 drop on turn 7. Playing a Tar Lord on turn 7 doesn’t really feel too good and doesn’t have much of an impact. However, I often find myself using the coin to get board clear out a turn early against Aggro decks. Don’t be afraid to do this.

Against Aggro: You have the board clear, the taunts, and the life gain. Kill everything they play and slowly chip away at their face. You can play more aggressively if you have Grommash Hellscream in your hand or on the board, ignoring some of your opponent’s board if you have at least one taunt up.

Against Control: You wont have as many minions to deal with, but the one’s you do have to deal with will probably be pretty large. Try and beat them down as fast as possible without playing into major boardclears that you know they will likely be running (Lord Godfrey, Shadowreaper Anduin, etc.). Remember that a pre-equipped Gorehowl with an activated Grommash can quickly burst an enemy down. Use Deadly Arsenal wisely. Make sure you know what weapons (if any) are in your deck. 6 mana 7 damage AoE is much different from 6 mana 3 damage AoE.

Against Quest Rogue: You will probably lose if you do not kill them quickly. Summon a massive board as quickly as possible, rush them as hard as you can while doing your best to disrupt the Quest completion, and hope they don’t have Vanish. This matchup should be much, much better after the nerfs hit because the 4/4’s won’t be able to hit your 4 attack Taunt Dragons and live.

Card Choices:

I am going to briefly go over my card choices for this deck. I definitely think that there are a ton of cards that could potentially fit into this deck, and this is probably not the most optimized list. Despite this, I will go through and give my reasoning behind each card choice.

Bring It On: You need health gain against Aggro and Midrange decks in the mid to late game. 2 mana get 10 armor + no minion to mess up Recruit mechanics? Yes please.

Warpath: Solid board clear, especially effective against the Paladins terrorizing the ladder.

Shield Block: Some health, some card draw, and something to do on early turns. Oh, and no card draw minion to mess up Recruit mechanics.

Bright-Eyed Scout: The reason this deck works.

Direhorn Hatchling, Tar Lord, Primordial Drake, Dragonhatcher, Master Oakheart, and Sleepy Dragon. I could spend a ton of time talking about how pulling a Hatchling, a Dragonhatcher, a Tar Lord, and a Sleepy Dragon/Primordial Drake plus getting a 5/5 for 9 mana in one turn is somewhat decent. But I am not going to. All I am going to say is that each of these cards are decent to amazing pulls from other Recruit mechanics, so adding in Oakheart to guarantee taunt pulls when you need them just makes sense. Oakheart is the only other card besides Bright-Eyed Scout that you do not want to recruit out of your deck, but other than that, he is a great addition. I will also add that Direhorn Hatchling shuffles more recruit fodder into your deck, which is always helpful against both Aggro and Control decks. And Primordial Drake comes with an attached board clear, which is really nice to have.

Deadly Arsenal + Gorehowl: Arsenal is one of the crazier ideas within this deck. It is heavily dependent on if you draw your Gorehowls or not, and even then you can get screwed up by rolling Woecleaver instead. However, Deadly Arsenal is good for a couple of reasons. #1, it actually does get a slight discount from the Scouts if drawn, which is good. #2, I would probably already be running Gorehowls anyways because I needed to remove the cheap hard removal spells in order to add more big minions to the deck. #3, 6 mana for 7 damage is insane. You can crush a Control deck’s dreams with this card without leaving up one random minion like Brawl does.

Gather Your Party + Woecleaver: Let’s put some big stuff from our deck into play. Enough said?

Baron Geddon: Baron is an interesting choice because it also damages your own minions. But that extra recruit potential, the additional boardclear, the potential 7 attack damage, and the insane power it has against Paladins make Baron an extremely strong card in the deck.

Grommash Hellscream: Burst Damage that is recruitable? Yes please!

Scourgelord Garrosh: The axe and the hero power are extremely good at keep the board clear, allowing you to spend your mana on following turns on minions instead of boardclear or removal.

The Lich King: Big minion, has Taunt, has additional value. Sure, why not?

Replacements:

This deck is expensive. At 15040 dust, you should not be making this deck unless you have just about everything already. The problem is that so many of the legendaries and epics in this deck are too key to be replaced. There are only a few cards that can be replaced, and I will go over those here.

Deadly Arsenal can be replaced by Brawl (although Brawl is still an Epic).

Grommash Hellscream could maybe be replaced by another big dragon such as Ysera or Deathwing , but you do lose a ton of potential burst damage.

The Lich King could be replaced with another large minion, either a big dragon such as Ysera or Deathwing, or just a cheaper, more mediocre big minion.

Baron Geddon could be replaced by a different big minion or a hard removal spell such as Execute or a different board clear such as Reckless Fury or Brawl.

Conclusion

Thanks for taking the time to read through my guide! I really enjoyed building and playing with this deck, it is just so refreshing to try something new. If you have any suggestions for optimizing the decklist, any questions or feedback about the guide, or want to spectate me playing the deck, please feel free to comment down below! If you enjoyed the guide and the deck, upvotes are greatly appreciated! Thanks again, and take care!

Immolate