Beginner Warrior Deck List Guide & Tips 2017

Welcome to our Beginner’s Warrior Deck List Guide! If you are just starting out in Hearthstone this guide will help you learn how-to build and play this completely free Warrior deck list. The guide includes card explanations, mulligans, play strategy, and future card replacements/substitutions.

Find More Beginner Decks: Beginner Hearthstone Decks for Every Class

Beginner Warrior Deck Overview

Warrior is one of the tougher classes to start out with and with the nerf to Fiery War Axe it has become a bit more difficult. However, War Axe is still a decent card and the class has access to other strong class cards like Kor'kron Elite and Arcanite Reaper.

Don’t understand some of the terms in this guide? Check out our Hearthstone Terms & Glossary!

Card Choices

These card choices are broken down into two sections: Class and Neutrals.

Warrior Cards

Cleave – A bit of an awkward AOE spell, but when it lands on two minions it’s extremely valuable and is cheap for the cost.

Execute – Was one of the best removal spells in the game, but after the nerfs has been tempered down a bit. Still decent removal against big minions.

Fiery War Axe – Once one of the best early game cards in all of Hearthstone. The card is now weaker but is still a strong early game weapon that can take down multiple minions.

Shield Block – Better in a full control deck that uses Shield Slam, but still works as a cycle card that can protect you from burst damage.

Kor'kron Elite – Good for an aggro/midrange deck, it can go straight to the face or trade with a lower attack minion.

Arcanite Reaper – Great for trading into minions or putting pressure on your opponent.

Neutral Cards

Acidic Swamp Ooze – Decent stats and an ability that is very relevant against certain classes. It’s generally best not to be too greedy with the effect unless you know for sure they are going to play a weapon. It’s almost always better to play something rather than wait and hope to destroy a weapon. Be more conservative with this card against Warrior.

Bloodfen Raptor – Mostly just a body for stats and a cheap cost. The beast tag is largely irrelevant to Warrior.

Razorfen Hunter – A pretty bad overall card, but getting two bodies on the board makes it harder for your opponent to remove them easily.

Shattered Sun Cleric – Solid minion that has a strong buff attached to it. While it’s nice to get the buff, it’s usually best to just play the minion on the board rather than hope for a best case scenario.

Chillwind Yeti – One of the best basic minions. 5-health is very important and can trade and survive against most minions of the same cost or below. The card saw some really early play in meta decks in the beginning of ranked play, but is just purely outclassed by better minions now.

Sen'jin Shieldmasta – Similar to Yeti but loses 1-attack stat for Taunt. This card can trade with a lot of early minions and help stave off pressure from aggressive decks.

Boulderfist Ogre – This is essentially the 6-drop version of Chillwind Yeti. 7-health is very hard to remove with a single card unless it’s premium removal like Hex or Polymorph is used.

Stormwind Champion – This is a great card when you have minions on the board. It also helps against AOE by giving your minions additional stats.

Beginner Warrior Deck Mulligan Advice and Strategy

Cheap drops are what you want to keep, but Cleave and Execute are not the cards you are looking for. Your 2-drop minions are the best options, and if you get one of the minions you can keep a 3-drop minion or Fiery War Axe, and if you have a 2 and a 3 you can keep Kor’kron Elite or Chillwind Yeti.

Keep your 2-drops, and if you get one in the opening mulligan you can look to keep a 3-drop. If you are going second then you can consider keeping a 4-drop if you already have a 2-drop.

• Always Keep: Acidic Swamp Ooze and Bloodfen Raptor
• Keep w/2-drop: Fiery War Axe, Shattered Sun Cleric, and Razorfen Hunter
• Keep w/2-3 drop Curve or 2-Drop & The Coin: Chillwind Yeti, Kor'kron Elite, and/or Sen'jin Shieldmasta

Play Strategy

This is a midrange-tempo based deck so you are looking to control the board with your weapons and beat up your opponent with minions. Weapon usage is going to be the key factor to this Warrior deck and you should pretty much never use a weapon charge on your opponent’s face unless you are looking at setting up lethal or finishing off your opponent. If you are fairly certain your opponent doesn’t run weapon removal and you have no other real play you can equip a weapon and pass the turn. Weapons in this deck are going to be your main path to victory.

A good habit to learn if you are a player that wants to stick with the Warrior class is to attack with your weapon first and THEN use your hero power. Armor is better than health because you can gain as much armor as you want and your health pool maxes out at 30. There are also cards that benefit from armor that you might use in the future like Shield Slam. Mortal Strike which sees play in aggressive Warrior decks does not count armor, so you want to get below that health threshold if possible. Alexstrasza only changes your health total and does not remove your armor. Being damaged is also one of Warrior’s main synergies and works with Battle Rage which sees play in some decks.

With Shield Block and Gnomish Inventor having card draw effects, if you have extra mana and are planning to play one of these cards you should generally do it FIRST (Shield Block you might want to keep the armor, it depends on the situation). Like with most card draw effects, doing it first means you can potentially change your plan if you get a card that is better than what you currently have. This is a common mistake players in Hearthstone make and a good one to get in the habit of doing early.

Card Replacements and Substitutions

I’m going to list cards that you should start to look to replace to stick with the theme of this deck which is a Midrange/Tempo Warrior. You should start to look towards budget decks and build towards them once you start to acquire cards. Once you’ve built a budget deck, you can then start to build towards a meta deck.

Find Budget Decks: Hearthstone Budget Decks for Every Class

Warrior’s best option currently is Pirates, so you’ll want to start building in that direction. The good thing about a lot of the Pirates is that they synergize well with weapons so even if you don’t have card_link name=”Patches the Pirate”] a lot of them will still work in this deck. Common Pirates such as, N'Zoth's First Mate, Bloodsail Raider, and Naga Corsair can all be added in place of cards in this deck. Cobalt Scalebane is another solid midrange/tempo minion that can add a bit more aggressiveness and pressure to the deck.

Once you’ve gotten a few of these upgrades it’s time to start looking into those budget decks listed above! Good luck out there on the ladder.