Blood/Unholy/Unholy Plague Deathknight – (Standard, Whizbang’s Workshop)

Overview:

I hit Legend #12953 today with this deck, so I figured I might as well upload it here.

I’ve found this to be a particularly attritional deck. It shuts down Highlander decks, and the plagues also whittle your opponent down over the course of the game.

There are also just a lot of cards that generally let you deal with your opponent’s board efficiently, and there are quite a few threats to play towards the endgame that’ll generally kill your opponent once they’ve run out of answers. 

Card Choices/Rationale:

We’re running the plague package here, except for the Chained Guardians, because those are dead draws early on and not particularly good until you’ve managed to shuffle a whole lot of plagues into your opponent’s deck. 

We’re running a lot of unholy cards, because they generally provide great value/they’re synergistic with the rest of the deck. Crop Rotation and Acolyte of Death lets you draw a lot of cards, Army of the Dead and Crop Rotation are particularly insane with Threads of Despair, etc..

The cards from the newest expansion are being run because they also provide pretty great value for their cost. The Headless Horseman is very strong (It’s a six-mana asphyxiate that also gives you five armor and gives you a very powerful late-game hero power). Dr. Stitchensew is also very strong (You’re basically getting eight mana worth of cards off of one deathrattle, and this is before you factor in duplicate deathrattle shenanigans.)

The only cards I forewent were the handbuff cards because I felt they were way too slow and inconsistent. You could be doing something better any time you’re burning five mana for a 2/6 taunt that’ll buff, on average, two to three cards in your hand at best. It might be worth it to run Lesser Spinel Spellstone because it is pretty easy to get a lot of corpses, but personally, I doubt it. Generally, it doesn’t actually feel like you want to be keeping a bunch of minions in hand, doing absolutely nothing for turns on end while they wait for their buffs.

About the only card I kept from that package was Shambling Zombietank and that was purely because it’s 6/4 in stats with taunt for two mana which was just too much value to pass up. (The corpse cost doesn’t matter, we’re generating so many corpses with this deck it could honestly use more corpse-sinks.)

Death Growl as mentioned earlier synergizes pretty damn well with Distressed Kvaldir, Chillfallen Baron and Dr. Stichensew It turns out being able to get two additional deathrattles using one mana is kind of good, and with the number of cards that let you establish some kind of board presence (even if it’s only temporarily), I haven’t really had any difficulty getting those deathrattles off.

Threads of Despair, as mentioned earlier, is just kind of nuts when combined with Crop Rotation and Army of the Dead. It is a very efficient clear. 

Maw and Paw is a card I’m kind of tempted to cut it because it feels like a super situational card, but at the same time it’s basically a magnet for removal because I’m found people really hate leaving that card alive. Which is kind of funny. 

My E.T.C., Band Manager is currently loaded with Harth Stonebrew in the event I run out of resources in my hand, Prison of Yogg-Saron in the event that I need RNG to pull a miracle out of my butt/as a desperation move, and The Scourge which is the card I most typically use because it tends to create a giant board your opponent has to clear or else they’ll die. This is subject to change, and I’ll probably switch some of these out for tech cards depending on how the meta develops.

Overall Playstyle:

This is a very, very attritional deck. It basically plays like every other plague deck out there. Most of the games I’ve played with it do actually go past turn ten, barring a few exceptions when my opponents instantly conceded because they saw I was running plagues. Probably because the poor sods were running highlander decks, which this deck just hard-counters by dint of its existence.

Early game, you’re playing for the board while shuffling plagues into your opponent’s deck – cards like Mining Casualties and Crop Rotation are very good ways to clear out weak minions before they can develop into threats, and Acolyte of Death lets you draw every time your own disposable fodder bites it. 

Late game, you’re searching for your own threats while letting your plagues eat your opponent alive – The Headless Horseman, The Primus and Dr. Stichensew, and if you’ve loaded your ETC up with threats like I did, E.T.C., Band Manager