Budget Aggro Warrior Deck List Guide (Saviors of Uldum)

Our Budget Aggro Warrior deck list guide for the Saviors of Uldum expansion will teach you how to play this budget list. This guide includes Mulligans, Gameplay Strategy, Card Substitutions, and Combos/Synergies!

Introduction to Budget Aggro Warrior

Aggro Warrior is a tempo-oriented, aggressive build, which was always the best budget option for the class. Warrior is usually associated with the expensive, Control builds that all cost over 10k Dust (“Wallet Warrior” term became a thing for a reason). But given that those decks always rely on Epics & Legendaries, it’s simply impossible to build them on budget.

Saviors of Uldum, however, has brought back the faster, Aggro/Tempo Warrior builds. While players have attempted to do it ever since Witchwood (when Rush Warrior became a potential archetype), it didn’t really work that well until now. The archetype has got a bunch of new, strong cards like Temple Berserker, Bloodsworn Mercenary, Livewire Lance and Restless Mummy. However, as you can see, two of those are Epics. And sadly for budget players, the two Epics are strongest of the bunch and basically required to play the best version of Aggro/Tempo Warrior. Which means that while the deck can still be built on budget, it will lose a substantial amount of its power. If you manage to upgrade it to a full meta version, however, it should serve you quite well as a solid ~Tier 2 deck.

Check out Hearthstone Budget Decks & Guides for All 9 Classes!

Budget Aggro Warrior Mulligan Guide

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Eternium Rover – The only real 1-drop in the deck, which means that you want to keep it. While it’s associated with Control builds, the 1/3 stats alone means that it’s good enough to see play in faster decks too (just like Dire Mole did, or Crystallizer does now). Extra Armor you’re going to get is a nice bonus that can be useful in Aggro mirrors.
• Temple Berserker or Amani Berserker – Your 2-drops. In general, Temple Berserker is the best one to keep, because it’s pretty sticky and can sometimes get 2 for 1. Amani Berserker is also okay if you don’t have it.
• Woodcutter's Axe – While 2/2 weapon is not the best, you can still use it to deal 4 damage to the opponent or clear some small minions. Then, the Deathrattle works very well with your Rush minions.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Cruel Taskmaster – Keep with a 1-drop or when you face a deck against which 1 damage ping can kill something (e.g. some Aggro build).
• Rabid Worgen – Keep with Woodcutter's Axe. If you play Axe T2, you can trigger its Deathrattle on T3. So you drop Worgen, hit with Axe and you have a 5/4 with Rush for 3 mana, which is pretty solid.
• Frothing Berserker – Keep only if you already have a good Turn 2 play. It’s a good T3 follow-up, but if you skip T2, it will probably die too easily without doing anything.

Budget Aggro Warrior Play Strategy

Aggro Warrior is a deck that heavily relies on the “Enrage” mechanic – damaging your own minions to get extra bonuses. For example, damaging Eternium Rover gives you Armor. Damaging Frothing Berserker (or any other minion when it’s on the board) gives it extra attack. Same goes for Amani Berserker and Temple Berserker. Then, possibly the biggest pay-off is Battle Rage. The card was always very important in fast Warrior builds. You should easily be able to get 2 draws out of it (as long as your Hero + a single minion is damaged), which is very good for 2 mana. But the card has a way higher ceiling – you will often get 4+ cards out of it, and that’s almost a Divine Favor level of refill. Talking about Battle Rage, you WANT to damage your Hero in order to activate it. Try to hit some minion with a weapon early. Against slower decks, you might even want to skip your Hero Powers because of that. If you get too much Armor, you won’t be able to damage your Hero, because opponent won’t likely hit your face with anything. It might seem weird, but the extra Armor you get from Hero Power is mostly irrelevant vs Control anyway – if the games goes to the point at which they stabilized, took control over the board and kill you with minions, the extra Armor wouldn’t matter anyway.

Your goal is to utilize those “damage” synergies to snowball the game. One of the quickest way to win is a big Frothing Berserker. If not answered, this card can kill your opponent by itself. Let’s say that you’ve played Amani Berseker on T2, then Frothing on T3 and traded Berseker into something. Now you have a 4/4 on the board that will just grow its attack every turn. Your opponent plays another minion next turn? Just rush into it and hit face with Berserker. And so on, and so on. If they don’t have a way to directly remove it, it will win games by itself.

Thanks to the weapons and Charge minions, Aggro Warrior can dish out a lot of damage from hand. Arcanite Reaper is an absolutely amazing way to close out games, especially if you combo it with Upgrade!. A 6/3 weapon is 18 damage over 3 turns. That’s like casting Fireball on your opponent every turn, 3 turns in a row, and all of that just for 6 mana. The downside is that weapons can get removed and blocked by Taunts. However, weapon removal is very rare in the current meta, and Taunts can be cleared by your minions (especially Rush stuff like Restless Mummy – it’s great at removing walls on your way). You also have Kor'kron Elite to do some instant damage – since it’s a minion. You can even drop an Inner Rage or Cruel Taskmaster on it if you want to deal more damage immediately. Which means that dealing damage to your opponent is very important. While you still want to protect your important minions (like Frothing), your goal is to dish out as much damage as possible before opponent gains board control. Sometimes you will kill them before they do, but lots of time you should be able to get them down low, but not enough to actually kill. And that’s where weapons & Kor’kron come handy.

If you run a full meta deck, it becomes a tad more complex thanks to the Bloodsworn Mercenary. The card is just insane in this kind of archetype, because you can use it in so many different ways. Extra tempo (simply copy any solid minion), extra removal (copy a Rush minion), value (copy something and play Battle Rage to draw +1) and even as a part of the combo with Leeroy Jenkins (damage it, then copy and hit face with both). By the time you add them to your deck, however, you should have a general idea about how to play it, so learning new interactions shouldn’t be that hard.

Future Card Replacements for Aggro Warrior

First of all, I’ve decided to include SN1P-SN4P because he was given out for free recently. If you, however, just started playing or came back after a longer break and you don’t have it, no worries, you can still play the deck without it. In the current build, I’d probably add another Frightened Flunky to replace it.

Sadly for budget players, a full meta version of Aggro Warrior is pretty expensive. Still not as expensive as Control Warrior, but it’s easily in the range of 8k Dust. However, the extra Epics & Legendaries you put there DO matter and make a huge difference. Budget Aggro Warrior is pretty bad, while the full version is a solid meta deck. Here are the replacements you want to make:

• 2x Improve Morale -> 2x Town Crier – In the right deck (so a deck running a few Rush minions),  Town Crier is one of the best cards in the game. Just compare it to a card like Novice Engineer. Both are small minions drawing cards, but Town Crier costs one mana less and has +1 Health. It just works insanely well.
• 1x Battle Rage -> 1x Militia Commander – Make that change only after you add 2x Town Crier to your deck! Restless Mummy is a better Rush minion in general, but if you run 2x Town Crier already, you want to add a third one to your deck to increase consistency. Otherwise there’s a solid chance to draw your Rush minions before Town criers, making them quite useless. With three Rush minions in total, you shouldn’t run into that issue given that you play a pretty fast deck. And with 2x Crier to give you more value, you don’t need a second Battle Rage that much.
• 2x Woodcutter's Axe -> 2x Livewire Lance – Let’s face it, Woodcutter’s Axe is a mediocre weapon. But Warrior has got something amazing this expansion – Livewire Lance is PERFECT in this kind of deck. While you pay +1 for the same stats, it generates Lackeys on attacks, so you get more value and tempo (since Lackeys are pretty high tempo). It also has great synergy with Upgrade!, since adding an extra point of durability means generating an extra Lackey.
• 1x Frightened Flunky -> 1x Leeroy Jenkins – Flunky is not a bad card, but it just works better in a different kind of deck. It’s a bit too slow for Aggro Warrior. Leeroy, on the other hand, is another Charge minion that can help you with closing out games, and it’s part of the combo with Mercenary.
• 2x Rabid Worgen -> 2x Bloodsworn Mercenary – Possibly the strongest new Saviors of Uldum addition to the deck. Bloodsworn Mercenary lets you really benefit from damaging your own minions, because summoning an extra copy of them for just 3 mana (ON TOP of adding another 3/3 body onto the board) is amazing. Later in the game you can also play Leeroy Jenkins (or Kor'kron Elite if you don’t have Leeroy) + Inner Rage + Mercenary for 16 damage burst.

Alternatively, you can go for an even slower build with Zilliax and Grommash Hellscream. However, stats indicate that faster build is slightly better (especially against Mages, which are incredibly popular on ladder at the time I’m writing this). Still, if you want to test it out and you happen to have those extra cards, here it is: