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Mulligans
General Mulligans
Having high-value low-cost cards in your starting hand is the way to go. Nightcloak Sanctum and Far Watch Post are specifically powerful cards in the early game. Both cards drastically slow your opponent down which, in turn, gives you room to breathe.
If you know you're going late game against your opponent, look for Sire Denathrius or Taelan Fordring (equivalent but slower). Having Denathrius in your hand as early as possible allows more value to be gained through infusions.
Mage
With the introduction of Prince Renathal, highlander is an obvious choice for classes that possess a high-control toolkit. Setting your starting health to 40, Prince Renathal provides a 33% increase in value towards Reno Jacksons battlecry. Furthermore, being limited to a single copy per card, per deck, means we must tap into the vast array of utility cards provided in the neutral selection; which leaves little complaints.
Having 10 extra cards in your deck while obliging the highlander limitation may seem disadvantageous at first. However, this extra room allows your deck to contain an answer to almost every situation. Let’s go over some of the strong utility included in this deck.
Featured Cards
Sir Finley, Sea Guide allows you to rotate your deck into your hand. This is an extremely powerful effect if you happen to mulligan poorly and need answers. If you see this card in your mulligan and nothing else of worth, keep it; it will bail you out more than once.
Mankrik is—in my opinion—a vastly underrated midgame card. For 3 mana you get a 6/11 [atk/def] split across two bodies. The downside is that you do need to wait before drawing Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred. Luckily, mage provides plenty of card draw to expedite this process. Once down, Mankrik, Consumed by Hatred is not an easy card for the opponent to deal with. He can easily remove a number of >5 cost minions from the board, or continuously hit face if your opponent has a weak board state.
Smothering Starfish is good into the current buff meta. In decks such as Beast Hunter/Imp Warlock, minions will get very scary very fast. Having a board-wide silence like this can halt your opponent and make clearing the board more manageable.
As a surprise to no one, Theotar, the Mad Duke makes the list. Despite recent nerfs, Theotar provides too much disruption to be overlooked. Having the ability to steal cards like Wildheart Guff, Mordresh Fire Eye, Kazakusan is invaluable.
Zola the Gorgon when combined Brann Bronzebeard allows for some insane plays. There are too many to list, but many are obvious. I will mention that when duplicating Theotar, the Mad Duke with this setup, you can theoretically steal up to 6 cards from the opponent.
Any of Queen Azshara‘s Ancient Relics provide value. In particular, Tidestone of Golganneth synergizes very well with mage. This includes the potential to receive massively discounted versions of Rune of the Archmage, Drakefire Amulet, Blizzard, among others.
Fire Sale provides both board clear and card draw. If you manage to clear a zoo board and your opponent is stuck rebuilding, this card will provide another level of clear that will hinder (most) zoo decks. When paired with Bloodmage Thalinos, you have a Flamestrike with card draw for 1 less mana/damage.
Finally, Reno Jackson is the centerpiece of the deck. Essentially allowing your hero up to 79 heath (combo free). When combined with Zola the Gorgon & Brann Bronzebeard, this number goes up to 157.
Win Condition
The idea of outlasting your opponent with this deck is not farfetched. This, however, is not the most reliable win condition. Instead, Mordresh Fire Eye, Magister Dawngrasp and Sire Denathrius provide the edge needed for consistent victory. One strategy is to keep Sire Denathrius in your mulligan. By doing this you gain the maximum possible number of infusions.
Coda
Having the ability to control any situation with ease while possessing win conditions of your own offers potent design. However, this deck is not without downfall. When drawn poorly, the value cards won’t be played in the same scenarios and instead out of desperation; resulting in an overrun board. A good mulligan is key for success with this deck. Overall, if you mulligan well enough and analyze the best value per circumstance, you will have an answer for every situation.
This looks quite fun, gonna try playing it.
Any good replacements for Sivara and Smothering Starfish?
Don’t have them and hesistant to craft just for this deck.
Thanks for posting!
In terms of direct replacements there isn’t much, but I do have a few cards in mind that fit the curve well. I’m a big fan of School Teacher & Multicaster. They have been in previous iterations of the deck and provide plenty of value. Royal Librarian is also somewhat of a replacement—single target silence plus tradable. The main reason I find Sivara valuable is: once you have Tidestone of Golganneth (Queen Azshara relic), you’re able to potentially receive 10 (15) extra spells (+Brann) or inconsistently 25 using Zola, too. It is of course best to do this once you’ve used Reno. Let me know if you find better replacements and I can start recommending them to make a more budget-centric list.
Thanks for the quick response!
I’m going to try those suggestions and experiment herer and there, we’ll see how it goes.
A bit surprised highlander decks are nowhere to be seen in the current meta, you’d think some would make it to Tier 3 at least.
Right? Soon enough I’m going to post a Highlander Druid deck list which I believe to be a tier above this. Let me know how well your games/experimenting goes and if you have any recommendations for improvements.
im not sure why I havent seen this before it seems like a multitool. I do like mossy horror when played with smothering starfish tho
I think Fire Sale would be better to run than mossy horror. You get a tradeable as well as dealing 3 dmg to everything for one less mana than Mossy Horror which doesn’t seem that great. The main reason I would use it over Fire Sale would be if the minions on the board had a bunch of low attack and high health such as after Pride’s Fury was played by an Aggro Druid, but if that has happened then the minions are already over 2 attack anyway with just one extra boardwide buff, making Mossy Horror unuseable anyway.
what about Runed Orb and Venomous Scorpid for resource generation? Both of those seem more useful than a lone Fireball. Otherwise this look fairly optimal.
After some testing this checks out. I’m swapping out Mossy Horror and Fireball for Fire Sale and Venomous Scorpid.
As per the points you mentioned, the swap seems obvious here. Adding in another tradable card is pretty big for consistency in the deck. I had actually considered Fire Sale over Mossy Horror when originally putting the deck together, however, having another minion for the opponent to deal with seemed more worth at the time. Yet due to us removing Fireball for another wildcard spell, we can just use that slot as our other body. I appreciate your criticisms of the deck and if you have more let me know.