Hello lads, 

I got to legend with this deck on the first week of the June season, climbed up to rank 85 before I started trying other decks out and have since fallen into low 1000s but, I thought I’d share my list anyway for those of you that are still trying to climb.

The win rate was ~60%, so it took close to 170 matches to climb to legend.

The worst match ups for me have been vs Shaman both shudder and even are tough to play against. I think I was like 30%. Even shaman keeps going super wide and is tough to deal with, while shudder shaman keeps spamming board clears, hagatha, heals, until the combo is drawn esp if they turn 6 hemet. 

I came within 1 game of legend 3 times, and lost 4 stars in a row, it was rough. My win rate was close to 67% initially but I kept getting bad match ups and some horrendous luck drawing spiders.

Spell hunter is tough, recruit hunter is not nearly as bad because you can sap/vilespline for good value. Vs recruit hunter the matchup is favored, but spell hunter is a brain dead face race and them planting a freezing trap on your early minions and continually using hunter’s mark + candle shot, or greater spellstone on T5 pretty much closes out the game because they have way too much tempo for 0 cost. It’s not really a skill match, it’s just a pure luck matchup depending on how well the player draws. 

Best match ups are priest, warlock, and druid. The only way warlock ever wins is if they turn 5 skull into voidlord + cube pact, otherwise it’s a very, very easy game. I had a 95% win rate against priests and 90% win rate against warlocks, and something like 75% against druids. I farmed these classes to get to legend. 

Every other match up was pretty much 50/50 such as quest warrior, odd rogue, token druid, etc. 

Mulligan matters A LOT! 

Mulligan guide:

Always keep: Firefly, Vicious fledgling, Hench clan. 

Sometimes keep: Faldorei strider, preparation, sap, backstab.

On coin keep: Edwin (At worse, it’s a turn 2 4/4 which is very strong tempo against slower decks, but only if you have another 3 to follow).

Sometimes on coin keep: SI7 Agent (If you’re playing against an aggro deck with soft minions such as odd rogue, odd pali, etc)

Never keep: Auctioneer, Shiv, Eviscerate, Elven Minstrel, SI7 off coin, Edwin off coin without a prep already in hand, Vilespline, Leeroy, Cold Blood, Fan of Knives. These are all complete trash early game and give 0 tempo. Literally dead cards sitting in your hand until turn 5-6 at the earliest. 

Vs Odd Pali – Hard mulligan for firefly/fan of knives, you’re probably going to lose the game if you don’t have either of these cards because the board will get out of control by the time you drop your first 3-drop. Fan is much, much worse than firefly. Firefly is a top tier pick, it might even be worth it to throw out fan for a chance to get firefly. Fan is usually a turn 4 play to prevent a board filled with 1/1s from getting hit with level up. Past turn 5, fan is completely garbage in this match up. 

Thoughts on the evolution of the deck:

I originally ran one of the more popular renditions of this deck which involved 2 copies of shiv, and 2 SI7 agents. I found this version of the deck sucked against decks with a lot of removal such as control mage, or shudderwock shaman. Often times I’d have a hand full of spells and no threat to put on the board, so I decided it needed some change.

I cut 1 shiv and added in a blink fox. I really liked the consistency it added. The next problem I found was that I was drawing SI7 in my opening hand too much, and with the popularity of cubelock and taunt druid, SI7 was a bad keep even on the coin because there was never a target to destroy. I cut the SI7 for another blink fox. 

Finally, I found one of my best 3-drops was hench clan thug. Many times my opponent would feel so threatened by a hench clan, they would throw premium removal at the monster alone to get rid of it. That was never the case with blink fox. I felt blink fox was better than SI, but lacked consistency and also did not pose nearly as much of a threat as hench clan so I cut blink fox for vicious fledgling. So far, the change was great and I’m very happy with it. Now I’ll drop a vicious fledgling against a warlock and see them use a hellfire as a response to it or druid uses swipe if they have no wrath or spellstone. That was never the case with blink fox. 

The fledgling version is way more aggressive, I can understand arguments for fox. Blink fox gives you a +1 card, replaces itself out, potentially nets you insane value/lethal, it has way better upside at bailing you out of a game that would otherwise be lost by doing something silly like discovering a defile or naturalize or fireball. It’s really up to you. I tried various versions of this deck, I tried cutting out auctioneer for sprints as well. The auctioneer wins, and for my playstyle, I prefer fledgling. I found blink fox was too slow and I was getting punished too often for keeping it in my opening hand against aggro decks. You try it out and see what you like. 

I have considered and tried out shadowstep. It’s got the wombo combo potential with leeroy, but I think it makes the deck worse overall, nothing feels better than value trading with a vilespline then shadowstepping it back to destroy a big drop that just came out, but it’s clunky af and messes with your tempo more often than helps it. However, if you really want to play it, I would cut a fledgling for shadowstep. That’s the only place I can see the room being made.