[Legend] 68%Winrate Standard Secret N’zoth Paladin, farming warrior on ladder

Since the release of WOTG, the ladder has been filled with one class: Warrior. With many variations such as Pirate aggro Warrior, Tempo Dragon to Control C’thun warrior. Warrior has successfully dominated the ladder. Therefore I wanted to make a deck to counter them, hence I created ‘Secret N’Zoth Paladin’. A Midrange version of the Control N’Zoth Paladin, with powerful Midrange cards like ‘Mysterious Challenger’.

First of all, the deck’s playstyle is completely different from the original ‘pre standard secret paladin’. Its playstyle is in fact very similar to the currently quite popular Midrange Hunter, where you constantly fight for the board and be ahead on   tempo. Instead of finishers like ‘Call of the Wild’, you have ‘Tirion’ and ‘N’Zoth’; Instead of ‘Savanah Hymane’, you have ‘Mysterious challenger’ on turn 6 which applies huge pressure to your opponent.

Secondly, you might ask,’how do I farm warrior with this deck?’ Out of all the variations of warrior, C’thun warrior is the easiest matchup, whilst pirate warrior can be tough. You can easily counter ‘Fiery Win-Axe’ with the ‘redemption+2 drop’ combo. You play ‘redemption’ on turn 1 and following it up with ideally a deathrattle 2-drop, such as ‘Huge Toad’ or ‘Loot hoarder’ for maximum N’Zoth value. With this starting hand, you can stay ahead on tempo despite the warrior using ‘Win-axe’ to trade away ur minions. You might also consider keeping a six drop such as ‘Mysterious Challenger’ or ‘Cairne’ if you have the coin in your starting hand, so you can coin them out on turn 5. Don’t be afraid to commit into brawl, try and bait out the two brawls by generating a huge board time and time again, then use N’Zoth when you see two brawls are gone to win the game. Lastly, remember keeping ‘Harrison Jones’ to destroy ‘Gorehowl’.

Thirdly, ‘What do I do when I que into Shaman or Zoo instead of warrior?’ Well you are going to have a tough game. However, the deck is equipped with enough anti-aggro cards to beat these aggro decks.’Forbidden healing’ to heal for 20; ‘Aldor Peacekeeper’ and ‘Keeper of Uldaman’ to give you favourable trades and neutralise those 4 mana 7/7s; 2X ‘consecration’ to wipe the zoo boards which now doesn’t have many sticky deathrattles; ‘Harrison Jones’ to draw you six cards and ‘Tirion’ a 6/6 Taunt with divine shield where aggro shamans and zoo cannot easily deal with. So the game plan against aggro is contest the board early on in the game to preserve your health，use ‘Aldor peacekeeper’ to do favouable trade and redemption+2drop’ combo to maintain as much tempo as you can. ‘Redemption’ + ‘Infested Tauren’ is also a great combo against aggro decks as they have to go through 2 taunts to hit face. Be aware of ‘Sea giant’ and ‘Flamewreath Faceless’ and make sure you have ‘Keeper of Uldaman’ or ‘Aldor Peacekeeper’ to deal with them. If your opponent has really bad curve, you might be able to stabilize this way, however this is very unlikely. Therefore when you are about to loose the board, pray to god you have ‘Consecration’ in your hand. Look for the perfect moment to use your AOE and flip the board back to your favour and start applying pressure yourself. By this time you would probably be at 15-20 health, the aggro deck might switch strategy and go all face. Here the best curve would be ‘Mysterious challenger’ on 6, ‘Forbidden healing’ for 14 on turn 7, then play ‘Tirion’ to stabilize. Against these aggro decks with almost no board clears, you should play ‘N’zoth’ as soon as possible as they have no way to deal with all the resummon minions.

Card Choices

1)Divine Favour: People might think there is no need for divine favour along with 2 Loot hoarders and Azure drake for card draws. However very often you run out of cards quite quickly and divine favour can draw you cards when you are out of steam. Aim to draw 3+ cards against control decks, whilst you should be happy if you manage to draw 1 card against aggro.

2) Forbidden healing: a pretty useless card in a control matchup, but the card is tech in to give you a higher chance of winning against aggro decks. Use the card wisely as it is your only healing.

3) Aldor Peacekeeper + Keeper of Uldaman: These cards are your big game removals. They also give you favourable trades to maintain tempo.

4) Infested Tauren: A week 4 drop but the card synergies with redemption very well. Also it is nice to get a taunt from N’Zoth.

5) Azure Drake: A good 5 drop which not only grant you a card draw but also synergies with Consecration.

6) Harrison Jones: The meta is currently very weapon-heavy. It is quite nice to completely ruined shaman’s game plan and draw 6 cards. You can replace it by taking out a Loot Hoarder, add an Acidic Swamp Ooze and another Azure Drake.

7) Redemption: This card synergies with half of the deck as the resummon one health deathrattle minion will again be re-summoned by N’Zoth. The dream is to Redemption+Tirion/Cairne for maximum N’zoth value.

8) NO Sylvanas: This deck is a midrange/tempo deck, Sylvanas is for control and it’s way too slow here and most of the time won’t get value.

9) NO Ragnaros Lightlord: In theory the card would be really good and much better than forbidden healing. However the problem is the healing effect is to a random target and a lot of the time there are many damaged minions on board. Tried out the card and was not convinced by it.

10) NO Ragnaros firelord: Ragnaros mana cost is too high and it fights for the same spot with Tirion. The matchup against control is already great and does not require more burst. You can definitely tech-in the card if you wish.