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Return of the Dreadsteed! This deck had a bit of popularity when TGT released, and now is being revived a bit by Senfglas. The idea of the deck is to get Dreadsteed on the board and use it to trade minions while retaining the Steed on the board. You can use Sacrificial Pact on a Dreadsteed to gain life, Power Overwhelming to trade with bigger minions, and Baron Rivendare will double your Steed output!
Update: +1 Mortal Coil, +1 Darkbomb, +1 Siphon Soul, +1 Twisting Nether, -2 Power Overwhelming, -1 Imp-losion, -1 Shadowflame
This is a great deck. Certainly competitive and often overlooked even by some of the top pro players. Senfglas has played this game for a massive amount of time, and he agrees it’s a fantastic deck if you play it correctly, perhaps even tier 2 material.
Mulligans are pretty standard. Chows, Peddlers, Imp Gangs, a Darkbomb if you expect a high-priority target (e.g. if you expect Tempo Mage or Zoo, or it’s a Hunter, Paladin or Shaman, which play threats like Mana Wyrm, Knife Juggler and Tunnel Trogg that kinda need to die asap for you to not lose). If you’re in a control matchup (Warrior or Priest especially) you can probably keep Dreadsteed in your mulligan, ESPECIALLY if you also hold Voidcaller – that’s pretty much the dream. You basically want to toss everything else.
I’m not massively in touch with how the matchups go but I do know, if you play this correctly, this deck wins basically any control game. Just keep certain cards in mind for certain classes. Don’t leave a single Dreadsteed on board going into a Priest’s turn 6 for example (Cabal), and remember they lack burst, so the earliest Jaraxxus you can play is often just a gg. Also try not to draw too much, as these games often go for fatigue. This is especially true against Warrior. It doesn’t matter how many Dreadsteeds you have on board, if they’ve played Justicar and efficiently allocate their removal, and you drew too many cards in the early-mid game, you simply don’t have enough damage to kill them before you enter fatigue and it kills you. You have to try and bait out their removal and force them to draw towards fatigue. Jaraxxus is also really good against them but be wary of combos such as Grom + Taskmaster (12 from hand). This reaches 16 if they have a Death’s Bite already equipped.
Against aggro you just want to survive really (this includes Secret Pally). Play your threats, remove theirs in the most efficient way possible etc etc.. if you reach the late game and you’ve swung your health enough you win, simply because this deck doesn’t lose board once it’s taken over with the steeds.
It struggles most against midrange and combo decks. Combo Druid is without a doubt its worst matchup (although they can struggle to deal with a board of steeds) simply because you give them time to draw into combo. I assume the same applies vs decks like Anyfin. I believe Senfglas feels this deck is slightly favoured vs Freeze Mage (surprisingly) but you MUST play the matchup correctly. Allocating heals and removals is crucial, but in general you can gain too much health for them to deal with unless they draw the dream, and you can often burst them out with Mal’Ganis or PO combos or something. Double Healbot and Sac Pacts are amazing vs Freeze.
Sorry for the essay but I at least hope it helps somebody get to grips with the deck, it’s such an amazing feeling winning with this deck after playing correctly. It’s smart, versatile and underrated. A true hipster Hearthstone player’s dream. Another side-tip worth remembering is it’s often not a good play to fill your board with steeds vs Hunter because of Unleash The Hounds. Probs best to keep that in mind, you usually just want to stay healthy against them and seize tempo in the mid-game.
Hope some of this helped!
it did, thanks man 🙂 i love the deck, and your explanation is helping me play it correctly.
You lose against priest if he cabal =) cause your deck turns around dreadsteed
“I would imagine” that u haven’t play the deck..
Mulligan: dark peddler, zombie chow, Imp gang boss specially if u have coin
I think it is a tier 3 deck. It does OK in the meta, but it is not really competetive.
Priest is almost an auto loss. They steal your steeds and they also Entomb your Baron. Next thing you know, they are beating you with your own combo.
You try playing Jaraxxus against priest? I mean sometimes they tempo out with dragons or injured blade masters but for the most part priest sucks at applying pressure and if you can get some dreadsteeds onboard with demon wrath should be enough until you can drop Jaraxxus and win the game through hero powers/shadowflame.
Just dont be an idiot by playing voidcaller with Jaraxxus in hand and dont play imp gang boss post 6 mana (cabal).
Yeah this deck is actually super-favoured against Freeze. I made a big post on here loosely explaining some of the matchups.
I meant Preist! *****
I played around with a similar deck and will say that this deck isn’t particularly easy to play and I feel a couple of the card choices in this are lackluster at best. Things like Jarraxus seem solid, but unfortunately are just never really needed. Instead I’d run Kel Thuzad instead as an activator for the Dreadsteed combo. Also I prefer to run Twisting Nether as my 3rd board clearer as it takes care of any ultra late game threat that can land on the board while you are heavy on Dreadsteeds. Knife Juggler isn’t needed but is great for midrange board Control.
Does it fit in actual meta?
I would imagine that you’d have to mulligan for Dreadsteed pretty hard to be competitive in meta.