Wild DK Paladin OTK (KFT September ’17)

OTK Paladin is a fun new combo deck. essentially an exodia mage but for paladin. Rather than needing 2x of 2 different cards and a single legendary the combo requires 3x legendaries and any 3 1 cost spells (or a coin).

Your win condition will require 3 turns of setup. 

1. You will need to drop emperor thaurisaan with auctionamster beardo in hand along with 3 1 or 0 cost spells in hand. This turn will require 6 mana at least.

2. You will need to get your DK Uther down. This will be a 9 mana turn maybe you can shennanigans with thaurrisan and discount it though.

3. In dk mode you need to hero power, auctionmaster, spell, hero power, spell, hero power, spell hero power.

Thanks to auctionmaster this will cost you 10 mana exactly after the thaurrisan turn. 8 mana of hero powers, 2 for auctionmaster and 0 mana worth of spells.

It all seems a bit cumbersome yeah. But what makes the deck so interesting is the nature of the otk. This is the only non-damage based win condition in the whole game. You don’t have to care about ice blocks as stricter otk decks would. And really you don’t need to push damage at all to win.

A hard part of constructing this deck well is getting the right number of 1 cost spells. The deck runs 5, 3 natural 1 costs and 2 from hydrologist. Humility is a 2-of for natural 1 cost spells because it can prevent the most damage. Ideally you don’t want to use any of your one drop spells but you will end up having to. Never pick redundant secrets from hydrologist because it’ll mess up your otk turn and always always save the coin as its a free combo piece.

Your goal in actually playing the deck is twofold. Draw your combo one, and this will often require you to draw your deck in its entirety and two don’t die. The deck is naturally weak to aggro due to its high end and high volume of combo piece draws. Focus on mulliganing your doomsayers, your pyro equality and your belchers. Make sure to push face damage, even though you don’t need to just to coax out more stuff from your opponent for you to remove.

Control matchups are where the deck really shines though. You’ll find yourself victorious in games that are solitaire vs solitaire if you focux on your cycle and ration your removal. There are some problematic cards that can stop your combo, skuliking geist being the worst of it. It literally renders your deck obsolete. The only play-around here is to have coin and not play your hydrologists until after geist is dropped. It will often derail your whole strategy. Cards like counterspell and nerubian unraveler and mindbreak can be problematic as well and have to be considered even though they aren’t so common.

Everything else is cycle, taunt, removal or healing. Hand size management is absurdly important when running this deck. Probably moreso than any other I’ve ever witnessed. Milling yourself is one of the worst things you could possibly do and if it hits one of your combo-piece legendaries you should concede. Play your acolytes with utmost caution.

Hammer of wrath and novice engineer may seem weird as  draw choices but there are clear reasons. Being cards that let you draw upon play they can be used to fetch taunt or removal when you really need them. Also I cant stress enough how big your hand is going to be all the time. So simple low cost cards that replace themselves make managing hand size a bit easier when you’re drawing like crazy.

I’d recommend pairing your doomsayers with taunts if you can and, if you can get these guys off on big boards it will really save you. The more they can function like a 3rd and 4th equality clear the better I’d try and be more conservative with this card than most decks would. Pairing it with a righteous protector early is one of the best anti-aggro plays you have. 

If you’re interested in a unique slow-paced crawl of a deck with a flashy win condition I’d give this list a whirl. It forces you to think about the game in a unique way and you really get to BM like a champion with DK Uther in play once your combo is all setup and you know your opponent can’t do a thing about it. 

Cheers

~Khakis