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The announcement of the return of Mysterious Challenger filled many veteran players’ heart with dread, remembering the scourge of Secret Paladin from the days of The Grand Tournament. Back then, the archetype served as an upgrade of the vanilla midrange builds, playing overstatted minions on curve through the entire game (remember Zombie Chow -> Shielded Minibot -> Muster for Battle -> Piloted Shredder -> Sludge Belcher -> Mysterious Challenger -> Dr. Boom -> Tirion Fordring?) with the occasional power spikes along the way. This time, you won’t have such a toolkit to build around, forcing a lower curve and a bigger emphasis on Secret synergies.
The featured build opts for a much more aggressive gameplan, with the hope that the Mysterious Challenger turns will serve as endgame bombs rather than middlegame tempo tilts. To make best use of the downcosted Crystology and some of the Secret synergies, two copies of Temple Berserker are featured alongside the Secretkeepers as draw targets. Brazen Zealots are included for a more consistent early game board presence plus snowball potential. Bellringer Sentry also serves as a way to make use of the Secret package (which, of course, includes Avenge) in the deck fairly early on.
There are, of course, a few cards you can play around with in the decklist. An interesting alternative to Blessing of Kings would be Prince Liam, but the poor past performances of Arch-Villain Rafaam in Warlock – a class which is capable of drawing two cards per turn – makes it fairly unlikely that it’s enough to turn the tide in a longer match once your initial aggression fizzled out. Truesilver Champion is also a logical choice, but since a 3-durability Mysterious Blade will likely still be around on turn 4, we’ve opted for the minion buff in the featured build. Desperate Measures might also prove to be overkill as only a select few cards synergize with actually having a secret in play. For curve considerations, History Buff is a viable alternative, having already seen play in fringe aggressive Paladin decks before the patch.
>>but since a 3-durability Mysterious Blade will likely still be around on turn 4
Mysterious Blade plus the bonus is a 3/2, not a 2/3. Thinking of Headhunter’s Hatchet? The argument still holds water, though: you need to build board fast with this archetype meaning under most circumstances you’d prefer to spend Turn 4 playing either another minion or buff while holding the 2nd Blade charge as a minion-killing threat.
It is possible to force the Truesilver on Turn 4, but most of the time you’ll end up either doing a low-value swing on Turn 3 just so you don’t lose the charge or swing-then-Truesilver on Turn 4, which seems even worse because you lose the surprise 4 damage. I end up in this exact scenario sometimes when playing the Whizbang secret deck–I’ve tried both ways and neither ever ends well.
Nice deck.
– Desperate Measures
+ Blessing of Kings
Seems really nice! Will try it out 🙂