It’s an option, that’s for sure, but it a very hit or miss card. If you happen to get a great start, like 4-5 minions on the board, into turn 4 Soul of the Forest, then the card pretty much seals you the game. But Soul of the Forest only starts getting good with at least 3 minions on the board (it’s really bad on 1 or 2) and since everyone is trying really hard to kill everything you play (for obvious reasons), on the average the card might not perform well enough.

Another thing is that it’s a bit of a “win more” card. It’s great if you’re already winning, but if you’re already winning you might actually not need more support to win. If your opponent doesn’t have the AoE to clear your board anyway, then the card was useless and playing anything else, like a 4-drop (e.g. Argus), would just do more.

I think that there is some room to experiment with that card, but this deck lacks the “stickiness” of the Egg Druid to really utilize it.

About Hallazeal: Because I don’t judge the cards ONLY based on the current meta. Hallazeal is a strong card in theory and it can still see more play until it rotates out. When we’re at the last expansion of 2017, so the last meta before 2018 rotation, and it doesn’t see play, I will just put it on the list.

Not to mention that he’s still played in Control Shaman right now. http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/wirers-nzoth-control-shaman-top-50-legend-april-2017-season-37/

But why do you think that Hallazeal + Storm isn’t relevant against anything besides Shaman? There are many other matchups which can have multiple minions on the board and you might need healing. Basically most of the Midrange decks – Midrange Paladin (especially the Murloc variant), Midrange Hunter, even against something like Miracle Rogue the AoE + healing might come handy. Hallazeal isn’t as strong without Elemental Destruction, obviously, but the combo with Storm is still relevant.

Yes, the deck is very hit or miss. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad deck, because when it hits it’s almost a guaranteed win. When judging a deck, you can’t look at the individual games, you have to look at the average. And on average, it wins more than it loses, that’s for sure.

The fact that deck is inconsistent might make it harder to score win streakers, but it doesn’t really matter that much, after first day of playing it I had 18-7 stats. And while the games I lost felt really bad, as in “I really couldn’t do anything here with those bad draws”, I had even more games that were auto-wins.

Basically, Ice Block is a terrible Secret unless you plan to die. If you won’t ever get “killed” (which Block prevents obviously), it’s a card wasted on what could be something else that could actually help you.

It’s not a Freeze Mage or Burn Mage, where Ice Block is a huge help, because you’re playing a defensive deck that’s meant to stall the game. This is an aggressive Tempo deck. Like, a more extreme example, but would you put Ice Block in Pirate Warrior deck? Of course not, because that’s not your game plan. Even if you do put it and it prevents lethal, this deck has little to no comeback options. Your only hope is to get one more draw for potential lethal if you’re really close, but that’s a rare scenario.

There is another version of Secret Mage with Ice Block and Ethereal Arcanist, but that’s mostly because of that combo. Ice Block isn’t likely to get procced in the early/mid game, so you constantly have a Secret up for the Arcanists to grow. Block is also okay-ish if you face a heavy Aggro meta and actually that one turn delay might matter. But if you face mostly slow, Control decks, then your main goal is to put pressure on them. If you’re in a situation where they took over the board control and killed you, then you’re not coming back into the game anyway.

Because you actually don’t need more to pull off around 2-3 Secrets per game consistently. Remember that you have 2x Arcanologist, for which you’re heavily mulliganing, and it fetches you a Secret. Then you also have Primordial Glyph which can give you a Secret from outside of your deck.

But if you feel that it’s not enough, you can add more. I’ve seen lists running 5 or 6 for more consistency.

In my opinion, Arcane Giants are a big “nope” in this deck. You don’t run enough cheap spells to justify them. You plan to end most of the games around turn 7-8, because you’re playing a heavy tempo deck. And by that time you rarely have played enough spells to make your Giants cheap enough.

Crystal Runner is good even after just a single Secret was played. 4 mana 5/5 is actually good. And if you play 2 Secrets, which is really common in this deck, it’s a 2 mana 5/5.

In order to play a “cheap” Arcane Giant, let’s even say 5 mana, you need to play 7 spells. The only way to drop such Arcane Giant on curve or generally before the game is getting close to finish are the Primordial Glyph chains. Which are very rare.

Sure, Giants are good against Control. But majority of the ladder is not Control. it would probably be safe to say that maybe 20-25% of the ladder is actually Control and the rest is Aggro and Midrange.

Jade Druids can be really hard for slow Mages to beat. I remember playing Freeze Mage in Legend last season… I’ve played against the same Jade Druid player 2 times in a row (I’ve even waited after the first game to not queue again into him). He was playing a super anti-Mage hate list with 2x Earthen Scales + 2x Feral Rage AND Eater of Secrets, it was a nightmare to play against him, I seriously considered instantly conceding the second game to save my time (in a hindsight I could do it, because I wasn’t even close to winning).

I’ve played him in Combo Paladin in Gadgetzan. Isolate Leeroy in your hand, play Brann + Han’Cho, you have 15 Attack Leeroy. Next turn play Leeroy + Blessed Champion = 30 Damage 😀

The deck sucked hard, but I’ve actually managed to pull off the combo in like 2 games out of 15.

I’m really impatient, but at the same time I have enough Dust to play anything I want (that’s an advantage of playing since Closed Beta) so I’m keeping every Wild card… for now.

If anything, I’ll start with dusting all my Gold cards. I easily have like 20k Dust in Gold cards.

That’s why it’s under “probably safe”. Probably safe are cards that might see some fringe play, but they’re by no means staple or necessary to build a viable meta deck. Greenskin CAN be played in a Pirate list, but it’s not needed at all and – at best – on the level of a common card (each of them can be situationally better). If it was necessary, you’d see it a lot on the high ranked ladder and in tournaments. And I haven’t seen him in a long, long while. But there is a possibility that it might be played, that’s why I didn’t put it under “safe”.

I still don’t get your point. If you’re having fun with Jungle Giants, don’t disenchant it. This list wouldn’t make any sense if this was about “fun”, because that’s a subjective matter. You might like to play around with a wonky fatigue deck using Nat the Darkfisher, but it doesn’t change the fact that this Legendary sucks.

The list was created for people who want a competitive collection. And Jungle Giants is not a competitive card, there is no viable (in higher ranks) list that plays it.

If you, or anyone else, has fun when playing around with suboptimal cards, that’s great. But I’m not ordering anyone to disenchant their cards. Everyone has free will and mind of their own – if they feel like they want to play around with X or Y, they just won’t get rid of it (or at least play around with it first). But most of the people I know play viable meta decks in order to win as much games as possible, and players like that are the target of this article.

What about them? They’re all pretty strong, so if you plan to plan Wild in the future, you shouldn’t disenchant them. But since they won’t be playable in Standard, if that’s the only mode you’re ever going to play, go ahead and get rid of them.

Thanks, I’ll definitely take that into account when updating the guide next time!

Crabs, just like any other tech cards, can really fall out of favor very quickly if the deck they target disappears from the meta. Maybe I’ll just not include those “hate” cards in the deck list and instead write about them in Card Substitutions section.

But then again, some people don’t really read that far into the guide and they might miss it…

I’d go for Tarim. He’s much more flexible + he fits into both faster and slower lists (while Rag only fits into the slower ones).

Early builds have used Hemet, but new ones don’t. The thing is that a lot of the 1-3 mana cards are still useful in the late game. Sure, you might want to get rid of Mana Wyrm, but Primordial Glyph, Ice Block or Arcane Intellect are all pretty significant cards to get later in the game. But I can definitely see HEmet making a comeback in a slightly different list.

Theoretically Arcane Giants might work in this list quite well. I haven’t tested them, but playing one instead of Elise and second one, hm, maybe instead of Polymorph, can be a good idea.

The main thing I don’t like about the Giants is that they’re dead cards through the majority of the game. Even at 6-7 mana they’re often unplayable, because they don’t have any immediate impact on the board. Sometimes you have to get them down below 5 to even play them and it’s not that easy. You already run Medivh and Alexstrasza, adding 2 more expensive cards might increase your chance of a terrible early game hand quite significantly.

I wouldn’t really craft it for this deck alone. You can replace it quite easily here. However, if you play to play other Control decks, like the Priest/Paladin you’ve mentioned, or even Control Warrior (non-Quest version), Elise is amazing.

Overall I think that it’s a solid craft in this meta and dust well spent if you’re not an Aggro player. It just fits into pretty much every Control deck and considering how much value it gets in the long game, it might be a staple slow Legendary even few expansions from now.

I personally wouldn’t cut Ooze – there are still a lot of weapons on the ladder – Pirate Warrior, Midrange Paladin/Hunter, even Medivh is pretty popular in slower decks and getting rid of Atiesh is huge.

I also don’t like Babbling Books that much. The card is obviously good, it wouldn’t be played otherwise, but I hate depending on such random cards. The high roll potential is great, but getting Shatter or Pyroblast against Aggro feels really bad.

Check out the last section, “card substitutions”. But yes, Priest of the Feast is a pretty okay sub.

Captain Greenskin is worse than Naga Corsair. You’re forgetting that a lot of the time those cards aren’t played for the effect, but rather for the body. You often end up dropping Naga Corsair as a 5/4 with no weapon equipped and that’s a correct play.

There is a significant difference between 4 and 5 mana. You can’t just say that it doesn’t matter. 5 mana is much more clunky than 4 in a deck that wants to close up the games by turn 6-7. One of the most basic scenarios – you’re at 6 mana and you have a 2 mana card + either Naga Corsair or Greenskin in your hand. It’s quite obvious that you’d prefer Corsair. And it’s not like it’s a rare scenario, you quite often end up with something like that. Then, there is a lower chance that you’d still have a weapon up on turn 5. By that time you’ve most likely already used your Rusty Hook/Fiery War Axe and you’re looking for the Arcanite Reaper. Sometimes you get like 2 or 3 Upgrade effects and you end up with your small weapon still active on turn 5, and then Greenskin is better, but that’s a rare scenario and you’re probably winning already.

And if you don’t trust me, explain why no pro Pirate Warrior list (at least no I’m aware of) runs Greenskin if it’s better than Naga Corsair.

“I think it’s pretty hard, almost impossible, to say that some card is “safe to dust.”” – Yes, that’s true. the bolded part of the first paragraph for my answer.