The Ladder Climber (Rank 15 to 5 in a single night)

Hello, my ninjas!  I don’t often do decklists but I had such amazing success with this that I had to share it.  I know it isn’t exactly original, and I did bite the idea from several meta decks, but I made a few tech choices that I believe work very well in the current meta and I will explain below.

Mulligan:   

You typically want to hard mulligan for your 1 drops in nearly every matchup.  This is very much a tempo deck and having board presence before your opponent can set you up for some very fast wins.  If you’re up against hunter or other smorc decks, hanging on to a Truesilver Champion can give you some much needed breathing room in the mid-game, but if you don’t have one, those early drops can still outpace a lot of decks if you combo out well enough.

The synergy:

It’s murlocs, duhh… but with the new tools Un’goro has given us, that means SOOO much more than it used to.  If you curve out perfectly and your opponent doesn’t boardwipe by turn 4, a Gentle Megasaur  does NOT live up to his name.  Adapting 3 or 4 murlocs usually results in a conceding opponent.  Sunkeeper Tarim  and Finja, the Flying Star  are absolutely the MVPs of this deck.  If Finja procs even once, you can drop Coldlight Seer  and Megasaur behind it to essentially win the game.  +3 attack is typically the best choice for the adapt, although there are plenty of scenarios where the deathrattle or poisonous can be useful.  I choose the deathrattle if I’m up against something like mage or hunter where I have a hard time keeping minions on the board (typically if you start a turn with 0 minions on board, you’re gonna have a bad time).  I choose Poisonous if my opponent has multiple oppressive creatures overwhelming my tempo, easy boardclear. Spikeridged Steed  can buy you much needed time in games where you are behind, and you can justify casting this even on a silver hand recruit because the stats it gives are so great.  The Black Knight , because who isn’t running taunts nowadays?  The Curator is a no-brainer in this deck because Primordial Drake is amazing, he gets you another Murloc and a Megasaur… Combo Time!

Replacements and Tech:

This is not the original deck I climbed with and I’m a little ashamed to admit I did not save a copy of the original.  When I hit rank 5 this deck stopped being very effective, and I began trying to tweak it repeatedly to serve what I was going up against and I wish I hadn’t.  With that being said, HDT still shows me having a 59% winrate out of 93 games with this deck (55-38).  Before I hit rank 5 I was at 73%.  Here’s what I learned about this deck:  Leave the murlocs alone.  Megasaur stays.  These are the core pieces of the deck.  Truesilver Champion is entirely too good to replace.  Stampeding Kodo is a tech card that I saw a lot of pro decks using but honestly I’m still on the fence with it.  It’s amazing to kill a 2/7 taunter with, but idk if it deserves 2 copies or even one honestly… if you’re going to personalize this deck I would start with the Kodos.  I’ve actually received mixed input on the Black Knight but it is my very firm belief that in the current meta, TBK belongs in nearly every deck (I’ve even seen the SMOrcs using him to push their last few hits through).  As good as Spikeridged Steed  is, this would be the second card I would consider replacing as almost no other card in this deck is dispensable.  I feel like every legendary in this deck is necessary but I would love it if someone proved me wrong on that.  For replacement ideas I would consider the second Primordial Drake  first.  I used to have 2 in here anyway, and it’s a good card anyway you look at it.  A lot of times it feels like an equality or two might be useful, but I find it difficult to justify since this is a tempo/midrange deck and not a control deck.  I see a lot of similar decks running the murloc crabs for the mirror match, but I find that most times they’re not necessary, and they take up valuable card slots.  If you don’t have Tirion Fordring , replace him with Ragnaros, Lightlord .

I hope this list helps someone climb over all those quest rogues and freeze mages and come join me in the single digits soon.  I’m still trying to hit legend but it would seem that competition gets really fierce around rank 3.  If you like the deck and have success with it, please tell me about it, I wanna hear your success stories (and your fails, honestly).  I stream at night, EST, typically between 10pm and 7am (I haven’t hammered out a firm schedule just yet), if any of you have questions about the deck or want to watch me pilot it, please stop by and say hello.

All the love,

Fryilluh

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