Wild Top 10 Legend Tempo N’Zoth Warrior (December 2016, Season 33)

Hi, I’m Mathiosky, a casual hearthstone player like a lot of other people around. I finally managed to reach top 10 legend in wild on the NA server last season almost exclusively with this deck. I had a 74% winrate in 103 games from rank 15 to legend, all of them in less than 12 hours.

This season I’ve experimented with some variants of this deck and I think this is the best list so far.

This deck utilizes weapons as tempo removals and card advantage, accumulating resources until your opponent can’t keep up with the number of threats you play. The various whirlwind effects help keeping the board clear and when paired with Battle Rage, they become a really strong draw engine. You can also burst people with a Frothing Berserker hidden behind a taunt or a 14 dmg combo with Grommash Hellscream and Death's Bite. If the game is long enough, the N'Zoth, The Corruptor package provides some extra value and board presence.

Mulligan Guide

Usually with this deck you want to mulligan hard for Fiery War Axe. Blood To Ichor, Armorsmith, Fierce Monkey, Frothing Berserker, Ravaging Ghoul are your other general good keeps and Death's Bite can be one as well, if you don’t have any other weapon. Slam is a good keep, expecially against aggro, since you can always use it to kill a minion if you don’t have Fiery War Axe or you can use it to combo with it or with Ravaging Ghoul. Execute and Piloted Shredder can be kept against control. Execute is also fine against decks with a lot of high health minions (5+).

Play Strategy

In the early game you will generally be reactive, answering their early game minions efficiently. Sometimes the best way to do so is to take a turn to partially damage those minions to finish them off 1 or 2 turns later. Usually around turn 4-5 you will start to build your board. Piloted Shredder and Sludge Belcher are both sticky minions that are annoying for your opponent to remove easily while Fierce Monkey can hide a Frothing Berserker or a Piloted Shredder to push some damage. Once you grab the board you can then make better trades while pushing damage. Against control, don’t overextend into an AoE and keep stuff to play right after and you should be fine. Against aggro and combo, try to armor up every turn, after you stabilized. If you really need health, you can generate quite a lot of armor with a couple minions, a whirlwind effect and an Armorsmith. Against mages playing Armorsmith alone is usually a poor play, since the 1/4 body doesn’t trade very well against mage minions without the help from other cards, and if it’s a freeze mage you rather want to combo her with Death's Bite or Ravaging Ghoul to gain armor.

Once you get to the Mid-Lategame you can start playing your really strong minions. Sylvanas Windrunner, Dr. Boom and Ragnaros the Firelord are all very strong minions and must be answered correctly or you can simply run away with the game. Also, try to plan a 2-3 turns lethal with Death's Bite and Grommash Hellscream or a huge burst with Ravaging Ghoul  and Frothing Berserker. With this deck you shouldn’t be greedy with N'Zoth, The Corruptor, if you resurrect a Piloted Shredder and a Sludge Belcher usually it’s good enough value to win the game, expecially if you play him right after an AoE.

Sometimes you might struggle to take the board early. In that case Brawl act as a panic button to reset it. Useful against all those secret paladins and other N'Zoth, The Corruptor decks. Also remember that Execute can work as both a tempo removal, destroying a minion for only 2 mana, or a hard removal for specific, difficult to answer threats, like Mysterious Challenger or enemy’s Dr. Boom, depending on the situation on the board and specific matchups. 

Conclusion

That’s all, hope this little guide was useful to you and I’m sorry if my english wasn’t perfect. I think this is a really strong deck, that can play both as an attrition style deck or as an aggressive tempo deck, it’s fun to play, although the learning curve for this deck isn’t exactly steep, but can get you pretty easily to legend once you learned to play it. Worked for me at least 😀

Update (June 2017)

The deck is now a decent tier 2 deck. Mostly because two of it’s best matchups (secret paladin and freeze mage) aren’t played at all right now. But, in a aggro heavy meta, this deck can still be played as a counter to less greedy control decks who try to counter aggro. I suggest to play a more control oriented version deck, as most of them have better winrates than this one. You can find some here:

http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/controls-nzoth-shaman-wild-heroic-tavern-brawl/

http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/vlps-nzoth-control-warrior-wild-heroic-tavern-brawl/