I gotta say, I’ve played against this deck a few times today, and it’s a biatch if you get behind or have a bad initial draws. Seems to answer everything post-nerf pretty well.

PS I love I site, great work 🙂

Evident, really the point I was trying to make was essentially what was said Advocaat’s reply, i.e. the listed decks clearly did not tech for druids, e.g. Skulking Geist, which is an absolute necessity for ladder. Thus, you can’t just take one of these decks straight to ladder without tweaking it to account for druids.

Absolutely correct on all points.

Innervate needs to go, or a bunch of cards are gonna have to be reworked. UI not being able to be applied to your face does not stomp that card into the ground, and returns it to some semblance of sanity.

Everyone banned druid in the HCT that just happened, so I don’t think it really will make a difference.

Except for the druid decks, the problem with using any of the above in constructed play is that all of these decks clearly assume that they would be auto-banning opposing druid decks, which is what actually happened.

Last week I took another version of this deck from rank 11 all the way down to three stars into rank 1 with very little effort in that I had almost a 70% win rate against druids, and just over 45% of my matches were against druids. Unfortunately I decided to sleep at some point, and the meta changed overnight . . . resulting in my not-so-slow backslide to rank 5 playing just about every variation of this deck in what were futile attempts to overcome the stupid brute force of Ultimate Infestation (as well as the odd Exodia mage).

I figured I’d give this deck its turn despite the initial feeling that no Ysera or heals was going to be ugly. To my surprise, the card generation from Mind Vision and Thoughtsteal provides the ability to contest the board during those early rounds in which you’re holding on for dear life with similar “big” decks, and nicely bridges the wait until you can use your Shadow Essences. Anyway, it’s a way more stable deck than the other versions out there, and warrants a look.

I had the same questions about Barnes & Mistress when I first decided to try this deck, but after playing about 40 games with it I have to admit both inclusions are pretty genius.

– Jade Spirit and/or Chieftain are not needed. The Jade that’s in the deck is just there to as cheap bodies that you use to keep your opponent off the board, with the nice side effect that when your Jades die, it opens space for more totems. Also an easy way to quickly get minions on the board for a cheap win by way of an early Bloodlust.

– Barnes is frickin AWESOME in this deck because literally ANYTHING he spawns will have an immediate sizable impact or decent utility. I found that playing him as soon as possible leads to quick wins.

– Because this deck is all about quickly establishing as many totems as you can and making them stick, you’re gonna get punched in the face a lot during the early game. I found that it’s best to keep or mulligan for one no matter what I’m facing to have a turn 1 play and quick heal.

And to Cassia – Thank you! Such a fun deck to play, and handles everything very nicely – I think people just have no clue what you’re doing until it’s too late 🙂

Honestly, either works with the rest of the deck, but as mentioned a few times here in the comments, the discovered minions you get from the Stonehill Defenders can turn the game. What’s really nice about these guys is that because they have discover, you can tailor your choice of minion to the opponent you’re facing.

Honestly, you don’t need a big minion with this deck. It plays kind of like a zoo lock, in that the ability to consistently clear your opponent’s minions and inflict damage with your cheap minions is what ends up winning the game.

Really enjoying this deck trying to climb from Rank 10. Wanted to give some quick observations from my experience so far:

– Learning to play my secrets correctly took a little time depending on the class I was facing. So for anyone who’s getting frustrated that the “isn’t working,” believe me – it does – but as Latryna stated in the guide, you have to have a feel for what your opponent is going to put down next, i.e. spell or minion, and play your secrets accordingly;

– At Rank 10 I started out 5-10 with the deck as shown above, and felt it was because I just wasn’t consistently drawing secrets to allow me to use the minions’ mechanics effectively. To fix this I made the following changes: -1 Kabal Crystal Runner -1 Ethereal Arcanist +2 Mirror Entities. These changes made my game play way more smooth;

– Every Mage I’ve encountered so far is running some version of this deck 🙂 I’ve found that the ability to Counterspell their first secret pretty much decides the winner;

– Rogues – this deck destroys them! Quest, pirate, doesn’t matter. THANK YOU!

– How you use the big-hitter spells in the deck, i.e. Fireball and Firelands Portal, are almost always the deciding factor in winning or losing. Don’t blow them too early, but also don’t be afraid to use them early to remove a big threat. It takes a little while to get a feel for when these particular spells should come into play, and I’ve found that depending when you draw and what you get with your Babbling Books and Primordial Glyphs determines when and how the aforementioned spells should be used.

That’s all I have, but again, thanks for posting this deck, and keep us updated on changes 🙂

Cheers, Bueler 😉