That’s true – especially if you consider you can mix any colour with Blue or Black to gain access to combo breakers. That *is* a restriction, just nowhere near as strong as a restriction as “play Warlock”.

Maybe re-using the MSG “clan” mechanic so that specific combo-breaker cards could be used by *some* classes but not all – I think Kabal (Priest, Mage, Warlock) might be a good candidate.

Dirty Rat was just too powerful IMO, it could fairly reliably destroy any combo deck pretty much all on its own which ensured there were basically no viable combo decks as the Rat was everywhere.

My favourite deck of all-time was Malygos Miracle Rogue with Emperor Thaurissan, before Standard existed – yes it was an OTK deck but it required a lot of skill/luck to get to the OTK and could be utterly trounced by extreme aggro or even a simple Ice Block.

Druid could reliably do something similar for a short while with the Aviana/Kun combo (still can in Wild) – but it was almost as squishy as Rogue *before* KFT. Druid used to be all about BIG creatures and ramping to get them early… it had very few *cheap* Taunt minions to improve survivability. Now, however, Druid has the best of all worlds – cheap taunts, ramp, massive armour gain *and* lots and lots of card draw – everything to survive aggro and combo-kill control.

I actually think there are 2 problems here – the diluting of class identities (Druid really shouldn’t have cheap Taunts or warrior-levels of armour gain) and making OTK decks too available to all classes… they’re not really an issue when you’ve got to build a glass cannon.

Malygos is actually OK as it only works when there are cheap, direct damage spells to back it up *and* a way to cheat it out; which means it’s really only ideally suited to Rogue and Druid – both of which, historically, had a fairly weak early game and were vulnerable to getting Zerged. “Patching up” that weakness in Maly/Druid was, IMO, a mistake on Blizzard’s part.

Combo decks have a place in HS – there needs to be cards like Malygos to nuke the turtle decks; sitting behind an endless wall of taunts until victory is a perfectly viable way to win… boring, but viable – look at Hadronox or Quest Warrior.

There don’t *need* to be neutral combo-breakers (that’s a double-edged sword anyway)… if you look at something like MTG, Black has most of the cards that screw with your opponent’s deck/hand, cards that wreck combos – if you’re not playing Black, you don’t readily get that option (granted MTG has instants – so Blue can break combos with counterspells).

HS is similar in that if you want to screw with your opponent’s hand, you play Warlock – other classes have their own options to deal with Combo decks; a megatonne of armour or just rushing your opponent down for instance… even a well timed Counterspell/Explosive Runes can buy you a turn (especially in Wild – Druids can’t play Aviana while there’s a Mage secret on the board).

I always thought Dirty Rat was slightly broken – what was supposed to be a drawback to justify the extremely low mana cost, actually turned out to be the main reason to run it. When it was at it’s most prevalent I’d actually mulligan for Angry Rag.

Since this deck has basically nothing to do on T1 … I kinda wonder whether sneaking the Quest in might be possible. Not really going to help the Pogos much – gives them a +3/+3 boost I guess, but Elven Minstrel would be less of a tempo drop and the Giggling Inventor is terrifying for 5 mana.

Switch out a Stormchaser would be my guess; Electra -> Bloodlust is basically a game-winner.

You *could* put in a Missile Launcher … glue a Venomizer onto it and it should kill everything. Bit slow though.

I think the game wants me to run this deck since my golden legendary was Floop … and I’ve previously packed golden versions of both Alex and Malygos.

… and this is why I’m running 2x Hex and 2x Earth Shock in a Shaman deck currently 😐

Took a couple of failures until I got partnered with a Druid who knew how to use Jades – though, it took me a couple of attempts to work out that probably the best things to Sap/Shadowstep are the 5/7 Party Poopers (?) that spawn after the Piñata is on the board.

I was the Rogue each game.

Vivid Nightmare – the copy *also* has the buffs applied effectively giving you an extra copy of every buff spell cast when they die (Topsy Turvy / Void Ripper) – it’s kinda disheartening to see your opponent’s hand suddenly fill out massively with buff spells when you know there’s an Inner Fire coming.

Hearthstone Deck Tracker kinda gives the game away though as soon as something is cast/summoned … technically nothing *started* in the deck so every card on your opponent’s tracker has the little “gift” icon on it.

So the Warlock Mecha’thun shell is basically 2x Galvanizer, Bloodbloom, Cataclysm and Mecha’thun then… and there are a lot of tools here to help you survive long enough to draw your entire deck.

… it’s a million to one shot, but it might just work.

With all the Magnetic Mechs roaming around at the moment – double Hex/Earth Shock is really solid in this deck… and it’s good for laughs having 3 or 4 stealthy 16 attack Shudderwocks on the board.

Like just about every combo deck though, it really suffers if your draw is bad.

I’m not saying it’s terrible – just that you’ll need to build around it, e.g. with a Zoo-like deck… which you’ve basically agreed with? It’s situational.

Unlike Piloted Shredder which was just thrown into any deck that needed a decent 4-drop; from Mech Mage to Ramp Druid back in ye olde days.

Sounds like you missed the boat with the best Mech Inner Fire / Divine Spirit deck from GvG days… it involved Flying Machine.

Oh – and that bloody Skulking Geist!

That’s true of virtually any combo deck though – it’s one of the reasons why Dirty Rat was such a popular tech choice. I’ve been scuppered using OTK Malygos Miracle decks by things like Ice Block, Dirty Rat or even, occasionally, Gnomeferatu … not to mention having part of the combo burnt by Coldlight Oracle or Naturalize.

On the flip side, you can pretty much sit back and enjoy a guaranteed win against most Control decks.

Combo decks often wander into “glass cannon” territory.

Although, I suspect, a Goblin Bomb deck is going to be absolutely terrible – it does have 2 advantages, this and Fireworks Tech, plus the fact that you’ll probably not be too disappointed when you get Leokk.

Chuck in some Lepers and you could kill your opponent with nothing other than deathrattle effects.

It’s not quite as good as living the T3 Angry Rag dream, since Angry Rag has rotated to Wild and Innervate was nerfed, but you could theoretically drop the Lich King on 3.

I suspect it’ll be rubbish – but it get 10/10 for style… anyone have a link the the “play” animation?