Shadow Ascendants are a fairly recent inclusion and I, personally, think they work well in this deck. That said, I’m not a fan of removing Zombie Chows for early board presence. I’ve removed Lyra and Auchenai myself, but cut a single Silence and Potion of Madness to make room.

Shadow Ascendant or Injured Blademaster are both good options.

Thank you!

With Pint-sized Potion, the deck has a bit more AoE removal than its Standard counterparts. On turn 5, Excavated Evil is often more reliable than the two card combo of Pint-size + Horror. Similarly, DK Anduin is a bit unnecessary in Wild with Lightbomb to clear tall boards and the aggression from Ragnaros.

Given how many cards you’re missing, I’d wait a bit on crafting the deck right now. With an expansion coming soon, I tend to be more conservative with crafting around this time of year.

As far as difficulty, the deck is certainly beginner friendly, in part because of the highroll potential of winning games thanks to a good draw. Certain matchups can be a challenge when you don’t draw Barnes on curve and have to ration your resources, but I don’t think anyone would argue it’s at the top end of the difficult spectrum.

Yes, this deck is up to date and many players reached Legend with it last season. It does have a few bad matchups (including all Paladins), but can really punish slower-developing decks.

Congrats on the success and Legend card back! Glad you found a deck to climb with that you enjoy so much.

The Lich King offers a defense/offense hybrid minion giving you good balance between the two overall. Personally, I’ve rotated Ysera in many times myself (in favor of a copy of Obsidian Statue) and she excels in slower matchups. Dream is really helpful in both mirrors to efficiently manage Obsidian Statues and Voidlords.

Still, baseline lists tend to prefer double Status and The Lich King to have better game against aggro decks.

Gul’dan is more critical for this deck (and any other Warlock) specifically, but Lich King is more flexible as a Neutral card. Still, Gul’dan is more of a requirement for decks than Lich King so I’d lean towards him.

Congrats on the success!

Aluneth is a big loss, but the deck can get some wins without it. Aggro Paladin is generally a bad match up for Secret Mage and I can still see how Warlocks might slip out from under you with healing. It’s still early in the season though, so being at Rank 10 already is great progress.

A second Diremole should help shore up your one-drops, but Finley’s effect is extremely helpful in a lot of games and cannot be directly replaced.

At 12 wins, the base gold is a bit higher and you get an extra reward chest so it works out to be a bit higher overall than 11.

Five games is not a large enough sample size to form an opinion of a deck. It sounds like you just hit bad draws. A handful of players (including myself) have taken this list, or one very much like it, to Top Legend finishes on ladder.

As someone who plays predominantly Wild (F2P BTW), I’m very much looking forward to this Brawl.

Similarly, this Brawl was the most well-received and highly-anticipated part of Wildfest by the Wild Hearthstone community (there are dozens of us. Dozens!).

To say that it targets/caters to only whales or Standard players is simply false.

Fixed, thanks!

Nice catch. Apparently, I couldn’t get Big Priest out of my mind when writing this.

I’ve updated the list based on what I’ve been finding success with this season. 2x Duplicates are probably the lone debated/contested spot in the list. Primordial Glyph is the most common contender for that spot, but the inconsistency of a large card pool in Wild makes it too unreliable, IMO.

Lyra is nice for situations where you run out of resources, but is not at all required for the deck. Either a second Auchenai Soulpriest or Loatheb would be a good replacement.

I’ve been running Forgotten Torch in that spot, but haven’t tested enough games to say for certain what the best option is yet.

I saw a (non-budget) list earlier today that was running Wolfrider, so that might be a good option. Ethereal Arcanist could also be a potential replacement.

Honestly, Patches is probably the biggest hit. Bonemare/Corridor Creeper can replaced by Dr. Boom and other tempo-oriented cards, but the deck may need to shift back to a Keleseth build to have a chance come patch release.

I hesitate to count Tempo Rogue out just yet, but it doesn’t look good.