If you don’t play Wild, then it’s definitely worth to disenchant Golden Fandral 🙂

As for which one is better craft, right now Baku looks to be played in more decks than Genn. It’s impossible to call anything a completely “safe craft” so early into the expansion, but right now I’d say that Baku is the safest craft from Witchwood.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

The problem with not running weapon is drawing Doomguards. If you draw Voidlord, that’s not a big deal, you can still play it. But Doomguard? Nah, it’s a dead card until late, late into the game when you’ve already played all of your key cards. Of you can risk it, but then discarding Cube, Gul’dan etc. is very bad.

To be completely honest, weapon is not destroyed that often. Weapon destruction might be a bit more common right now, but I’m still getting it off like 3 out of 4 times. And weapon on T5 is basically a win in lots of matchups – if you pull out 2-3 big Demons for just 5 mana, it’s game over for your opponent.

Yes, it sometimes happens that the weapon pulls nothing… but the same can be said about Lackey. Some redundancy is needed to make everything more consistent.

One more advantage of the weapon is that you play the cost in advance. Playing weapon means that next turn you have all of your mana to work with – if you pull out a Doomguard, you can immediately Cube + Dark Pact it, and that’s 15 damage!

If you’re playing a lot of Cube Lock, I would recommend crafting the weapon. It’s the second most important Legendary after Bloodreaver Gul’dan. To be honest, without weapon, I probably wouldn’t even run Doomguards (so basically just play a regular Control Warlock).

Yes, it seems like this Druid is a great counter to this deck. You need to play fast (try to play minions over Hero Powering, you don’t aim at a long game, because in the long game you lose), and hope that they don’t draw the right cards. You can’t really do much more.

3.33% chance that Shudderwock is the last card in your deck, actually.

I know that you’re exaggerating, but it’s just not true. Same could be said about any combo deck – if one of the combo pieces is the last card in your deck, too bad, you probably lose. E.g. if Shadowreaper Anduin was the last card in your Highlander Priest deck, yeah, you most likely didn’t win that game. But it doesn’t happen often.

I think you’ve misunderstood something. I have said that you don’t need to play combo pieces ON THE SAME TURN as Shudderwock, not that you don’t need to play them before him at all…

I’ve explained how the combo works two times – in the Introduction and the Strategy part. Both times I’ve said what you need to play before you can drop Shudderwock.

If there was a point at which I’ve said that you don’t have to worry about playing cards like Saronite Chain Gang or Lifedrinker before Shudderwock, quote that part and I’ll change that…

P.S. I disagree with playing Battlecry cards as fast as possible. All you need to do is to play all of them before Shudderwock. There is no point in dropping that Lifedrinker on Turn 4 if you have a better play for that turn. Dropping them as fast as you can will often just lose you the game, because you were making poor plays. You need to plan ahead. E.g. if your opponent is starting to build the board, you might want to play a Doomsayer even if you have a Battlecry combo piece in your hand. The only “clunky” Battlecry card that I’d say you want to drop as fast as possible (unless you play against a slow deck) is Grumble – at 6 mana and without life gain / Taunt, it’s pretty slow. Both Saronite Chain Gang and Lifedrinker can really wait, you can even drop both of them a turn before Shudderwock if you didn’t have a good opportunity before and it will still be fine.

Thanks!

Thank you! 🙂

I think that those are two different builds and both have their merits.

If you play Hagatha, you go for a Control Shaman with a combo finisher in a form of Shudderwock. You don’t entirely rely on the combo to win, you can also outvalue your opponent.

And this specific build goes all-in on the combo, basically it’s the deck’s only win condition. This one doesn’t need Hagatha – it closes out most of the games around Turn 10 anyway (if it doesn’t die before, of course).

Late game value generator. The 0/1’s it summons are also great after you turn into Frost Lich Jaina – pinging them means that not only you get a random Legendary, but also a 3/6 Water Ele on the board 🙂

It sure does – but it won’t be able to after the rotation 🙂 Ice Block rotates out to Hall of Fame.

Baron Geddon is a great card in Frost Lich Jaina deck, but not necessarily in this one.

This is a Midrange deck that wants to stay ahead on the board all the time. Ideally you want to be the one having a board advantage all the time.

Mirrored AoE damage will often be a dead card – if you have minions on your side of the board, you won’t want to damage them.

You can try building a bit slower and more reactive deck, then Baron Geddon would definitely fit into it.

Adding a Rush minion and Ashmore might actually be a good idea! I’ll definitely test it out.

It would be better if it was always a 5/2, but you never want to play it as a 2/5 in this deck 🙂 You want to maximize the face damage. The slight advantage of Panther is also being a Kill Command activator.

Apprentice is there, because Mage has no good 2-drops, and this is a 3/2 with a slight upside. I prefer it over Shimmering Tempest because of the stats – 2/1 is just too weak in a deck that wants to stay on the curve with strong plays every turn.

Same reason for Amalgam – Igneous is good for activating the synergies, but I don’t think that a deck full of Elementals will have any problems activating those anyway. And 3/4 stats are just so much better on curve than 2/3. E.g. against 2/3 2-drops, Amalgam can just clear it, with Igneous you still have to ping. Even worse – if your opponent drops a 3/3 3-drop (which aren’t that uncommon, actually) – Amalgam gets ahead out of that trade, Igneous doesn’t.

But like I’ve said, we’ll have to play around with the deck before discovering the best list!

2 mana 2/1 is not really great, and a random spell you can’t choose (like with Primordial Glyph) is often bad.

The only advantage is that it’s a 2 mana Elemental, but there is no 3 mana Elemental synergy to activate anyway, so you can skip that mana slot in terms of Elementals.

You’re right and I’m wrong – going to change that part. Thanks for noticing 🙂

The deck list at the top hasn’t been updated to The Witchwood yet – we just don’t know how it will look.

We posted the cards that are rotating out and a list of potential replacements in the Introduction, and we’ll update the deck & guide once the expansion hits and play test the new version 🙂