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Sunfury Protector in ShocLock Aggro

by - 10 years ago

Yesterday, I took you, the faithful readers here at Blizzpro, through my thought processes while playing ShocLock Aggro.

In the process of doing that, I also provided everyone with an list that had been updated since my last article talking about the deck; this included Sunfury Protector, a card that you don’t see in aggressive decks.

In fact, I’ve never seen it in an aggressive deck until now.

I think that it is an outstanding card in this deck and this video is a great demonstration of why.  Note that, in this game, I’m down to 18 before my opponent even reaches their third turn; with the help of a certain protector, I’m able to turn the momentum of the game and bounce back.

Keep an eye on how having a two drop that gives two of my minions taunt completely changed the dynamic of the game in this clip.

Note that, after the protector gave my minions taunt, my opponent had to take care of both of the agitating minions which gave me time to get Voidwalker set up as well.  All of this culminated in my opponent having to use Force of Nature to just get rid of a Voidwalker and Knife Juggler.

If the Sunfury Protector had been, say, a Faerie Dragon, my opponent would have still had free reign to continue attacking the minions they wanted to instead of the ones I say “you have to”.  This snowballed to the board state that I mentioned above which led to me having exactly lethal the following turn.

Note that the two mana cost also allowed me to give two minions taunt; Defender would have also been great there, but it would just been one minion with taunt.

Give Sunfury Protector a shot in your ShocLock decks; you’ll be glad you did.

 

Michael “Shoc” Martin

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JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “Sunfury Protector in ShocLock Aggro”

  1. JohnJohn says:

    I’m not convinced. He didn’t attack once before you got your Voidwalker out, so that argument is invalid. In fact, all it did was allow him to attack your Harvest golem instead of the Voidwalker.

    • Shoctologist says:

      You’re not thinking about the entire picture here.

      First, we don’t know what was in his hand nor how the Protector affected his line of play. He might have had a much more aggressive route that we changed; we don’t know.

      Second, you say “it allowed him to attack golem” as if that’s a bad thing. Let’s think about it; if we played out our turn the same, but with a Faerie Dragon instead of a Sunfury Protector and he has the same followup, we would have just had Voidwalker as our taunt minion; we would have had to trade off a Faerie Dragon plus a couple points from Harvest Golem to kill the Keeper (otherwise, he gets to kill the Voidwalker with an attack + Shapeshift). If we DON’T kill the keeper, then he does the same play but kills the Voidwalker instead.

      If he does that, then we’re completely open to Force of Nature doing more damage than just taking out a Voidwalker and Knife Juggler (not to mention our Voidwalker would already be dead) and we don’t have lethal, giving him, a person who plays Healing Touch, another turn. While I don’t think we would have lost, you never want to give extra turns, and that Force of Nature would have given more time that we didn’t want to give.

      What actually happened is that he had to take a point of damage to shapeshift/kill Harvest Golem and we still got to keep a 2 power minion AND a taunt minion; if we just had Voidwalker as our only taunt, he would have been able to kill it the previous turn.

      That’s not even accounting for the fact that the two taunt minions allowed us to attack past (and ignore) the keeper, which gave us the clock needed to close out the game when we did; if we didn’t have that taunt, we would have had to have played differently, stopping us from having him on as much of a clock. It allowed us to take an aggressive stance safely, which is what we want; the initiative and momentum. That Sunfury Protector singlehandedly provided that.

      Yes, he attacked our Golem; that is what we want. We want him to waste his mana, not add to the board, and have to attack a minion that leaves another minion behind when it dies. That’s why giving Cairne Bloodhoof taunt is so good; we’re doing that, but on a much earlier turn and allowing us to maintain a much more aggressive stance.

      You have to look at more than just the immediately obvious “results”; look at how the protector allowed me to play and think about that play from the Druid’s perspective; what might he have had that he couldn’t use once I made that play?

      What if he had a backup Druid of the Claw that he wanted to give charge and couldn’t (efficiently use it for that purpose)? Laying down the protector was such a sigh of relief in that game, knowing I was safe for a turn or two. That’s all you need to regain momentum.

      • Jath says:

        I put in a Sunfury in my Aggrolock deck before I saw this video and it worked out pretty well. It’s not nice to see because people might hop onto the bandwagon now.

        Nice video though!

        Does wonders for the mirror matchup as well! If you can taunt Squires it gives you very favourable trades.