by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Every Friday a legendary member from team DKMR breaks down Don’t Kick My Robot’s “Deck of the Week” . These decks are seeing a lot of play either in constructed ladder or tournaments. Team DKMR explains the deck lists and how to play them. Make sure you check out Don’t Kick My Robot if you want to become a better player or check out their premium services if you would like them to do a 1 on 1 coaching session with you to help you better your game. View past Deck Lists of the Week.

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[DKMR]Brad here again to bring you the deck of the week. Most of us have seen Impact tear up the Sunshine open, defeating Brian Kibler, a well-known professional Magic the Gathering player, in the finals. Since it’s the start of a new season, we figured we’d write about a deck that tends to do a pretty decent job at getting to legend quickly, Zoo. The games are quick, the deck is strong, what more else can you ask for in a deck? Impact’s Zoo that he used in the sunshine open is pretty standard to what you would normally see on the ladder but there are a few minor changes that proved to be strong in the cup. Let’s take a look at the deck!

The Deck

2x Soulfire: As Admirable would say, this is a HUUUUUUGE tempo card. 4 damage for 0 mana is unheard of, of course it comes with the downside to discarding a random card, but this is usually irrelevant. It can easily kill 5 drops with ease and helps maintain board control, not to mention you have the ability to life tap each turn to draw 2 cards a turn anyways.

2x Mortal Coil: Warlock has a hard time dealing with 1 health minions, so this card is a good addition. It’s basically a Mage hero power for 1 mana but a little more situational because it does take up a card slot in hand until you can use it. If you have 2 of these in hand at once, don’t be afraid to take a 2 health minion out with both of them.

2x Abusive Sergeant: +2 attack to a minion and a 2/1 body, this card is great. Zoo often has some kind of board presence, so this card helps your minions trade up so efficiently. Although this card has a lot of 1 drop minions, sometimes this is the only one you draw on turn 1. Sure, it’s not the greatest turn 1 play, but it’s often better to play a naked 2/1 than nothing at all.

2x Argent Squire: With so any buff cards in the deck, this card generally gets a lot of value for 1 mana. It’s often a minion that the opponent can’t deal with in 1 turn and is very sticky and annoying.

2x Flame Imp: The biggest creature in the game for 1 mana besides Zombie Chow. This card is more useful in Zoo than Zombie Chow, however, because healing your opponent for 5 usually just makes your deck fall short in killing them. Sure it gives board control, which is what Zoo is all about, pushing damage is also extremely important, and Flame Imp accomplishes it well.

2x Voidwalker: This card doesn’t push the most damage in the world but it gives your minions a shield to be able to hide behind. There are a good amount of minions that have 1 health in the deck, so this card doesn’t allow your opponent to use their hero power to pick them off 1 by 1 easily. You can also buff this minion with Shattered Sun Cleric or Defender of Argus to make it a solid threat.

2x Dire Wolf Alpha: Allows you to trade up easily while also pushing extra damage. It is also just a good card to be able to trade off your Nerubian Egg with to get the 4/4.

2x Echoing Ooze: 2 1/2 minions for 2 mana is a lot of value. You can also buff it with Defender or Argus or Shattered Sun Cleric to get 2 2/3 minion to get a sick amount of value for 2 mana.

2x Haunted Creeper: A sticky minion that you can buff easily with this deck. Cards like Dark Iron Dwarf and Abusive Sergeant helps this minion trade up with 2 or 3 drops which is a huge tempo swing as well as spawning 2 other 1/1s. This minion alone makes the deck a lot easier to get 2 Defender of Argus targets on board when turn 4 comes around.

2x Knife Juggler: With so many small minions, you’re bound to get a few juggles of with this card. There are cards like Haunted Creeper and Echoing Ooze aswell to get extra juggles with just 1 card. As we mentioned earlier, it’s not easy to deal 1 damage to minions to finish them off with Zoo, so this card helps along side of the mortal coils.

2x Nerubian Egg: With so much buffing in the deck, this card gets a crazy amount of value. It’s usually slow and unexciting when u play it but when u get to trade up with it and get a 4/4 out of it, it’s a huge tempo swing.

2x Shattered Sun Cleric: A great card to combo with Echoing Ooze, as well as just buffing any other minion in the deck. This card is epecially great with Nerubian Egg, Haunted Creeper, and Argent Squire. A lot of the time, you can buff your minion and it would survive something that it usually would die to. For example, you can buff a Dark Iron Dwarf to kill a Chillwind Yeti while establishing a 3/2 minion on board.

2x Dark Iron Dwarf: 4/4 for 4 mana isn’t the worst body in the world, but buffing a minion +2 attack for a turn is huge. Works well with every minion in the deck, but in particular, it’s great with Nerubian Egg, Haunted Creeper, and Argent Squire.

2x Defender of Argus: Same reasons it’s in the deck as Shattered Sun cleric, but it also has more upsides. Taunts are extremely important against Hunter in particular. Zoo usually has 2 or more minions of it’s own on the board, so this card often gets a lot of value.

2x Doomguard: A 5/7 minion for 5 mana that has charge is a crazy amount of value. Of course you discard 2 random cards from your hand, but usually when it gets to turn 5 and you have this card in hand, you usually have 0 or 1 card in your hand anyways. Of course you can also life tap each turn so you can refill your hand very easily.

Mulligan

Generally speaking, you just want to mulligan for your 1 drops. If you have no 1 drops in hand you usually want to mulligan your entire hand to get a 1 drop. Usually, you don’t want to keep any of your 4 or 5 drops because early board control is the most important thing to get in this deck. If you fall behind on board, it’s often really hard to catch back up.

The Coin

The mulligan phase is slightly different when you have The Coin. Since you can coin out a 2 drop on turn 1, you can be a little more lenient to keep 2 drops but that being said, it’s often better to just coin out two 1 drops on turn 1. When playing the game with the coin, you want to find out the best way to curve out. For example if you have an Argent Squire, Flame Imp, Shattered Sun Cleric and Doomguard in your opponent hand, it’s probably best to play 1 of your 1 drops on turn 1 and then coin out Shattered Sun Cleric on turn 2 depending on what you draw. If you draw a 1 or 2 drop on turn 2, it’s probably best to just save the coin and just play the 2 drop or the 2 1 drops.

Gameplan

Just spam minions and play your curve as best as possible. Zoo is all about building your board turn by turn while pushing damage at the same time. Often new or experienced players have a hard time know when to trade their minions and when not to. When you have a 2/1 and a 4/2 on board and your opponent has a 3/2, usually you always want to trade the 2/1 into it, unless you of course have lethal. If you have a 5/3 and a 3/2 on board and your opponent also has a 3/2 on board, generally you want to trade your 3/2 into his 3/2 to preserve your 5/3 minion.

Final Thoughts

Head over to empeopled and continue the discussion here – https://beta.empeopled.com/p/26439. Let us know if you like the deck and how it is working for you!

[DKMR]Brad streams weekdays http://www.twitch.tv/bradhs. You can find all of DKMR’s streamers on their website with the days that they stream!

Written by [DKMR]Brad

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