by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

In this week’s Deck of the Week we are looking at a deck that took Reddit user TingoTONG to #1 on the NA ladder. It’s an odd deck because it’s not following the current meta and has some cards we haven’t seen played in the meta for quite some time, such as Novice Engineer, Perdition’s Blade, and 2 Defias Ringleaders. I think that’s why I love this deck so much, because it reminds me of the days of Hearthstone’s early beta where having 2 Defias Ringleaders and 2 Novice Engineers was a must have for a rogue deck (now if we can just get Headcrack to be good again).

This deck is fairly cheap to make and the 2 legendary cards used, Bloodmage Thalnos and Edwin VanCleef could find easy replacements if needed. Nothing in this deck costs less than 5 mana, however, I wouldn’t call it an aggro deck. The deck is actually fairly slow to start out, I was finding myself mostly just casting my dagger hero power turn 2 and passing. If you go first and don’t have a coin there are no plays you can make turn 1. So basically, the first 2 turns you’ll find yourself not really doing much. Don’t let that deceive you though because this deck will ramp up very quickly and has a lot of answers to your opponent.

The whole play style of this deck is to control the board early, get tempo, and eventually run your opponent out of options. This deck actually does very well against heavy aggro decks like face hunter but you’ll find you have a tougher time against control heavy decks like Warrior Control.

You’ll want to mulligan for Blade Flurry, SI:7 Agent, Backstab, Goblin-Auto Barber, and Deadly Poison. With these you can get the early tempo going and control the game from there. Late game you just sit there and replenish your hand with Novice Engineer, Gnomish Inventor, Shiv, Azure Drake, and Bloodmage Thalnos.

Will this deck help get you to legend? Well, it certainly helped the creator, but it will solely depend on the current meta. If you’re finding yourself facing lots of aggro and you don’t want to play slower decks, definitely give this a try and let us know how it worked.