How to Win Cheaply at Hearthstone: Undertaker Zoolock

How to win cheaply on the Hearthstone ladder: play Warlock Zoo (Zoolock).

This list is a fantastic tempo deck that comes out to a roaring start, replenishes its hand by drawing and usually playing two cards a turn in the midgame, and ending things before the Villain can get stabilized. And best of all, it costs very little dust, with one legendary card and only five rares.

In August, I played a bit more constructed Hearthstone and got up to Level 8 by the end of the month. I won quite a bit in the final week but never got to a point where I was plateauing, which leads me to believe there was still more room to advance if I just kept grinding ladder matches.

This particular list I will feature is an update to the old Zoolock deck from the spring, but with the addition of a deathrattle theme from Naxxramus. I call it Underwarlock, after Undertaker, a huge addition from the Construct Quarter of Naxx. I've added as many relevant cheap deathrattles as possible to maximize the one-drop.

List
2x Soulfire
1x Power Overwhelming
2x Abusive Sergeant
2x Leper Gnome
2x Voidwalker
2x Undertaker
2x Dire Wolf Alpha
2x Haunted Creeper
1x Ironbeak Owl
2x Knife Juggler
2x Loot Hoarder
2x Nerubian Egg
2x Harvest Golem
2x Dark Iron Dwarf
2x Defender of Argus
1x Leeroy Jenkins
1x Doomguard

Strategy
This is not an all-out "face" aggressive deck, but rather a board-control, tempo-oriented deck. Take advantageous trades when you can, trade up using temporary buffs and build a board of one- and two-drops. Play two (or more) cards most turns. Don't worry so much about card advantage as board advantage. Even if your Paladin opponent Consecrations on four mana, many of our dudes leave a minion behind when they die, and we can almost always rebuild to an impressive board just one turn later. Unless you are super low on life and in danger of dying the next turn, spam that hero power when possible. Trust me, it feels great.

Card Thoughts
Knife Juggler: Backbone of the deck. Do not play him without a plan to abuse him. Some of my favorite plans include The Coin + Juggler on turn one if I have two one-drops to follow-up or Haunted Creeper turn two then Juggler, Abusive Sergeant and attack to trade on turn three for three knife throws out of nowhere.

Undertaker: Don't let him sit as a 1/2 unless it is turn one and you have deathrattles coming on line turn two. Otherwise hold him for a devastating extra 2/3 or even 3/4 on turn three or four at the cost of only one mana. Plus, one-mana knife throws are a huge bonus.

Defender of Argus & Dire Wolf Alpha: Be mindful of your minion placement, especially when you have either of these in hand. Keep in mind they don't play particularly well together on the same turn, since they only buff adjacent minions and they plop a summoning sick new dude in between your souped-up, ready-to-fight guys. They also work quite differently, with the wolf great on a board where you will trade off a couple weaker dudes from the center of your board and then immediately cascade his bonus to the next minion in line. Generally, I'll keep my weaker minions (the 2/1s) in the center of the board. Usually the bigger guys don't get as much value from the wolf's attack boost, but they can be great targets for the Defender's taunt-granting.

Loot Hoarder: An atypical choice, but one I have been extremely satisfied with. He is another two-mana, efficient deathrattle trigger for the Undertaker, and while the card draw is less important with Warlock's Life Tap, it is still nice. The one toughness (defense?) is not as much of a liability in Zoo because we have the luxury of tempo on our side. Even if our Villain trades two mana to hero-power kill our two-mana card that replaces itself, that is a net win for us because we probably played one or two other cheap spells that turn, while they may have had trouble doing anything else.

Soulfire: Obviously excellent to finish, but don't be afraid to use it early to establish board dominance. In what the Villian thinks should be a trading situation, Soulfire will let you drop a new minion, keep the one you had, and kill theirs, all for the low, low cost of emptying your hand. Luckily, our hero power will help us recover from this pure tempo play swiftly. If you can cast a minion to leave Soulfire as your last card in hand, cast it, then draw using Life Tap, that is big game.

Singletons
Doomguard: Since we can't play a second copy of Leeroy, this does a good imitation. I never want two in my hand at once and it is not good to have Soulfire + Doomguard both with the prospect of discarding one to the other, so I stick to only one. Playing this with an otherwise empty hand feels like cheating.

Power Overwhelming: Another card-disadvantage, tempo play, again I never really want two at once. I'm not running the Void Terror combo and since I have 4x two-power buffs and 4x one-power buffs for the Nerubian Egg, I don't need to rely on this to make the 4/4 Nerubian. Sometimes this makes my Egg into a four-power attacker with divine shield, but usual I find it acts more like a third Soulfire, dealing the final four points at a cheap cost and ending the game before the drawback matters.

Ironbeak Owl: This is the last slot in the deck for me, and I am sort of interested in squeezing another Owl in somewhere. He doesn't deathrattle and he doesn't have a great body, but it seems like he always makes some positive contribution to the board state. In the best case, he silences a troublesome large taunter. Otherwise, he'll usually remove the value from an opposing Egg or Harvest Golem.

Example Board State

At Rank 9, Villain should be no slouch, but we put a hurt on him by turn 4.

The scene depicted above was not the nut opening to a match, but it is pretty close, and with a slow start, our Villain had no chance.

VT1: pass

T1: The Coin, Knife Juggler

VT2: make a 1/1 soldier

T2: Undertaker, Leper Gnome, knifing soldier and Villain (30-26)

VT3: make a 1/1 soldier

T3: Nerubian Egg, Voidwalker, knifing soldier and Villain (30-17)

VT4: Truesilver Champion, attack Voidwalker (30-18)

T4: Defender of Argus, knifing Villain (30-7)

VT5: concede

Substitutions
If you don't have Leeroy, save up some dust and make him. I'd say he should be your first legendary crafted on account of him fitting into most aggro decks and some combo ones. A second Doomguard or Arcane Golem could do in a pinch. Otherwise, this deck is one of the cheapest you will find, with just five rares and one card from the Construct quarter.

Happy hunting and learn to love card disadvantage. I have!

great lr going through a draft

30 minute youtube going through the draft and done quick game summaries and sideboard decisions. Highly recommend.

Drafting with Limited Information: Magic 2015: http://youtu.be/Tpk9o6Zpcnc

M15 Draft: Match Recap

Let's recap some Magical Cards!

Round One

First match against a very nice gentleman named Nathan. On his first turn he plays

 










 




That's right folks, the double Ornithopter opening! While Brian and Marshall shudder I proceed to basically obliterate him without any particular danger.

Game two was a little more interesting only because he got the live the dream of a turn 4
















Fortunately I had a pretty nice smooth curve out and was able to Covenant of Blood the Angel down. I have the game very nicely in hand and whittle him down to 4 life when he casts.


















Suddenly his very impotent Wall of Fire is just machine gunning my evasive creatures. I get him down to 1 and he drops a Profane Memento (a card so bad that I can't bring myself to cut and paste directly) but he starts rebuilding his life total, killing my creatures and works me down to 6. I'm flooding mana, I drew my Negate one turn too late to stop the Burning Anger, and I have *three* Covenant of Bloods somewhere in my remaining 18 cards and I am top decking NOTHING. He's at 2 life, I'm at 6 life and I draw

















You magnificent bastard: you read creature OR player. So I squeak out a victory and go 2-0. I review his deck with him and he also has *two* Staff of the _____ Magus to support a Junkyard Dog and an Aeronaut. I give some advice and I move on. (2-0)

Round 2

Facing off against Chris, running a red/white aggro deck. Actually competently put together, I won't lie, it had some serious race to start

  















That's some serious early beef, especially give how I have nothing except three drops. I was shocked by how much work the Oppressive Rays would do. Suddenly a solid 2/3 blocker is useless the turn I drop it (because my mana is tapped) and I'm given a choice between establishing my board and saving mana for a blocker. In the first game he raced me down to 9 until I stabilized with a Covenant, got blockers up and mana for Oppressive and killed him with evasion. In the second game he raced out, had TWO effing Oppressive Rays to stymy blockers and dropped a turn 5 Thundering Giant right on curve to finish me before I could stabilize. Game three wasn't as good: he didn't have a fast start with double Oreskos Swiftclaw but I drew my one sideboard change:

















Once that swept his weenies, he had absolutely no answer for a Chasm Skulker followed by a Jace's (why yes, that IS a permanent +3/+3 and three cards). (2-1)

Round 3

Sadly nothing interesting here because manascrew haunted me in a rubber match. We are both running control (he was red/black) and was JUST good enough where if I didn't draw my answers, I was in trouble. His Necrogren Scudder was out early a LOT and just exerted a lot of pressure. When I mulled down to a two-lander and didn't draw into any lands for five turns... there's just not a lot you can do. (1-2)


In conclusion, I was *much* happier with my play this round. I won games I should have won and was aware of good sideboard. I think the deck construction could have used a little more fast defenses (good two drops) and avoided drafting some cards that I had a 0% playing (the buffing artifacts, unmake the graves, etc.)

M15 Draft Report

Saturday draft at the Gamma Ray Lounge. Plus sides: three rounds (usually about as much magic as I want to play) and geographically desirable. Downside: one table of 10 and one table of 8. Ugh. I was at the table of 10 and it was quite bizarre to say the least. I'd say maybe I was one of three that had a passing familiarity with drafting strategy. For example, the following were available as a mid-round pick.

 

I don't want to overgeneralize, but I feel like that should never, ever happen. What's weird is that I didn't get any signs of "lolred underdrafted" until deep into pack 2; clearly my righthand seatmate was just having a fine ol' time. But back to my draft:

Pack 1.

First pack wasn't particularly memorable but I'm happy to see a Chasm Skulker. It feels like a card that works well in the quadrant theory: not a bad developing 3 drop and a reasonable parity breaker. In the late mid rounds I come across some just solid, everyday blue (Aeronaut, Divination, and a Jace's (!)) So I scoop it and still more blue comes down the pipe including an embarrassingly late Frost Lynx and Research Assistant (exactly the kind of two drop I want). Pretty happy with the first back: a solid core of blue with some decent black but hardly committed.

 

 

 The second pack was not terribly inspiring but it had some premium removal right there on top. The first real choice was the fifth round: Ulcerate vs. In Garruk's Wake. I mull this for a while since sweepers that can completely bring you back from the dead are awesome. But if I'm in blue/black I'm not going to enjoy a lot of manafixing (Satyrs/mana dorks etc.) and I'm thinking that if I'm alive by the 9th turn, I'm probably stable. So I take the cheaper removal. Then right after that comes this pack just full of RIDICULOUSLY good red cards. I completely hate-draft the Kird Chieftan. I just can't.

The third pack is more of the same. I think the rare was a perfectly decent Goblin Rabblemaster but since I'm already rocking two Aeronauts I take a playable artifact. Third pick was interesting: meteorite vs. Welkin Tern vs. Divination. I take the meteorite due to my reasonably high mana curve and 2 direct damage is not to be sniffed at. Then the Covenant of Bloods come rolling in and I just can't resist them. Any of them! A pick 10 Jace's (meaning that too went all the way around the table) is also snapped up.

 

So we have a bit of a pile of cards. My biggest risk is a total lack of two drops (Research Assistant, Typhoid Rats, and Bronze Sable x2) but my three drops are glorious and stabilizing ( Gargoyle, Frost Lynx, Witch's Familiar x2, Aeronaut x2) I don't have a really solid kill card like Caustic Tar but I do have pretty good evasion, card advantage, and three Covenant of Bloods. I build a deck as follows:

Creatures (14): Typhoid Rats, Bronze Sable x2, Research Assistant, Coral Barrier, Chasm Skulker, Frost Lynx, Witch's Familiar x2, Aeronaut Tinkerer x2, Gargoyle Sentinel, Accursed Spirit, Nimbus of the Isles

Spells (8): Ulcerate, Divination, Jace's Ingenuity x2, Meteorite, Covenant of Blood x3

Sideboard: Amphin Pathmage, Festergloom, Flesh to Dust, Negate x2, Sign in Blood, Nimbus of the Isles, Sacred Armoy, Brawler's Plate

Thoughts? Too many Covenants? More small creatures? Swap a Covenant for a Flesh to Dust?

Quadrant Theory

This week Marshall decided to write about Quadrant Theory. Check out his article here:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/li/quadrant-theory-2014-08-20

and if you want to go deep listen to the LR cast this week.

M15 Draft Match Report

Welcome back. Here is a link to the post detailing the draft. For those just joining you should head over and see what we've got. Let's Go!

Round 1: I got the bye. Super Lame. W (1-0)




Round 2: I played a super annoying 20 year old kid. In game one he mulled. We got off to a pretty normal start. He was green white and got some early stuff down. He was applying pressure and I decided to trade away in an effort to keep his convoke action at bay. On turn four he dropped a rare on me

Marshall and Brian told me not to be to worried about this guy. But he returned his 1,2, and 3 drop with it and I felt pretty bad. Then I played a 2/3 and another 2/3 and he was iced out. Eventually he got a Triplicate Spirit but I had my Nightfire Giant online.

 < 

Basically the script for the game was as follows. He got some quick stuff out and ground me down to 4. But I had enough time to stabilize and crushed him. Win.

Game two was identical to game one except it was my turn to mulligan. This time he again ground me down to four but I wasn't worried, I had my Hornet Queen. Sadly I never got that 3rd green source. There were nine in my deck and he killed me on turn 10. I felt a little jobbed. His hand was empty so I knew everything he had and the queen would have easily locked it down.

Game three he mulliganned twice. I'm not going to waste any time going through the details. Again he came out quick but my card advantage was overwhelming. W 2-1 (2-0)

I should also mention that this dude was rocking the charge and an annoying priest

 

I think time and the recent pro tour have shown that these cards are the real deal. However I knew about the Charge and was able to see it coming a mile away every time. So I was able to limit the damage from it and it became awkward for my opponent because five is a ton of mana. I suspect as the format develops this card's value will

Round 3: This was pretty strange. My opponent dropped a turn 2 welkin tern and I responded with a satyr wayfinder.

  

I continue my plan and mill myself a bunch more. He bounced my way finder and I dropped the 3/1 zombie dude who mills for three. Then my opponent drops a

and then he asks how many cards I have. The answer was 9. Then on his next turn he drops a

Uh oh. However he had nothing else going and I kill him on my next turn after drawing the last card in my deck.

He was 2-0 so far in the tournament so I was super stoked that he got some wins with the mill deck. Game two starts off exactly the same way. But this time I'm wise to the Sculpt so I limit my self mill. He manages to fire two of them off but I kill him with 6 cards left. Turns out he had 3 Sculpts so I was actually possibly close to dying. His deck really had nothing else in it and he had no walls, it was weird. W 2-0 (3-0)

Round 4: Despite having not earned my 9 points there I sat. There were three people in the tourney with 9 points. One of the others was my friend Jed. Way to go us! Sadly we did not get paired in the last round. I got matched with the other 9 win guy and Jed got paired with that kid I beat in round 2.

Unfortunately my opponent had a mono red aggro deck (despite having two islands in it). And he steamrolled me both games. It wasn't as bad as that dude with the mono white deck who rolled me in my last draft. But it still felt awful. It also did not help that I mulled in both games and he did not.

I mentioned earlier that my deck was a little soft to early rush. I had no

 or 

A couple of those would have shored me up (sadly I was in Green Black) and I think I could have pulled out  the victory. I could search the gatherer to see what GB should take for this slot but I'm too lazy.I did manage to Rotfeaster for Rotfeaster in game two

 for 

Which was sweet, but he just had too much gas for me. Ok so maybe those blue blockers wouldn't have helped me.

His deck was highlighted by the following

oh and a

yeah that blew me out in both games. Gross. L 0-2 (3-1)


Recap: The upside was that he was in my pod. So I was at least a little responsible for it. Maybe I should have pulled a Lightning Strike or the Heat Ray, I did have a toe in red after all for that Nightfire Giant. I totally passed the Cone of Flame because it was double red. Perhaps I should have hate drafted it. IDK. Thoughts?

I had a blast playing green black. The self mill was fun and the graveyard recursion was sweet card advantage. Playing Feral Invocation was as good as advertised. But my favorite card was easily the

 and the 

I know it's a bit Rotty but the number of times that guy got me out of a string of lands or fixed my mana up was basically every game. I think this guy is the real deal.

Comment me up on stuff you disagree with. Peace.

M15 Draft Recap

So Jed and I were at Card Kingdom this weekend for the M15 draft. For those not familiar it is a weird draft where the split all the people who show up (in this case N=25=8+8+9) into draft pods. The you play four rounds of suisse against everyone. Easy for the TO but lame for the magic. My pod had a dude who highly prefers foil cards to anything else and a guy who had never drafted before and post draft asked "so do I have to play with all the cards I took?".  So you can't really take any of this draft too seriously. But having those two on my right was sweet. Anyways we'll cover the draft in this post and later on get to a match report. Plus a bonus rant about a card I love and hate.

So I rip open my first pack, giddy as a school boy and here's the best card:

  

But instead I rare draft the land. Clearly a mistake, but whatever. Pack two rolls around and it's similar. This time however there is an old favorite squaring off with a rare land.

 

Side bar: Which card has better art? There is only one right answer. It's up against the Red/Blue pain land and I decided not to rare draft again. So now I'm leaning white. Pick three was a no brainer, the pack was dead except for

I snap that bad boy up. Afterwards I did some sluething the guy who passed it was the foil man and he said "well it was triple green and costs 7 so I don't know". Clearly this guy doesn't listen to limited resources. Oh and btw he was running green/blue, he really really doesn't listen to limited resources. So now I'm feeling some solid green/white convoke action. We still are no where close to knowing what's open. Pack four is even easier than pack three. There is complete crap and a

Yes please! Now I feel like green and black should be open. But you never know. The rest of the pack rounds out with nothing exciting. In pack two I get the hook up with some green and note that absolutely no red or white or blue is coming my way. Could be variance,  but it feels like the guys to my left are in those colors. I certainly passed some red in pack one and they are clearly not green. Possibly they are into black but that means I should be good to go in pack three. Which is exactly what happens. So far I'm ok having picked up in pack two some role players and

 

Also I picked up a black uncommon late. The ole slyblade.

 

I didn't know what to think about this guy. Vanilla fail. I have no enchantments and the ability costs 4 to activate. I decided I'd rather have a witch's familiar so that's what I wound up running in that slot. The in pack three there was nothing amazing. I was low on removal and had some holes in the curve and got paid off. I managed a pick 3 and a pick 5

 

I mentioned a bunch of role players and whatnot. In green black you wanna be playing the graveyard angle. First you get stuff into the yard with your early plays

 

i had two of both of these guys

Then you grind out the wind with some graveyard recursion.

 

I also had to rotfeaster maggots (3/5 gain life for graveyard exile = toughness). Let me tell you Rotfester for Rotfester was almost as good as teachings for teachings. But I digress.

Overall I was pretty worried about the deck. I was a little soft early but had  solid late game. I felt pretty good that if I could survive I would do some winning. The deck wound up being a ton of fun to play and was more powerful than I thought. As Obi-Wong mentioned the green/black deck is better than it looks.

Here's the deck list:

1 drop: Typhoid Rats

2 drop: 2x Satyr Wayfinder, Runeclaw Bear

3 drop: 2x Necromancer's Assistant, Witch's Familiar, Netcaster Spider

4 drop: Gravedigger, Accursed Spirit, Zof Shade (not sure how I feel about the number and quality of my 4 drops, there are two more in the board and I balanced based on what I faced. If the Spirit was unblockable then the second one came in)

5 drop: Nightfire Giant, 2x Rotfeaster Maggot

7 drop: Hornet Queen

"9 drop": Feral Incarnation

6 Spells: Meteorite, 2x Flesh to Dust, Unmake the Graves, Covenant of Blood, Caustic Tar

18 Lands: 1 mountain, 8 swamp, 9 forest

Sideboard of Note: Witch's Familiar, Zof Shade, Accursed Spirit, Leeching Sliver, Xathrid Slyblade, 2x Shadowcloak Vampire

Given the meteorite and 2x Satyr Wayfinders I figured I could run a solo mountain for the Nightfire Giant. Two sources for the ability and sometimes the bonus +1/+1. It would up working for me every single time. One game I did have trouble with the 3G in the Hornet Queen, it probably cost me that game. But I had 10 lands in that game. Oh well.

Also as you all know I was rocking the Lannister sleeves but I have used them so much it was time to retire them. Needing new sleeves there was only one way to go:

Also I would like to rant about a card. Take a look at this guy:

I love this card. Flavour win. I would prefer that if he blew himself up that you not get the landmine for the turn. I prefer the flavour of him trying to set a mine and messing it up. However I guess they want you to get at least something out of him, even if he goes on the first turn.

That said I absolutely had the coin flip part. Not from a power level concern or anything. But rather from a, I can't stand watching my opponent scramble around trying to pick his quarter up off the ground or out of someone's drink. It was excruciating to play against. Also I do think this guy is good. I would play it.

Also for this set I didn't look at the gallery because I am boycotting the stupid new look to the wizards page. So basically I don't know any of the rares. It's kinda fun to not know what's in a set. Also I have still yet to touch a triplicate spirits. I'm hope the next draft turns out better.

And finally. Let's talk about sideboarding. I'm on a crusade to get better at it. Previously I focused on mulliganing and I think I've gotten better at that and directly led to some more wins. As far as the sideboarding goes there are some really easy situations. Often you may have a narrow but efficient removal spell and if they are vulnerable to it, you bring it in. Another thing I've been working on is trying to figure out your opponents plan. In this case my caustic tar wasn't necessary against aggro. If I survived to the point where I could cast it I had already won. So it came out for a Witch's Familiar. I'm just setting out on this quest but there is one thing I have put together.

Sideboarding starts during the draft.

Always be looking for good board action in the second half of the packs. And don't be afraid to look at your sideboard during game 1. The rules let you do that now.

Ok enough for now. See you all in a few days with the match recap.