Badge Jankiness

Third Place – March Article Contest
by: Stickrod

I’ll be straightforward, I like awkward decks.  I’ve been trying to find a use of some badge of justice cards, and a fun combo (with yet another underplayed card) has developed.  Without further ado, I present to you two main cards for this deck, Bloodlust Brooch and Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600!

I’ll go ahead and give you some time to read these, some of you might not have paid too much attention to them.  Before we go on to what these can offer in a deck, lets take a look at these cards themselves.  First to note is that they both are trinkets, so it is possible to have both on your hero at the same time (or two copies of one).  Brooch can create a lot of swarm tokens, whereas Auto-Blocker turns your hero into a mini Weldon.  Obviously, this deck is going to create a large amount of tokens later, so let’s find a way to take advantage of it.  Two classes can use both of these, Shaman and Warrior.  Now, when I think token swarm with those classes, I automatically jump to warrior.  Why? 

Easy answer is this, Bloodbath!

This card finishes the jankiness of this deck.  Power up your weapons (note each, not one) by eating tokens and end the game.  We’ll look into other cards that would add to this deck later.  First, let us look at how this combos with the badge cards:

Bloodlust Brooch:

This is an interesting combo.  Attack with your tokens, eat them, then create even more than you had.  For example, you have whispering blade and perdition’s blade on your hero (4 attack) with 4 tokens from the last turn.  Attack for 4 with the tokens, then power up bloodbath.  Your weapons now have 12 attack.  Attack with your hero, and you now have 12 1/1 tokens!  If you can get this combo out, the game is done in 2 or 3 turns.

Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600:

The bane of solo decks.  To get to your hero, they either need to waste a nuke on a token (yay!) or stealth.  This also combos interestingly with bloodbath. If you can afford to leave one resource open during your opponents turn, protect with the token then eat it during combat for the pump.

A deck with this combo obviously has some great synergy.  What else should you add to this deck?  The simple answer is, build it like a standard solo traitor warrior.  Pummels, Sudden Deaths, Punctures, you know the drill.  If you don’t need help in deck building (just wanted to see the combos), stop reading here.  If you do want to see a final version, keep reading, I’ll walk through a sample deck.

The first thing to consider for this deck is hero.  You only have 2 options:

I’m going to build this deck around Fallenstar, for a few reaons.  I want Blacksmithing (I want to play another underused card in this deck, Bulwark of Ancient Kings).  Plus, she allows us to play Weldon Barov  (another weapon fueler, eat those tokens before they get destroyed anyway) or Zempre, Grace of Elune (who has a beefy shadowmeld body and provides us with awesome damage prevention).  The only other cards hero choices affect is quests, and this is where it might be worth switching to Lionar (who doesn’t love Counterattack and Swift Discipline?).

Here would be a sample decklist for Fallenstar:

            4x Whispering Blade of Slaying

            4x Perdition’s Blade

            4x Vindicator’s Brand

            4x Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600

            2x Bloodlust Brooch

            2x Doomplate Shoulderguards

            2x Doomplate Legguards

            2x Bulwark of Ancient Kings

            4x Stronghold Guantlets

            4x Bloodbath

            4x Puncture

            4x Pummel

            4x Sudden Death

            4x Weldon and/or Zempre and/or Sayge

            3x Corki’s Ransom

            4x Information Gathering

            3x Bane of the Illidari

            2x The Darkmoon Faire

If I were to look at this deck for the first time, I would definitely question the choice of allies.  You’ll notice that each ally possibility listed provides a large mid game threat for you opponent.  The main goal is to make your opponent focused on killing a completely different card type than the rest of your cards.  It makes sideboarding against this deck a lot harder and provides you an alternate threat/win condition.  Ideally, 4x Weldon is the best fit (those tokens love bloodbath), but we all know how hard it is to get your hands on him (the badge cards are hard enough, luckily most people currently care less about Badges of Justice).

Now no deck is perfect, so lets look at some main decks now and see how we shape up:

Black Ice:  Black Ice is a good matchup. With Perditions Blade, Puncture, Sudden Death and hero flip for ally control, the hardest part is getting those to go through.  Pummel helps a lot in countering the counters.  Its not hard for your hero to attack through water elemental into myriam with all your armor.

Kilzin:  This is a hard matchup, especially going second.  Kilzin is just fast, ideally you’re going to need multiple punctures and/or sudden deaths in your opening hand to pull this off (Blocker and Weldon also help).

Jonas:  When playtesting, this is about 50/50.  If they manage to get a lot of pick pockets/ purloins early, you’re pretty much hosed.  Always save a Pummel for turn 5.  Try saving 2 (they will purloin/pickpocket you).  You just might be best off around the mid game not attacking at all, leave both your weapons reading Pummel.  If you get past Overkill, you should be fine.  It not, good game.

This deck has one very glaring weakness: Bringer of Death.  You need to sideboard wreck.

I hope reading this article has provided you insight into some underplayed cards.  If you looked at this article and got some great ideas for a deck of your own, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.  If you have any questions at all on this deck, go ahead and e-mail me at stickrod.jeff@gmail.com, I’d be glad to help!