First of all, let me tell you a story.

Imagine yourself playing Worlds 2011 in Rotterdam. It's Round 7 or something close to that. You're playing aggressive Horde Warlock and have already won one round of Classic. You feel quite confident as a match starts. Your decklist is good, while your opponent's hero is [Obora the Wise]. This seems pretty weird and looks like your opponent is playing some homebrew battleground-level deck. You win the dieroll and start with [Blooodsoul]/[Lesson of the Nether]. You look into your opponents hand and this is what you see:

[A Question of Gluttony], [A Question of Gluttony], [Vortex], [Vortex], [Set Ablaze], [Meltdown], [Magni, the Mountain King]

What will you think in this situation?

Let's rewind the game forward for a couple of turns. You have a significant board advantage, while your opponent is doing nothing except placing resources...and then you die.

What happened? [Intensify] and [Arcane Missiles]? Both copied? What's that card's name? [Kalecgos]? Really?

Statement 1: Kalecgos is insanely good if you're able to put him into play early. Turn 4 or 5 seems to be good enough.

Statement 2: If we want to put Kalecgos into play we need to play a lot of abilities. Cheap abilities. Mostly zero-cost abilities. And you need at least seven to play your master hero for free.

Statement 3: You will need extremely an good card draw engine to build a hand of seven 0-cost abilities. Or an extremely specific engine. Like Obora the Wise.

And that's how it works: You wait until turn 4-5 (depends on board and your hand), flip Obora and play a stream of 0-abilities. Every time you play one, you draw another. Repeat until you draw Kalecgos to play him for free.

Now all of your interrupts are duplicated. Your X-cost abilities are duplicated; some of them certainly are blanks like Vortex, but others are quite useful like The More, The Scarier and Meltdown.

And you already know how this deck is going to win the game: Intensify and all the direct damage abilities are duplicated also.

Creating the decklist is not complicated in this case. Just use all must-have cards and fill the remaining slots with zero-cost abilities.

Hero: [Obora the Wise]

Master Hero: 4
4 [Kalecgos]

Allies: 4

4 [Magni, the Mountain King]
Abilities: 44
4 [Intensify]
4 [The Taste of Arcana]
4 [Fizzle]
4 [Arcane Focus]
4 [Set Ablaze]
4 [The More, the Scarier]
4 [Arcane Missiles]
4 [Meltdown]
4 [Vortex]
4 [Presence of Mind]
4 [Arcane Spikes]

Quests: 8
4 [A Question of Gluttony]
4 [Seeds of their Demise]


Magni is not the best card, but it's definitely worth playing because sometimes you will face ally-less decks. In such cases the dwarf token is extremely useful as a target for your Meltdowns and Arcane Spikes.

Talking about matchups we need to clearly define that there is a limited amount of possibilities to lose.

1) You can lose to your own deck - it sometimes happens when you're playing combo. You may dig 30 cards deep into your deck without drawing a single [Kalecgos]. The combo may fizzle even if you start with 4 zero-cost abilities in your hand, just because of drawing wrong cards again and again.

It's an acceptable risk for this kind of deck. Sometimes it just happens.

2) You can lose if your opponent is able to interrupt [Kalecgos]. Play-sets of Taste and Fizzle are here to defend your master hero from opposing Tastes and Mystic Denials, but still there is some problem here as sometimes you will not be able to leave any resources ready while combo'ing out.

[Slow] is another kind of threat coming from Mage opponents, but can also be answered by your interrupts.

3) You can lose to some sort of super fast aggro-deck (Bogmara especially), not being able to survive until turn-X.

Let's take a look on matchups with most popular Classic decks:

Spiders - This deck was able to show extremely fast draws even in Core (talk to Marcin Filipowicz about it) and it became even faster in Classic. In this matchup you really need to secure your existence until you can combo out. [The Taste of Arcana] seems to be the key card here as it gives you 1-2 additional turns and/or forces your opponent to play around it. Remember to use [Set Ablaze] as it is good at killing spirit wolf tokens.

Jihan – This deck is dangerous as it combines board pressure with disgusting control elements. You can't wait long because this Mage has enough options to kill you quickly, but you also need to be aware of their own flip-powered Tastes. Having two Kalecgos in hand after comboing is a perfect answer, but if you are not lucky enough, just defend with your own interrupts or find a window of opportunity if they give such a gift.

Vorna or any other Control Mage - With integrated Crab-Volt combo, it is also annoying at having multiple angles of attack. You need to be prepared for a counter-war, keeping some answers for their combo plan. Despite that, this matchup is mostly about skill.

[Death Wish] - It's rarely fast enough to be a threat, but some of zero-cost spells don't work properly here. Magni is necessary to activate Arcane Spikes and Meltdown. Tons of armor can also make a one-shot kill problematic, but Bloody Rituals are really helpful on the other hand.

Zaritha – This deck is well known for having answers for everything. But not this time. It's nearly impossible for them to win before turn 9 (except the Swedish build, which is truly a completely different archetype). Control shaman is unable to interrupt master hero or put enough pressure to race [Kalecgos].


Plague – This matchup was already described in the beginning and there's not much to add about it. Their Eyes and Lessons are completely useless as unlike other combos, this deck is insanely resistant against spot discard. Almost all of your cards are doing their best in this matchup. [Fizzle], TMTS and even [Set Ablaze] are pretty nuts here.

Surely this deck has it's own problems and i don't suppose it to be a perfect choice for a major tournament, but it's so much fun to play. It's so fresh for WoW to have true combo decks. Why not try it, at least at your next Battleground. Have fun!

- Dmitry Tikhomirov