Glad to be back this week; I got busy during the holidays and was forced to skip my last article.

Darkmoon Faire Orlando is coming and Core Constructed is on everyone’s mind, as people are coming up with new ideas and working to improve old strategies. I got the chance recently to look over the entire Worldbreaker set, card by card, thanks to the online spoiler on this website, and found a lot of cards that help out with resource acceleration that allow us to play our cards turns before they were meant to be played.

Resource acceleration, or "ramp," has been something that the WoW TCG has been missing in the past, and something I always thought would make some cards much better if you were able to play them earlier than usual. There have been a few cards in the past that let us gain resources or make things cost less. In March of the Legion limited, we had the under-appreciated [Tarwila Gladespring] that helped out tremendously in what was such a slow limited format. Stuart Wright made top 8 in the 2010 European Continental Championship with an Assassination Rogue deck featuring the [Timmo Shadestep] hero that used [Vigor] to get ahead on resources and play its bigger threats before his opponents could.

Worldbreaker brings us many more ways to increase the amount of resources we can put into play than any other set. Worldbreaker introduces Dragonkin which seem very good at getting additional resources in play with both [Emerald Lifewarden] and [Eranikus]. [Emerald Lifewarden] allows us to play extra resources each turn and [Eranikus] puts an additional resource into play at the beginning of our turn. Both allies also have very good stats for their cost and look to see play sometime in the future.

[Flourish] also helps in getting more resources in play faster, but is limited to Druid decks only, more specifically Control Druid decks which seem to have faded away recently with the loss of [Illidan Stormrage]. The one card that sparked my interest the most was not something that helps us bring more resources into play, but an equipment that makes our cards cheaper. I am of course talking about the new and improved [Aurastone Hammer], [Devout Aurastone Hammer]. Right away I wanted to build a deck around it; I looked at equipments that, when stashed, put an Heirloom counter on other equipments to make our allies cost even less to play with the Hammer.

[Balanced Heartseeker], [Bloodied Arcanite Reaper], [Charmed Ancient Bone Bow], [Dignified Headmaster's Charge], [Discerning Eye of the Beast], [Dread Pirate Ring], [Repurposed Lava Dredger], [Swift Hand of Justice], and [Venerable Mass of McGowan] are the other nine equipments from this set that put additional heirloom counters on equipments. Right away we can get rid of [Balanced Heartseeker] and [Charmed Ancient Bone Bow] as we cannot play them in the same deck with the [Devout Aurastone Hammer]. In order to see which equipment to add to our deck, we will need to know which class best utilizes the Hammer. Druid, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman can play [Devout Aurastone Hammer] and the first class I looked at was Shaman.

What made me want to look at Shaman first was the change Worldbreaker has made on totems, making them both abilities and allies. The Hammer would allow us to play our totems at a discount and make our instant totems even better. The old totem cards do not count as allies in our hand and Worldbreaker did not bring us many new ones, so I think we will have to wait and see more come out before [Devout Auratsone Hammer] finds a home in Shaman totem decks.

The next class I took a look at was Paladin and I did not look further than that for a couple of key reasons. I felt that Paladin is very underused, but it has gotten a lot of great cards recently in [Penance], [Repentance], [Restitution], [Vigil of the Light], and a few others. We have decided on Paladin so we can add [Bloodied Arcanite Reaper], [Dread Pirate Ring], and [Swift Hand of Justice] as possible inclusions in our deck.

Now we have our class, we need to pick our faction and I lean toward alliance for a couple of reasons. First, Alliance has the allies that have the most impact on the game with the biggest one being [King Varian Wrynn]. Another reason to go Alliance is that we get access to a very good quest for our deck in [Concerted Efforts]. [Concerted Efforts] helps us on turn one to dig for [Devout Aurastone Hammer], allowing us to see three more cards by turn two. This makes our deck more consistent and helps us get out the Hammer earlier which will, in turn, make our deck run more smoothly.

Our plan is to get out [King Varian Wrynn] in play as early as possible, stopping any kind of onslaught from our opponent. Having just one way of reducing the cost of our allies will not be enough, so I looked to Drums of War block and found a hidden gem in [Stormwind City] to help out. We have a few Human Paladin heroes to choose from so the restriction of “Human Hero Required” will not be a problem and we can also play [Blazing Hippogryph] to get multiple uses out of [Stormwind City] in a single turn.

I jotted down some very handy Human allies to add to the deck and some of them were also Paladin’s to help make our [Lesson of the Divine]’s free to play. I went with a suite of unique allies since they had some of the best Human Paladin allies and having [Crusade Engineer Spitzpatrick] for card draw works out great in this deck keeping our hands full while we fill the table with dominating allies.

Here is the initial list I threw together for our [Devout Aurastone Hammer] deck:

Hammer Time!

Hero: [Grand Marshall Goldensword]

Allies: 23
3 [Veteran Crusader Aliocha Segard]
2 [Tyrus Lionheart]
4 [Blazing Hippogryph]
4 [Crusade Engineer Spitzpatrick]
1 [High Commander Halford Wyrmbane]
1 [Aurius]
1 [Jaina, Lady of Theramore]
2 [Weldon Barov]
2 [Crusade Commander Entari]
1 [Anduin Wrynn]
2 [King Varian Wrynn]


Abilities: 19
4 [Hammer of Justice]
4 [Lesson of the Divine]
2 [Vindictive Strike]
4 [Repentance]
3 [Tuskarr Kite]
2 [Inspiring Light]

Equipment: 6
4 [Devout Aurastone Hammer]
2 [Bloodied Arcanite Reaper]


Quests/Locations: 12
4 [Stormwind City]
4 [Concerted Efforts]
4 [The Call of the Crusade]

After working on the list for a couple of days with my buddy JB, and playing a lot of games with the deck and having lots of fun doing it, I made some changes to it. I took out the [Bloodied Arcanite Reaper]s; having 4 [Devout Aurastone Hammer]s is plenty because getting heirloom counters on our weapon, while nice at times, was not that needed and the [Bloodied Arcanite Reaper]s did not perform as well as I thought they would when I played them. I changed the ally suite around and figured out which ones were more important than others.

I also moved around the abilities a little by taking out [Vindictive Strike] which was there to handle the new Abberation allies, but I found that they were unnecessary. Another ability that got the axe was [Repentance], not because of its performance but because I found a better hero for the deck which happens not to be a Retribution hero. I feel that [Eadric the Pure]’s flip is very important for the deck as it helps protect our [King Varian Wrynn], which is our main win condition. I also added [Shelter] to the deck to help out against [Army of the Dead] or any other removal our opponent might have for our big allies.

Here is the current list I am running of the deck.

Hero: [Eadric the Pure]

Allies: 27
4 [Veteran Crusader Aliocha Segard]
2 [Tyrus Lionheart]
3 [Blazing Hippogryph]
3 [Crusade Engineer Spitzpatrick]
2 [High Commander Halford Wyrmbane]
2 [Aurius]
2 [Jaina, Lady of Theramore]
2 [Weldon Barov]
2 [Crusade Commander Entari]
2 [Pappy Ironbane]
3 [King Varian Wrynn]

Abilities: 17
4 [Hammer of Justice]
3 [Shelter]
4 [Lesson of the Divine]
2 [Tuskarr Kite]
2 [Inspiring Light]
2 [Vigil of the Light]

Equipment: 4
4 [Devout Aurastone Hammer]

Quests/Locations: 12
4 [Stormwind City]
4 [Concerted Efforts]
4 [Darkness Calling]

(Note: [Eadric the Pure] is not legal with [Stormwind City]. Thanks to the WoWTCG.com forum goers for pointing this out. You will have to stick with a different hero to use the same deck. -Mike)

There are only 29 even cards in the deck down from 30, which is the number I usually like when dealing with reveal 3 quest cards. So occasionally we will miss when completing [Concerted Efforts], but it evens out since the time we do hit on it, it gives us a Hammer to play on turn 2 or a differentiated 4 cost ally. I increased our 1-cost allies from 5 to 7 in order to ensure that we have a cheap Human ally out to power our [Stormwind City] and both of them play off of [Lesson of the Divine] quite nicely. The last thing I added was the [Darkness Calling] and [Vigil of the Light] combo to have a secondary way of getting our [King Varian Wrynn] out as early as possible.

If you are looking for a fun deck to play, I would suggest trying out Eadric. I look forward to seeing everyone at Darkmoon Faire Orlando.

Later,

-BillyP


William “BillyP” Postlethwait is a professional gamer who has been winning high-level gaming events for years. His successful finishes did not stop in the WoW TCG, which he proved by winning the 2009 World Championship in Texas. He followed this up with a top 2 finish at DMF Las Vegas in 2009, as well as a top 2 finish in the 2010 North American Continental Championship.