Darkmoon Faire-The Deck

I'm back today to talk about the Darkmoon Faire and the deck I played in it. I'll give you the decklist, what changes should me made, and how I fared with the deck.

Here's the list:

4 Apprentice Teep
4 Apprentice Merry
3 Scaramanga
4 Latro Abiectus
4 Jeleane Nightbreeze
4 Chipper Ironbane
3 Moira Darkheart
3 Ka'lai the Uplifting
3 Searing Totem
4 Frost Shock
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Annihilator
4 The Defias Brotherhood
4 Finkle Einhorn At Your Service
3 Rescue the Survivors
3 Battle of Darrowshire
2 The Missing Diplomat

It's a pretty straightforward Alliance Shaman rush deck. We were expecting a field of heavy solo equipment decks and rush decks. We felt like we were solid vs. the equipment decks with 4 Chipper, 3 Moira, and 4 Finkle Einhorn. The biggest mistake I made in this list is the Searing Totems. They really should have been Chain Lightnings for the ability to remove Untargetables. We didn't do anything fancy with the deck, it was just the brute force build.

We chose Scaramanga over Kryton because late in the game Scaramanga's draw was better and we weren't playing Earth Elemental Totems so Kryton couldn't bounce those for a free guy. We maindecked the 4 Chippers because like I said we were expecting a lot of solo decks. There was also shockingly few things that could deal one damage that didn't deal 2 so his 1 health rarely mattered. He almost always had a target and any matchup where he didn't he was still a 3-ATK ally for only 2.

We put Moira in the main for the same reason as the 4 Chippers. We expected a lot of equipment. We skipped Parvink because while the card is nice, I just don't like a 2-ATK 3 resource ally in a deck that wants to end the game by turn 6.

For anyone who hasn't seen him in action, Ka'lai is a monster. There are many situations where he is better than Fury. He doesn't have Ferocity, but the bonus he gives your other allies gets around this somewhat in the sense that he "deals" that extra damage the turn he comes in. He also spreads the bonus out over your other allies making it more effective many times. He saved a lot of my allies from death over the weekend with the one-health bonus he gives, and he combos well with Rescue the Survivors. Two places where he really outdoes Fury though are his 4 health, which doesn't seem like much but makes him significantly harder to remove, and the opportunity to have more than one in play at a time. To summarize, Ka'lai is really good.

For our quest selection we went with 4 Defias Brotherhoods because we had 4 allies in play a lot of the time. Putting tokens in from Rescue the Survivors helped a lot as well. We ran 4 Finkle Einhorn for Chipper recycling and because it's almost like drawing an extra ally. We ran Battle of Darrowshire as cheap card draw that also helped fight off Cannibalize. We only ran three of these because we didn't want to draw too many since completing one is easy, two can be a stretch and three is almost impossible. We ran 2 Missing Diplomats, honestly, because Ka'lai is just that good. Occasionally, it would grab a Chipper or Moira, but for the most part it was extra Ka'lais.

We felt pretty good that we could beat the solo decks and outrun the other rush decks, so we felt like we had a reasonable shot at success. My brother-in-law Gary played the exact same decklist. I ended up a somewhat disappointing 4-3.

In round 1, I played against a basic (from what I saw) Shaman control deck. I won in 2 somewhat close games. Round 2, I got my first taste of the Tauren Fury Warrior, but all the removal was too much for him. Round 3, I got a Ruby Gemsparkle Untargetable rush deck. He won game 1 and in game 2 completed all 4 Defias Brotherhoods, played Parvink 4 times, and used Ruby's flip. I died under a mountain of cards. Round 4 was a Troll Priest with lots of healing and lots of protectors, but the untargetable allies were too much for him. Round 5 I got another Ruby Gemsparkle deck. He didn't get to complete all his Brotherhoods and actually had some pretty bad draws, so I won that one and moved to 4-1.

At this point, Gary was also 4-1 with his only loss at the hands of eventual winner Tim Batow. Rounds 6 was not kind as Gary got paired up against Chris McMurry who ended the Swiss rounds undefeated, and I got a Dizdemona deck. Rain of Fire and Infernal are both really bad cards for this deck, and we both lost. Round 7 came up, we both needed a win to have a shot at the top 8 and a win for Gary would all but guarantee him a Nationals invite as the bulk of the top players in the standings were all already qualified. Much to my dismay, I got another Dizdemona deck. I won game 1 quickly and decisively and hoped to pull out one of the other two, but Rain of Fire and Infernal proved to be too much to overcome. Gary also dropped his last match to an Alliance Shaman deck, so we both ended the day at 4-3 and placed in the 20's.

I liked this deck a lot. The only change I would have made is the Searing Totems would be Chain Lightnings. I would wait to see how popular Warlock decks are before I play this deck again as the 1 damage at end of turn cards are just too strong against a deck with no Ferocity.

Tomorrow, I will talk about the top decks from the event and where the metagame looks to be moving.