Articles

Corey Burkhart

Preview season is done, but all that means is that the new cards are here and ready to be played with! The full set is finally up, and let's just say a number of the cards are completely absurd. I can't wait, so rather than continue introducing ideas and saying how I got to a deck idea, here's my first deck with Betrayal of the Guardian based off what one of my buddies has been trying out in Contemporary Constructed, but I wanted to try in Core instead:

Hero: Wildseer Varel

Allies: 11
4 Corin Stallnorth
4 General Husam
1 General Turalyon
1 Bigbelly, Furbolg Chieftain
1 Archmage Arugal

Abilities: 35
4 Thorns of Nordrassil
4 Ancient Moonkin Form
4 Entangling Roots
4 Moonshard
4 Wild Wrath
4 Wild Rejuvenation
4 Living Seed
4 Innervate
3 Malfurion's Gift

Equipment: 2
2 Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian

Quests: 12
4 Seeds of Their Demise
4 The Path to the Dragon Soul
4 The Black Morass

It has been quite a while, but welcome the return of the Moonkin (AKA oomkin, boomkin, boomchicken, etc). Moonkins were all about a solo based ability deck back in the day using Moonkin Form, some abilities to kill opposing allies, and armor to keep themselves alive. Ancient Moonkin Form is a new form of this beast. While we don't gain additional armor, we do gain additional healing, and the added spice that if we can control five ongoing abilities at once, that we can draw an extra card each turn.

I knew when this card was first previewed that I was going to be drawn to it, and every time I saw a card during the preview weeks and at the Sneak Previews this past weekend, I thought about how my owl counterpart would use it.

The card that caught my eye the most is Ateish, Greatstaff of the Guardian. It's not everyday you get to use legendary equipment, but I know I want a crack at it. Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian does everything you want in this deck. If you discard abilities it continually heals your hero, which with Ancient Moonkin Form heals you for additional damage. If an ally happens to be discarded from the top of the deck, well then we can make allies that will help us trade with the opponent's allies. The trouble in this can be that the deck has very few way to actually destroy the opponent's hero and win the game. There are only elven allies in the deck, and four of them have only a single point of attack, so Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian has the potential to remove our big win conditions.

That's where Delve comes in quite handily. You really want to stick an Ateish, Greatstaff of the Guardian on turn 3 if possible, otherwise it will generally be too slow for this deck to take advantage of it. However, the games you do play it early, you need to make sure it doesn't remove your few win conditions from the game, so Delve from Seeds of Their Demise does substantial work. Likely even more important than saving yourself from disaster, we want to be sure our Ateish, Greatstaff of the Guardians are healing our hero, thus we need to be removing an ability from the game with its effect rather than other card types. The idea is still a work in progress with Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian, but I know I'm a huge fan of it discarding additional forms, and with the help of a Delve or two, it can be used to remove an ability you don't need in a certain matchup from the game rather than having to draw it.

Outside of the healing, the big thing everyone probably cares about is how is this deck actually going to win the game. It's cool to watch your friend muster up all of his or her power doing what their deck is designed to do, and you just out heal them, but if you don't actually close the game out, eventually they will destroy your hero! I for one love Malfurion's Gift as our way to win. I can't get myself away from the card, and when you add in another awesome restoration talent like Living Seed, I'm just going to want to play both! Not only is Malfurion's Gift going to bring back one of our dead allies, it's going to be able to grab them back at instant speed which is exceptional with General Husam. The power in General Husam is in his ability to grow out of control, but it really takes a turn to get going unless you have a ton of allies in play. With Malfurion's Gift being instant, you can grab back the General Husam at the end of your opponent's turn and really avoid that turn of hoping he survives to smash your opponent's hero in. The other excellent thing about Malfurion's Gift is that like most of the abilities in the deck, they're ongoing which helps utilize the drawing effect on Ancient Moonkin Form.

Perhaps even more important than drawing cards off of Ancient Moonkin Form, the hero flip in this deck is completely absurd because it can basically search your deck for anything! Need a way to win the game? Wildseer Varel has a Malfurion's Gift ready for that. Interested in removing a troublesome ally that continue to attack you, Entangling Roots can be searched up and deal with it. Is our hero in grave danger? Living Seed actually attaches to your hero, thus, we can go search it up with our hero flip. I love Portal style effects, and being guaranteed to always have one just makes me so excited. Wildseer Varel's flip alone is enough of a reason for me to want to play Alliance Druid, but once you get going, there are so many different cards that can be included into the deck as well that it makes finding the exact 60 a tough feat.

Outside of General Husam, the deck has a few win conditions I'm looking to give a shot in place of some of the more accepted fatties decks like this will be playing. The first of which is Bigbelly Furbolg Chieftain, whom I had in the Sneak Preview this past weekend. This guy was unsurprisingly awesome in Sealed play, but in Constructed I think he would also be quite a large threat due to the healing this deck can do. Your opponents are going to keep tossing cards in your way to heal through and destroy, and come turn 7 or 8 when we have enough resources to play Bigbelly, I could see him being a 13/13 or larger. Tell Mazu'kon that he can't kill every non Elusive ally in the format, because this is one large Shaman!

Archmage Arugal is on the other side of the coin from Bigbelly in that he's not big and ready to beat your opponent down. Instead the Archmage is really there to keep us safe from opposing threats. Cards like Mazu'kon, General Husam, Rhonin the Time-Lost all present unique problems for decks like this, but are all susceptible to the same thing, being stolen and used against their masters. Arugal has been one of my favorite high cost allies of all time, and anytime I have an excuse to play him, I'm going to take it as a sign to go wild.

General Turalyon is the last of the huge allies in the deck, and I mainly want to give him a chance because of the keyword Invincible. If you played during the days of Ring of Invincibility, you knew how difficult it was to kill your opponent's key cards. General Turalyon is not as Invincible as the ring, but definitely has some potential. Anytime a card splits up its attack and health into two large threats, you need to take a look at it because the card is generally quite powerful, and difficult to deal with. In this case, General Turalyon is an 11/9 when you combine the stats of him and Lothar together, and because he is both a Protector, and Invincible while you have Lothar in play, you can ensure your smaller ally, Lothar, sticks around long enough to beat the opponent down.

This is not the traditional kind of Moonkin deck the old school players are used to seeing, but I for one am still very excited. Moonkin Form was one of the most iconic cards for me from the online game, and now that it is remade I know I'll be trying out tons of different decks with the card. I have some friends working on some different variations of the deck in Contemporary Constructed so down the road hopefully they'll allow me to share their sweet creations with you guys as well!

Share your thoughts on the boomchickens coming back to Constructed in the forums and remember to have more pew pew and less QQ!

-Corey

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