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Corey Burkhart

In the past few weeks, I've spent time reflecting on a large portion of the decks I've built in the past. Many of the decks begin centered around a certain card, and if the idea doesn't pan out to be strong enough, I scrap the card and the idea as a whole until a later time, or until I have someone else I work with bring up the idea again. This week, I want to revisit one of those old ideas.

It's no surprise at this point that I absolutely love Tyrande, High Priestess of Elune. She does everything I want in a card. She is Elusive, meaning she protects herself from the most played forms of damage, allies. She creates token allies, which create extra threats and a different dimension of the game your opponents need to worry about. Lastly, she recycles your previously played allies which increases your odds of drawing important allies in a matchup. Everything this ally does screams awesome, and I've been trying for nearly a year to bring out her full strength.

Someone on the forums brought it up after I tried Tyrande, High Priestess of Elune combined with Rhonin, the Time-Lost that they felt I was on to something. The deck was pretty fun, but it really struggled against aggressive strategies, namely Grglmrgl. After seeing the results at the World Championship, and the sheer number of Grglmrgl players, I felt it would be a lost cause trying to spend my time on a deck when its worst matchup is the most played in a competitive field, until I found something pretty important.

I was looking at cards legal to Core and noticed Tyrande's Favorite Doll. The idea of accelerating to Rhonin, the Time-Lost was pretty appealing, especially if it meant I could still have a ton of tokens in play to pump out his effect. Unfortunately, having Tyrande's Favorite Doll and Tyrande, High Priestess of Elune didn't mesh so well together. The High Priestess is generally the last ally you want to play, and accelerating out a Rhonin, the Time-Lost yielded little returns as you spent time getting him out faster and couldn't develop a board to protect him. So there I was, frustrated at more Time-Lost hours on an idea I really want to work, until I saw it in a pack I opened.

Legguards of the Legion is exactly the kind of acceleration I would want in this style of a deck. It gives you incentive to still play allies as it turns your hero into the removal, cleaning up slots in the deck that abilities or other equipment would have normally, and the armor it provides keeps you alive as well. This meant we would no longer have to be Warlock like the deck before, and wouldn't be playing Bottled Void or Nightfall anymore, and would need to choose between Hunter and Shaman.

Each class has their merits. Hunter always has very efficient allies in the form of their pets, but playing the Pets would lower the count of either Human or Night Elf allies in the deck. Similarly for Shaman, their cheap removal would lower the count of allies to curve into the Legguards of the Legion, but because the prior version of the deck was very clunky, and struggled with aggro decks despite the insane amount healing I tried to jam into it, I wanted to give the early game more of a consideration this time around, and chose Shaman.

Then came the truly interesting part of remaking the deck. Are we truly looking to accelerate out Rhonin, the Time-Lost no matter what? Does the deck have to play Rhonin, the Time-Lost on turn 4 to compete? What if the deck was designed to accelerate Rhonin, the Time-Lost into play, but actually used an army of Night Elf allies as the supporting cast because of Harmonize, and they're cheaper to get into play with Haste, to get far enough ahead on tempo? It seemed really deranged in theory, but at this point I was willing to give anything a go and here's where I'm at now:

Hero: Janvaru the Thunderspeaker

Allies: 36
1 Nalisa Nightbreeze
4 Darnassus Warrior
4 Tharal Wildbreeze
4 Tarwila Gladespring
4 Faenis the Tranquil
4 Thadrus, Shield of Teldrassil
2 Lord Kur'talos Ravencrest
4 Delinar Silvershot
3 Tyrande, High Priestess of Elune
2 Malar Silverfrost
4 Rhonin The Time-Lost

Abilities: 10
4 Frost Arc
2 Hexamorph
4 Lava Strike

Equipment: 4
4 Legguards of the Legion

Locations: 3
3 Shadowfang Keep

Quests: 7
3 Seeds of Their Demise
4 If You're Not Against Us. . .

By no means is this deck perfect, or the best version of this deck, but it's where I'm at right now, and I actually enjoy playing with it quite a bit. The deck is definitely taking a step in the right direction in terms of dealing with the early game, and powering out its late game powerhouses, but it now lacks some power elsewhere. The deck struggles in the late game at actually finishing opponents off, especially those on the midrange Horde decks, which play all the of the faction's best allies alongside the abilities and equipment available to their class. The reason that matchup is so much tougher than it used to be is that more of your early game cards are very defensive like Thadrus, shield of Teldrassil, and I don't expect Tarwila Gladespring to do much attacking unless it is for exactly lethal damage. These concessions to stay alive in the early game weakened the late game up as there's a lack of Nightfall and Bottled Void, but the problem the Warlock had was that it never survived to play those cards in the first place.

What does this deck do well then? It really survives the opponent's onslaught for sure, and while it sits there and is surviving, it's building up a board full of Night Elves to utilize Legguards of the Legion or Rhonin, the Time-Lost. Even if you don't have one of these two awesome cards in your hand, Lord Kur'talos Ravencrest is a more than reasonable threat when he's being healed to full each turn by Faenis the Tanquil or protected by the beast that is Thadrus, Shield of Teldrassil. The deck just has so many options on turns 2-4, that sequencing can be quite difficult, and it can take quite a few games to learn which cards to play first in certain matchups. On top of knowing when you need to be defending your hero or setting up to get aggressive with one of your threats, the deck has access to Shadowfang Keep as an extra piece of acceleration alongside Tarwila Gladespring and Tharal Wildbreeze. Shadowfang Keep is just an all around all-star that if your deck is play a bunch of allies, I would recommend giving a shot. In this deck it is particularly awesome because it also has the ability to add an unnecessary Alliance ally to the graveyard before playing a Tyrande, High Priestess of Elune for an extra Wisp token.

Why Night Elf over human? It's a fairly rough and odd way to explain it, but you want to accelerate Rhonin the Time-Lost out without actually accelerating him out a large portion of the time. What that really means is that you don't want to have to resource all five times to actually play a Rhonin the Time-Lost, but you also don't want to play him on turn 5 every single time. The idea behind all the key cards in the deck, Rhonin, Tyrande, and Legguards, are that they want you to use all your allies in a combined effort to crush your opponent. Resourcing even a single one of them reduces your damage in some form or another whether it is dealing a point of damage less out of combat, making fewer Wisps, or having fewer Assault. The deck has the ability to cheat resources everywhere that actually dropping five resources should only happen if they're face up, or if the game goes really late and you need to play multiple cards in a turn. There are of course other exceptions to this, but this is something I've noticed. Resourcing face-down is not a positive experience in this deck especially if it's an ally!

Outside of the whole resourcing ideology, the actual Night Elf allies serve the deck quite well. Losing access to some of the burn that Warlock had made me want to find other ways to kill allies in the middle of the game like a Banish Soul type of effect could emulate. Delinar Silvershot is the card I first pick the most in the War of the Ancients draft format, and it fits in perfectly into the deck. With any of the acceleration, outside of the Legguards of the Legion because they come down on turn 3, Delindar Silvershot can kill a three cost ally, and likely trade for another in an effort to keep your hero alive. Having a Night Elf in play is fairly easy, especially when so many of them are either Elusive or have a large health total, so I haven't had to much of a problem in that regard just yet. The other ally that I've had a great experience with is Malar Silverfrost because it acts very similarly to a Bottled Spite, except that it's on a body. I honestly had no idea Malar Silverfrost was a Night Elf until looking it up, but I was quite pleased as it's a great way to deal with the armies of token allies running around.

Let me know your thoughts of version three or four now of the Tyrande, High Priestess of Elune deck. I did this mainly out of the number of comments I had on the last version of this deck, and awesome messages people sent to me about the strategy. Those comments let me know what everyone wants to hear about and see me work on in terms of decks, and it leads to super sweet decks like this combining cards I never imagined combining in decks. Thanks again!

-Corey

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