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Hello everyone! I'm a first time masters player who comes from years in the magic community. I really enjoy playing combo decks of varying synergy, but not everyone has the time or brain power to climb 4 divisions per tier with ez/heim vi/karma. Keeping this in mind I wanted to build an aggro combo deck that curves out and attempts to win rounds 6-8 for faster and less stressful climbing. Now that nox/pnz burn has fallen from grace, aggro decks like this that win just a turn or two later have a good opportunity to solidify themselves as contenders in the meta.
The deck: https://lor.mobalytics.gg/decks/br9l20dbunqbjloa5660
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Gameplay: This is a board based aggro deck that pivots into a combo burn finish; we want to use hapless aristocrat, elise, cursed keeper, ravenous butcher, blighted caretaker, and petty officer to curve out early and come out swinging into their face. Our board will quickly fill up, allowing us to drop a phantom prankster or neverglade collector and finish out the game with chump block burn or big hecarim swings. This deck has good game on other board based aggro and midrange decks that cant get through our blockers without blowing themselves up and is able to sneak under control decks with raw power.
Card Selection:
Early Aggression:
• Ravenous Butcher: We want to hit the board hard and fast, this card lets us do both. Use the butcher as early as possible to start chunking their life bar in preparation for later burn. We lose short term tempo setting up prankster, neverglade, and powder monkey but butcher lets us steal it all back.
• Hapless Aristocrat: This is an enabler for butcher and caretaker while also giving us 2 blockers to burn down the road.
• Cursed Keeper: Another enabler for butcher and caretaker that gives us amazing stats for only 2 mana.
• Blighted Caretaker: Caretaker is everything this deck could want at 3 mana. It allows us to pop our keeper, clear their blockers, start setting up hecarim, and throw bodies out for prankster to burn. Be careful when popping keeper with caretaker; the caretaker will summon his 2 saps before the abomination so you will need 3 open spots plus the keeper to get the abomination.
• Petty Officer: A solid curve choice at 3 mana that also gives the flexibility of summoning a barrel for a board clearing make it rain.
Burn Enablers:
• Phantom Prankster: One of my favorite cards in the game and what inspired the deck. If the prankster sticks the rest of the deck is built to enable a big board that will die. Get this out as early as possible WITHOUT sacrificing aggressive face damage and start burning them down.
• Tips: Cards like blighted caretaker and haunted relic are essentially 3 damage burn spells with prankster on the board; butcher can do 1 damage at burst speed and glimpse beyond gives 1 damage at fast speed with prankster, these types of situations become relevant as you start scraping wins just before they hit lethal.
• Try to play around prankster almost like you would with bannerman, be a bit greedy with trades using your health as a resource so that prankster can have fuel. However this deck fills the board very quickly, so try to recognize what type of enablers and fuel you have in hand when deciding what trades to make on the board.
• If playing against deck packing board removal (make it rain, withering wail, twisted fate) try to get prankster out as early as possible since most of our cards have very low health.
• Neverglade Collector: Neverglade is the consistency that the deck needed and it heals us up to combat other aggro matchups. It costing 2 more is very relevant as it doesn't give us much tempo other than face burn with a full board.
• Monkey Idol: When monkey idol was released I thought this might have a shot at being a winning strategy but the buff pushed it over the top. Dropping a monkey idol on 3 and a prankster on 4 will lead to 7 burn damage over 3 turns on death procs alone. The powder monkey is very versatile with the deck, giving us a blocker, an ephemeral attacker, and something to kill with butcher and caretaker.
• Tips: Always play the monkey idol before prankster if you have both, this allows the monkey idol to set up the powder monkey next turn and prankster to see it die. Try to always play monkey idol on the enemy attack turn, this gives us 2 chances to attack with the powder monkey instead of only 1.
Spells:
• Mark of the Isles: Gives us reach and allows us to hit hard through removal. For example when someone mystic shots your butcher to stop its attack, mark of the isles lets your butcher live and hit for 5 damage.
• Glimpse Beyond: Gives us a way to refuel our hand and avoid lifesteal/drain effects.
• Haunted Relic: A combo spell with our burn enablers and hecarim, don't be afraid to throw this out for some blockers if you need it
• Make it Rain: When we attack and block, the enemy will always want to make trades that keep their board alive. Make it rain allows us to clear their board before big attacks, making sure our abominations can hit the nexus. Remember that we are using petty officer and the potential for a 2 damage make it rain is there.
Champions:
• Elise: The spider queen is great in aggro decks since she is able to go over blockers on turn 2 and she makes us a spider to burn to keeper, caretaker, or prankster. People will throw three damage removal at Elise which is great news for prankster, who will generate a lot more damage in shorter periods of time.
• Hecarim: Hecarim is an amazing top end champion that allows us to end the game on 6 or 7 with consistency. His overwhelm and the spectral riders in conjunction with prankster make him hard to block without bad trades and often will just close the game on the spot.
Mulligans:
• We desperately want to hit as hard as we can on the first four rounds, keep in mind what attack you are on (even or odd) and plan accordingly!
• Optimal hits on odd attacks can look like a hapless and 2 butchers on T1, a keeper on T2, and a caretaker on keeper for a huge swing on T3. That is a whopping 6 damage on T1 and 16 more on T3 with 2 challenger units. Even attack games we prioritize caretaker a lot less since they will have more to block with on T4 and we can instead start setting up a powder monkey or prankster on T3.
• I typically try to hard mulligan into the above setups that allow for aggressive starts, always keeping any butchers, 1 aristocrat, 1 keeper, or 1 prankster (1 caretaker when attacking odd). Put more emphasis on finding a prankster if the enemy is packing board wide removal. Try to keep mark of the isles against decks that are packing removal, glimpse against lifesteal decks, and make it rain against spiders.
That is all guys thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy the deck!!
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