Articles

Corey Burkhart

Welcome back! We're exploring the dual-class Monster heroes still, and this week we're with the Druid Hunter dual-class hero, Jasani, Shrine Keeper. Jasani might be the most difficult hero to build a deck with mainly because one of the classes is already on top of the world, and doesn't need much help. Hunter dominated the North American Continental Championship, and still managed to lock up three spots in the top 16 of the Asia Pacific Continental Championship (APCC) even with the format shaken up by a new set. Druid, on the other hand, has been in quite the slump. Before the release of Tomb of the Forgotten, there weren't many reasons to be playing Druid outside of its awesome token making abilities, but Tomb of the Forgotten has made sure we are rewarded now for playing with those tokens.

Yang Zheng Yan showed just that with his Wildseer Varel midrange token deck at the APCC this past weekend. His very innovative deck earned him a Top 4 finish, and has started to open people's eyes to the fact that Druids are very good again. Let's take a look at Yang's deck to see how it works

Yang Zheng Yan

Hero: Wildseer Varel

Allies: 21
4 Crime Scene Alarm-o-Bot
3 Jeishal
4 Davius, Herald of Nature
3 Stevrona Forgemender
4 Edwin Vancleef
3 General Husam

Abilities: 23
4 Verdant Boon
2 Natural Purification
2 Wild Wrath
4 Nature's Focus
1 Mark of Restoration
2 Innervate
3 Gift of the Earthmother
1 Malfurion's Gift
4 Avatar of the Wild

Equipment: 12
4 Bottled Life
4 Winter Veil Disguise Kit
4 Viewless Wings

Quests: 4
4 Leader of the Pack

If you start at the bottom of Zheng Yan's deck, it starts off looking like a fairly standard Worgen Druid deck, but once you move into the abilities, the deck gets pretty exciting. Due to the flip of Wildseer Varel, Zheng Yan was able to play numerous abilities that are great in very specific situations like Mark of Restoration and Malfurion's Gift. One card that really surprised me however was Natural Purification, as it is just a conditional The Natural Order. It has been a while since Druid has had access to The Natural Order, and in any token based deck, Natural Purification is just a half priced The Natural Order, which turns out to be very, very good.

Considering the metagame from the APCC, you definitely need to be able to kill abilities and equipment. Viewless Wings, Etched Dragonbone Girdles, and Winter Veil Disguise Kits a-plenty are out there. Each of these cards can dominate a game with the help of only one other card, and once they start dominating the game, they can snowball out of control. Miniature Voodoo Mask is seeing a ton of play, but I find it much more useful to play a deck that has one or no targets for the Mask to make sure they are drawing blanks. Therefore, I would definitely play equipment of cost four or greater like Viewless Wings or Fluid Death if I happen to be a Druid Hunter dual-class hero.

The other interesting choice in Zheng Yan's deck i General Husam. Until recently, I had only seen General Husam see play in Sealed decks, and there, he was amazing. In Core Constructed, he's actually much of the same: completely bonkers. In a token strategy like this, it is very easy to grow General Husam to a 9/9 the turn he comes into play, and once at that many +1/+1 counters, he acts like a ticking time bomb. Can your opponent answer Husam before the General crashes in for a kill?

In Zheng Yan's deck however, he also has the ability to make the General pseudo-invincible with the extra health from an attachment. In combination with Mark of Restoration or Gift of the Earthmother, General Husam can take more than fatal damage but survive because damage is dealt in the form of removing his +1/+1 counters. If you try and remove the zero remaining +1/+1 counters, the damage is essentially prevented, and General Husam's attack and health will be equal to the amount the attachments give him. General Husam in this case is an insane finisher, and even without the use of attachments, leads me to build this Jasani, Shrine Keeper creation:

Hero: Jasani, Shrine Keeper

Allies: 26
4 Keeper Sharus
4 Boomer
4 Pygmy Firebreather
4 Stonebranch, Ancient of War
4 Edwin VanCleef
3 Pygmy Pyramid
3 General Husam

Abilities: 15
4Avatar of the Wild
3 Natural Purification
4 Verdant Boon
4 Nature's Focus

Equipment: 11
4 Bottled Life
3 Fluid Death
4 Viewless Wings

Quests: 8
4 Wake of Destruction
4 Seeds of Their Demise

I was working on a deck similar to this one for the Death Knight Shaman dual-class hero, Mogdar the Frozenheart, but that deck was to clunky and had too many things going on that I wasn't a fan of. In this sort of a deck however, tokens have been pulverizing decks, and best of all it's hilarious to play with. Bottled Life and Verdant Boon is still the best one-two punch against a slower opponent's deck, and can really lead you into a powerful turn four and five including my favorite portion of the deck.

Every four and five cost card in the deck is designed to win you the game when combined with any of the other four and five cost cards. Stonebranch, Ancient of War is excellent when there's already a Fluid Death in play to pump your hero's ATK after you beat down with your tokens, or it will pump the rest of the team with a Viewless Wings in play. Edwin VanCleef and his tokens are great to lead with on turn 4 into a General Husam on turn 5, as they can turn the General into a 7/7 Protector Sentinel, threatening fatal damage nearly on his own on the following turn. Even the least explosive of the four cost cards, Pygmy Pyramid, is awesome because the opponent has to deal with it, and when the pyramid explodes, the building blocks are all tokens come, ready to aid the team in any way they can.

When working on this deck in the form of Mogdar the Frozenheart the past couple of weeks, Keeper Sharus and Keeper Bolas were both in the deck to turn on Bark and Bite. I really liked the card as it created four separate tokens, and it was phenomenal with Viewless Wings, generally aiding to kill opponents with ease. The problem however is that it put too many cards in the deck that were only good with one specific card. Keeper Balos was generally too weak when going second to even warrant playing onto the table, and Bark and Bite was awkward when your Keeper Sharus was killed in response to playing your ability by a Flame Lance, Nature's Focus, or Concussive Barrage. Thus, when I switched the plan over to Jasani, I removed the idea of Bark and Bite and moved directly into a plan that could use Keeper Sharus as acceleration to get the deck from three to four faster, just as Zheng Yan had used Davius, Herald of Nature to skip ahead and play an early Viewless Wings in his deck.

Thus far, the switch has been awesome, and Keeper Sharus can still attack with a General Husam out to pump him up, and is still excellent as an Elusive attacker and survivor with Viewless Wings on the table, two things that frequently come up outside of the one cost ally's Harmonize effect.

Boomer, Pygmy Firebreather, and Avatar of the Wild likely don't need much of an explanation at this point. Each are the most efficient cards at what they do, and each fill an important role of tempo, card advantage, and utility respectively. One problem I had when building this deck however was the resources. Unlike the Worgen counterpart, Monster heroes don't have access to Leader of the Pack, Fordragon Hold, Kor'kron Vanguard, Magni, the Mountain King or Cairne, Earthmother's Chosen. All five of the above have been clear and easy choices to jam into decks to create tokens and help control tempo in the early turns of the game, but in Monster you aren't given the privilege to play these resources. I saw some decks using Druid to ramp up to Thrall, the Earth Warder with the help of Repurposed Lava Dredger and Stash effects, but taking other writerss decks and their work just isn't right. Therefore, working on this deck, I had to find a solid selection of resources in order to dig a few extra cards deeper into the deck each game.

Thankfully, Wake of Destruction is actually pretty solid in this deck despite the 15 Monster ally count, and Seeds of Their Demise has been better in this deck than most, making sure you're only drawing four cost and greater cards in the late game. Certainly, this resource lineup is not as flashy as Zheng Yan's Stevrona Forgemender and Leader of the Pack, but it still suffices very well, drawing cards and manipulating your deck at a very cheap cost, allowing you to make follow up plays on the same turn.

Let me know your thoughts are on the Jasani, Shrine Keeper deck. I feel this is one of the more difficult heroes to streamline as both of the decks are very strong with their Alliance counterparts as the APCC showed us this weekend. I certainly feel that a Stash deck using Heirloom counters could definitely be a real deck, but I have only played against it a couple times with the local guys at my shop and I'm not certain how good it is. I know from experience now that Thrall, the Earth Warder is completely absurd, and basically does what a Master Hero should do when it hits play: win you the game! Still, there's a ton of potential in this token and equipment based version of Jasani, Shrine Keeper, and with a little more work, it could be more powerful than their Alliance versions. Come back next week as we explore the last and possibly most interesting of the dual class heroes, High Guardian Malosun.

-Corey

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