I did face several Secret Paladins on Constructed, and i'll be honest: at 6 mana players have already drawn a few cards, so getting some sort of counter until then can be possible.The true reason behind Secret Paladin is how chaotic it gets. The early pressure combined with the sudden tempo swing (not to mention the deck mill of 3-4 cards in a single move) is enough to place players on such a state that they'll be more likely to make a mistake. Staying calm and being prepared in advance is key.Preventing the opponent from getting a massive board is a good option, so have an aoe at hand - any that can cause 1 damage to all minions at turn 3, or a weapon to clear the most dangerous ones. Then do the second requirement - drawing a spell counter or BGH before turn 6 or later.On the bright side, Secretkeeper is finally seeing competitive player. You never know which will be the next underdog that'll get some of that spotlight.
Great advice! Yeah, the fact that you get to remove up to five of those out of your deck is great, especially when you're running the Mid-Range version which should let you get more of your powerful cards.
Considering Blizzard's present stance on changing cards, it's fairly unlikely that this card will be going away any time soon. Whether this is a good or bad thing is for the individual to answer. It's great that it provides Paladins with another archetype to play with, and it has pulled a handful of cards out from mediocrity, so there is definitely some merit to it even if it might stray a little into 'too good' territory.
I went for a deck as my first try of a TGT deck and I really enjoy it. It was my idea, though, before it was all over the meta :DMy particular one is about 50/50 at the moment but it's great fun when it gets going. It uses a lot of sticky early minions and then a lot of inspire and recruit synergy to overwhelm the board:
I've been running secret paladin since Naxx with pretty good success. I'm almost sad that it's a mainstream thing now. Here's what I was running pre-tgt. http://www.hearthhead.com/deck=74307/the-greater-good
Blizz keeps pushing secrets but misses out on adding counterplay options.Instead we get Minion effects like: "silence a demon" ...great -.-The above mentioned "couterplay" by Rodmin is easier said than done.Pala already has Shielded-miniobot, Muster for Battle and Truesilver Champion to set up a field safe enough to kill almost everything you can possibly put out.I dont see a lot of ways to possibly win such a game.
This is all based on the assumption that you have board control and a favourable draw in the first place. With that many secrets in your deck, you're more likely than not going to draw a couple of them in your mulligan (are you going to mulligan for a 6-drop??), meaning that either they're not available for to draw, or that you're far behind in board control at that stage. Fireball and Fire Blast will deal with him and the Redemption quite easily, as will Polymorph, for example. If a Paladin plays him on 6 onto an empty board, and I play Dr. Boom on 7 (now 7/1 due to Repentance), what will the Pala do? Hit me for 6 or trade?I imagine that mid-range Hunter would be favoured. Demon zoo, tempo / mech mage are likely to put too much pressure on in the early game, minion quality may not be strong enough to deal with control decks like Handlock, and there aren't enough catch-up mechanisms, since most decks are quite well equipped to deal with a large minion or two. If it's working in the current meta, it's because the meta is incredibly slow at the moment with control-based decks and Inspire decks (being quite slow themselves) being the norm.Might be fun to play, but it just doesn't seem reliable enough to make the long-term meta when you have 8 secrets in the deck. Mulligan RNG will be too inconsistent, I think.
I've played this deck a couple of dozen times already and it's win rate isn't that great. It is a good strong deck, but I've managed to beat it when I have encountered it with a zoo deck and by knowing what's coming. I've actually lost to the aggro paly deck, dragon priest, and hunter with this secret deck too so its not that tough to beat with the right deck and right card draw. Card draw is everything because I was also able to beat those exact same decks with the secret Paladin deck too.I think it's a good thing that there's another viable archetype out there. Frankly we could use more deck options to keep the game from getting boring like back when everyone played miracle rogue and you had to get slammed in the face 3 times by Leeroy Jenkins every other game. That just gets old and its good to see new viable decks pop up and hold their own. And I'm tired of the whiny $%^&*!@s who have now been dethroned by a new aggro deck...it makes me laugh to see them get mad that some one is using the deck.
That new secret pally deck only wins with the right draw order. If you get to many secrets early game or/and no Mysterious Challenger the deck fails. I don't think it's that good compared to the new dragon Priest or the older standard decks.Calling it the TGT Grim Patron is too much Ithink, as that deck is better and more consistent.
Thanks blizzard for bringing more cancerdecks into Hearthstone.
The counter to this deck is just to tech in 2 copies of Argent Horserider while on ladder. That one card completely foils all of the traps as safely as possible. It has one health already, charge, and doesn't die to the 2/1, and that isn't even a direct counter like Kezan Mystic or Flare. A lot of decks are already running BGH so the actual Challenger isn't that difficult to deal with either. It's a strong deck but it's nowhere near the imbalanced OTK nature of Patron Warrior where you have no time to react before you've died to the combo.
Running the deck I often feel it's only a question of waiting for the meta to realise how to beat it. It's actually quite vulnerable to start with because all your minions have low health and early board clears can really mess me up. was originally doing wonders but nowadays weapon-using classes are wise to it. They pop it with their weapon so that their minions are undamaged. I had a great run with it yesterday, went from rank 16 to the brink of 13 in one session but other days I can just easily be on a big losing streak.
If you think about it, if your Redemption is proc'ing on Noble Sacrifice, you're paying 1 mana for a vanilla 2/1. That's pretty horrible value - you want your Redemption on something with Divine Shield and/or other value cards.
I don't see why people have so much trouble/put so much importance on Grim Patron, he's easy to counter as long as you don't sit there passing your turn for 7 rounds. Even with Emp, he still needs 9-10 mana to pull off his otk, and other than that he can't really do anything.
Its not really that hard to deal with the challenger since the secrets are very predictable. All you need is to attack once, either with a minion or your hero, which clears out all the secrets, and then one hard removal to deal with the challenger afterwards and all they have left is a 2/1. If you have nothing on the board on turn 6 when they play the challenger (and they don't nearly always draw one by turn 6), then you were likely losing already anyway. Not to mention that any deck that is going to play 10 secrets in it to fuel the challenger is more often than not having really weak early game drawing nothing but those useless secrets.
You're assuming there's only the challenger on board when he plays it. I usually wait till I have several minions on board because I also want to take advantage of the competitive spirit secret. If Avenge buffs a recruit I then have two decent minions plus the sacrifice. Not forgetting that any minion played next is likely to get their health reduced to 1 so that 2/1 can still take out anything you play. Sometimes it's fun to do it with a up too as it can mean the Noble Sacrifice guy can take out even a 3 health attacking minion and may even survive. Then they have to take out the champion only for him to be ressurected back with 2 health and 7 attack! Fun times :)
I'm surprised that so many people overlook how dumb Divine Favor is. It punishes you for playing well and having card advantage and it allows the paladin to play stupidly and basically mindlessly vomit his hand every turn and not get punished for it. It completely annihilates one of the key strategic elements of this game which is ressource management.This card should have been reworked ages ago and it is one of the factors that make "cancer paladin" decks so strong. It's good that there are strong decks, don't get me wrong, but strong decks that rely on unfair mechanics aren't healthy for the game.
It's not that good. Firstly, it's just two cards out of thirty, meaning that if you don't get them, you can't 'mindlessly vomit' your hand each turn. Secondly, it's only exceptionally powerful against certain deck archetypes (control-based or hand-lock type decks).Finally, you need to compare it to a similar card such as Arcane Intellect or Prep/Sprint. 2 cards for 3 mana, or 3 net cards (throwing out Prep) for 4 mana. It stands to reason that there will be circumstances that allow you to get better value, just as there will be circumstances that result in no value whatsoever (e.g. playing against a hunter, who will inevitably have less cards than you).As a final note, the attitude of "this card takes advantage of good play and abuses resource management" is fundamentally flawed, as it's perfectly fine for a game to have catch-up mechanisms. Clockwork Giant, Unleash the Hounds, even Mind Control Tech are just as 'unfair' mechanically as Divine Favor is. Which, in my mind, make them perfectly fair.
Mind control tech and unleash the hounds punish you for overextending, they are AoE effects in the same vein as flamestrike. Clockwork Giant promotes different gameplay. Divine favor is just, if your foe is countering you with good value cards, leaving you at a massive card disadvantage for playing like an idiot, it doesn't matter because you can get five or six cards for three mana, and be right back in the game.Dragon priest, handlock, most types of control decks just flat out CAN'T come back from divine favor. You get punished for playing control properly, by getting maxium value and gaining card advantage. You can't play around Divine favor except by dumping your hand, and then you lose value that will cost you the game anyway.Divine favor is just a terrible card, it rewards you for playing like an idiot. There is a difference between, oh my foe has a lot of cards, so I get a cheap eight eight they can deal with, and oh I just was mindlessly rushing face, now I'm out of cards cause my foe was playing correctly and getting max value, I'll have just as many cards as you do now.It's poorly designed, and was only tolerable in the past because paladins didn't have any good decks that involved dumping the hand. Now that they do, it's pre-existing glaring flaws are more apparent.Catch up mechanics are one thing, but they should be for punishing a misplay, or to counteract a very greedy play. Your foe floods the board, you AOE, that's good. Your opponent summons a massive minion, or really buffs one, you use removal, that's good.You play suicidally agressive without any care beyond hitting the face, and now you get a massive card advantage despite playing poorly. And yet...if you play against an equally aggressive deck, the card lets you keep the pressure on even then, because it's still a two or three card draw.The ONLY situation where this card isn't good value is if your playing against a deck that never has any cards in hand. Besides face hunter, how many of those decks exist? Even face hunter tends to keep an owl and hunters mark in hand.