Hello everyone, this is Tritros and I have decided to start writing articles on some of the various deck ideas I have come up with. To begin this I decided on the Hoarding Hero deck. Hoarding Hero is a minion that doesn’t see competitive play mainly due to his lackluster effect and his glaring weakness. Like other decks that buff a single minion, wasting multiple cards on one guy is not the best game plan however because Hoarding Hero cares about items they aren't really costing you a real card, but an item card which a lot of Purple minions generate it is a bit more feasible.
The Deck
So when we take a look at Purple there are some items we would like on our Hero. The first one is the Healing Potion, this might sound weird but with the potion you can summon hero on turn 3 as a 4/4 which is pretty decent. The next one is the Wok Shield for a boost of health and that sweet armor 1. Next on the list is the bane of aggro, the one and only Biting Blade from Sword Saint. The last one of course comes from the dragon turtle Terragon with the Adamant Pearl. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at the first list I came up with.
Now, the first version of the deck was decent and got me into Mythril. It has a solid body and can look for a Freki Sidecar that will take over the game if it is not answered. However there were a few problems with it.
It wasn't that good once it fell behind, and had trouble reestablishing the board.
The main bad matchup for the deck was valks that drew troll on turn 4. If this happened there was a low chance of winning.
The deck was a fun little tempo deck that plays out its minions and could throw down a hero with a Shield and Sword and carry games by himself. I took it into a tournament and got fifth having lost to Cardine on valks and knew I could make the deck better so I went back to the drawing board.
Now we get to the new and improved version of the hoarding hero deck. This version of the deck is more suited to the more aggressive meta that this season brought. The deck brings some nice early aggression and can carry into the late games vs some more control decks. The plan of attack is to tempo out your minions and look for the horn finisher that everyone loves. It has an extra Terragon for a big body and the pearl is never bad. Now we will go over the average game plan and some of the fun things you can do with the deck.
The Game Plan
First thing you want to do is burn your enchantments since you are playing rainbow and it is the main card draw of the deck. Like all rainbow decks there are times to play enchants but they should be first on the burn list unless you are fighting rush and have Red Cliffs. Red Cliffs is a good answer to rush and you can shut down some decks by just throwing a decent minion on top of the cliffs because everyone knows the high ground is all powerful.
With Hoarding Hero you have to remember there is a time and place to play him.
Against aggro a turn 5 hero with a Wok Shield and a Biting Blade will be a great way to stabilize and win the game.
Hero is pretty safe on turn 4 if you have a Wok Shield however if you only have a blade it can be risky.
Against yellow he is pretty safe right after a Misanthropia or on turn 3 with a health potion.
Against valks hero might just be kicked out of the club by an enforcer which will set you behind if he was carrying anything except for a potion. If you do not get hero, do not be afraid to throw your items on a Terragon and swing for the fences.
So now that we have a base strategy and know some of the nuances of Hoarding Hero lets look at one of the games I had in ranked.
A Sample Game
So with this hand there is a pretty simple plan. You are going to burn the enchantments and curve out your item generating minions. So you burn Neo-Gangnam and play out your Simuzen for a battle chef next turn. All we are trying to get is a nice foothold on the board and see what kind of deck the opponent came with.
Ok so it was harder to stay on the board than we thought it would be but we did manage to have Freki Sidecar survive on the Red Cliffs. Now at this point in the game Master of Shadows is pretty useless because we are fighting YP control who have all the answers for him so he is an easy burn. We play Terragon on the left of sidecar and kill the Meso Libre. They have a choice of killing Terragon or the Freki Sidecar and we can get a nice cleanup with Magnus.
Well our plan to clear up with Magnus went off without a hitch. Sadly Terragon got eaten up by Sapo so he is a lost cause. Luckily we top decked everyone’s "go to nerf" Allfather's Horn. So we are going to set up for a horn lethal by moving Magnus to the right playing Hoarding Hero with a shield all that way on the left and coining out Sword Saint on Red Cliffs so we don't take 8 damage to the face.
The enemy decides not to block with the Celestial Dragon which turns out to be a fatal mistake for them. Easy horn lethal by throwing all the items on the hero and swinging for victory. Now against yellow knowing when to commit hero is a tricky business. Misanthropia is a scary foe but for hero items can keep him alive and doing damage,
Because sometimes Heroes Never Die.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article shines some light of one of my favorite Purple cards in the game right now. Hopefully with the next expansion some new item generators come out and this hero can finally be meta. I hope everyone can have as much fun as I have had with this amazing card and learn that Purple has some fun decks to play.