Hi all, Erik9099 here, bringing you the deck I used to win this past weekend's Master's Challenge Tournament. I've also been playing this deck in top ~50 masters throughout the month to great effect, peaking at rank 1 and currently sitting in the top 10.
I think this is one of the best deck in the game at the moment, and when played optimally I think it's the best deck overall. The core card of this deck is
Svetya's Sanctum, a powerful relic that allows you to amass an army of tokens to gum up the ground and kill your opponent with. However, the deck can easily win without sanctum by playing a traditional control plan, with the maximum amount of card draw in 4 copies of :
Strategize,
Wisdom of the Elders,
Privilege of Rank, and
Honor of Claws. These spells draw you into your removal:
Defiance,
Snowball,
Permafrost,
Ice Bolt,
Clan Tactic,
Pristine Light,
Hailstorm, and
Harsh Rule. The deck is rounded out with 4 merchants to get silver bullets or finishers out of the market, as well as 2 copies of
Martyr's Chains as maindeck finishers. Not only is Chains extremely powerful on its own, but it swiftly transforms your horde of 1/1 and 2/2 sanctum tokens into unstoppable behemoths.
Post-Tournament Changes:
Went up to 4 permas to combat the stonescar menace.
Hope you like the deck!
Defiance
x4
1
Permafrost
x3
2
Eilyn's Favor
x2
2
Ice Bolt
x4
2
Privilege of Rank
x4
2
Re-read
x2
2
Strategize
x2
3
Hailstorm
x4
3
Jennev Merchant
x4
3
Pristine Light
x2
3
Rime Conclave Smuggler
x1
3
Wisdom of the Elders
x4
4
Honor of Claws
x4
5
Harsh Rule
x4
5
Jotun Hurler
x2
6
Svetya's Sanctum
x3
9
Martyr's Chains
x1
Justice Sigil
x7
Primal Sigil
x3
Clan Standard
x3
Cobalt Waystone
x4
Crest of Order
x4
Hooru Insignia
x4
View Deck on Shiftstoned
I don't actually claim to be the best eternal player in the world btw, don't think anyone can make that claim at the moment.
I've played against a mono green deck where they use svetya, merciful orene to buff all units and get aegis. How do you win against this deck using this Hooru control deck?
Thanks for your help.
First off, mono-J isn't a meta deck, so you shouldn't worry too much about it since you won't see it very often. However, there are some more popular decks that have Svetya, Merciful Orene in their market, and she's very hard to beat as hooru control. The main plan to beat her is to cast Royal Decree to turn her into a seek power. You don't even need to onslaught it (assuming they only have svetya in their market), because you only need to nab the 1 copy of svetya. Wait to use decree until the turn before they would cast her, because otherwise you might miss and get hit by a topdecked merchant into svetya. If you fail to do so, you can still sometimes beat her by overwhelming them with sanctum tokens, but its a lot harder.
Cheers,
Erik9099
This is the first control deck I used all of my shards. I like the post-nerf update. I just made it to masters from diamond 2.
Thanks again.
:)
For the "dealing damage" issue, the key is to take things slow and steady. You're playing a very slow control deck, and your card draw is how you're going to win the game. There's no rush to kill the opponent. I usually discard or strategize away sanctum if I draw it in the early game, since I'd just rather have more removal/card draw. Although sanctum is the best way to kill your opponent, a merchant with a palace can do the job in a pinch. You can also merchant for scourge out of the market, which beats most decks on its own.
Attatchment destruction isn't very common to run into in the current meta, but it does pop up on occasion. If you do run into it, my advice is the same as the above. As for avigraft, I would recommend making sure you have a face aegis before making sanctum tokens against decks that run it. You can also hold up ice bolt to kill your own sanctum token in response to the graft.
Primal influence issues are not very common, this is simply a factor of your small sample size of games. I would advise not keeping hands that are missing primal influence, but this shouldn't come up often at all.
There are few-to-none commonly-played aegis units in the current meta, so this is really a function of playing in casual. If you took this deck to a tournament you'd play against very different decks.
The fact is that although Hooru Control is the best deck in the game when played optimally, it's ridiculously difficult to do so. You need to have near-perfect knowledge of what's in your deck as well as your opponent's deck, and be one of the best players in the game. If you can't play it at a near-optimal level, it's really not a good deck at all. My advice would be to either practice a lot more with the deck, or play something a bit easier to master (Praxis Pledge or Stonescar Midrange are good options).
Hope I helped,
Erik9099
To be quite honest, I have never actually played a mirror with this deck. I've played against other versions of hooru control, most of which didnt have chains and just died to my scourge. The addition of chains makes things far more complicated, so this is my best guess of how the matchup will play out.
I am Top5 master and I used an Hooru Control based on your build. I will post the decklist tomorrow, after the deadline for ECQ.