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JPS Keelo (Top 64 ECQ and top 20 ladder)

Expedition Deck By
LordPerth
LordPerth+2561
Team Not-Tavrod

+2

Cost Curve

Type

Faction

Information

This is the deck I took to the recent ECQ and with wich I reached the top 64 (17:11), where I lost in the first round to Watchwolf. I also reached top 20 on expedition ladder with it. The deck is mostly played around Rolant, who is great at countering the popular token and aggro decks. Backbreaker and Keelo are the other really important cards. Keelo helps with generating value over long time if you can protect it or she can just search you Rolant to snowball from there. Backbreaker helps with bigger units, but also tokens and it can apply preasure on empty boards.
Your optimal starting hand includes at least 3 power (including Chants or Petitions, optimally focused on justice) and a Merchant. Small removal (Suffocate, Blightmoth) or just a 2 drop can be great too (sometimes also Rolant, depending on your powerbase). The first 2 to 3 turns are usually just power/influence fixing and playing small removal if needed. Optimally you can play a Merchant to grab Keelo on turn 3, but 4 is usually enough. Then you usually try to setup rolant, optimally with Bubble Shield in hand and snowball the game from there with the card advantage from Keelo and the valks from Rolant. The alternativ plans are Backbreaker beatdown, Restrained Action or Damara stealing a wincondition (and against aggro you sometimes just win with some removal and solid units).
Good luck and have fun!

Expedition Information

Expedition #13
August 10-31, 2020

Details

Shiftstone Cost
Does not include campaign cost
51,100
Premium Cost
232,000
Influence Requirements
4 2 2
Power Sources
19 7 11 12
Power Calculator
Shiftstoned Icon View Deck on Shiftstoned
Deck Rarities
8 31 22 11
Card Types
30 5 20 0 25
Contains Cards From Campaigns
Whispers of the Throne [Set1085]
Shadow of the Spire [Set1087]
Archetype
Midrange
Added
August 23, 2020
Views
1,358
Eternal Version
Argent Depths
BBCode For Comments
Deck URL
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Comments

djwarpt Eternal Version: 20.08.10
Thanks Lord for this one. This is still my favorite deck of the format since it is woefully underappreciated. I went 16-12 with my Argenport version in the ECQ, but this deck is strictly better. The use of Keelo in the market has to be one of the coolest Expedition tricks out there, and imho it is just better than running main. I would never have come up with that.
I didn't make any major changes, but I do prefer Just Desserts to Annihilate because you can do some really nasty stuff with Rolant, but that could be overkill. Also, I did add one copy of Makkar's Stranger because it just seemed like a more relevant pull with Keelo a lot of the time. But I can't really argue with any of the choices, and the market is amazing. Good job!
LordPerth Eternal Version: 20.08.10
Thanks. Just Desserts was part of the deck for some time, but Annihilate felt better as a proactive answer for stuff like Mother of Skies or similar units that are either not attacking or have a lot more health than attack. Makkars Stranger sounds good, I did run 2 Vorlunk Corpses for a long time so a second 5 drop doesnt sound bad. I got the idea with Keelo out of the market because Murderofcrows played it that way against me once and it felt pretty good, but Watchwolfs list with Keelo in the main is pretty good too, so both ways seem valid (Watchwolf beat me in the first round and got top 8, so it is probably even better).
djwarpt Eternal Version: 20.08.10
Yes, I saw Watchwolf's deck also, and I think he probably was favored against you unfortunately based on the principle that with similar decks the greedier one generally wins. So it's really unlucky that you had to face off in Round 1 because if you hadn't played him, the other matchups seem quite good. In general, excessive greed in Expedition is not a good idea because of the large number of aggro decks (Skycrag in particular.) I definitely think your deck has a better matchup against Skycrag Aggro because the smugglers are decent enough to hold their own whereas Keelo can be pretty slow. Often enough, you just draw a Rolant, and you can skip right to the midgame without ever needing Keelo, and then the smuggler can pull an Unseen Execution or Restrained Action to put them away. In that sense, I think it's important to consider options like Keelo in the market for Tempo decks as opposed to running 4 main for a traditional value/control strategy.