Exodia Paladin

Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wildest of Wednesdays is a series aiming to highlight a different off meta deck each week with an in depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.

Today is Twosday! Therefore, we are going to dive into a deck that uses 2/2s to win the game. How is this possible? By using the four 2 mana 2/2 Horsemen from Uther of the Ebon Blade's hero power: Deathlord Nazgrim, Darion Mograine, Inquisitor Whitemane, and Thoras Trollbane. If all four of them are on the board, you win the game. This deck has a strong draw and board clear package to get to this win condition, as well as a variety of ways to pull it off. It also uses Nozdormu the Timeless to ramp mana and play your Uther of the Ebon Blade faster. In honor of Twosday, we hope you enjoy this deck and have the Twoest of wins!

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

Exodia Paladin starts off by drawing a lot, using removals to stall, and ends the game with Uther of the Ebon Blade.

Draw - You have an abundance of draw. You want to draw as much as you can while being careful to avoid milling yourself.

Stall - You have removals in Wild Pyromancer, Equality, Lord Barov, and City Tax and combining those with each other to have 5 mana total board clears. You also have Time Out! and Maiev Shadowsong to stall.

Combo  -  First you play Uther of the Ebon Blade, which can restore 5 hp the turn it's played. Then you can use his hero power 4 times in a row with the power of Auctionmaster Beardo to win the game. You have some support cards to be able to do this, including coins from Mailbox Dancers, discounts from Cariel Roame, and Maiev Shadowsong setup.

Exodia Paladin can win against non-combo decks by using its removals to stall until it gets its combo off. Against combo decks that don't require a 9 mana card as setup, it may be too slow to win unless you can play Nozdormu the Timeless early.

Mulligans

• Keep Crystologys, Knight of Anointments, and a Salhet's Pride. You can consider keeping 2 copies of Salhet's Pride if against a slower deck.
• Keep Nozdormu the Timeless. If you don't have it in hand, keep Redscale Dragontamer.
• If you do have Nozdormu or Dragontamer, you can consider keeping Uther of the Ebon Blade and Auctionmaster Beardo if you have both of them in hand. Also keep some cards that can help you combo if you're going for this, such as Maiev Shadowsong, a Tour Guide, Cariel Roame, or Mailbox Dancers.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck is timing your removals. You have a couple of board clears, and need to time them so that you don't run out of removals while keeping your hp high enough to avoid losing to burst.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Removal Synergies

Equality or Lord Barov + Wild Pyromancer or City Tax is a full clear for 5 mana.

You can use Time Out! and Maiev Shadowsong to stall and then clear the board a turn or two later.

You can play Time Out! and Lord Barov and then Lord Barov will be a clear by himself, as you won't get any face damage from his effect being delayed by a turn.

You can also play Wild Pyromancer along with any spells if you need some damage. You can play Hand of A'dal and Flash of Light on them to get more uses.

Bloodmage Thalnos and City Tax can combine for a 2 damage clear that heals you for 2 for each enemy minion.

Combo Synergies

To win the game, you want to have all four Horsemen from Uther of the Ebon Blade's hero power on board at once.

You can use his hero power 4 times in a turn using Auctionmaster Beardo's effect to refresh it.

You have different ways to get this combo off: First, you can use Tour Guide to discount the initial hero power to cost 0. You can play him even before Uther of the Ebon Blade and the discount will remain. This saves 2 mana.

You can use coins from Mailbox Dancers as cheap spells to both trigger Auctionmaster Beardo and gain mana. 

You can use Cariel Roame to discount Holy spells to have cheaper spells to use on your combo turn with Beardo. You can get your 2 mana spells to cost 1 mana, and save one for the combo turn. A 1 mana non-holy spell you can save is Crystology.

Finally, you can use Maiev Shadowsong on Auctionmaster Beardo to make him Dormant and then combo when he awakens in 2 turns. This saves you 3 mana on your combo turn.

Overall, you need to plan ahead and calculate how you can win using a combination of one or more of these methods. Since this combo is flexible, the only key card that you really need to win is Auctionmaster Beardo. Therefore, you can use Maiev Shadowsong for survival as a way to "freeze" an enemy minion for 2 turns, use your coins to play Uther of the Ebon Blade a turn or two earlier, use all your spells for removal and draw - in general, the flexibility of the combo makes you able to use most of your combo pieces apart from the combo itself.

However, when doing so, you need to make sure that you do leave a way to combo in the hand or deck. Also, if you don't need to use combo pieces, don't use them for no reason and hope to draw others - maybe it's better to just use the ones you have in hand to combo faster if you don't draw your others in time. This calculation will depend on how many cards you have left in the deck, what the situation on the board is, and what combo cards you do have in hand.

Additional Tips

You have to be careful of milling yourself with all your draw. Sometimes you should dump cards from hand, such as a Wild Pyromancer or a Time Out! if you're not getting pressured on the board.

Since Auctionmaster Beardo is your key card to combo, you should try and keep other minions in hand against control decks to minimize the chance that he gets hit by Mutanus the Devourer or Dirty Rat. This may even mean keeping a Tour Guide in hand for longer just to keep Auctionmaster Beardo safe. This deck is generally not too vulnerable to hand disruption as Uther of the Ebon Blade can't be hit by those effects, and Beardo is the only minion you need as you have a variety of different ways to combo.

Time Out! can prevent most combos from beating you, and can be a good play after you have set up a lethal in 2 turns using Auctionmaster Beardo with Maiev Shadowsong, or are drawing to your combo and want to avoid being comboed yourself.

You should play Nozdormu the Timeless as soon as possible in most cases, you will be able to draw while using your cheap 5 mana board clears to control any board your opponent makes.

You should play Time Out! before using Uther of the Ebon Blade's weapon on a turn you are planning to do both. This will make your hero Immune while using the weapon.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

Note: If you don't have Maiev Shadowsong, the combo can still work in other ways. You can replace her with another copy of Wild Pyromancer and still play this deck, although its flexibility will be reduced.

Combo

These cards help you win with the Uther of the Ebon Blade combo. You also use draw and removal spells, really any spells in the deck, to be able to combo.

Ramp

Nozdormu the Timeless lets you ramp to 10 mana early and be able to combo off faster, while Redscale Dragontamer tutors him from your deck. Don't worry about giving your opponent this mana, as you will be able to use your cheap removal and stall cards to hold them off while you draw to your combo.

Removal and Stall

These cards help you survive until you can play your combo. These include removal and healing.

Card Draw

Card draw is important to be able to assemble your combo quickly and consistently.

Exodia Paladin is a deck that uses Uther of the Ebon Blade to win with 2/2 Horsemen. It's the perfect deck to play on this Wildest of Twosdays. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

What are your favorite wild decks? Which off meta decks have you been playing? Share them via our deckbuilder and let us know in the comments below!