Sidequest decks

Has anyone tried making a deck with Questing Explorer, Licensed Adventurer and Sky Gen'ral Kragg and activating those cards via sidequests instead of main quests?

For Druid, the main quest more or less builds the deck for you, so I thought that would be an interesting class to try this on. This was the result: (click it for the guide with more details)

Did anyone else try using sidequests like this? And if so, what were the results?

You want to summon big minions with druid sidequest so putting these small ones is contraproductive

Quote From Alfi

You want to summon big minions with druid sidequest so putting these small ones is contraproductive

I was afraid of that when creating the deck, but it turns out that if you have 4 minions, of which you'll typically catch one in your opening hand, in a minion-rich deck, the chances of summoning a small minion are pretty low. And if you do summon one after playing Embiggen, you get a yeti in stats, which isn't bad for a 1-mana investment.

Just my observations;

The decklist removes many of the cards you would prefer to have hit with Strength in Numbers. Plus, there is a notable absence of taunts, and in its place you get a ramp for 1, and/or draw for 1. Not a very good trade off considering the meta currently (Galakrond warrior and rogue, dragon hunter).

Escaped Manasaber, Licensed Adventurer, Alexstrasza, and Secure the Deck all in one deck, usually means combo but your deck doesnt have any combo that OTKs or TTKs. If tempo is the game, then not having Oasis Surger or Faceless Corruptor, or Scalerider means you have few mid game tempo swing cards, and very vulnerable to mech pally or dragon hunter.

I think its best to rework the deck to fit Gonk, the Raptor. But dont let me stop you, I would be interested to know your win rate with this list.

I made up a side quest hunter deck and tried it out a little.

It feels like I've made a slightly confused deck. But it is reasonably fun to play.

Quote From dapperdog

Escaped Manasaber, Licensed Adventurer, Alexstrasza, and Secure the Deck all in one deck, usually means combo but your deck doesnt have any combo that OTKs or TTKs. If tempo is the game, then not having Oasis Surger or Faceless Corruptor, or Scalerider means you have few mid game tempo swing cards, and very vulnerable to mech pally or dragon hunter.

I'm not sure Alexstrasza really should be in the deck. She's useful if you haven't been able to get your opponent's life total down enough because of armor or Zilliax, but there have been games where I was above 15 health and my opponent below 15 by the time I could play her, and even more games that were over on turn 7/8.

Faceless Corruptor is a great card if you have a small minion on board, but that's not often the case with this deck. Oasis Surger might be a good addition; I chose to include more dragons instead but I'm not sure what's better. Scalerider would add another low roll to the sidequest; maybe it's good enough to make that an acceptable risk, similar to Questing Explorer and Licensed Adventurer, but so far I haven't really missed it: many decks seem to either go so wide that you need Swipe or they don't play anything significant until turn 5.

Quote From dapperdog

I think its best to rework the deck to fit Gonk, the Raptor. But dont let me stop you, I would be interested to know your win rate with this list.

I like Gonk, but for a Gonk combo you need a lot of support cards, which means the combo would dictate the entire deck. Maybe just having Gonk and the sidequest could work, but in practice the Claw damage often goes face, so I have some doubts about Gonk's added value.

I haven't been keeping stats, plus I don't play at highly competitive ranks anyway (currently at rank 13) since I only play a handful of games per day and most of what I play is experimental and off-meta decks.

Quote From frenzy

I made up a side quest hunter deck and tried it out a little.

It feels like I've made a slightly confused deck. But it is reasonably fun to play.

Nice!

The deck does indeed look a bit confused about its identity, with the rush minions, face damage and dragons all in there. There doesn't seem to be a lot of synergy between those packages.

Maybe beasts instead of dragons would work? The rush package already consists of beasts and Phase Stalker and Kill Command would synergize with the other sidequest. Revenge of the Wild would also be good with Sky Gen'ral Kragg.

I think you'd probably want two copies of Tracking, so that if you don't get a sidequest in your opening hand, you can go fish for it.

I think team5 purposefully created the sidequests in such a way that they dont synergize well with one another and that's my impression with druid sidequests. I can fully empathize with players who dont chase up ranks and merely want to have a good time (I alternate between gaining ranks with meta decks, then losing them all with a fun experimental deck), but I feel deck building should be made with the meta in mind. In this case, I'm particularly worried that the entire deck can be taken down with nothing more than a Faerie Dragon on 2, and Evasive Feywing on 4, both are currently in two of the top tier decks, hence the Scaleriders.

Maybe remove the Escaped Manasabers for Oasis Surgers, or Evasive Feywings? Remove alex + 1x ferocious howl for 2x Winged Guardian. At least with this there's a good chance you can steamroll rogue, and have a decent chance against dragon hunter.

Quote From dapperdog

I think team5 purposefully created the sidequests in such a way that they dont synergize well with one another and that's my impression with druid sidequests.

They created sidequests with different synergies, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're in conflict.

In the case of Druid, getting 3 copies of Claw is very flexible, since you can use it as removal or as burn depending on what you need in a particular game.

I have made a few attempts at a Sidequest Mage deck today, but that was a big disappointment. Part of the problem is the current elementals aren't good enough in this rush-heavy meta: for example Fire Hawk often becomes 7/3, but I wasn't able to do any face damage with it. But another part is in the sidequests themselves: Elemental Allies works best with cheap spells (because of their abilities and because it's easier to keep the elemental chain going if you can play more than one card per turn) while Learn Draconic works best with more expensive spells. So for Mage, I do think the sidequests are difficult to fit into the same deck.

I have some ideas for a Sidequest Beast Hunter, but I don't really want to craft a second Toxic Reinforcements since if the idea fails I may never play that card again.

For Paladin, maybe Air Raid is the card that brings both sidequests together.

Quote From dapperdog

In this case, I'm particularly worried that the entire deck can be taken down with nothing more than a Faerie Dragon on 2, and Evasive Feywing on 4, both are currently in two of the top tier decks, hence the Scaleriders.

Maybe remove the Escaped Manasabers for Oasis Surgers, or Evasive Feywings? Remove alex + 1x ferocious howl for 2x Winged Guardian. At least with this there's a good chance you can steamroll rogue, and have a decent chance against dragon hunter.

Meta is a weird thing. Last week I encountered mostly Rogue, Mage and Priest, while today I got five Hunters in a row. None of them were playing Dragon Hunter though (one Quest, one Mech, one Face and two different Beast variants).

I agree that Alex and Howl are candidates for replacement. I don't want to lose the Manasabers though: being able to ramp into Emerald Explorer or Evasive Wyrm can really decide games.

Quote From Zelgadis

Meta is a weird thing. Last week I encountered mostly Rogue, Mage and Priest, while today I got five Hunters in a row. None of them were playing Dragon Hunter though (one Quest, one Mech, one Face and two different Beast variants).

True. I think the nearer you get to the safe zones (rank 15,10,5 etc.) the weirder ladder gets. But all the better for it.

Quote From Zelgadis

I have made a few attempts at a Sidequest Mage deck today, but that was a big disappointment. Part of the problem is the current elementals aren't good enough in this rush-heavy meta: for example Fire Hawk often becomes 7/3, but I wasn't able to do any face damage with it.

You can still try double sidequest mage, with Chenvaala and Mana Cyclone. If you get Elemental Evocation+Chenvaala on turn 1, its very favorable towards you from then on. I've tried quest+Learn Draconic cyclone mage. Kinda nice, can win some games but absolutely impossible to beat priest and face hunter. Ditch the Fire Hawk. Nearly every tier 1-2 mulligan for some 3 damage card.

Quote From Zelgadis

For Paladin, maybe Air Raid is the card that brings both sidequests together.

I've actually forgotten that pure pally plays both sidequests. But none play the quest synergy cards. Yeah, this class is perhaps the best to do double sidequest with. Mostly because the conditions for it is too general.