Warrior’s quest returns to the classic archetype of Pirate Warrior, but takes it into a different direction. Pirates have historically been one of the most aggressive tribes yet this quest clashes with it so much by being a control win condition. However, both the Core Set and United in Stormwind do bring a variety of new pirates that lend themselves to a more control orientated deck. Is the quest going to be fast enough to be reasonably completed? Let’s find out!
Parameters for the Statistics
Before jumping into the breakdown, I would first like to give the conditions behind a lot of the calculations you will see in this article and almost all the future ones. In every scenario, I assume the player goes first and hard mulligans everything but the questline to find the key cards to accomplish the quest, and then prioritizes completing the questline with the hypothetical opponent not applying much pressure. In addition to that, unless a percentage is stated, assume that the given scenario will happen 50% of the time. With this out of the way, let us dive into this questline!
Decklist
Quest Completion Breakdown
For the first step of the quest, we need to find 3 pirates. We can expect to have drawn 3 by turn 4 60% of the time. However, when we factor in Harbor Scamp, we can expect to have drawn enough pirates by turn 2. The issue arises when you consider the mana costs. While possible to finish the quest by turn 3, we can expect to finish it turns 4-5 more often due to lacking enough mana.
The second step is just more of the first. On average, we can expect to find a total of 5 pirates by turn 7, which is not great. Harbor Scamp lowers this down to turn 5, and every additional draw through things such as Outrider's Axe or Stonemaul Anchorman also speeds up the turn count by 1. Due to this, we can expect to finish this part of the quest by turn 6-7. Depending on how much we draw.
This brings us to the last step, requiring a total of 7 pirates. This will happen on average by turn 11, which given the late completion of the second step, is not horrendous. One Harbor Scamp lowers this down to turn 9 and two will lower it further to turn 7, meaning we can expect to finish the quest by turn 8-10, depending on how much additional cards we draw.
Reward
The issue then falls upon whether the reward is worth running. Cap'n Rokara herself is a 7/7, and she comes with The Juggernaut] that will start to force the opponent out of the game. To see what The Juggernaut is going to provide for the deck, let’s break down the average rolls for the three outcomes.
Starting with weapons, 33% of the time you’ll get a 3 attack weapon (assuming you have armor for Spiked Wheel), 33% of the time you’ll get a 1 attack weapon, which either buffs up a minion in your hand by a minor amount, or will most likely prevent you from taking damage with Bulwark of Azzinoth, and then finally 11% to get either a 2 attack weapon, a 7 attack weapon or a 4 attack weapon, resulting in the juggernaut giving an average attack weapon of 2.778, which obviously isn’t possible so we’ll just round that up to 3. As for the pirates
Now onto the average pirates. For this I have just averaged out the average attack and health of each pirate, so there are going to be cases where you will get extra value out of the pirate, such as through Stonemaul Anchorman, which also draws a card. The attack averages out to be 2.91 and the health averages out to be 3.41, so we’ll round both which leaves us with a 3/3 per turn, which if I’m being honest, is not that great.
As for the final part of the reward, the 2 two damage pings at the start of every turn are a bit harder to calculate “the average roll” given that its dependent on the opponent’s board. If you want to calculate it for yourself at a given board size, the formula 1/(x+1) if you want to hit something once, or (1/(x+1))^2 if you want to hit something twice.
Wrapping this all together, Cap'n Rokara is a 5 mana 7/7 that gives you 3 damage, a 3/3, and 2 two random damage on the enemy per turn for the rest of the game. For a quest that is fairly easy to complete, this reward is pretty decent overall. However I’m not sure if it, in the form that I’ve made the deck, will be able to compete with more established decks in our current meta game, let alone a meta game with access to more tools.
What are your thoughts on Warrior's Questline? It definitely has potential, and bouncing Rokara and getting multiple Juggernauts is very good, but I'm just not sure if there is enough strong control tools that fit with what Pirates have going on right now. So many of the pirates are low impact later on in the game that you have to rely on Juggernaut pulling its weight and I am just not sure how I feel about it.
Learn More About Stormwind's Other Questlines
We have a whole series of articles planned for the questlines. Here's everything published so far:
- Demon Hunter's Final Showdown Legendary Questline
- Druid's Lost in the Park Legendary Questline
- Hunter's Defend the Dwarven District Legendary Questline
- Mage's Sorcerer's Gambit Legendary Questline
- Paladin's Rise to the Occasion Legendary Questline
- Priest's Seek Guidance Legendary Questline
- Rogue's Find the Imposter Legendary Questline
- Shaman's Command the Elements Legendary Questline
- Warlock's The Demon Seed Legendary Questline
- Warrior's Raid the Docks Legendary Questline
Comments
It seems to me, that this is one of the stronger Quests because it creates "a solid win condition" without big deck limitations because there are enough good pirates available.
I think, this quest has even the potential to see play in Wild. Back in the days where PW was new and half of the ladder was only PW it was a viable strategy to play nothing on turn 1 or even turn 2 so you can combo a ship with a 1 mana pirate at 3 mana to counter the early game board of you enemy when you were lucky with the ship shots. So maybe even in 2021 it could be possible to wait with your first pirate until turn 2 or 3.
With the quest complete the PW will never run out of gas. Time will tell if the quest or the non quest version of PW will be better - maybe depending of the meta.
I can definitely see this card existing in a build of pirate warrior in wild, though I'm not sure if just fitting it into a typical list would work that well. Stuff that is normally very good in that deck, like Patches the Pirate and Parachute Brigand unfortunately do not progress the quest, and for the case of the Brigand, definitely hurt the completion rate of the quest.
As for this quest being "a solid win condition", while true that inevitably will win a game, I am concerned about decks that have their own dedicated late game plan. Stuff like Lord Jaraxxus kinda puts the reward to shame or with a hypothetical Quest Dude paladin having a button that creates 2 5/3 divine shields per turn. We've had slow value win conditions in the past, mainly Lakkari Sacrifice, and while this one is significantly easier to complete, it still runs into the main issue that slow incremental value is typically too slow.