Pure Recruit 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 Days 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.

Pure Recruit Paladin is a deck that goes all-in on silver hand recruit synergy. It has plenty of ways to summon and buff them, either with stats or abilities like Divine Shield or even Windfury or Poisonous. This deck got new and powerful support from the latest expansion. Stonehearth Vindicator can draw one of your key spells that summon recruits and set its cost to 0. If it draws Day at the Faire, you can corrupt it with a 1 mana card and then summon 5 recruits. In addition, Dun Baldar Bridge can be played before you summon recruits and then all of your cards that summon silver hand recruits will summon 3/3s instead of 1/1s for 3 turns, which are a lot more powerful. Overall, Pure Recruit Paladin uses a lot of silver hand recruit synergy that got printed over the years with new cards that support this strategy. If you like the flavor of recruits or decks that go wide and then buff their boards, give this deck a try!

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

You build multiple waves of recruits and buff them. Then you keep on buffing them and snowball board control into a win.

Recruit Waves - You have many cards that summon recruits, as well as your hero power. You have buff cards that should be played either before or after to have the recruits buffed. In addition, Crystal Lion provides additional tempo. With the buffs, you should try to dominate the board and push face to win, which can happen quite quickly with all your attack buffs or a potential Windfury.

This deck really only has one strategy, and being so focused around this strategy means almost any card you topdeck helps it and this provides a lot of consistency.

Mulligans

• Keep a Lost in the Jungle, a Righteous Protector, a Shielded Minibot, Stonehearth Vindicators, a Dun Baldar Bridge, and Lothraxion the Redeemed. If you're against a very aggressive deck then don't keep the Bridge and Lothraxion.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is to know when to use your hero power and avoid overcommitting on board to have enough refill for maintaining tempo for the midgame.

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

Try to conserve resources and not overcommit on board, often it’s better to hero power in addition to one of your recruit creating spells than to cast two. You usually only need one wave to survive and often even having 3 or 4 recruits buffed up can end the game.

It's better to buff 3 or 4 recruits than play another summon spell.

You can play Dun Baldar Bridge and then all your Divine Shield minions as well as recruit summoning spells will be extra strong for a few turns. This includes Crystal Lion - dropping lions buffed to 7/7 Divine Shield along with a buffed board of recruits can be very powerful. Dun Baldar Bridge actually corrupts Day at the Faire, so you can play that to summon five 3/3s next turn in addition to having 2 more mana on other cards or hero power.

Righteous Protector can absorb 2 minion attacks and protect a recruit board so that you can buff them.

Salhet's Pride draws Righteous Protector and Stonehearth Vindicators, as well as the second copy of Salhet's Pride itself.

If you draw Day at the Faire with a Stonehearth Vindicator, you can corrupt it with a 1 mana card. Because of this, it may be better to play Stonehearth Vindicator on turn 4 if you have a 1 mana card in hand instead of turn 3.

Lightforged Zealot can be used for board control or for 8 face damage over 2 turns.

Lightfused Stegodon can be very flexible, but the main options you usually look for are 3 attack, Windfury, or Divine Shield. 3 health can be good if their attack has already been buffed to above 1, +1/+1 can be decent, and Poisonous can be great if you're facing big minions. Overall, you'll almost always get a good option for your Adapt.

In general, after you have played Lothraxion the Redeemed, your boards will be a lot more powerful, so you should play him as early as possible if your'e not too behind on the board as this will lead to your future waves being a lot harder to remove meaning you can buff them up more consistently.

Sunkeeper Tarim, in addition to being a buff for 1/1s, also lets you get through taunts or remove any big minions. This can be especially powerful with your divine shielded minions (including recruits that have Divine Shield from Lothraxion the Redeemed, Lightfused Stegodon, or Balloon Merchant).

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.

Recruit Summoning

These cards summon recruits. Use your hero power to summon recruits as well.

Recruit Buffers

These cards buff your recruits.

Standalone Strong Minions

These minions are generally good even if they don't actively summon or buff recruits. They either provide good tempo or card draw.

If you like recruits and buffing them, you'll enjoy this deck. Compared to the quest version of recruit paladin, it doesn't have as strong of a midgame or lategame, but it has a way better early game which makes it able to win games faster. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

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