Hearthstone
Drek’Thar, Tax Collector
- Aggro Paladin
- Wild
- Casual
Drek'Thar has been released and is ready to see play in many wild decks. This week, he is becoming a Tax Collector. One of the best decks to make full use of Drek'thar is Tax Paladin. Tax Paladin is an archetype using multiple cards which increase the cost of your opponent's cards, and a secret package to interfere with your opponent's plans even more. Drek'thar is extremely powerful here to summon 2 minions from your deck. The deck already uses minions costing 3 or less, and there are no understatted battlecries, so his condition is easy to meet and his effect is always great. One of the key cards of the deck has always been Call to Arms, and Drek'thar acts as a third, often better, copy of it that thins your deck and provides tempo early in the game. If you like this sort of playstyle, help Drek'Thar collect taxes before the new expansion comes out and play this deck!
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
This is an aggressive deck with a disruptive strategy.
Aggression - You have multiple ways to build boards including Drek'Thar, Call to Arms, and Dun Baldar Bridge and small minions. You can also buff your minions and use secrets to protect your board. You want to have buffed minions and snowbally minions like Crossroads Gossiper protected by taunts so they can push face damage.
Disruption - Use the disruption strategy to slow down other decks while your aggression wins the game. You can make opponent's cards and especially battlecries cost more and mess up their spells to slow down any board development, card draw, and clears.
This deck does really well against most other aggressive decks, and can usually slow down combo enough to win. Control decks with multiple board clears are its worst matchup but Oh My Yogg! and Never Surrender! can get you the win even then.
Mulligans
Keep Call to Arms (both copies if you have them) and Drek'Thar. If you don't have a single one of these, you need to mulligan your entire hand to try and get one of them.
If you have one of those, keep 1 and 2 cost minions and Sword of the Fallen. The exception is don't keep Nerub'ar Weblord if you have Drek'Thar.
If you have a Righteous Protector and are going first, keep Hand of A'dal.
Gameplay
The general gameplan is to generate boards and then start pushing face damage with your bigger minions while your small and sticky taunt divine shield minions, secrets, and disruption slow down your opponent's plans.
Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.
Secret Synergies
You have 3 secrets in this deck, one copy of Never Surrender! and two copies of Oh My Yogg! and Redemption. Use Never Surrender! and Oh My Yogg! to protect your board from a removal spell, and use Redemption to get another taunt, divine shield minion, or Crossroads Gossiper.
Something to note is that when Crossroads Gossiper is resurrected by this secret, he will immediately gain +2/+2.
Don't play Oh My Yogg! if your opponent still has the coin, unless you really want tempo and countering their coin feels worth it. You can play another secret first and make them test for Oh My Yogg! with the coin or other small spells, which will make your Oh My Yogg! more likely to counter a big spell when you do play it.
Use Sword of the Fallen to get secrets played from your deck. In addition to getting the secrets in play, this is a great deck thinning effect to improve your future draws. If you have a secret in hand, play it before using the weapon if you want the weapon to have a higher chance of getting a different secret - otherwise the weapon may get the same type of secret you have in hand and you will be unable to play it.
Board Synergy
If you have the choice, always play Drek'Thar before playing Call to Arms.
You should try to play Dun Baldar Bridge before Drek'Thar or Call to Arms if you can and are not too far behind on tempo.
You can often control what 3 drop you will get back from Rally!. If you need tempo, try to cast it before playing Mindbreakers to get a Crossroads Gossiper, while if you need hero power disruption do the opposite.
Blessing of Authority is one of the most powerful cards to be able to finish games. It gives great tempo and the ability to trade well the turn you use it, especially if you use it on a divine shield minion like Murgur Murgurgle. You can then keep going face with the minion while using your taunts and disruption to keep it protected and win the game in a few turns.
Kotori Lightblade will repeat Hand of A'dal and Blessing of Authority.
The other main finisher of the deck is a growing Crossroads Gossiper that can also keep going face while you protect it and slow down your opponent’s gameplan with your disruption and secrets.
Disruption Synergies
Far Watch Posts can be protected by taunts and increase the cost of cards your opponents draw. This is especially powerful against decks that draw a lot, like combo decks.
Nerub'ar Weblord will slow down your opponent's battlecry minions. Your deck is mostly unaffected, however the exception is Drek'Thar is a battlecry minion. Therefore, if you have him in hand it's usually better to play him before you play any Nerub'ar Weblords and before you play Call to Arms which can summon a weblord.
Although there is a bit of anti synergy here, in practice it is not an issue if you just play Drek'Thar before getting your weblords going. If you draw Drek'Thar later and your weblords are on the board, either they will be removed or if your opponent is unable to remove them you should generally win the game anyway.
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.
Secret Package
Secrets and cards that synergize with them.
Taunt and Divine Shield Minions
Taunts are great to protect your key finisher minions and divine shield minions work great with buffs.
Disruption
Disruption cards slow down your opponent's gameplan by increasing the cost of their cards.
Board Generation
These cards generate boards. Getting boards of 3 minions for only for 4 mana and in the case of the first two also thinning your deck is very powerful. This is the main engine that makes the deck work, and Drek'Thar is an amazing addition to it. Compared to Call to Arms resulting in 3 one or two cost minions on the board, Drek'Thar results in a 4/4 and 2 one, two, or three cost minions. Dun Baldar Bridge is great for making the boards you summon more of a threat.
Buffs
These buffs are especially good with divine shield minions and help you trade well, maintain board control, and create big finisher minions. Kotori Lightblade can double Holy buffs.
While we are waiting for the next expansion to come out, if you chose Drek'Thar as your free legendary, consider playing him in this deck. It's a unique playstyle with both tempo and disruption. This deck is actually quite strong and unlike most decks on this series, can even do well in diamond ranked. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.
Vote On This Deck!
Enjoy this deck guide? Help others find it and show your support to the author by giving it an upvote!
11Update #5
Card changes 2 years, 7 months ago (Sunken City Nerfs)
Update #4
Card changes 2 years, 9 months ago (Kazakusan Nerf)
Update #3
Card changes 2 years, 10 months ago (Battlegrounds Buddies)
- Righteous Protector 2
- Far Watch Post 2
- Annoy-o-Tron 2
- Crossroads Gossiper 2
- Sword of the Fallen 2
- Conviction (Rank 1) 2
- Drek'Thar 1
- Dun Baldar Bridge 2
Update #2
Card changes 2 years, 10 months ago (Battlegrounds Buddies)
- Call to Arms 2
- Shielded Minibot 2
- Drek'Thar 1
- Hand of A'dal 2
- Righteous Protector 2
- Far Watch Post 2
- Crossroads Gossiper 2
- Sword of the Fallen 2
- Conviction (Rank 1) 2
- Never Surrender! 1
- Dun Baldar Bridge 2
- Annoy-o-Tron 2
- Blessing of Authority 2
- Oh My Yogg! 2
Update #1
Card changes 2 years, 10 months ago (Battlegrounds Buddies)
- 00
- 01
- 02
- 03
- 04
- 05
- 06
- 07+
- 1 Never Surrender! x 1
- 1 Oh My Yogg! x 2
- 1 Redemption x 2
- 1 Righteous Protector x 2
- 2 Hand of A'dal x 2
- 2 Kotori Lightblade x 1
- 2 Murgur Murgurgle x 1
- 2 Ring of Courage x 2
- 2 Sword of the Fallen x 2
- 4 Call to Arms x 2
- 4 Dun Baldar Bridge x 2
- 5 Blessing of Authority x 2
- 2 Annoy-o-Tron x 2
- 2 Far Watch Post x 2
- 2 Nerub'ar Weblord x 2
- 3 Crossroads Gossiper x 2
- 4 Drek'Thar x 1
More Aggro Paladin Decks
More Decks From Swizard
Leave a Comment
You must be signed in to leave a comment. Sign in here.
Comments
Righteous Inferno
For the Hoard!
Awesome my friend! Played a bit with this one yesterday to test my shiny Drek'Thar and it feels great disrupting the Tier 1 decks, when it works. Nerub'ar Weblord against Pirate Warrior is hilarious. Against Odd Hunter though, they are so strong against board based decks that even Mindbreaker couldn't stop them (they just kill it with spells). It may slow them down, though.
I made some changes for testing purposes. Blessing of Kings in place of Authority because cheaper, and speed is everything in this meta. Galloping Savior felt underwhelming. Double Conviction (Rank 1) is a must-have IMO because frequently you just lack burst to win the race against the T1 folks. Good ol' Knife Juggler always an option, to not run out of creatures to tutor. I don't like the Rally or the Gossipers so I'm subbing them out for the moment.
Lemme know what u think. Also, if you think this is a real contender or just a meme. Didn't feel strong enough to me, as it's too dependent on the tutor effects and still loses most of the time to the holy trinity.
GREAT deck name, by the way!
I personally went 3-0 against Odd hunters and 3-1 against pirate quest warriors. However, I didn’t test it too much against meta decks, I really don’t like this meta so I am only playing in casual (I broke a legend streak of over a year last month, I’m tired of playing against those 3 decks all the time). Try first playing other minions and then use Mindbreaker later when they have used their spells to remove other minions. Overall I’m not sure how good this deck is in the meta although based on my limited experience with it (I only got one day to play with it before releasing it) it did feel very strong.
Only played a few games but my first impression is that Siegfrieddo has a point. The deck needs more damage output, Conviction instead of Authority sounds like a good idea. If Hunters prove to be a really big problem there's always Robes of Protection. Very cool idea anyway, positive win rate so far. Thanks for sharing!
But to be honest I stopped playing wild ranked the 3rd month of Stormwind, it gets very dull facing the same 3 decks over and over. I play only wild casual where I face a really diverse meta - sometimes the tier 1 decks but way less often. Therefore, my decks for the off meta series are truly off meta and aren’t as optimized for climbing. They are generally more focused on being fun to play and using some lesser seen cards and I wouldn’t really recommend trying to climb with any of them (people can just use tier 1 decks to climb). When I optimize the decks I am keeping in mind a very varied meta rather than a narrow meta like diamond ranked. I recommend people play them in casual or lower mmr (for example either below diamond or if you lose mmr after reaching Legend). So overall I don’t know how good this deck will do in a meta where you face the same 3 decks most of the time. I personally beat them more often than not when I faced them in casual but it was a pretty low sample size.
Authority is really good, I think it’s better to cut Mindbreakers than Authority if you want to put in Conviction. Depends on how many hunters you face of course. The thing about Robes of Protection is they can still target face while Mindbreaker completely shuts them down, and is also great to stop Even Warlock from drawing.