Menagerie Warrior

The Voyage to the Sunken City expansion has just launched, and to celebrate this milestone we're doing an event called Wild Week. Over the next 10 days, there will be one guide a day, one for each class, using as many new cards as possible. Today, we're going to be looking at Menagerie Warrior in Voyage to the Sunken City.

Menagerie Warrior is an archetype first introduced in Darkmoon Faire along with Ringmaster Whatley, Tent Trashers, and Ringmaster's Batons. It's an archetype mostly built around mechs, dragons, and pirates. The latest expansion has brought it Nellie, the Great Thresher, whose 1 mana pirates synergize amazingly with Mr. Smite and handbuffs, and the flexible Amalgam of the Deep which can count as and discover any tribe. Overall, the deck has become a lot better and is a great deck to try if you want to play with the Warrior Colossal.

Past decks in Wild Week can be found here.

If you want to suggest a specific deck archetype to be covered for a particular class, you can comment it to this article and it may be covered during Wild Week or after.

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

Menagerie Warrior uses Rush minions to fight for board control, and can win the game by winning the board. To complement this, it has a lot of Charge damage from hand to win against decks that can keep removing its boards.

Midrange - Use your Rush minions to control the board while using your plentiful draw. Use Ringmaster's Baton and Conditioning (Rank 1) to handbuff your minions and make them even stronger.

Charge Damage - All your handbuffs will help with this, as you use Alexstrasza's Champions and Mr. Smite along with cheap pirates, potentially 1 mana ones from Nellie, the Great Thresher, to win the game off of minions with Charge. Rokara, the Valorous can provide both a hero power that goes face and damage from The Unstoppable Force to make winning with this easier.

You can play as a Midrange deck for most of the game and focus on board control and if needed use that strategy to set up Charge Damage to win.

Mulligans

• Keep card draw. So you'd keep Stage Dives, Town Criers, Corsair Cache, and Ringmaster Whatley.
• Keep an Alexstrasza's Champion, or two if against an aggressive deck.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is to balance playing for the board and for Charge.

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

Amalgam of the Deep is your key card that counts as all tribes. Remember this for buffing from Ringmaster's Baton and also that it works with Mr. Smite.

For Mr. Smite, you can use any pirates that you handbuff including Amalgams, and specifically if you can handbuff some high attack 1-cost pirates from Nellie, the Great Thresher you can get close to 30 Charge damage.

Blademaster Samuro can be buffed either through Stage Dive or Conditioning (Rank 1).

Don't use Conditioning too early, you should often save it to turn 5 at least to use it for tempo, if against a Control deck save it for after Nellie, the Great Thresher.

You can start pushing face damage with various things to set up a Mr. Smite finisher in a few turns, including handbuffed Alexstrasza's Champions and Rokara, the Valorous's weapon.

Remember that Zilliax can magnetite to any mech including Amalgams.

Onyxian Drake is generally good stats and Taunt but you can activate its Battlecry through Eternium Rovers, hero powering, and Rokara, the Valorous armor gain and hero power.

Corsair Cache draws a Ringmaster's Baton.

Don't be afraid to use a Ringmaster Baton even if it only hits one or two minions, and remember it can always hit an Amalgam.

Don't always play minions too early, sometimes you want to keep one of a specific type in hand for longer to be buffed by the Baton.

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.

Pirates

These are the pirates in the deck.

Mechs

These are the mechs in the deck.

Dragons

These are the dragons in the deck.

Handbuffs

These cards handbuff your minions.

Charge and Damage

These cards provide damage without needing to have minions on the board first. Blademaster Samuro is your key anti-Aggro card, able to clear a board with buffs. Nellie, the Great Thresher provides three 1-cost pirates for Mr. Smite.

Draw

Card draw is very important to get to your Charge and Handbuff cards consistently. Overlord Saurfang draws 2 cards as he resurrects and triggers the Frenzies of Stonemaul Anchormans.

Menagerie Warrior is a Midrange deck using the new Warrior Colossal and Amalgam. It has both a Midrange feel and also a sort of Combo feel to it as well. 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!