Big 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. To see past decks in this series with updated cards guides, check out the Wild Deck Guide Compendium.

Big Paladin is a deck centered around getting big minions (high cost ones) into play for low cost. Historically, it has used things like Duel! and Prismatic Lens to do this. The latest miniset has given the archetype Front Lines to potentially fill your entire board with big minions, as well as get any combo pieces out of your opponent's deck. In addition, the miniset has brought another great minion to cheat into play, Neptulon the Tidehunter. To be able to play Front Lines early, the deck uses Nozdormu the Timeless to ramp to 10 mana as early as turn 4, and Call to Adventure to tutor him from the deck. The interesting part of Big Paladin compared to many other big decks is that both Duel! and Front Lines can act as disruption by pulling out key opponent minions and being especially good cards against decks with minion based combos. Overall, if you like Big decks or have enjoyed Big Paladin in the past or want to try out Front Lines, 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.

Deck Ratings

Strategies

Big Paladin can get big minions into play at low mana to overwhelm opponents, or it can ramp with Nozdormu the Timeless to be able to play Front Lines.

Big Minions - The main strategy of the deck is big minions, and it has many ways to get them into play early including Duel!, Prismatic Lens, Front Lines, and just playing them after Nozdormu the Timeless.

Survival - The deck uses cards like Equality, City Tax, Lightforged Cariel, and Vitality Surge to provide removal and healing. In addition, many of your minions have either Rush or Taunt and will help with survival as well.

Overall, the deck has a limited amount of threats and can't resurrect them like Big Priest does. However, it can get more threats into play faster as disrupt an opponent's combo strategy with Front Lines and Duel!.

Mulligans

• Keep Nozdormu the Timeless, and a Call to Adventure if you don't have him. If you have one of those, keep a Front Lines. You can also keep Equality and Lightforged Cariel or Brasswing if you have both if you have Nozdormu or Call to Adventure.
• Kep Equality and City Tax if you have both.
• Keep a Duel! or Prismatic Lens, prioritizing Duel! if you have both. You can even keep 2 copies of Duel!.
• You can keep a Desperate Measures if you have either Nozdorumu, Call to Adventure, Duel!, or Prismatic Lens.

Highlights

Turn 3 was coining Nozdormu, turn 4 was this Front Lines, and turn 5 was a win.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is to use Front Lines at the optimal time.

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

Nozdormu Synergy

Call to Adventure always draws Nozdormu the Timeless if he is in your deck. Therefore, you can have him in hand more consistently.

You can ramp to 10 mana to setup Front Lines the following turn. Be careful though, as an Aggro deck will be able to flood the board and Front Lines won't do much. Therefore, if you're going to play Nozdormu against Aggro, you might want to make sure you have some way to counter their board in hand such as a combination of Equality and either City Tax, Brasswing, and Lightforged Cariel.

If you don't have Front Lines in hand, it may be better to just cheat minions into play with Duel! and Prismatic Lens if you have those in hand to give your opponent less mana to react if they are Control and may have board clears. However, if you don't have those then it is often good to ramp even if you don't have Front Lines in hand.

Note that against Druids with 20 mana, Nozdormu can be saved to put them back down to 10.

Front Lines Play

Front Lines doesn't work well if your opponent's board is full - if they have 5 minions it will only summon 2 more for each player. Therefore, in most cases, you want to try and play other big minions or board clear to setup a more powerful Front Lines the following turn.

However, if you're against Aggro and they have 4 minions, getting 3 big minions may be able to win you the game. Keep in mind that Colossal minions like Neptulon the Tidehunter and The Leviathan will summon their appendages when summoned from Front Lines or Duel!.

Late in the game, your deck may have too few minions remaining to play Front Lines effectively, so be careful about that. Try to remember what minions are still in your deck and play around that.

Because so many of your minions have Rush, you will be able to remove most of the minions your opponent summons from Front Lines. Front Lines may be good even if you have few minions left in the deck just to pull out combo pieces such as Malygos or general win condition minions like Kazakusan.

Other Tips

After you play Duel!, if a minion has Rush, it will be able to attack again. This can be powerful with Templar Captain to summon an extra 5/5 Taunt, The Leviathan to Dredge an extra time, and with Neptulon the Tidehunter to potentially deal 8 more damage to 2 enemy minions.

Prismatic Lens usually makes the minion cost a small amount but sometimes, if it hits Front Lines, it may be able to discount it instead.

If you trade a 10 cost City Tax into your deck after a Prismatic Lens, it will still cost 10 the next time you draw it.

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.

Big Minions

The core of Big Paladin are the minions. They're chosen to have immediate board impact the turn they're put into play. Colossus of the Moon and Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound are exceptions but they are in because of how singularly powerful they are.

Big Minion Spells

These spells put Big Minions into play for cheaper than their actual cost.

Nozdormu Package

Nozdormu the Timeless is a key part of this deck, especially for making Front Lines work well, and Call to Adventure is here to tutor it.

Survival

Equality is the key card to activate most of your other removals that deal damage. You also have Desperate Measures for some disruption and as a cheap spell for Prismatic Lens and healing. Lightforged Carielmakes this healing worth more as well as being great on her own and with Equality.

Big Paladin is a very fun deck for both playing with Big Minions that are too slow to see play in most other decks and disrupting opposing combos. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

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Looking for more decks? Look no further than the Wild Deck Guide Compendium to see more decks and guides.