Introduction:

Death Knight was one of my most anticipated additions to Hearthstone ever since I started playing in Beta (still got my Gelbin Mekkatorque sitting around waiting for his resurgence into the light…) Having played a lot of the class back in my WoW days, I was eager to see Death Knight and its different flavors of runes make the leap to Hearthstone. So I waited….and waited……and left the game for a while before coming back years later….and waited a few more years before the class was finally added into the game this past year. I jumped into Wild, my preferred format, built some rough first drafts of decks….and then found that DK was having a hard time finding success in the format at launch. That’s not to say there weren’t powerful options out there, but they quickly coalesced around mechanics and deckbuilding requirements separate from the class itself: good ol’ highlander and even decks. While these decks were and are still quite fun, I really wanted to try making something different even if it wasn’t going to do as well on the Ranked ladder. 

Fast forward one expansion and rotation to the reveals for Festival of Legends. Being the player I am, I was immediately drawn to a new flashy-legendary-that-could-drive-a-whole-deck-type-but-probably-wont-see-much-experimentation-due-to-not-great-results-on-Ranked-ladder: Cage Head. I knew immediately that I wanted to mess around with this card as much as possible in an effort to have something else to play besides Even DK or a variant of Reno DK. Armed with that determination and a fair amount of YouTube & Twitch research, I set out making the deck you see here.

This deck is something between a combo deck and a midrange deck, not really living entirely in either world but dipping its toe into each. You generally fight for board and drive up your corpse count in the early game while using a few clear effects and discovers to help you gain a foothold. Once you get to the mid/late game you turn your attention to Blight Boar’s lead guitarist and his supporting artists to send wave after wave of comically oversized and over-keyworded boars directly at the opponent’s face for a burst of lethal damage. While I have actually had a good amount of success with this deck both in Casual and on ladder so far, it definitely performs better into slower control decks than the melt your face hyper aggro that is more common in Wild. That being said, it has held its own against the likes of Pirate Rogue and Even Shaman, if you get good draw and control the board as much as possible. Keep that in mind should you decide to join the band. 

The Headliner:

At the most basic level, the goal of the deck is to get Cage Head down on board as soon as possible while also killing it on the same turn if you are able so that he doesn’t fall prey to transform effects so that his deathrattle can be transferred to Boneshredder on a later turn. Important note: Silence is not the end of the world! Boneshredder will still look for and copy Cage Head’s effect as long as he died a Cage Head, even if his deathrattle was not triggered. Cards like Polymorph, Hex, Devolve and Devolving Missiles (yes, I was hit by someone maindecking missles recently) are your main enemies with this deck. Priests and their silences are not so bad. The immediate destruction of Cage Head is hopefully accomplished by a pre-set Construct Quarter, although depending on mana and the situation Unholy Frenzy can do in a pinch. That card in particular deserves its own section for its myriad applications in this deck, which can be found below. Boneshredder becomes a board on demand and a follow-up boar later, twice or four times if you can get Brann Bronzebeard to stick. 

Death Growl is a super unique and fun card that I am excited to see grow in utility over the years. In this deck, its main target is obviously Cage Head or a triggered Boneshredder. Keep in mind, like I didn’t initially, that all of the deathrattles will be spread with this card even though they only show up as one deathrattle on the beneficiaries. This means that, should you live the ultimate greed dream, a Boneshredder with Brann Bronzebeard on the board will give each of his neighbors two boars to summon upon their deathrattle. This can get silly, very easily. 

SUPER IMPORTANT: THIS IS A DECK/COMBO THAT CAN BE RELIANT ON BOARD POSITIONING! *GASP* It feels like I haven’t played a deck that can rely on placement like this for a long time. The most important thing to keep in mind is that Boneshredder will always summon his battlecry boar to his right. This means that Death Growl can get a little awkward to play with him, because you will be passing a deathrattle to the first boar you are summoning, along with whatever minion is pulling its best The Falcon impression and coming up on his left. This is important, because ideally you are able to trade right away with whatever minions you are giving the deathrattles to so that they too are safe from silence or transform effects. It also means that you unfortunately can’t give a Boneshredder deathrattle to a hero power Ghoul due to the battlecry going off. Short story long, always make sure your Cage Head and Boneshredder are between minions you can actively trade with to maximize the deathrattles you have available. You want to avoid leaving deathrattles on board as much as possible unless you know you are against a deck that has no way of negating them. 

The last note for this section: remember that Blight Boar has charge. I know this sounds stupid, and I am for not realizing this immediately, but if you need to use an Unholy Frenzy to clear tall minions with boars on board…they are resummoned ready to attack again and charge right at the enemy. This also would trigger any deathrattles you might have been forced to spread to a boar due to the Boneshredder placement, and can also give you a wave on unexpected boars. Seriously, it can go from zero to utterly stupid very quickly. 

Opening Acts:

These are the cards that are meant to bridge the gap and get you to your Cage Head finisher. There’s not a ton to say about these, so I’ll be more brief. Generally speaking, these cards are here to help you gain and hold a board presence, in a sort of midrange deck fashion like the Unholy rune is accustomed to doing in other decks. The difference here is that you are not building up to a Grave Strength or Lord Marrowgar finisher, rather just making sure you don’t fall terribly far behind by using removal and smart trades. These are the cards I try to mulligan for as well, unless I know for sure I am facing a slower deck that won’t run me over in the first few turns. Battlefield Necromancer and Blightfang are vital against aggro, the latter of which benefits greatly from an emergency Death Growl if you need to buy a few more turns to get to the good stuff. Nerubian Swarmguard may not have any buffs in this deck to directly benefit from, but each one does provide three corpses and soak up some damage in the name of giving you as much time as possible. Plus, there’s always a chance you discover some kind of buff from Nerubian Vizier to make them a little beefier. Hardcore Cultist has been useful in testing to further protect myself from aggro, but can be awkward to fit into turns depending on what you need to get done to set up combos later on. 

Your secondary/tertiary goal with all of these minions is to stockpile at least five, if not ten corpses if possible. These will fuel Boneshredder later on as the true win condition of the deck. Be careful, it took me a few mistakes to remember that Brann Bronzebeard means each Boneshredder is going to eat ten corpses if possible, not just five. 

Lorekeeper Polkelt is here as the other Wild addition to this deck to help us curve into Cage Head as consistently as possible. Just keep in mind that any time you play him you are massively telegraphing that you are looking for your next few cards. It may be wise to hold onto Polkelt in some situations to prevent the odd Gnomeferatu or Movement of Envy play that will basically shut you down entirely. Alternatively, you can Polkelt into some discovered card draw such as Defrost to get him into hand if you believe it to be safe to do so. If Cage Head does somehow get burned, it’s probably best to go to your next game. However, don’t discount discovering a copy of him through Necrotic Mortician entirely. I’ve actually discovered extra copies of the guitarist more often than I thought I would at the outset of playing this deck. It’s not a reliable strategy by any means, but possible. 

Clear Out the Pit:

These cards deserved their own little section because they really are the driving engine behind this deck and the reason I splashed a Frost rune rather than go Blood or full Unholy. Together with a board of undead minions, these two cards together provide removal, corpse generation and card draw that can help you get to Cage Head as quickly as possible. Unholy Frenzy in particular has a ton of utility in this deck and feels like it was made for a setup such as this. Besides helping to leverage your generally small minions into extra attacks and removal, Unholy Frenzy can act as an activator for Cage Head or Boneshredder and generate lethal through boars provided the enemy board has something that will kill your minions. If Cage Head does in fact die through a frenzy, you just gained an extra activation and therefore an extra boar. Coupled with a Construct Quarter, you can generate 18 charge damage on your first set of boars alone. As alluded to above, Unholy Frenzy also turns your existing boars into incredibly efficient removal of opposing big minions by forcing trades and re-summoning them with charge. Just don’t forget to attack with the boars first if going face so that they can be used for as much damage as possible. 

You should always try to play Acolyte of Death only when you will get an immediate effect out of them. This can include dropping her behind a wall of Nerubian Swarmguard or Battlefield Necromancer against an aggro deck that you are certain will have to trade in order to break through. Even without a Frenzy play, Acolyte of Death can still generate a solid amount of draw with careful consideration of the board and what you expect the opponent’s deck to be able to counter with. Without Acolyte, this would be a very different deck that would probably not be as focused on the Cage Head finisher. Speaking of it being a different deck…

Potential Guest Artists:

Modifications to the deck get tricky. You are always going to be fairly strong against control if you play smart and shield you win conditions as needed, and fairly week to utter hyper aggro unless you draw all of your answers in order and can keep the board squeaky clean turn after turn. Modifications to the deck require you considering using a different rune combination. Perhaps luckily, we do not go terribly in on the Frost rune in this deck so changes aren’t glaring other than a shift in play style and priorities.

Shifting to a splashed blood rune gives you more survivability and control at the expense of draw power. Some of you out there may not have a problem playing this way and using cards like Obliterate, Death Strike, and Heart Strike to survive early game onslaughts at the expense of possibly comboing more slowly. I think there is probably a viable way to build this deck if it includes Lorekeeper Polkelt to keep you as on-schedule as possible. 

Going full Unholy to me means that you are shifting away from a Cage Head primary win condition and are making him more of a secondary consideration. With access to cards like Grave Strength and Lord Marrowgar, Cage Head and Boneshredder become more of a secondary package in case one of your other options fails and the game goes late. This can totally work as well, it just appeals to me less than going all in on the combo as the primary focus of deckbuilding. 

Conclusion:

I adore this deck, and will most likely now be working towards making it golden to match my copy of Cage Head. The combos in this deck always feel fun to pull off, and you can frequently snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with a burst of 18-54 face damage out of literally nowhere. I am happy to see the new package from Festival of Legends come together into a playable deck in our format, even if it may lack the competitive firepower of the more “traditional” Even DK. 

Can something be traditional if the class is only a few months old? I don’t know. 

Moreover, I am looking forward to players and deck builders who are more skilled than I am tinkering with Cage Head as an archetype in the future to create other fun ways of playing the card. If you want a different style of DK to play in Wild then “you’re in the right place to melt your face!”

*Many thanks to Swizard for his input and testing, as always!*