Greetings everyone!

Autumnsbane here with our first post to the web site. We want to start posting regularly, but the first entry was a no-brainer for me. As our regular listeners know, we recently held our first AWO Casual Tournament.  Our tournament’s winner, Dustin the White, sent us an email with his winning deck, and a little narrative of his experience.  What I found amusing about his writing was his use of  “A Worthy Opponent” as he told his story.  Rather than just listing his contest-winning paladin deck, I’ve included pretty much all of his email.  The writing was just too good not to share.

Without further ado. we present the winning deck:

Paladin Deck List
(mana cost/card)

I have 9 minions that cost 1 or 2 mana. Those minions allow me to be versatile and have options throughout the game. The best case scenario for my deck is if I get to go second and get the coin card and also get the Sword of Justice and a couple 1 or 2 mana costing minions. It allows me to get the sword out on turn two and on turn three I can get two minions on the board (my favorite is when I get the sword on turn two and on turn three get out the Young Priestess followed by the Argent Protector (to give the Priestess a Divine Shield!)) If I don’t get the Sword of Justice until late in the game, I usually don’t fare as well but this deck can usually still beat any kind of deck. I used to have two Faceless Manipulators but I crafted Leeroy Jenkins last week and replaced one of them with him. I also used to have Malygos in this deck but that felt like too many minions that cost 8 or 9 mana and I’d never be able to play them all. I have five Legendary cards in my deck. I used to have Defender of Argus in this deck and I usually combo that with Sylvanas Windrunner so it would force my opponent to kill her and I would get to take advantage of her deathrattle. Since taking Defender of Argus out of my deck I feel like I should get rid of Sylvanas and I meant to but I just forgot. I’d probably replace her with another Azure Drake I think, for the card draw and if I have Sword of Justice equipped, it makes the Drake pretty formidable at 5/5. The Young Brewmaster allows me to reuse Argent Protectors and Aldor Peacekeepers. The battlecrys of those cards are very valuable. Finally; Leeroy, Ragnaros, Tirion Fordring (hopefully with Secret: Redemption!) and Ysera are usually my clean up crew to win the games. I just wanted to give y’all a little insight into how I try to win my games.

Ayonna was my first match up. She also used a Paladin deck. It featured a lot of the cards I had in my deck such as Sword of Justice and Lay on Hands. Both games played were very close. The last game was won because Ysera gave me the card Ysera Awakens which does 5 damage to everyone except Ysera. She had at least 5 minions on the board and a Faceless Manipulatored Ysera of her own. I used that Ysera Awakens card and kill all of her minions except her Ysera and did 5 damage to her character. My Ysera had 5 attack due to getting buffed by Sword of Justice and that is how I finished her off. She was a  very Worthy Opponent.

Next up was my match against RingoOSU who played with a Hunter deck. My strategy was to not play a lot of minions so it would not be worth it for him to use Unleash The Hounds against me. All of the games were close. He won the first game. I won the following two. I don’t remember a lot about this match up. I’m going to try to get Ringo’s recollection of what happened. So that we can go into more detail if you guys want. RingoOSU was a very Worthy Opponent.

After the Hunter, I faced IVs the Legend Rank Warrior. I was alarmed when I saw he was currently rank 5 on the ladder (myself being ranked 13), and I got really worried when I got into the game with him and saw that he had Legend Cardbacks. However, I ended up winning both games against IVs. I believe the key to winning these games was killing his Armorsmith before he could gain more than one or two armor from them. I was worried he had a bunch of cards that would do a lot of damage in relation to how much armor his character had, so the Armorsmith had to go quickly. Luckily Truesilver Champion makes that easy and I was lucky enough to have one on me when I needed it before it got out of hand. The craziest moment of the two games was going for the killing blow on the second game. I think he had 4 health left and I played Leeroy Jenkins which of course does 6 damage with charge and gives your opponent two 1/1 Whelp minions. However, after I clicked on Leeroy to make the killing blow to Garrosh’s face (after IVs graciously emoted me a “Heh, Well played”) my three year old daughter Emma was trying to climb onto my lap (she likes to help Daddy play) and she put her hand on my desk to pull herself up and inadvertently hit the mouse in my hand and caused me to release the mouse button early and Leeroy charged at a 1/1 Whelp minion instead of ending the game. I couldn’t believe that happened! I messaged IVs and let him know what had happened. He told me I get the win but lets finish the game as it is anyway. He ended up going through all 30 cards in his deck and started fatiguing and lost about four turns later. That was crazy! IVs is a very Worthy Opponent.

The final match up was against Belshnickle’s Druid. It was another very close set of games. I won the first game, he won the second, and I ultimately took the third. His Druid was very good. He kept the board clear most of the time. One memorable moment involved me using a Faceless Manipulator on his Ancient of War that was a 5/10 with Taunt. I had a Sword of Justice equipped at the time and it gave me a 6/11 minion with Taunt. Unfortunately I don’t remember a whole lot about these games but I do remember that the last game ended epically with three Ragnaros on the board. Two for me and one for him. He played a Ragnaros and it killed my minion I had on the board. I had a Ragnaros in my hand but then I drew a Faceless Manipulator and decided to use that on his Ragnaros and I think my Faceless Ragnaros hit his character and his Ragnaros survived. His Ragnaros hit my Paladin in the face and I had only like 7 health left, he also had only about 7 health left. I still had the Ragnaros in my hand and I knew I had the game won. I played my Ragnaros and hit End Turn and my first Ragnaros killed his Druid and then it let my other Ragnaros kill his Ragnaros! Belshnickle is a very Worthy Opponent!