1.5 Zhanna Plague

[dyny]

At the current Meta, the plague card had lost a lot of power. I've tried a few scenarios and different combo, but it just doesn't seem like it's coming out the way i feel comfortable with.

Essential cards:

4x Plague
4x Cobra Skin

Sandra: Optional

Current deck build:
4x Jasmine
4x Dirk
4x Brig
3x Blake
3x Aldon
4x Ice Storm
2x Focus
4x Plague
3x Bad Santa
4x Cobra Skin
4x Wiz Staff

Explanation:

Dirk: 2cc and defender good ally
Brig: Protector what else
Blake: Good low cost ally but easy to die
Ice: deal 2 damage if opponent has board presences and kill with allies
Focus: May not be as necessary but depends
Cobra: This is an important card to this deck because its the only card that can lower your opponents resource to less than 2.
Wiz: Draw

Other Note: Sandra not sure if she comes in handle b/c when you have 4 resources plague and cobra becomes more important.

Game Play: Ideally to sac most of the turns to maintain 4+ resources. At turn 4 and 5 is a critical game play for this deck. You would either go t4 wiz staff so you have draw engine or t4 plague, t5 cobra, t6 cobra and so forth. It's also important for you to have ally presences early on: brig + dirk + aldon.

What do you guys think?

[glencocoe]

It's not gonna work very well. Not trying to rain on your parade by any means, but I played a baduruu resource starvation (rs) deck w/the ability to equip weapons independently while I starve my opponent & it's HARD. I had 4x here be monsters & 4x cobraskin. With all of the rs abilities, you're going to be wasting all your energy trying to keep your opponent down while your resources dwindle too. Your opponents, just going to cast 2c-3cc cards and you struggling to keep them hemmed in. In the end, you'll have nothing on the field and have to abandon your main plan and just try to work without them. At least with baduruu he can use his ability to cast and he can do certain things in-between turns. You're gonna be caught in the middle. Unfortunately, fully reducing resources isn't too viable. At least not yet. So instead, it might be better to do it some other way. Perhaps use plague & leave out cobra skin. You don't get draw & -1 damage for 3 hits, BUT youre 1 valuable resource ahead of the curve. For priests, resources are quite important. Run plague and take out cobraskin. To be honest, resource starvation decks are very stressful :/ think about your deck choices very carefully

Oh and in addition...there WILL be times when you won't get ANY resource starvation cards in hand for the first half of the game. Even if you had 8 of them. Trust me, I've been working on it alllllll week.

In addition, even @ 2 resources. There's now you're mine, cripple, retreat, clinging webs...net trap, a lot of stuff. And id bet you $300 bucks it's going to be impossible to keep your opponent around 3-4 resources and make a noticeable dent

[dyny]

I agree. I shouldn't of dumped my gold into doing this deck. The plague card had lost its power for sure. I've had hard times to regain board control. Unless the opponent has bad draw then your ok. They need a little more balance or more cards to synergies. Sandra was the only card that can reduce opponents resource w/o touching yours. It takes a lot of trial and error to make this work some how. Hopefully someone can see the light in this deck.

[The Haydes]

I tried a deck similar to this on the test server. It worked fairly well at keeping your opponent under 5 resources. The problem was that it also meant that you didn't get to play many cards that weren't resource destruction. I would burn through all 40 cards, keep my opponent under 5 resources, but never do enough damage to kill them. So I did a little tweaking and in the end it turned out pretty good. I had to basically add some fatties to the deck. Haven't tried it out on the live server, but I would expect it to be able to hit at least a 250 rating. Never let your opponent have more than 4 resources.

1 x Zhanna
4 x Plague
4 x Cobraskin Wraps
4 x Ice Storm
3 x Destroy Arms
4 x Wizent Staff
4 x Puwen
2 x Aldon
2 x Jasmine
4 x Priest of the light
3 x Tainted Oracle
3 x Earthen Protector
2 x Sandworm

[dranjo]

The strategy with your deck was similar to the first plague deck I tried out, which was to stock cheap allies to have supreme 4 resource and below board control. I added smite and ice storm to boost my board control even more. But as the post above me said, most of the cards you play will usually be resource destruction cards, leaving little tempo for allies and board control.. So I switched my focus from early board control to more off a mid late game resource advantage snatching, before going for board control.

I am currently playing a zhanna plague deck with moderate success so far.

My strategy is usually a T3 curse then T4 usually plague or staff. If I used plague then next turn I will cobra, leaving opponent at 2. Any allies which sneak out at this point loses attack to curse and my armor tanks a little. At this point I focus purely on resource destruction with cobraskin lily (lily will draw damage away from hero at at the same time combo or plague till I have a decent resource lead and throw out my fatties EP and Aeon and Raven.
You can also play some 3 cost allies(POTL is great) to vy for board and divert some damage away from your hero. This is only possible due to curse and cobra helping you tank any allies. If too many allies sneak out, tidal wave and continue.
Your draw comes from Cobra, Lily and staff. I find staff quite useful as the card advantage builds up crazy fast while your opponent is trying to sac and play a card every turn and enters poverty mode quite fast.

My humble tips:
1. destroy their draw engine ASAP. This is a resource starvation deck after all.. can't have them getting enough cards to sac and stay in the resource war.
2. don't be scared of allies early game. Curse and armor will tank well enough until mid to late game, if you keep burning their resources. Worst case tidal.
3. Long games are good for plague decks as resource/card advantage begin to show. Zhanna also gets to heal more.

Just my humble tips. You can watch some of my replays if you wanna see how I play.( I'm not that pro though) my ign: retard101

[dyny]

All these tips are great. If Jericho has a better ability then I'll consider using him for a plague deck. Maybe I still can. I've sold my cards , reason being was the my zhanna ghostmaker deck was much better. I 've sold my cards then built my gravebone deck. Only thing with Jericho you can use his SE for Wiz draw and the challenge is you'll have to use healing touch.