The Oathbreakers of Dunharrow 2.0 *** Updated for Meta ***

[yomaster]

Very nice deck and write-up! Just out of curiosity, what rating are you playing at? Which heroes are you targeting since you mentioned it is against the Meta?

Still a little uncomfortable with only 2 Wizent since you would be in a pretty bad spot if you can't play a T4 draw engine.

I'm around rank 285. I would be above 300 except I like experimenting with hunters and rogues. The meta is leaning a lot towards portal mages, and ankle-breaker lance (+ raven). This deck is excellent against almost every deck I've encountered. I can't think of a single deck that hard counters this.

You definitely don't want more than 2 wizent. Having more than 6 cards is plenty to get a drawing card by turn 4, and if you don't, Zhanna can just sit back and absorb damage while using curse, smite, tidal, healing touch, and king's pride while you wait for your drawing engine to get set up. Another negative side effect of having too many wizent's is what do you do when on turn one you have 2 wizents, 3 tainted oracles, and two other fatties? It really clogs up the deck having too many cards for sacrificing, which after all, that's exactly what wizent's staff is for. I almost never use it.

[yomaster]

Nice nice nice.. I love it. We are getting closer on this. My only different choices are retreats over smite and jasmine over sandworm. But maybe yours will be better. I should definitely look into the use of sandworms. Would you mind persuading me with smite over retreat and sandworm over jas?

Here's the problem with retreat: it doesn't align with the purpose of this deck. The main purpose of this deck is not to send fatties back to their hand, it's to get their allies out on the board ASAP so you can wipe them away with a tidal wave. Retreat really slows down your tempo and helps your enemy more than it helps you. Try to give me a scenario when retreat would be absolutely necessary here?

Since you have no allies that you could use retreat on yourself for benefit (priest of the light, kris, Lily), it's really an unecessary card. Smite however, is. Think of all the 3-4cc allies that will attack you when you have a wizents or ghost maker out... They will gladly take the 1 damage from your weapon. This sets you up nicely to drop a smite next turn to kill them off unexpectedly, saving your tidal wave for a few more rounds. Remember, the key is to draw your enemy to play their allies, and hold off as long as you can before you tidal wave them.

Now as for jasmine, she has two main flaws. One, she's not very strong. She can easily be taken out by a fireball, nuke, majiya SE + death mage, eladwen etc. Now that problem is when she dies, she's just clogging up your graveyard! You really don't want any cheap allies in your graveyard, only tainted in the early-mid game and earthen protector in the late game. Also remember her ability uses up 2cc that you usually need to keep up your tempo. On the other hand, sandworm can survive both a nuke AND a blast from eladwen. And if the enemy is lucky enough to kill him, he doesn't clog up your graveyard because once he's resurrected, he still requires another 3 hits to die (4 if you have king's pride). That's generally plenty of health to keep up the fight. Also you aren't really trying to inflict max damage on the enemy hero. You're trying to take control of the board in the late game. Sandworm gets really strong once you have king's pride out, and even stronger if you get aeon out in front of him. He also draws out the crippling blows, which are easily negated by healing touch. He can also survive the very popular dimension ripper spam attack. He can also survive a direct hit from raven + curse without losing any attack! All in all, he is just so far superior for this deck and the synergy that goes along with it. Try it, you won't be disappointed!

[yomaster]

I forgot to add that since this deck has very few allies, sand worm is really the only way to go since you need your guys to stay alive and get out of the graveyard so you can keep suiciding your tainted oracles for drawing power.

[bobwei]

Two problems: how do you deal with enemy jas who does not let your TO suicide? I retreat her.

When I do tidal plus aeon in late game, they just retreat my aeon and put on their jas or raven or sth, then I need retreat to get it back.

That's why I need retreat. Probably you have a better solution? I'd like to know.

[Fuzer]

For jasmine Smite+attack with Wizent staff.
For Raven+allies, wipe with TW or smite+ attack with sandworm (immune to raven with curse on play)+wizent staff.
Etc

[bobwei]

For jasmine Smite+attack with Wizent staff.
For Raven+allies, wipe with TW or smite+ attack with sandworm (immune to raven with curse on play)+wizent staff.
Etc

In the first situation, I usually don't have wizents because I have TO to play so I sac my wizents already, where I think yomaster also plays this way.

In the Second situation, I have done tidal plus an ally last turn, and they do retreat my ally and put on their ally. So at the start of this turn, I don't have anything on board, so smite plus ally attack is not viable. If I can only do another tidal to solve this, it is quite demanding cuz I have to waste a tidal again just because of their one retreat.

[yomaster]

In the first situation, I usually don't have wizents because I have TO to play so I sac my wizents already, where I think yomaster also plays this way.

In the Second situation, I have done tidal plus an ally last turn, and they do retreat my ally and put on their ally. So at the start of this turn, I don't have anything on board, so smite plus ally attack is not viable. If I can only do another tidal to solve this, it is quite demanding cuz I have to waste a tidal again just because of their one retreat.

That's exactly the tempo problem I was talking about with retreat. If you retreat their ally, they will just play it again next turn. What you really want to do is the following:

- If they play jasmine on turn 3 and you play TO on turn 4, then they may very well use jasmine's ability on TO. This is OK, and is in fact a GOOD thing because they will keep using 2 resources every turn TO stays on the board. You can do a few things depending on the cards in your hand:
1) Play another TO, or play a wizent's on turn 5, anything to keep up your draw. If you play a second TO, make sure you have room in your hand for all 4 cards when you wipe with a tidal.
2) If you have no other drawing cards and TO was your last option, just sit tight and top-deck for a few turns and see if they drop more fatties on the board. When they do (and attack becomes 5 or more) then tidal and problem solved. This is nice because you'll get 2 cards from TO, and they will be really short on cards (as long as you've been destroying their drawing engine). The worst thing they can do is drop their OWN TO, or they play a Wrath of the Forest. In this case, you may just have to take the hit and let them have cards.
3) If all else fails, you can use healing touch on your TO to heal jasmine's ability, then use your TO to attack jasmine and suicide on her.

All 3 of those options are better than retreat.

For the second scenario with raven, aeon, etc. you shouldn't fear an enemy retreat. You are trying to take control of the board in the late game where you can throw down two fatties at once (fatties being sand worm, aeon, earthen, or even a king's pride tainted oracle). If they throw down a retreat + raven and all you had out was an aeon, then you played your aeon too soon, which means you probably played your tidal wave too soon. I almost never play a tidal wave before turn 6. The only exception is when they drop a kris, puwen, aldon, and they are going first. Then tidal on turn 5 and hope you draw healing touches.

In some cases you can use a fatty to COAX enemies to put down fatties on the board. So in your case that tactic might work to draw out a raven + retreat. The good thing about that is they just used up 2 cards and you gained one. Simply tidal wave them and drop down a ghost maker or another tainted and keep up the draw. Remember that I almost never play aeon until the very very late game to seal the deal. If you are trying to take control before turn 10, then you better make damn sure you won't lose the board, so make sure you have a king's pride out or a ghost maker in hand.

[pyrogene]

I think the difference in opinion is largely due to difference in playstyle. I find that Zhanna's main weakness is not weenie swarm (obviously) but if your opponent is good and play a single fatty (PB/MD/Raven) which can control the board on its own. In that case, retreat may be useful. However, since you have no Jasmine or Raven, you usually can't control the board with just one ally (unless you have KP in hand) so in this case, retreat is pretty pointless as well since next turn he can just play the ally again.

How do you deal with such a situation when the opponent plays conservative? TW is inefficient for 1 ally, Smite is insufficient to kill.

[Harakhte]

Smite alone is insufficient, yes, but when combined with Sandworm and Wizent's it can kill most 4-6 life allies handily enough, and with Curse out hopefully Raven won't neuter your Sandworm in the process.

Personally I would give a great deal of consideration to Inner Strength whenever using Sandworms with Priests, that extra damage makes them a lot more dangerous.

[yomaster]

I think the difference in opinion is largely due to difference in playstyle. I find that Zhanna's main weakness is not weenie swarm (obviously) but if your opponent is good and play a single fatty (PB/MD/Raven) which can control the board on its own. In that case, retreat may be useful. However, since you have no Jasmine or Raven, you usually can't control the board with just one ally (unless you have KP in hand) so in this case, retreat is pretty pointless as well since next turn he can just play the ally again.

How do you deal with such a situation when the opponent plays conservative? TW is inefficient for 1 ally, Smite is insufficient to kill.

If they play conservative, GREAT! You just sit back and defend with curse, kings pride and healing touch, all while keeping up the draw engine. The longer they wait, the more of a card advantage you get. Eventually you will tidal and swarm with 2 fatties and a ghostmaker, which can be three fatties. Control regained.