[Arena with Stone] Paladin - the new Mage?

Continuation

  • Pings. If you aren't playing the class that can ping (Mage, Druid, Rogue) it's even more important, but even for those classes additional pings are fine. By pings I mean minion abilities that can deal damage. It's usually 1 or 2 damage, so not enough to kill anything big, but enough to pop Divine Shields and keep their dude count low. Cards like Elven Archer, Mad Bomber or Stormpike Commando are really good against Paladin. Uther has by far easiest access to Divine Shields, and you don't want to trade minion just to get rid of Divine Shield. Bombers (the small and the big) are great counters to Muster for Battle. If you're lucky enough, of course, and all of the bombs won't go into your face. Paladin is a dude factory, and you don't want him to flood the board with them. But on the other hand, you don't really want to run your 4+ attack minion to kill the 1/1. That's why playing the class that can ping or having couple of those minions in your deck is really helpful.
  • AoE. While AoE is great against any class, Paladin is one of the classes that benefits most from the board control. If he controls the board, he can make good trades with help of Recruits and buffs like Blessing of Kings. That's pretty simple. Also, having a way to strictly deal with dudes is good. If their number gets out of control, or he Musters, it's nice to have spells like Swipe, Fan of Knives, Whirlwind or even Arcane Explosion. If you happen to play Hunter, Unleash the Hounds is great Paladin counter.

So, now that you know how to draft against Paladin, I'll give you some tips how to play against him. First and most important thing you need to do is to recognize what kind of Paladin are you playing against. It may not be that easy, but after couple first turns you should have general idea what kind of deck your enemy is playing. Aggro/tempo decks have much more early game and play in a faster manner. If he plays early Avenge or drops something like Leper Gnome, it probably hints that he's playing a faster deck. If he passes the first turn, and plays Hero Power on second, he probably plays slower deck. Or he had really bad draws, but either way, the tactic is the same. Also, you can usually tell it by their behavior. If they go for the face even if they can get good trades, they probably try to finish you off as fast as they can, so they don't care about value.

Against more aggressive decks, don't wait to get the value with your cards. For example, if your only 3-drop is Blood Knight and enemy has no Divine Shields, it would seem counter-intuitive to play him. But you should just to get something on the board. You can't let Paladin overrun you with minions, and it's really easy to do so with his Hero Power. If you don't have AoE, his Hero Power can be much stronger than Hunter's one. Hunter deals 2 damage. Dudes can often deal up to 3-4 damage if they survive long enough AND you have to deal with them. Aggro Paladin decks can kill you in no time, but on the other hand he empties his hand much faster than you. If you manage to get some threats on the board and make favoravle trades, you should win the game. Remember to not play the value game and use Hero Power only when it's really good or you have no other play. Taunts, heals and AoE are all great against this kind of Paladin.

When you face slower Paladin, you should deny him value and push him to the wall. Slower Paladin decks are lategame beasts, so unless your deck also has solid lategame, don't try to win the value game. Paladin can get solid card advantage with cards like Truesilver, Hammer of Wrath and Argent Protector, which can all 2 for 1. Paladin however suffers from lack of board wipes. The only one in his Arsenal is Equality + Consecration or Wild Pyromancer + Equality, but those combinations is pretty rare in Arena. You want to abuse this fact and flood the board with minions that are too big to Consecrate. Control the board. Make Paladin think that you play the control game too and bait him, but in reality, do Tempo plays. Use your cards liberally, get more minions on the board than he has. When your hand starts to get empty, and he thinks that he's winning, completly change the tactic and go for the face. In best case scenario, you should win in two-three turns. Control Paladin usually throws one big threat per turn + Hero Power. If you have much more minions on the board, it will be really hard for him to trade with his beefy guys. Kripp described the concept pretty well in his recent video, so check him out if you didn't already.

Killing. Dudes. Is. Important. That's the best tip I can give against Paladin. Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might are common cards in Arena. If you control the board and kill all his dudes, if he has them, they sit dead in his hand. And that's what you want. GvG gave another reason, which I've already described - Quartermaster. If he gets buff on one, it's not a big deal. The value is average - he summoned 2/5 and 3/3 with one card and 7 mana. But big Quartermaster turn can easily swing the game in his favor. On top of that, Paladins tend to pick Abusive Sergeant and Dark Iron Dwarf because of how well they synergize with their Hero Power.

Play around common cards. It may seem obvious, but new players often don't do that. The most important cards to play against are Consecration and Truesilver. Sometimes you should take the worse trade and make your board safer. For example, if you have 3/2, 2/1 and 6/7. Enemy plays 5/5 minion. You can take two routes of trading if you have no additional way of dealing damage from your hand. Either you run 6/7, killing enemy minion, or you sacrifice both smaller minions to do so. In the world when enemy has no Consecration, the first play is much better. But if enemy has consecration, you'd rather have 6/7 on the board than 3 minions at 2 HP. Taking less efficient trades to play around certain cards is sometimes important. Of course, first you have to judge the chance of enemy having Consecration. Arena is all about judging what enemy wants you to do, and then doing the opposite. Let's get back to the previously described situation. Enemy is keeping a card in his hand for couple turns already. You know it's not a minion because he'd drop it. It has to be some situational card. Why did he play his 5/5 if he knew that you'd destroy it for free? Maybe the card is Consecration and he wants to bait this exact trade to punish your board state? On the other hand, if enemy had a perfect chance to Consecrate your board a turn earlier, and he didn't use that card, you can safely assume that's it's not it and do the greedy trade. It obviously can be punished by their topdeck, but you can't really play around topdecks. Same thing with Truesilver. You need to evaluate the chances that he has Truesilver in his hand. If you think the chances are high enough, play around it. If you're pretty sure that he doesn't have it, don't. This rule is global and doesn't apply only to playing versus Paladin. Every class has cards you need to play against, but I guess I'll have to write another guide about it some time.

 

Afterword

 

So, that's it. Sorry for the wall of text. I've tried to make short, (I still could write much more) but I failed miserably. I know that my style of writing won't appeal to some people. And sorry for all the mistakes and repeating the same words over and over again. Writing longer articles is still pretty difficult, since I'm not a native speaker, but I hope I will improve with time. If you have any questions about the article, you can ask them here. I'll try to answer every one of them. You can also add me in game and ask questions there (my battletag is Stonekeep#2420, I'm playing on EU). If any of you liked the article, I'd also like to ask you about what you want me to write next. I have some ideas, but I'd also like to see what would you like to read.

And lastly, I'm not sure if it's against subreddit rules. If yes, I'd like someone to notify me and I'll delete it right away! I'm an amateur content maker. I'll try my best to write many interesting articles, I also plan to make YouTube videos on different topics, and maybe stream in the future. Right now I'm doing it for free, and it will most likely stay this way. I'm against paying for content like guides etc. But if any of you enjoyed it, and want to tip me, I'd be really grateful. I can't give much in return, I can only promise that I'll try my best to serve good Hearthstone content for everyone to read and watch. HERE is the site you can donate on.

I want to thank really, really much to everyone who read it! I'll appreciate anny comments, whether they will be positive or negative.

Best regards,
Stonekeep

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