Essential tips for surviving the Warrior's deadliest deck.
Grim Patron Warrior is currently the meathead Hero’s preferred flavour of deck, although Control Warrior’s certainly capable of giving it a run for its money. What if you’re not playing either of these decks though, and you just want to send that pile-on packing?
We’ve gathered together some useful hints and tips for how to tackle this meta-dominating deck. Let us know in the comments if you’ve found any other useful strategies and we’ll add them to this article.
1. If you’ve got any kind of silencing effect in your hand, and you’ve good enough reason to believe you’re up against Grim Patron Warrior, save it for when that thing pops. Good Warrior players will wait until they have their combo pieces Mana-reduced by Emperor Thaurissan though.
2. Watch the size of your minions. Be very careful about keeping minions with two or less attack on the board, otherwise you’re handing the Grim Patron a perfect activator. Consider trading them before Turn 8, and certainly don’t play them out onto the board in the late-game.
3. Kill the Warrior’s card draw. Success with the Grim Patron Warrior deck depends on pulling together very specific pieces of the game-winning puzzle, and if you deny or delay your opponent drawing those pieces, you’ve a much better chance of beating them down. If you can pick off that Acolyte of Pain in one clean hit, for example, then prioritise doing so.
4. Consider teching in cards like Harrison Jones if you’ve got the card in your collection or the Dust to make it. For a cheaper option, Acidic Swamp Ooze can cause just as big a headache. Note that disarming the Warrior of his Death’s Bite will still result in its Deathrattle effect going off.
5. Don’t take your eye off the ball. There are two clear win-conditions with this deck, and you need to be aware of the Frothing Berseker / Whirlwind finish as well. If you’ve dealt with the opponent’s Grim Patrons, don’t overextend onto the board unless you have a clear run at lethal and you’ve seen both Warsong Commanders already.
6. Prioritise killing Grim Patron and Frothing Berserker if they appear on the board without Warsong Commander support. No exceptions – kill them immediately. Armormith is also a must-kill when you see it. It may look relatively harmless in the early stages of a match, but it can give the Warrior massive amounts of armour in a Whirlwind situation.
7. If you’re truly stuck in Grim Patron Warrior hell, consider switching decks for a while until you’ve cleared free of the swamp. Handlock is extremely powerful in these match-ups, as are Taunt-heavy Druid decks.
8 . Race the opponent to victory. Things get really spicy against a Grim Patron Warrior once you reach Turn 8 and onwards. The faster you can bring the match to a conclusion, the lower your risk of being killed in one turn.
9. If the board gets out of control completely, you’re going to need to use your area-of-effect damage spells – just make sure they do three or more points of damage though, eh? For reference, here are the relevant board clears by Hero – consider making room for these spells if you don’t already run them:
- Mage: Flamestrike or Blizzard + spell-damage boost
- Paladin: Equality / Consecrate combo or Consecrate + spell-damage boost
- Priest: Holy Nova + spell-damage boost
- Rogue: Bladeflurry on a suitably buffed weapon.
- Shaman: Lightning Storm + spell-damage boost.
- Warlock: Shadowflame or Hellfire.
- Warrior: Brawl
