One of the first decks that Wife ever played was Orgrimmar Orcs. It is little wonder that it holds a special place in both our hearts as this was the gateway drug to get her WoWtcg addiction going. Over time it unfortunately has fallen by the wayside within the ranks of classic decks. Why talk about a has-been list? Well a while back we spoke briefly about the Lazy Peon Format and since there has been some interest in lower budget builds, I wanted to talk a little bit about an aggro list for it.

How to Be Lazy

While it can be tough to try and track down old official documents the important thing to keep in mind for lazy Peon is a simple deck construction rule: only commons and pncommons. It is pretty self evident where the budget part comes in. It also presents the chance to utilize piles of draft leftovers in a constructed format. The next most important thing is this format is even more unknown than classic. Lazy peon has a few things towards the beginning of the game, but over time it was all but forgotten. That being said pauper has become to see a resurgence in Magic, why not lazy peon here?

Given that the format is a gigantic series of question marks it makes sense to approach it much the same way you would an unknown “normal” constructed format. Namely establish how fast the clock is. Aggro decks tend to dominate in the early parts of a formats lifespan until it can be determined what corners can be cut and where things can be cheated. Let’s see if we can learn to fight:

Hero

Lioanar the Blood Cursed

Allies (45)

4 Bloodsoul

4 Rosalyne von Erantor

4 Onnekra Bloodfang

3 Offender Gora

4 Kagella Shadowmark

4 Zugna, Windseer Apprentice

2 Razor Hill Spiritseeer

1 Orc Grunt

4 Cromarius Blackfist

4 Orgrimmar Heartseeker

4 Brok Bloodcaller

4 Munkin Blackfist

3 Bonechewer Behemoth

Abilities (7)

4 Sudden Death

3 Blood and Thunder

Quests (8)

4 Torek’s Assault

2 Uncatalogued Species

2 If You’re Not Against Us…

Not to be a broken record, but like I said earlier who knows what lazy peon will bring. Well I do a little bit. It is going to bring a huge swarm, a Horde if you will of

giant,

angry,

ORCS!

While it lacks the signature location Orgrimmar, there is plenty of ferociousness to go around. We’ll get there though, let’s work our way up from the quests. The majority of quest bases in this format will actually be pretty strong, Eye of the Storm is uncommon and really every quest you are likely to want wears white or green at the bottom of the card. Sure there are the occasional oddball quests but Tooga is waaaaaaay too much work, we’re lazy remember?

Each of these quests only costs 1 and rewards you handsomely when you finally get around to completing them. Torek may be a little more proactive, but I think it is worth the tradeoff. More seriously you do need to ensure you have cards and these can be squeezed into turns where you are otherwise slamming the mean green machine. Orders from Lady Vashj are naturally another potential inclusion however the goal here was to make it so that at worst you are underdropping only by 1. Say you need to pop an opposing equipment? Well turn 5 you can get a card as well as play munkin as opposed to requiring the additional resource for Orders. The extra cards can’t be ignored so it is up in the air what it will ultimately look like.

That was quick! let’s move onto the abilities which…well there aren’t many here either. Sudden Death is just too efficient to not run. Puncture is another obviously viable alternative since Will of the Forsaken is likely to be few and far in between. If you see a lot of gray cards on the other side maybe that’s where you go. Moving from there, you really need to consider Blood and Thunder as a finisher.

“But 4 damage isn’t that much!” You might say, but if we peak ahead at the next chapter of the textbook you’ll see Kagella Shadowmark. She certainly is an oldy, but a goody. Kagella + B&T spells 7 damage from the 2 cards before you factor in any other allies in play. The “off-the-top” factor provided by B&T is great. Plus it is also really fun to say!

You just said it didn’t you?

I know I did.

The allies are a hodge-podge but naturally the meat of the deck. The curve goes 15-11-8-11. You will pretty much always be able to flood the board from early stages and continue to apply pressure with every card off the top due to the simply fact that 75% of your deck is an ally. Counting things like Heartseeker tokens, B&T, and Bonechewer Triggers you have 22 cards that deal damage the turn they come into play in one form or another. Bloodrush may be conditional but let’s face it, your opponent is always going to be bloodier than you unless something is already going catastrophically wrong.

I made an attempt to keep everything as orc focused as possible mostly for giggles. Getting to generate a bunch of tokens is fun too. Regardless of the card game tokens see to be something everyone can enjoy. Moving away from orcs, Faceless Sapper would shine in a deck like this. It may be more consistent to run the bloodrush enabled grunts, but that is where testing comes in. You can always branch out to introduce other aggressive monsters or utility red cards but the allure of theme is too strong for me personally. In all honesty I want to cut Rosalyne but c’mon, she’s too good despite not being an orc. Don’t think these are the only viable orcs though. Maybe something as obscure as Timewalker Smasher will earn a deck slot. You are pretty much always have 2+ orcs in play and again it has “ferocity” by giving something +4 attack and smash until end of turn.

That’s kinda it really. You apply pressure but can also keep your opponent from blowing you out due to supplementing the angrier parts of your army with the blackfist family. Admittedly this is the most original idea, as we started out with the base of the deck already existed. However the format has to start somewhere. We have a lot of other ideas that we’ve briefly covered before such as a vorix-like Jaina deck, a Mogdar dragonkin centric build, and of course Obliveron. What decks have you tried in lazy peon? Are you excited to dig out those boxes of commons and uncommons? It is too bad that there are different card backs within the game as this would be a great format to play “raw” and never sleeve anything. Anyway, I hope this provides at least a little inspiration. Check in next time for more random thoughts