With the balance changes that came in to the game today Morvran became a lot more exciting to brew with, mostly due to the changes to give more of his cards the aggressive keyword. There are a few different ways you could build around the aggressive mechanic; the main two ways being an AP deck using Bouncer for reach to go into cards such as Ket Zek. The other is putting an aggressive theme into an aggro shell, that is what this article is going to be looking at, depending on the reception I could write a follow up article looking at an AP version in the future.

Decklist

Bouncer is used both as reach into the high hp creatures and to make the opponent take damage from their next creature. Rush of Blood is useful against decks that reach into large creatures as on top of making the creature aggressive you can also make them take an extra hit to kill it. Gorad is arguably the weakest of the chosen aggressive creature as you have to take more damage from your next creature. However due to it making both players’ next creatures aggressive it gives a potential nine extra damage for Deadly Prey as opposed to the three from Rush of Blood or the six from Bouncer. Deadly Prey is often used in this deck as six to twelve damage, while the burst isn’t as large as you can get from something like Earth Blast this doesn’t include the damage taken from the aggressive creatures themselves.

Most of the deck is a fairly standard three AP aggro shell, Rowdy Cannoneer into Barker Toad gives eleven damage over two slots which is a good rate, combined with the other small consistent damage in Troll Chucker and Scorpion this is enough to wittle your opponent down. The large creatures chosen for targets of Bouncer’s reach are Jogre Shaman and Ogre Chieftain. Jogre Shaman is usually six to ten damage, originally I was planning to use Sergeant Grimspike instead however Jogre Shaman usually represents more damage and is easier to kill at three base attack if you don’t find a Bouncer or Sergeant Slimetoes. Ogre Chieftain has a high ceiling where damage is concerned with a minimum of five damage if the opponent is on one base, ideally you wouldn’t want to kill Chieftain without reaching into it to kill it in two hits however if needed you can tank extra hits off it to get those key last points of damage in. AP is gained through Kyzaj and KGP Agent with White Wolf being used for card draw and early gold gain.

The final slots in the deck are taken up by Dark Crabs and Bar Fights. Dark Crab feels necessary as a heal due to the fledgling nerf. Bar Fight is included for two reasons; against decks such as grief Linza removing durability from a weapon to stop a Dust Devil or Karam can be key; it can also be used after a Bouncer if you don’t have a target to reach into but want to make your opponents next slot aggressive for instance if you expect a Jad or another large creature.

Mulligan Decisions

Depending on how you want to play out a match up there are two main ways you can mulligan with this deck; focusing on consistent damage or going for an aggressive combo. For consistent damage getting to three base attack is key so i would suggest hard mulliganing for either Kyzaj or KGP, after that I would aim for the low hp damage dealing creatures. If you expect to be in a longer game for instance against a deck with a lot of healing then keeping a White Wolf for card draw is also very useful.

For the aggressive combo the main cards you want are Bouncer and Deadly Prey. Bouncer is useful even without Deadly Prey as you can reach into Ogre Chieftain or Jogre Shaman with it. Unless your hand includes Deadly Prey before the mulligan i would usually suggest mulliganing for base attack and small creatures. If you have both Bouncer and one of the large reach targets then they can also be worth holding onto in the mulligan if you expect you are against a deck where you can catch a large creature with the aggressive from Bouncer such as Jad or Sentinel.

Match Ups

The main good matchup for this deck is, as you may have guessed, decks with big creatures in them, namely AP decks. Raptor can be a bit more troublesome due to just how much sustain he has however you have Ogre Chieftain for if the game goes long and the aggressive mechanic rarely misses against this kind of heavily creature focused deck.

Support based Ariane is a bad matchup as far as the aggressive sub theme is concerned, however if you hard mulligan for the consistent damage then you can still race her with Cannoneers and Barker Toads. From one day of testing this match up has been fairly even with Jogre Shaman being key for doing large amounts of damage.

By far the worst match up seems to be aggro Vanescula, while Bouncer usually hits a meaningful target, unless you burst them down with Deadly Prey the extra damage only helps them get to mortal. After feeling the matchup was slightly bad to even on the ladder I did a series of ten games with Banzai to further test it. While this is a relatively small sample size during the games it felt like Vanescula had the upper hand and the series ending with aggressive Morvran having a 30% winrate.

Final Thoughts

The list is far from being optimal. Dark Crab feels necessary however I would like to find a different heal for the slot. Slimetoes is useful for reaching into the larger creatures however it often ends up dead in hand with no targets so at least one copy of it is likely to be cut. As far as the large creatures go I like both Ogre Chieftain and Jogre Shaman however the numbers may need tweaking and possibly a different large target could be substituted in in the future.

The deck is fun to play and in a more AP centred meta it would be a great choice for ladder, the current meta as of when this was written is mostly aggro Vanescula and support Ariane so currently i don’t feel like it is a great choice. I will however be keeping it built for tournament play incase I strongly expect an opponent to play out an AP deck for the next game in a round.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or on reddit/discord, until next time I’m Musher and this has been brewing aggressively with Morvran.