Midrange Secrets Paladin Standard

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Secrets Paladin Midrange Standard deck.

[Nuraldin 0]

Sottle, my winrate with your previous Secret Midrange deck was higher. (The one without Barnes)
Too bad you removed that one.

[positiv2 953]

1 hour ago, Nuraldin said:

Sottle, my winrate with your previous Secret Midrange deck was higher. (The one without Barnes)
Too bad you removed that one.

Actually, the deck is now listed in the Legacy Decks on the bottom of the page. Here is the link.

[Paracel 165]

If a month ago somebody would tell me "You're going to play Silent Knight, Stranglethorn Tiger and Argent Commander in your Paladin deck", my reply would have been "I don't do Arena".

This carefully put and incredibly smart joke (no), however, describes my initial doubts and following thoughts about this Secret Paladin in the Standard Format. I felt outnumbered and outgunned against many of my opponents, who were doing, in simple words, more flashy stuff, while I tried to muster my mysterious 30 for battle (pun intended as usual).

It's too vanilla. You try to get some averagely sized dudes in and then back them up with some slightly-over-the-top cards, while the rest of the format throws 4 mana 7\7s draw threes strapped on Taunts, 2 mana 3\3s with Charge and other ridiculously undercosted and considerably more busted stuff at you. It's like Midrange Hunter except your cards are worse and your Barnes fetches Divine Shields instead of Deathrattles.

Interaction against aggresive matchups is mediocre and pressure on heavier decks is not always enough to punish their big grinds like Cabalist's Tome or Nourish turns. I can't believe I'm saying that but Mysterious Challenger lacks his signature immediate "spiked" board presence and long-term staying power. A tag-team of Tirion Fordring and Ragnaros the Firelord is a reliable duo, however, they cannot handle all the heavy lifting. Consecration doesn't kill everything like it used to do and drawing secrets when you have just three of them sucks.

Silent Knight and Argent Commander are actually performing fine, and Stranglethorn Tiger is truly a midrange sleeper hit of this whole format. A shame that "just fine" is not enough for today.  Deck still felt like a stacked 12-0 Arena deck breath of fresh air and fair in the middle of Standard chaos and madness, and I'm definetly going to jam it, but only on my days off. Better options for either rank climbing, Paladin and Fun do exist.

Going forward I'd definetly suggest upping Noble Sacrifice count to 2 because second Challenger is really dead weight, playing a Divine Favor to have so much needed card velocity and grinding power and trying out Defender of Argus because Taunt + Divine Shield is gas and Shaman is popular.

[KingMe 289]

Just a note. Defender of Argus is in the deck description but not in the deck itself. 

[Valks 2,375]

On 11/12/2016 at 8:37 PM, KingMe said:

Just a note. Defender of Argus is in the deck description but not in the deck itself. 

Made a note of it, thanks!

[positiv2 953]

7 hours ago, Blainie said:

Made a note of it, thanks!

No need to - I already did, Damien added me and I quadrupled the amount of issues. Poor Sottle though.

On a more serious note, Sottle has a lot on his to-do list and it might take a while before this guide issue is resolved. Sorry for inconvenience!