What do you guys like right now? Sjow is playing 2x: execute, shield slam, axe, armorsmith, taskmaster, acoltyte, death's bite, sludge, shieldmaiden, and 1x of each: whirlwind, block, bgh, senjin, brawl, harrison, sylvannas, baron, boom, grom, rag, yserra.

Yserra seems greedy to me; I would rather see more early game anti-aggro business: sheep or ghoul maybe, or a second brawl. I wouldn't expect this version to be favored against a mech mage with a good curve and annoyotron?

responding from the mega thread:

if the combo druid is teched with those cards (not auto includes, although really good ones, obv) then the matchup becomes a lot better ofc

I run a list like this that has been absolutely crushing:
-2x Brawl
-2x Piloted Shredder
-0x WW
-2x Armorsmith (debatable)
-1x TBK / 1x Shieldmaiden
-1x Loatheb / 0x Harrison
-2x Belcher
-0x Baron Geddon
-Gromm, Rag, Boom, Sylv, Alex, no Ysera
-2x Block
-0x BGH

Basically the idea is to make your Paladin and Mech Mage matchups more favorable with double brawl and then tech everything else to fixing the Druid matchup. Shredders are some of the most helpful tech with Druid as they give you a trade + weapon answer to most druid threats. Double brawl is unbelievably strong for me right now, it even helps a lot with druid where getting a 2 for 1 is a huge deal.

Loatheb>Harrison as I find Loatheb is still awesome in the Paladin matchup to prevent equalities, LoH and such. Loatheb helps a lot vs. Druid even when they aren't running combo (preventing Wrath/Swipe to catch back up with your weapon tempo).

I think CW is in an excellent place now, naturally strong Rogue matchup, it has great tech options that flex well between multiple matchups. Ramp Druid is much more manageable than combo which helped improved a weak matchup. The key for me has been thinking more like a midrange deck than a control deck, cards I would be looking at very closely beyond this list are things like Piloted Sky Golem, BGH and Owl.

Should note that sjow has been testing his warrior list for like the last month with drastic changes, I wouldn't take any current version too seriously yet.

yea...i agree with cwar. 2 brawls is essential now

I find Alex a little awkward when used with the shredders. All that midgame damage is wasted if you later want to use Alex offensively.

i strongly caution against double brawls. i know a lot of you swear by it, but spots are very precious in this deck. a lot of games brawl doesnt earn its keep.

Shieldmaiden too strong to only run one imo. Don't think BK is that great right now with the shift from Taunt druid to Combo druid due the UT nerf and not many hunters.

I agree with Bobo 2 brawls can be so awkward. I don't think it is worth it to run 2 just to make sure you have it by turn 5. If it is for Mec mages I'd rather run like 1 MCT than a 2nd brawl or some other earlier option.

I've rarely found Shredders used for damage honestly, you trade them in actively.

I honestly struggle to find games where brawl hasn't been great, it's also one of the more efficient anti-Boom techs (which is why I don't run BGH). It's similar to having a wrath in your hand in MtG, you get to play differently when you know you have a brawl. Which matchup do you think it's a burden in? I've been running it for a while now and it's honestly never felt like a burden. Thing is, if you draw the second one and it's redundant, you're usually so far ahead having a dead card in your hand is a total non-issue.

Haven't played much this week so maybe it isn't warranted now, they are easily swappable. IMO MCT is much more frequently underwhelming than brawl.

Actually, with the resurgence of shaman, double brawl is cool again. The only real value loss for brawl is against sticky combo druid and rogue.

I think this is potentially the only time in the history of control warrior where running double brawl is potentially justified. I'm still not going to do it though. In the past, running double tech like that of a card that does no damage has meant I've not had enough damage to finish some of the slower matchups. Having to rely on brawl against the current mech shaman is almost guaranteeing a loss, and warrior is a heavy favourite over that deck anyway.

DDubois, Ysera is very greedy yeah, but an unanswered Ysera simply wins the game, and it is very difficult to answer for the majority of the current meta decks.

As for the mech mage/warrior matchup, I am currently 63% against mech mages this season with control warrior. A lot of that is my opponents making mistakes in playing mech mage, and I'm sure at legend the matchup is a lot more of a coin flip, but I believe warriors are still a slight favourite in that one.

I find myself in the same position as Sjow. Based on what I'm seeing in the meta, Control Warrior should be one of the best decks right now. I think it's just a matter of tuning the deck. In my experience, Sneed's Shredder is extremely underwhelming as non-bgh-able replacement for Rag.

I must be making some mistakes on mech mage, I feel like if I open hand an axe I win, if I don't, I lose.

Generally my mulligan priority VS Mech Mage (from left to right) is:

Win Axe>Armorsmith>Cruel Task>Shield Slam>Execute>Death's Bite

Death's Bite moves up a couple ranks if I have the coin. Everything else gets mulliganed, always, and I always mulligan aggressively for axe.

Turn 4 is often the deciding turn in Mech Mage matchups imo. If you can remove whatever mechs they have on three and they can't blastmage, they will often play inefficiently trying to conserve the blastmage for a later turn, you then start dropping midrange minions that destroy their board and you win the long game.

Explosive Sheep and Doomsayer seem like good cards to combat Mirror Entity.

Hyped just said on stream that Rogue is great vs Warrior if you run Loatheb and a shredder. Said he has a 75% win rate, but people just don't understand how to play the match up.

I'm it is ****ing hyped so 75% for him is not 75% for the norm, but damn what is he doing if true. Gotta see if he has some example Rogue vs Warr games on his VoD's recently.

again, there is no way in hell rogue is 75% to warrior, lol

i mean, im all for people making those sorts of claims, and perhaps the very best players are putting up those outlandish figures, but i remain a skeptic.

Hyped showed his decktracker. 14-5 vs Warrior.

I'm not saying you are wrong in general it is just interesting and maybe there is just something other rogues are doing that is just very wrong outside of just good variance he is seeing.

Druid was his worst at like 57% or something. It's interesting he was saying you need like 80% win rate to push for rank 1 so he is disappointed in that cause it won't be enough if there are lots of druids, which is funny because it is not like druids want to queue into rogues at all.

that's 73% and if he lost one of the games he won he'd already be down to 68% which goes to show how insignifcant this sample size is.

also 70-75% has been enough for me to get rank 1, I don't think you need 80%

Hyped is an unbelievably strong player that does this full time, he's also a rogue specialist who makes the perfectly almost no matter how complex. Rogue decks are VERY hard to play perfectly, if you've ever watched one of his tourney matches you can see many decisions he makes that are different than yours. It's kind of like an average weekend basketball player playing some pickup with MJ, the difference in skill is that large.

That said, those are good tweaks although I can see the Shredders not being great vs. Mage.

Was playing the control warrior mirror match the other day and wasn't sure how to handle this:

My opponent had a 3/2 acolyte of pain and a cruel taskmaster and my board was clear. My hand was something like cruel taskmaster, shield slam, grom, and 2x execute. I think it was around turn 6 or 7 or so.

Was I right to execute the acolyte so he couldn't draw more cards? Or is that never right, or an "it depends" kind of question?

My gut instinct is yes, 100% correct. The deeper reason is that with that type of hand you basically need to stall as you have no foreseeable way to to get board control in the near future. Preventing your opponent from drawing is an effective way to help stall and reducing your clock is helpful as well.

Its generally a bad idea to waste removal on the acolyte, but like most things, it depends.

In the future take a screen shot. Today I executed a Belcher in the mirror to get the card draw on the slime for my acolyte - 100% was the right play, but was only right because of the situation.

Also you didnt mention how much armor you had. If his 3/2 is preventing you from armor gain, (thus rendering the slam irrelevant) it needs to be removed ASAP.

Yeah, I should have taken the screenshot. I'm definitely missing some key details. Still, thanks for the feedback!

It depends! Generally two things determine who wins the control warrior mirror:

1.) Who gets more value out of their acolytes.
2.) Who is able to use their removal more efficiently.

So while using execute prevents him from drawing cards, you are potentially "wasting" a valuable removal.

In this case, your hand is so bad that you need to remove as much advantage that he has as you can with the resources you have at hand, so you're pretty much forced to execute.

I think I'm going to do a video about this tomorrow, but I'm getting tired of people asking me on stream why I am playing control warrior when "it is so bad right now in the meta".

Honestly, if anything, Control Warrior is stronger than it has been in some time.

1. There are relatively few druids on ladder, accounting for only 12% of my matches.

2. Mech mage can easily be teched against to be favourable for the warrior. I know Sjow and other big time streamers have given up somewhat on warrior, but I think that some of these players just lack a real understanding of how bad variance can be, especially when you are facing a deck as explosive as mech mage. Freeze mage is showing up more and more, and although I think the matchup is better for them now, they are still pretty big dogs to warrior.

3. Oil Rogue is basically a free win the majority of the time (unless you play against Hyped, in which case he deck magically has an extra 10-15 damage).

4. Many of the control matchups where the warrior was coinflipping or a slight favourite/dog have shifted into the warrior's favour since GVG, since many of these decks have had to get substantially less greedy and more reactive to deal with the insane mech mage/mech shaman/hunter burst.

5. The only matchup that has surprised me is Mech Shaman. It feels like it should be at worst a coinflip for the warrior, but it can be difficult to hold back the onslaught even with a near perfect draw.

6. Hunter is hunter, and losing to a face hunter requires a really bad draw on the part of the warrior and a pretty strong draw for the hunter. I think feign death hunter is basically just a gimmick deck at this point but it may have more legs than I am giving it credit for.

Many of the "anti-bgh" techs people are using in warrior are a huge over-reaction imo. Yeah, Ragnaros is pretty **** right now, but Alexstrasza is still gold, jerry, gold. People don't play around her anywhere near as much as they used to and she does a lot of work. Sneed's is way too volatile to be worth running and can result in games that you autolose to an unanswerable Sylvannas. KT is just too difficult to get real value out of as warrior to be worthwhile.

i think warrior is ridiculously strong given the influx of rogues. i also still stand by my comment mech mage is a dog to control warrior.

wanted to make a general post too; some people think control warriors are all about getting to fatigue. this is so not true. i rarely get to fatigue in my games - the idea is to deal with early threats to get to the stage where you can pump out your threats 1 at a time and basically break your opponent via the chain until they finally cant deal with anything.