So the deck was originally designed by Mathieu Brochu "The Broche" as something more akin to aggro control then the pure control version of Nathadan. To me Nathadan version were always what I like to call "mental masturbation" kind of deck that basically do nothing for hours and eventually would get a 12/12 tewa and try to kill you. Not my cup of tea. The latest expantion gave tools to the paladin that allowed for a much more explosive deck and a deck that can switch from control to aggro pretty fast. Combined that with the usual tools paladin got and you get a very dangerous deck:

0    TDP#TDP    Aleyah Dawnborn        Creature - Hero - Blood Elf Paladin    U    B

Qty    ED    Name    Cost    Type    Rarity    Color
        // Lands               
4    TDP#TDP    Solanian's Belongings        Land - Quest    C    B
4    SOB#SOB    Information Gathering        Land - Quest    C    B
3    FOO#FOO    Gahz'ridian        Land - Quest    C    B
        //\\               
        // Creatures               
3    SOB#SOB    Xanata the Lightworn    2    Creature - Ally    U    B
2    MOL#MOL    Vindicator Zalreth    7    Creature - Ally    R    B
2    MOL#MOL    Ishanah, High Priestess of the Aldor    8    Creature - Ally    E    B
4    SOB#SOB    Vexmaster Nar'jo    2    Creature - Ally    C    B
4    MOL#MOL    Doshura Risestrider    4    Creature - Ally    U    B
3    SOB#SOB    Tatulla the Reclaimer    4    Creature - Ally    C    B
3    SOB#SOB    Ras'fari Bloodfrenzy    6    Creature - Ally    U    B
3    TDP#TDP    Bhenn Checks-the-Sky    2    Creature - Instant Ally    C    B
2    FWV#FWV    The Abominable Greench    9    Creature - Ally    R    B
1    HOA#HOA    Panax the Unstable    5    Creature - Ally    R    B
2    MOL#MOL    Silea Dawnwalker    5    Creature - Ally    C    B
        //\\               
        // Spells               
4    HOA#HOA    Blessing of Wisdom    5    Instant - Ability - Holy Blessing    R    B
3    SOB#SOB    Blessing of the Martyr    1    Instant - Ability - Protection Blessing    C    B
2    TDP#TDP    Blessing of Freedom    1    Instant - Ability - Protection Blessing    C    B
3    MOL#MOL    Sacred Purification    1    Sorcery - Ability - Holy    C    B
3    FOO#FOO    Redemption    5    Sorcery - Ability - Holy    U    B
4    HOA#HOA    Hammer of Justice    2    Instant - Ability - Protection    C    B
2    TDP#TDP    Arcane Torrent    3    Instant - Ability    U    B
        //\\               
        // Sideboard               
1    HOA#HOA    Panax the Unstable    5    Creature - Ally    R    B
1    MOL#MOL    Silea Dawnwalker    5    Creature - Ally    C    B
1    TDP#TDP    Blessing of Freedom    1    Instant - Ability - Protection Blessing    C    B
1    MOL#MOL    Sacred Purification    1    Sorcery - Ability - Holy    C    B
1    TDP#TDP    Arcane Torrent    3    Instant - Ability    U    B
2    HOA#HOA    Shattering Blow    4    Sorcery - Ability    C    B
1    MOL#MOL    Shadala    2    Creature - Ally    C    B
2    FOO#FOO    Vorden the Shadowbringer    6    Creature - Ally    R    B

The meta call for us was stormclaw, priest discard and alliance untargetable with rush/myriam. Stormclaw is easy meat. Priest is tougher to beat but winnable as we will see and myriam + protector (especially the druid deck) is a bad matchup for us. Vorden went to the sideboard to help deal with myriam and we had 2 panax main. When it became obvious that no one was even gonna play alliance we decided to keep 1 panax (since it's still good versus other control) and 1 went to the sideboard.

-Zalreth is in there as a tool to deal with bringers a bit since the deck is pretty defenselss overall to them.
-Rasfari is the bread and butter of the aggro strategy.
-Bhenn seem to get better and better each set so this was a no brainer.
-Silea (which I nearly removed at the last minute) is really important to have those easy matchup versus rogues or warrior or to lock the druid out of the twig. It would have been a mistake to not have 2 main deck I feel afterward.
-We went to 4 wisdom due to the priest metal call.
-One of the blessing of the marty and one of the blessing of freedom were replaced by arcane torrent main deck when it became obvious the priest deck would main deck darkness. Arcane torrent is necessary for the deck to have a good matchup versus priest. Without it, you lose to darkness. It needed to be main deck with 1 more in the sideboard.
-The 3 sacred purifications main are there to deal with stormclaw specifically and stuff like surprise attack. They were pretty good all day overall. I did a turn 6 silea + sacred purification on form + twig against the druid in the semi final.

For the quests we moved away from the counterattack strategy since it's *** against the priest discard. It was important to have quests you could do when you got them all the time to improve that matchup. Information gathering was pretty good. I didn't like gazhridian too much but it was an ok decision and does help against priest without giving information away which forge camp annihilated did before we changed it.

There is no blessed life in this deck because we generally don't like to play with bad cards that do nothing.

For the actual report:

I feel the deck is more interesting then the tournament was so I'll go fast on the tournament.

Round 1: Playing Dominic Gaudrault with priest discard. I got owned in game #1 and managed to drag the game longer in game #2 and #3 for an eventual Greench lock. Both time arcane torrent on the darkness was essential to the win. In the hands of good players that version of paladin will beat the priest discard most of the time. The matchtup is not that clear though but unless the priest get the nut, it will lose eventually.

Side note on the priest but what people often don't realize is that bad players just get destroyed by this deck. They don't know how to play against it and are basically shooting themselves in the foot while the priest quickly start to rape their nearly dead corpse.

1-0

Round 2: Another guy from Quebec, Guillaume Soucy, playing a mirror 99% idential to my deck. He win game #1 while I try to rush and eventually run out of juice 1 card short and game #2 I forget that in the 1% difference we have he's playing 2 sword in the sideboard. I don't side in the shattering blows and get destroyed once he get it out.

1-1

Round 3: Forgot the name of the guy, he play what I feel is a suboptimal version of aleyah without the blessing of the martyr and bhenn and try to rush me with Outrider Zarg (incredibly bad against me) and Gurzuk. Strangely in game #1 I have no bhenn and no hammer so the 2 zargs actually hit home both time. Game #2 they die without doing anything each time. Game #1 he cannot deal with a turn 9 greench (he had 1 card in hand I decided to gamble a bit, if that card had been ishana I would have been in great trouble). Game #2 he can't deal with ishana.

2-1

Round 4 I get paired against the standard version of stormclaw. That deck is a cakewalk. He also get very bad hands which mean the game is even easier.

3-1

Round 5 I face Mathieu Brochu, playing mirror. This is where I feel we got unlucky since ton of people from quebec faced each other in round 5-6 while some of the americains with bad decks were able to win and keep going. Anyway coin flip that I win.

4-1

Round 6 I face Yako playing the same priest Dominic played, I win in 2 games.

5-1 after the swiss I finish 3rd. Yako and Nicolas Jamouille are also in the top 8 which is great but I feel we should have been 4-5 and we got a bit unlucky due to bad pairings.

Game #1 of the top 8 I face an halavar from the past that somewhat managed to get into the top 8.

Game #2 Semi final I play I forgot his name but it's an interesting version of stormclaw that give me more trouble then I thought that deck could. He plays morlug, cobrascale and 2 innervate main deck. In game #1 I was very close to dying to the morlug combo but he didn't manage to pull it off. Game #2 was pretty close till I attacked and flipped to deal 15 and heal from 22 to 7 damage total and get the game out of his hands.

Final it's a mirror, so coin flip again.

Overall our meta call was good. It did help that no one was playing untargettable + myriam decks (except one guy from quebec I think) since it was one of the bad matchups. Some stats: 39 of the 44 players were horde. 12 players played aleyah including 5 playing the Broche version from quebec. 10 priests discard and like 10 stormclaw. It was strange that in a meta where corki's is a quest sent from God everyone still decided to play horde.

Even though my life would have been harder that day and the results could have been different it is a bit sad I or Broche didn't face McArthur that day. After a few rounds it felt to me he was the only real test left in the tournament. Maybe next time.

Nice, I was hoping for a decklist, I tried to piece together the deck from what I saw.  I'm happy that I was semi-close with the numbers.

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Eric,

Thanks for sharing the tourney report.  It's somewhat redeeming to read that a fairly similar Paladin build did well.  Round 1 I had to play against a protector Miriam deck and Round 2 against a Horde Paladin mirror.  Congrats on the win.

Eric, did you guys test at all against solo rogue? Your build is different from most of the other Paladin builds I saw on Saturday but those decks seemed to have trouble with solo Rogue now with Cloak of Shadows.

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We tested Daspien more then we did alliance version but the deck will beat solo rogue most of the time I think. You have 3 sacred purification main to take care of surprise attack or potentially blade twisting (less played). You have 3 tatulla main deck to destroy some crap they may have on the board at the right time. You have hammer obviously too which they have to be ready to deal with. And lastly with 2 silea main if you do turn 6 silea + sacred on say, surprise attack + eye of rend or wait till they attack and do blessing of the martyr on silea they are in alot of trouble. If you ready with silea it's pretty much over unless you are near death since their board will be gone. The deck also got a bunch of protectors they have to deal with + early hammers. It's not as easy as say halavar but it's in favor of the paladin I'm pretty convinced.

1195032:

-Silea (which I nearly removed at the last minute) is really important to have those easy matchup versus rogues or warrior or to lock the druid out of the twig. It would have been a mistake to not have 2 main deck I feel afterward.

Man do I wish you had made that mistake. I played the alliance rogue against Guillaume in round 3 and then against Nicolas in the quarterfinals. 4x Escape Artist and 4x Cloak of Shadows is enough to deal with Hammer and without Silea I think the matchup actually swings to the rogue's favor.

yeah, those clown actually wanted to sideboard Silea AND cut down some sacred purif.

Hopefully good old Broche is there to watch them

I would say that without Silea the matchup isn't in Rogue favor, it's actually an auto-win for Rogue. You can't count on hammer anymore since Rogue have the anwser so Silea is the actual win condition. With blessing of martyr, sacred purif, blessing of freedom you got plenty of cheap ability to feed and control the board, and you have 1 million way to bring her back when she die

I tried to beat rogue w/out Silea and failed.  Though I may have had a chance if I had been able to keep Surprise Attacks off the board (thanks to Blessed Life, which apparently does nothing, unbeknownst to me).

1494572:

(thanks to Blessed Life, which apparently does nothing, unbeknownst to me)

I don't think I really realized that either until you started going after my Surprise Attacks.

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West Brom for the Premiership
Latest Result: WBA 0 Chelsea 3
2nd highest-ranked Limited player in Northwest Brooklyn
#2 Lifetime Honor scrub (#1 in '08!)
Lifetime Regional/RCQ match record: 88-64 (57.9%)

1386514:

yeah, those clown actually wanted to sideboard Silea AND cut down some sacred purif.

Hopefully good old Broche is there to watch them

I would say that without Silea the matchup isn't in Rogue favor, it's actually an auto-win for Rogue. You can't count on hammer anymore since Rogue have the anwser so Silea is the actual win condition. With blessing of martyr, sacred purif, blessing of freedom you got plenty of cheap ability to feed and control the board, and you have 1 million way to bring her back when she die

 

This is why you get called "the" Broche reffering to yourslef in the third person

 

Also I really don't understand how you can hate blessed life as I've found it nuts vs any aggro and any solo.

 

Also can you explain Bhren a bit more as he doesn't seem very good at all to me so I get the no brainer at all.

1195032:

Overall our meta call was good. It did help that no one was playing untargettable + myriam decks (except one guy from quebec I think) since it was one of the bad matchups.

Yep, I was playing Myriam, it was the tech we decided thursday before the Tournement me and Phil. I think it was a very good call. It put pressure on the other until you get to high drop. In fact we tested it me and Jamoulle after the tournement and it was realy tough for the paladin to handle her.

I also played against the same kind of Aleya you also faced and he could just not handle her fast enough. After that, Deafening Shout just nail it down.

It is just cheap that I'm an average player, because except for solo rogue, I think my Halavar build was really nice against the meta.

Well I don't hate blessed life that good but in alot of cases it's a win more cards. Against daspien it's also not that great since you have to deal with surprise attack. It's good against stormclaw but on the other hand the deck is already close to auto win versus druid aggro so why add cards like blessed life. The real bad matchup, the druid protector + myriam blessed life will somewhat help you but it will only slow them down and do close to nothing once they get gift out so you will need other stuff anyway. It's nice to protect the blessing from tatulla I guess but it's probably also easy to work around for aggro deck if they want to get rid of the blessing. Also when normal decks to beat run 3-4 tatulla and 3-4 hability destruction main deck it doesn't seem that nice to rely on that strategy.

As for bhenn there are many reasons.
With hammers he is slightly less usefull at exausting allies for doshura then in another horde deck but this is quickly compensated for the incredibly nice synergy he get with blessing of the martyr. They have antikron out and play a myriam? End of turn bhen, exaust anticron, attack and play blessing, myriam dead and bhen get back in my hand.

He is the answer to ishana. Player A plays a turn 7 rasfari player B plays ishana on 8. Without bhenn player A is fucked. With bhen you play him in response, exaust ishana and doshura her then you kill bhenn with something. If you remove bhenn from the equation you just can't do anything. You can also "tempt the devil" with an empty board ishana. They see the target and can try to respond with their own ishana. If they do they are fucked as you play bhenn, give him to the opponent, attack your ishana into bhenn, get his ishana and destroy yours.

So basically a combination of the fact you can use him with doshura, with blessing of the martyr and to go around ishana in mirror or other control relying on her and his normal usefulness at trading with jealaene or other intargettable make him very good.

Not that great with paladin but say you have glous or tyrennus out and they narjo into it. You have bhen what do you do? You exaust your own glous/tyrennus and narjo dies without trading.

NVM, just noticed that was already mentioned.

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This may be a dumb question... but whay Aleyah Dawnborn? couldnt it be any of the horde paladin heroes? i just wanted to know if her flip is just that good in this deck cuz i dont see it.

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Another steelshaperjones???

She has the best of the horde paladin flips for this deck.  A lot of times against rush decks you'll stabilize but be somewhat low on life.  The flip puts you out of range of burn spells.