Meme of the Week #2: Yogg-Saron, Reborn

You clicked again! For this week, I tried to make a deck around a type of card, rather than an actual card: RNG; more specifically, targeted RNG. By this I mean RNG that works in your favor, such as Meteorologist, where its effect, while random, cannot affect your side of the board, so while it may be unreliable, it is still good RNG!

Of course, this does not mean the whole deck is good RNG. In honor of the God of randomness - Yogg-Saron, Hope's End our deck this week is based around...

Through playing this deck, I have found that Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron tends to cast more beneficial spells than ones that stab you in the back. Whether this is due to there being more "unbackstabbable" spells in the Standard pool, or simply my blind luck, is something we can only speculate. The idea is to make as much use of the Puzzle Box, whether it's a last effort attempt to survive, or dumping King Phaoris with two Puzzle Boxes in your hand!

Replacements & Other Notes

To start off, you have your trusty Tortollan Pilgrim. This bad boy (girl?) can get you two more Puzzle Boxes, if at least one still resides in your deck. As the RNG appears to be skewed in your favor, casting as many Puzzle Boxes as possible is advised (and at least one of them should gift you the rare Secret Christmas Tree!).

King Phaoris: This fellow does the opposite of Tortollan Pilgrim. If you somehow ended up with both Puzzle Boxes in your hand, and cannot Discover them through the Pilgrims, Kind Phaoris has got you covered. He might feel like a poor man's Conjurer's Calling but he delivers. If you decide to throw a Khadgar into this deck (which I did not due to his lack of RNG!), the King will fill the board with mass destruction. His effect has such good synergy with the Puzzle Boxes that I cannot think of a worthy replacement.

Raid the Sky Temple: This card is not necessary. I have thrown it in as a late-game option in case the game goes on for far too long. It will take a bit of time to trigger it, since the deck lacks key cards such as Ray of Frost, but the Hero Power it awards is bursting with RNG. I managed to get an extra two Puzzle Boxes out of it, so it does eventually pay off. Since the deck is lacking two-cost cards, I would suggest either of the following replacements: Mad Bomber, to deal with the high amount of 1-health cards currently present in the meta, or Lorewalker Cho, if you want to go full RNG (never go full RNG). The deck does not contain too many spells, so the Lorewalker might in fact be pretty useful. Whatever Tortollan Pilgrim casts will not proc him, so he might actually have value. He is a high-risk card to play, though. You have been warned.

Baleful Banker + Body Wrapper: Useful to keep the deck nourished. The Puzzle Boxes can make you draw a bit more than you should, so having a couple extra cards in there to stave off fatigue is good. Plus, you can shuffle Tortollan Pilgrims or King Phaoris for infinite value! As a replacment, well... If you don't have one of each, having two of one is as good of as replacement as you can muster. Alternatively, Augmented Elekk can replace one of them, however they would need to be played on the same turn to make sure the Elekk is not prematurely disposed of.

Naga Sand Witch (née Naga Sandwich): A bit of a weird one. It goes against King Phaoris' wishes, however it is useful for when you find yourself with too high-cost a hand.

Stampeding Kodo: It is insane how many times this card has been useful. Turns out, there's quite a bunch of horrible 2-attack, 6-health Taunt minions in the game right now. Would run in any deck.

Drakkari Trickster: While I tried to avoid adding in many RNG cards that might benefit the opponent, this card can be useful against decks that rely on lots of powerful standalone cards. The cards in this deck are not that insane on their own, so the trade-off tends to be favorable.

Overall, I would rate this deck as decent. It is not exactly competitive, yet not outright terrible either. I have actually won more games with it than with last week's deck (which was themed around Supreme Archaeology, Plot Twist, and lots of other crazy combos). But wait...

BONUS ROUND!

I made one in Wild as well! If you've got the cards, this one I promise is at least 42% more RNG-based!

This one actually uses our one true God, Yogg-Saron, Hope's End!

NOTE: Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron is NOT that friendly to you in Wild!

Conclusion

RNG Mage - I feel - peaked in One Night in Karazhan. Even with all the Puzzle Boxes, the power of most decks in the current meta ramps up too fast for a deck based around 8-10 cost cards to keep up. Nonetheless, if there is anything I learned from trying to make this a viable deck idea, it is that Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron is stronger than it looks. It might cost a whopping 10 mana (or 5 with the Naga Sandwich) but when the going gets tough, and the box is all you have, it might just buy you a few more turns to get those key cards drawn and swing the tide of battle.

This was also an opportunity to test how useful King Phaoris is, and I would place him around the mid-tier area. His effect is strong, and if you manage to pull it off, it will certainly be a game-changer (unless you get Plague of Death'd!). The trouble with him comes from needing a decent amount of high-cost spells in your hand - spells you are holding out on in order to make the most out of him. The fact that he costs 10 mana means that sometimes, you might have to just hold him in your hand for quite a while and use some high-cost spells to survive, so that makes playing him even harder. However, that is something Luna's Pocket Galaxy can certainly fix for you.

If you have any suggestions on what card to cover next week, leave a comment and I'll be sure to read it!