Building that Nerubian Deck

In the World of Warcraft Trading Card game, you can play as the nerubians by using cards with the words "nerubian reputation". Who were the nerubians? If you didn't play Wrath of the Lich King, or didn't dive into the lore of the expansion, this next paragraph should help a little.

Backstory on the Nerubians
The nerubians come from a split kingdom of arachnoids that onced lived in Silithus. This group migrated north into Northrend and founded the Nerubian Empire Azjol-Nerub. Thousands of years later, the Lich King became a problem in Northrend, and a war broke loose. Eventually, the scourge won the war and forced the nerubians deeper underground. The nerubians are xenophobic and will generally attack anyone that is not a living arachnoid on sight because of their distrust of other races. In the game, you can build reputation with this faction. The nerubians are a neutral race siding with neither the Horde or the Alliance, but nonetheless they are fighting the Lich King. They are excellent trap makers and engineers, and constructed many underground kingdoms, sometimes with the help of jormungar (large centipede like creatures).


So how will this deck go together? surprisingly, this is another "team" based construction. When Aldor and Scryer came out a block ago, those cards were relatively easy to put together into a deck. The Argent Crusade reputation from this block was also easy to put together for a powerful deck, and the synergy continues with the Nerubians. Nerubian decks rely on what is in the graveyard, some get +1/+1 if an ability, ally or equipment is in your graveyard. As such, you may want to mill/discard some of your deck to get those bonuses. This gives us a few classes to ponder...

Priest (can mill cards)
Paladin (Uplifting Prayer can resurrect dead allies)
Druid (pump up nerubian allies, healing)

      - - - - - find treasure (draw a card, if you do, discard a card).

I think those classes would do well with a nerubian style deck. I really, REALLY like the idea of Uplifting Prayer resurrecting one nerubian ally from the grave a turn, but Priests can mill cards (along with help from quests). Dwarfs are the KINGS of cycling, and I think a good deck can be thrown together combining Nerubians with [Spelunker Maddocks]. Spelunker is a great under the radar win condition that can really work for this deck. So let's hop to it here!

If we go to www.wowtcgvault.com, we can do a search for nerubian cards. Click Card Search, and under the filter, select "all text". Type in "Nerubian" minus quotes to get every card in the TCG with the word "Nerubian" in it. Looking down the list, [Life-Staff of the Web Lair] immediately catches my eye, AND we can use the card since we have a priest! I would have considered [Kilix the Unraveler] for this deck, but my win condition is Spelunker, and I don't want the deck attempting to do too much outside of being nerubian plus the win condition.

For this deck, I want to focus on bonuses for having allies in your graveyard. Ideally, if you want to spread the bonuses out over a few nerubians, you should have a balance of ability, ally and equipment cards to discard into your graveyard. I want to narrow my focus a bit here, though. Here is what I have so far for candidates for allies in this deck:

Azjol-anak Battleguard
Azjol-anak Broodguard
Azjol-anak Deathwatcher
Azjol-anak Webspinner
Spelunker Maddocks

Counting my chickens early here, I may not have enough room for allies with [Find Treasure], UNLESS I make this an ally intensive deck. How about we limit the quests to 16, and the abilities to 16? That would give us 60-16-16-4= room for 24 allies in this deck. We can do a search for "find treasure" and find some cool stuff... I get a return of 7 cards. Since we want to be cost efficient, let's look at the lower costing cards. [Gromble the Apt] catches my eye for a couple of reasons. First, he is a 2 for [1/3] drop, so he may have some kind of longetivity. Second, he has find treasure. Third is his extra little bonus: I can exhaust my hero as if it were a resource. I'm not doing anything with the hero, so this is a nice advancement bonus for my resource row! Bah-zing. I now have 6 different types of allies in this deck; at 4 each we can manage 24 allies. Oh, I just noticed Spelunker also gives us Find Treasure. hehe. Let's head back to that nerubian search; I saw some quest cards we can use.

HO BOY! Look at [Death to the Traitor King] I'm not even going to repeat what it does because it is so awesome, AND works for our deck. This card is an obvious DUH. I'm choosing NOT to include [All Things in Good Time] in the deck because of the high cost to complete it- mana efficiency! mana efficiency!!! *COUGH* resource efficiency!

For quick draws, we can include [Proving Grounds], an oldie and a favorite. For my next trick, let's look at quests that force us to discard or mill cards. I get a return of about 14 cards. We can also do a search for all text, "put the top" to see what mill cards we can use. I get a return of 4 cards. We want to use [The Ring of Blood: The Warmaul Champion], so I am adding it to mine.Back to my earlier search, I want some cycling quests. [A Donation of Mageweave] will do the trick. With that, I am at 16 quests @ 4 each.

Now that the core of the deck is done, what can we do with abilities? a lot, actually. Our hero is a priest, so we can include holy cards, discipline cards, and shadow cards. I think we have enough cycling, so we can lay off playing cards that discard our hands. How can I be more of a pain in the ass with this deck? Holy and Disc buffs, of course! I am going to start by looking at priest abilities from the latest set backwards.

[Prayer of Vitality] makes me L OH L, because it is a common, and heals my allies. It also boosts their health. In combination with [Prayer of Spirit], our deck turns into a rolling snow boulder! [Power Infusion] is another neat card I am going to include in this deck, limiting our hero to discipline, dwarf. We will take care of that in a few moves. Contrary to what I just said, you can probably sideboard [Dementia] and get away with it. Pick your target. I'll throw in [Power Word: Faith] for healing and ability removal.

Now the hero. I get a return of one card, [Sister Remba]. We have to include her in order to run Spelunker. HAH, her ability can combo with [Power Word: Faith]. Here is the deck! I am probably going to build this and play test it extensively. What a fun deck!