Hey everybody, BadW0lfGaming here bringing you a deck that I've been having a lot of fun and success with on the ladder from a pretty underplayed class: Monk!

I’ve had around a 60% win rate with this deck in top fifty legend ranks recently. While this isn’t particularly impressive, it does make me feel that the deck has potential. Nothing about the list is really fancy, just a straightforward Agility-based Midrange deck. Playing Willpower does give you access to some solid cards like Golden Saint, Piercing Javelin, and Dawnbreaker. Dawnbreaker is especially good right now thanks to the increased frequency of Blood Magic Lords and Night Shadows on the ladder. This is due to Hist Grove helping the popularity of Ramp Scout and other late-game decks to skyrocket. Even in non-Endurance matchups though it is a fast 4 damage to push lethal with, often lets you avoid breaking your opponent’s last rune when going for game, and can even shoot down a 3/2 from Soul Split spirit from time to time.

We’re pretty all in on the “move creatures between lanes” plan, playing all 3 cards with the effect – Dune Stalker, Dune Smuggler, and Shadow Shift. This is pretty much a nod to the deck not having a ton of removal and no silence at all. These cards let us move around Guards and get favorable trades more easily. Sometimes you can get a good amount of value out of Dune Smuggler’s +1/+1 effect as well, often buffing a creature multiple times in the same turn.

Turn five Soulrest Marshal and turn six Golden Saint are really difficult for some decks to deal with right now, especially Scout Ramp and decks using Ice Storm. This deck has also been fast enough to race the currently super popular Action Assassin, with enough early game and charge creatures to apply pressure and lane switching cards to make favorable trades. This deck can fall short if it falls behind early or draws too clunky but we do play a decent amount of prophecies to help with swing turns and tempo.

Mulliganing with the deck is pretty straight forward; try to find a two drop and if you’re playing against an Agility deck, and keeping a lane switch effect or a Murkwater Witch to neutralize their first Fighters Guild Recruit would be fine as well.

While it is good against certain decks in the meta as I mentioned earlier, the deck does also have some not-so-great matchups. For example, if you fall behind against Archer and they draw Burn and Pillage then it’s almost impossible to win, but this deck does play its fair share of Guards so just try to stay ahead and keep them from breaking too many runes as long as you can. This deck also doesn’t have any answers to Divine Fervor so if your opponent sticks an early one you just have to try and race. Aggro decks are usually not too difficult between the number of prophecies, guards, and life gain we have (sticking a Dawnbreaker on a Werebat is just as much fun as it sounds).

This version of Monk comes in as somewhat of a budget deck, much cheaper than its Pilfering counterpart. There only three Legendaries and six Epics, with the rest of the cards being Rares and Commons. If you wanted to make the deck even cheaper you could remove the Ungolim and the Dawnbreaker for a couple of Divine Fervors and I’m sure the deck would work just as well. Conversely, if soul gems are not a concern and you own an Ahnassi, it could definitely work in the deck (possibly over a Cliff Racer). 

That’s it for today, everybody. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed, feel free to give the deck a try for yourself. It’s not an overly complicated deck to pilot so if you’re relatively new or still learning the game you should be able to play this deck pretty proficiently. Until next time everybody, good luck on the ladder!
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