Big Warrior Deck List Guide – Rise of Shadows (RoS)

Our Big Warrior Deck List Guide goes over all you need to know about this potentially upcoming archetype in the Rise of Shadows meta. This deck has seen some recent play with the Recruit mechanic, but that's being lost in the Standard rotation. However, there's some life to be found in the new RoS expansion. We'll be taking a look at some theorycraft builds for the deck, but once the set goes live we'll be featuring mulligans, card choices, play strategy, and substitutions!

While Recruit Warrior is on its way out, Warrior still maintains some cards that can pull big minions out of its deck and our hand. Recruit Warrior never ended up setting the world on fire, but with the lower power level of decks coming down because of the Standard rotation, it's possible that this deck could see play. The biggest issues we're facing is lack of armor gain, and just dealing with aggressive decks in the early game. It remains to be seen how the meta will shape up, and if this deck can hold up against faster decks.

Big Warrior Deck List for Rise of Shadows

This deck isn't a great choice right now, especially since Warrior has both Bomb and Control options to run with. We'll be updating this deck guide in the near future when the meta settles down.

Big Warrior Rise of Shadows Card Choices

We're looking for ways to get our big minions on the board, and also looking for stuff that will help protect us in the early game so we can play our costly cards.

Improve Morale

This is a possible inclusion, but I'm not completely sure it will fit. It can combine with our AOE to help finish off a minion, and then get us a Lackey to play in the early game. It's also good for popping Divine Shields and even enraging Grommash Hellscream if we end up playing him.

Sweeping Strikes

This will be really good for us in the late game if we want to clean up the board a bit with one of our bigger minions. It also has some potential in the early game, but we're likely not playing any early game minions.

Batterhead

This has a lot of health, but I'm a bit worried about the low attack. Are we going to be able to kill a minion with this on turn 8 to get value out of it? It will really depend on how often we're able to utilize the effect and I'm not sure it will be enough.

Big Bad Archmage

This is another interesting one that I'm not sure will fit in the deck. It's just too expensive for what it does, but it wouldn't be bad to pull it out with The Boomship or Dimensional Ripper.

Dimensional Ripper

This is one of the cards that makes this deck potentially worth playing. Unfortunately, it's really slow and having it means we can't really run any low cost minions because we would be in a bad spot if it copied one of them.

The Boom Reaver

This is another one we're going to need to be big for us if this deck is going to work. A bit of an important factor behind this card is that it makes a COPY of the card, and it doesn't pull the minion out of your deck. This could be important if we're in a longer game and gives us a chance to keep the resource in our deck.

Other Likely Cards for Big Warrior

There's a couple of ways to build this deck, and both have some potential. We could go lean towards Beasts and utilize Oondasta, or we can forsake the Beasts and just focus on big and powerful minions.

• Shield Slam - We're going to need removal because we need to get into the late game, and hopefully Shield Slam will be enough to get us there. There's not going to be a ton of armor generation in the deck, so we'll have to see how this card ends up working.
• Execute - Again we're on the look out for removal, and even though this was nerfed, it's still a pretty solid option for us.
• Slam - More useful early game damage against minions, plus this one has the benefit of potentially getting us a card if we can pair it with AOE or Shield Slam.
• Warpath - Good card for clearing boards in the mid-game, or even for us against token decks.
• Shield Block - This combines well with Shield Slam, gets us some protection, and also cycles a card.
• Brawl - One of our big ways to clear problematic boards, hopefully we'll only be left with a minion that isn't too problematic.
• Supercollider - Very strong Warrior weapon that will hopefully have our enemy's minions killing each other.
• Witchwood Grizzly - High health taunt that is good against aggressive decks, and can also be pulled out of our deck or hand as a pretty good option. This also works well with Oondasta if we are running a more beast oriented deck.
• Zilliax - The first card we add to just about every deck right now is Zilliax. It's a crazy good card and does a lot for us in the mid-game.
• Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - With the Standard rotation happening this is one of the few remaining hero cards in the format. It's also really good, and has a lot of good hero powers.
• Amani War Bear - Fits better in the more beast-centric build of this deck. It has a lot of stats, taunt, and the Rush is a nice bonus.
• Akali, the Rhino - This card can be pretty great if we can get an Overkill with it and it has the Beast tag which works with Oondasta. The stats are a little on the low side which can be problematic for the Overkill.
• Grommash Hellscream - One of the classic Warrior cards that used to carry it to lethal pretty consistently. These days it isn't as powerful, but getting it pulled onto the board is still pretty great. We can even pair this with Improve Morale to get the Enrage buff onto it.
• Bull Dozer - Big stats and Divine Shield is nice, although without Taunt I'm not sure how great this ends up being.
• Oondasta - This card is the reason we'd end up splashing Beasts in the deck. I'm not positive it will be worth doing it, but we'll have to wait and see how the deck plays out.
• Ysera - Ysera can help give us some gas in the late game, and it's a great card to pull out with Dimensional Ripper or The Boom Reaver.
• The Boomship - If we've got some of our more powerful minions in our hand, then this card will be insane. However, it's pretty slow and we have to have the right hand for it.