Secret Paladin Deck List Guide – Rise of Shadows (RoS)

Our Hearthstone Secret Paladin Deck Guide takes a look at some of the best options for this deck in the Rise of Shadows expansion. Our guide features information on mulligans, play strategy, card choices, and substitutions for if you are missing some of the main deck cards!

While Secret Paladin had reigned over Hearthstone for a period, it took a backseat once some of the strong secrets were rotated out of Standard. While many people thought the deck would terrorize Wild, this was actually not the case and the deck largely has no real impact in the format. There's been a couple of versions that have floated around in Standard since, but it looks like Blizzard could be intent on bringing it back in Rise of Shadows.

Secret Paladin Deck List for Rise of Shadows

Secret Paladin isn't doing too bad at the moment, but there's a lot of refining of the meta left to go. Below you'll find the most popular list for the archetype. We'll be updating the rest of the guide very soon!

Secret Paladin Gameplay

Secret Paladin Mulligan Guide

Always Keep

• Secretkeeper - Can get out of control really quickly if you've got the right secrets in hand. If you're going first you can play this immediately, but I wouldn't play it directly into a minion that can easily trade it. You can wait a turn then play it along with a secret to buff it up.
• Mysterious Blade - We generally want to be more proactive with this deck, but getting this weapon in play is still strong. Ideally, you'll be able to play a secret on turn one so you can buff this up.
• Sunreaver Spy - Really good card if we can get the buff on curve. It's particularly good if we're going first and we can lead right into it.

Situational Keep

• All Secrets - Only keep one if you already have a card that requires you to have one in play. All of the full keep cards need to have a secret, so you can keep one to guarantee a trigger. Autodefense Matrix and Noble Sacrifice are your better options.
• Desperate Measures - Keep this if you've got a card that requires a Secret in your hand, it plays much like your other secrets.
• Commander Rhyssa - Strong card, but needs some support if you are going to keep it. If you have one of the always keep cards, and you got a Secret (particularly one that protects Rhyssa), then you can keep her.
• Masked Contender - Again, keep this if you've got one of your always keeps.

Secret Paladin Play Strategy

We're really hoping to get off to a good start, because our secrets will hopefully keep our minions alive on board. If we can get a Secretkeeper going, or we get a buffed Sunreaver Spy in the early game then we're on the way to a potential victory. While we're an aggressive deck, we're mostly looking to use our weapons to keep the board free of minions. We want our minions to survive, because they are either being buffed by secrets, their effects, or triggering things by playing secrets.

We're aggressively trying to hold the board in the early game, so take trades where our minions can survive for the most part. Use that Mysterious Blade to take down minions, and Sunreaver Spy has a great stat line for trading against early minions if we got it buffed. We want our opponent to be looking to try to trade into us so they are triggering our secrets and buffing our minions.

Once we start racking up some secrets, and widening out our board a bit is when we can be a bit more aggressive. Again, we don't want to be trading our minions because our secrets only really work well if our opponent is killing our minions. Use Blessing of Kings as quickly as possible to get a beneficial trade or protect a minion from dying. Truesilver Champion is another card that lets us protect our board, so be sure to utilize it on anything that stands in your way.

As we get deeper into the game, we're going to start needing to really ramp up the damage. This is where Captain Greenskin buffing up our weapon can be beneficial to us, we can use it for some more damage to the face. Subject 9 gives us buffs for a late game Secretkeeper , and forces our opponent to have to trigger a bunch of secrets. Finally, we have the ultimate finisher in Leeroy Jenkins who should be able to put the game away if we were able to chip enough health away from our opponent in the early and mid-game!

Secret Paladin Card Choices

While a lot of great aggressive Paladin cards have rotated out of Standard, we still can find enough stuff elsewhere to put together a pretty strong aggressive deck.

• Autodefense Matrix - Protects one of your minions from death, and we'll need this for Commander Rhyssa.
• Desperate Measures - Most Paladin secrets are pretty strong, so we will just need to hope that we actually get the ones we need. In some applications, you can actually potentially force the pool of secrets down to one you might be hoping for if you can play some of the others first. I believe the card will only cast one that isn't already in play, but this hasn't been confirmed.
• Hidden Wisdom - We are lacking draw in this deck, so having at least one option that could potentially get us some card is nice to have. You won't want to have more than one of these in your deck, and the deck can probably operate without it.
• Never Surrender! - This seems like a pretty decent secret, but your opponent can potentially play around it if they have a board. The one good thing about it is that if your opponent casts an AOE the secret will trigger and could save your minions. This could end up as pretty strong AOE protection, which will be strong in this deck as it will likely run some cheaper minions.
• Noble Sacrifice - Always been a pretty good secret, but if we can get multiple triggers we even get an extra minion on the board.
• Redemption - Another strong one for Rhyssa, but it would be even more amazing if it triggered twice and got us TWO Commanders. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work this way, but we can dream.
• Secretkeeper - An easy include when you'd be running this many secrets. We're going aggressive and this is a great card for that.
• Mysterious Blade - This is a pretty solid weapon and will work well if you've got an early game secret. This being kept with Desperate Measures will guarantee you a 3/2 weapon, and we all know how powerful Fiery War Axe was as a 2-Mana 3/2 weapon.
• Sunreaver Spy - Another great early game card for the deck! A 2-mana 3/4 is really great, and being able to play a secret on turn 1 is very doable. So, you are very likely going to be able to buff this pretty consistently in the early game. This along with Mysterious Blade make for some pretty powerful early plays.
• Commander Rhyssa - Getting a double trigger off some of your secrets is pretty powerful, and that's especially the case with the new Never Surrender! secret. The problem is you are going to need secrets that keep this on the board, stuff like Autodefense Matrix , Noble Sacrifice , and Redemption .
• Masked Contender - Nice way to pull a card out of your deck and get it into play for free. The stats aren't too bad, and will be somewhat difficult to remove.
• Bellringer Sentry - One of the best options for the deck, it brings a secret into play once it hits the board and most likely when it leaves the board.
• Blessing of Kings - Good if we can jam enough minions on the board. We're happy just throwing this on a 1/1 and getting a trade.
• Dread Corsair - Great card when paired with both of our weapons, especially with Truesilver which makes this card 0-mana. This can also potentially protect some of our more important minions like Secretkeeper.
• Truesilver Champion - Strong weapon that can keep our health total relatively manageable if we're against a more aggressive deck. Can also be used to jam some damage in if we're looking to finish.
• Captain Greenskin - Pairs great with our weapons and has a solid stat line.
• Leeroy Jenkins - Great finisher card, we'll likely need this to get that final bit of damage in on our opponent.
• Subject 9 - Gets us a bunch of cards to play, and we can use those to buff up our Secretkeeper or enable some of our other cards.

Card Substitutions

• Argent Squire - Pretty strong early game minion that can survive damage and potentially get you a trade.
• Blessing of Wisdom - Now that Divine Favor has rotated, we don't have any great draw and this deck can easily go through cards quite quickly. This can be a way to get some more resources.
• Glow-Tron - Strong early game minion that has the bonus of a tribe and Magnetic. If we went more mech heavy, this would be an obvious inclusion.
• Repentance - This is a possibility, but it can be easy to play around and might be a wasted slot.
• Hench-Clan Hogsteed - Good in aggressive decks, and gives us some board presence while likely getting in a trade.
• Knife Juggler - Common addition to aggressive decks with cheap minions, but we just don't have as many ways to trigger him after the rotation.