It's Sunday: Death Knight Jin'rohk nonsense

A while ago, around the time of Scourgewar's release, I built a deck that was designed to do one thing - Jin'rohk your opponent in the face repeatedly. For better or worse I chose Death Knight as the class to do this with, and threw together a clunky deck that could sometimes perform this feat for the first time on turn 6. It looked a little bit like this:

Hero: Erondra Frostmoon

4 Beserker Bracers
4 Bonefist Gauntlets
4 Greathelm of the Scourge Champion
3 Breastplate of Undeath
2 Jin’rohk, the Great Apocalypse

4 Corpse Explosion
4 Unholy Presence
4 Unholy Rune
3 Death Grip
3 Army of the Dead

4 Wanda Darkfizz
4 Deathcharger
3 Short John Mithril
2 Pappy Ironbane

3 Eye of the Storm
4 Darkness Calling
4 Hazardous Materials
4 Bane of the Illidari

Clunky, I know. It did have its moments though - spending the opening turns armouring up, including Bonefist Gauntlets, prevented a large amount of early damage, Unholy Presence lets you play and swing with weapons for cheaper, and with those two cards on the table enabled you to drop - and swing with - Jin'rohk on turn 6. Armour was a big problem though, and thinking back I probably played a huge amount of irrelevant shit instead of Pappy too, but I don't have an accurate decklist to hand.

The Death Knight flavour of this deck was probably just a bit ahead of its time as there still weren't enough Death Knight cards out to build anything other than a red aggro deck. Since then a lot of cards that benefit this particular deck have been printed; also, one of the recent glut of previews could perhaps help bring this deck back to life a little: Dancing Rune Weapon.

Basically the new card enables you to play a Jin'rohk for one resource on turn seven, swing with it and still have resources left over. In the above deck, you shuold be able to swing for free on turn seven, do other stuff, and then on turn eight play the sword again, and have another crack.

Not to mention this involves you swapping specs to Blood, which gives you access to Hysteria; no more messing around with Death Grip! It is likely that one swing will be all you need to put the game beyond reach of your opponent when you destroy seven of their cards. There's no denying that Corpse Explosion is a big loss, but hopefully some of the other cards I've added since then will help out, especially now we have an extra turn to play with before Armageddon.

This is most definitely a work in progress as we don't know what else Worldbreaker will bring for our Knights, not least whether the red hero will have a flip that is at all useful or not! That said, the following list renders Krog's flip redundant anyway.

Hero: Krog the Deathfist

4 Beserker Bracers

4 Bonefist Gauntlets

4 Helm of Vital Protection

3 Sun-Emblazoned Chestplate

2 Jin'rohk, the Great Apocalypse

4 Broderick Langforth

3 Vuz'din

3 Short John Mithril

3 Wooly White Rhino

4 Hysteria

4 Dancing Rune Weapon

4 Entomb

3 Unholy Presence

3 Army of the Dead

3 Eye of the Storm

4 Hazardous Materials

4 Darkness Calling

4 For Great Honor

Basically, Beserker Bracers stop you from dying, Sun-Emblazoned Chestplate stops people attacking your hero, Helm makes your Jin'rohk bigger, Broderick makes your Jin'rohk bigger, Hysteria makes your Jin'rohk bigger, Hazardous Materials makes your Jin'rohk bigger, Wooly White Rhino prevents people from stopping you having fun with your great big, fat, Jin'rohk... Vuz'din makes you sad (Army is your only out) but other than that...

You get the idea. It is the beginning of the end.