How to play the Rush Warrior deck that helped lead ShuiMoo to victory

With the Hearthstone Masters Tour Dalaran over, and Wang “ShuiMoo” Qihao becoming champion, his Rush Warrior deck should be fun to learn and play. It’s proven to be one of the first true mid-range Warrior decks played both at competitive level and in ranked play.

Hearthstone caster and analyst Michael “Heatwave” Lancaster helps us explain how to play this deck in this deck guide for Rush Warrior.

The deck build

To start, this deck primarily consists of synergy around rush cards. These cards include cheap options such as Athletic Studies, Parade Leader and Crabrider. Along with the defensive hero power that Warrior naturally has, the idea of the deck is to counter your opponent’s minions with stronger ones who can immediately attack them. Along with those original rush cards, the deck features many ways to buff all your minion’s stats and build a powerful team on your side of the board.

When building this deck, if you want to have a perfect recreation of the one ShuiMoo used, it is costly. You will need over 12,400 dust to craft this deck from scratch, for the perfect match. While some cards can change, the high-cost cards all have their specific needs to counter other, popular decks. There are some possible changes to make within this deck, but cards such as Blademaster Samuro and Ringmaster Whatley are crucial. In the deck ShuiMoo used, the cards that were more specific towards tournament play were Archdruid Naralex and Ogremancer, so if you want to make your own version of Rush Warrior, those are two cards you can change.

One possible substitution Heatwave brought up was the Warmaul Challenger. With its unique ‘battle to the death’ battlecry, it synergizes with Rokara amazingly for a low mana cost. “If you are finding yourself running up against a lot of aggressive decks, there are key minions that you’re going to want to kill and Warmaul Challenger’s up to that task,” Heatwave said.

How to play

With Warrior usually being either a very aggressive or control-focused class in previous tournaments, this is a unique deck. Heatwave mentioned how the deck is “one of the few of mid-range Warrior decks that have really ever existed and to have success on a wide scale.” This is mainly due to how quickly it can build up powerful minions. When you get offered your first cards at the start, the cards to keep are Athletic Studies and Imprisoned Gan’arg. Being able to create a low-cost rush minion to combo into your other cards is key. As for the Imprisoned Gan’arg, getting that early weapon helps you clear the enemy’s minions as you build your own.

Another key card to play early on is Bumper Car. If you can trade, get those extra minions in your hand and buff them, it helps you establish board presence. Heatwave made sure to get that point across, saying “Bumper Car is your best friend as it will be able to fill your hand with minions for Conditioning. It works wonders with E.T.C too; Bumper Car is the unassuming hero of this deck for sure.”

As you go for as much damage as possible, free legendary card Alexstraza the Life-Binder can finish your opponents off. Heatwave was also key to mention how you should use Alexstraza’s damage almost always for either face damage or minion removal, as they’re very rarely healed.

How to work around Rush Warrior

The main issue with this deck is the lack of card draw. There are plenty of ways to create new cards with Athletic Studies and Bumper Car. But, with how much you need to trade, cards like Stage Dive are key to drawing more of your deck. Other options for card draw include Cutting Class and Stonemaul Anchorman, but the Warrior class lacks card draw in general.

Make sure to make your plays count and watch how many cards you have in your hand. As long as you do that and trade minions well, you’ll start winning in no time with this Hearthstone Rush Warrior deck.