High and a winner; Got a hot hand

It's January, so I'm back on the tournament circuit for the World of Warcraft TCG.

For anyone that's previously played with or against me during last years Realm Qualifiers, you'll be quite aware that my favourite flavour of deck is Goblin. Goblin Druid. Goblin beatdown. Infinite Goblins. Gobbos galore!

Last year I was rocking the Krixel Pinchwhistle/Exxi the Windshaper/Gurubashi Arena combination along with some other usual suspects.


This year I decided to break ground with a tighter version of my Baxxel Geartooth rush deck.
Hero:
Baxxel Geartooth

Allies:
[4] Kloxx Dedrix
[4] Izzy Quizfiz
[4] Grazzle Grubhook
[4] Yazli Earthspark
[4] Trade Prince Gallywix
[4] Boomer
[4] Exxi the Windshaper
[4] Zakis Trickstab
[4] Tesla
[2] Loque


Abilities:
[4] Avatar of the Wild
[4] Disengage
[3] Blast Trap
[2] Bestial Revival
[4] Aspect of the Wild

Quests:
[3] Corrosion Prevention
[3] The Essence of Emnity

Total: 61




...Okay, I said "tighter", I may have meant "Built-deck-in-30-minutes-and-not-thought-about-what-I-was-doing". I didn't have time to playtest either.

For me, playtesting was the first qualifier round due to time constraints.

For something so Ally heavy and concentrated, it performed about how I expected it to. Whilst I only went 2/3 and landed 8th place (Of 10 players...), my first games were supposedly quite close. Both my first and second games came down to a standoff, with me having a field and hand prepared to kill my opponent, and them managing to finish me off in their turn.

My 2 wins were against the same deck and against a less experienced player.

The other game was a Horde Hunter matchup that slaughtered me.


So, in 5 games I learned that compared to my old Druid deck, Hunters lack draw power. Speed was down to how fast I could drop Gallywix.
Yazli + Aspect proved to be exactly as effective as could be predicted as well.

My suggestions for the deck are few in number:
-2 Kloxx Dedrixx
-2 Zakis Trickstab
-2 Grazzle Grubhook
-1 The Essence of Emnity
+4 The Seeds of Their Demise
+1 Corrosion Prevention
+2 Gispax the Mixologist

I could be tempted to drop the Kloxx' altogether in favour of Kazbaz' or that other 2 drop Goblin protector, the 2/3 one.

This deck would benefit greatly from Cairne, Earthmother's Chosen if I could find a playset of them. The obvious stash effect and he's a beefy nature ally who can benefit from Aspect of the Wild.

I'm also toying with the idea of dropping the Loques altogether in favour of Al'Akirs. I'm not sold on the dropping a clear end-game card in favour of something just because it will stack with Aspect of the Wild. Loque is also retrievable with Bestial Revival, but Al'Akir is searchable with Gispax. If I were to run Al'Akir, I would feel the need to make room for Skywalls and Bound Vortexes. Skywall is easy, but the Bound Vortexes would be more difficult.

I'm wondering if running a couple of Zudzo, Herald of the Elements would be worth the effort of going about acquiring Zudzos .

All in all, I reckon that Aspect Hunter still has potential and it works with my Goblin theme. Whilst it remains likely that I'll be running Green Dragon beatdown at my next couple of qualifiers, I'm going to be working on an Aspect Hunter decklist for some other competitive events.