Introduction
The Menagerie wing of One Night in Karazhan opened this week, and with it, The Curator. The Curator has the potential to provide insane value, the trick is finding a deck to put him in. When played, he draws a Dragon, Beast, and Murloc. As a seven mana 4/6, his stats are incredibly poor, so his effect needs to pack a real bang. This has led many to craft new decks with the sole purpose of creating their own menagerie.
Curator’s compliments
The Curator doesn’t come alone, however. Along with him are Zoobot and Menagerie Magician. These cards both provide buffs to each of the types that The Curator draws. With maximum value, Zoobot is a three mana 6/6, and Menagerie Magician is a five mana 10/10. Hitting even a single target with their effects makes playing them worth it, two targets is extremely strong.
The three cards together have strongly promoted this new archetype of trying to fit three different types in one deck. Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder than it looks.
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The Problem with The Curator
So looking at this, it seems that as long as you put one or two of each type in, The Curator at least can get value. So I thought about simply fitting him into control decks, and seeing which of each type I would add. Here the problems began. Finding single Dragons is quite easy. Ysera and Alexstrazsa are great targets for high end, Azure Drake is good for midrange. You can even put in Faerie Dragon if you want more targets.
Beasts were slightly harder, but still fairly easy. If you merely want a decent statline, Hungry Toad is perfect. Jeweled Scarab can add consistency. Stranglethorn and Stampeding Kodo are good midrange minions. Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale is a good high end Beast. Lots of possibilities, even more within each class. Here came the problem.
Neutral. Murlocs. Suck. The only one that simply runs a good statline is Bilefin Tidehunter. Sir Finley can be situationally useful. You can potentially run Corrupted Seer or Coldlight Oracle, but you’re simply not happy about playing them. If you get them for free off of The Curator, it’s okay, but drawing them really sucks. Unfortunately this is an issue that isn’t about to change. This leaves The Curator at half value, or you running bad cards.
The ‘Solution’
The best solution so far is to simply run a Murloc deck. Not a typical Murloc Paladin deck, but a legitimate Murloc based midrange deck. You run a majority of Murlocs, but also enough Beasts and Dragons that the buffers are included. The best class for this is still Paladin because of their natural Murloc synergy.
The goal of this deck is largely around Zoobot and Menagerie Magician. As stated, if they are able to get their ability off on two targets, it is incredible value. Menagerie Magician especially can easily end the game with a big tempo swing. The Curator simply provides card draw and consistency to the deck.
Here is a sample decklist by redditor Yazza:
