Less important to me is the respectable attack. The combination of excellent utility and versatility is great. It can also lead to some great surprises when taking out crippling blows or weapons. Against warriors other than Vess, it can take out Blood Frenzy, which can win you the game. It is a counter to millstalker, but also Vess and Skervox.
These are very helpful against decks with a lot of items, or decks that rely on attachments. All in all, this serves as excellent utility in a variety of matchups. It’s relatively hard to kill, which can either leave you with an ally to use assassination/backstab on or at the very least prevent a good amount of damage to your hero. It stops the Bloodpack Shaman or Shadow Knight loop and lets you exile them while you’re at it. It exiles allies from the graveyard, limiting healing by elementals and kills Gravebone’s Dakraths for good. Spirit Warden on the other hand does a variety of useful things, it has steadfast, which safely removes snare traps. I originally had a few copies of Wily smuggler in this deck, and while this allowed for some occasional strong turn 4 combos, it was not nearly consistent enough in this deck to be worth it. I recommend keeping a few copies in a deck for a while, and it will start to grow on you. It may take you some time too, that’s ok. It took me a while to understand this card’s value. I don’t always need them, but when I do, I’m glad I have them in deck. I only have a couple in here because they’re tech, just like those Spirit Wardens. The haste is excellent, as is cycling cards and being able to pull off hasty assassinations / backstabs. That often comes as a surprise to opponents who thought that my 2/5 spirit warden couldn’t possibly hurt their fatty. As a bonus, I can combo it with backstab to get that +1 attack bonus on other allies. It’s here to complement Nightshade and to buff allies so that they can survive a supernova.
I’ve already talked about why I love this card in another article. Mirror matches for me are not just luck, I actually win by having the better-suited deck (that may change after you all copy me though). I can effectively death race Serena, out-controlling her in the early game, while steadily losing card advantage, and then finishing her off in the late-game. This has the added advantage of giving me an edge against other Serena decks. Nightshade / Sentinel makes this deck quicker and more aggressive than most Serena decks. It’s not as good as Night Owl in many matchups, but the ones where it’s better are the ones that I need it for. Generally Night Owl works for slower rogue decks with a higher resource curve, while Nightshade works (combod with Midnight Sentinel / Backstab / Assassination in decks with lower resource curves. You also don’t want Nightshade when you’re trying to keep Night Owl cloaked, and so they don’t play well together in decks. You don’t want Night Owl in games where the opponent is rushing and you need something down on T2. Night Owl is more efficient, but also more vulnerable and slower. I generally consider both very strong cards, with slightly different advantages. I think this needs some mentioning because many excellent Serena decks use Night Owl instead. The key is a lot of excellent utility cards combined with a strong (for Serena) early game, and support cards aimed at sustaining the deck into the late game. It has its share of weak matchups, but they’re usually slightly weak, and not auto-losses. What’s so special about this deck? It essentially is a broad toolbox for Serena, with potential answers in small amounts to a wide array of decks and play-styles. Sometimes we can just improve it or adapt it to fit ourselves and our situations. We don’t need to always reinvent the wheel. In my opinion, there’s no shame in copying, as long as you give credit where it’s due. At this point it has morphed a few times, and while all the cards are commonly used Serena cards, I like to think that I’ve made it my own. But in truth, it is a net-deck – well actually an adaptation of a deck that I already posted here (if others copy it, it becomes a net-deck, right?), which was loosely based off of watching BP Chamthabo play his excellent Serena deck (before he posted it). It also got me to a ranking of 324 in QM (though I’ve dropped a bit) and earned me the top place in both days of the Europe/Africa Regional Championship (2014). This deck has earned me high praise like “nice net-deck” and “looks more like just another player with a common meta deck”.
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