The tempo Archer shell is a really powerful aggressive deck with lots of draw, reach and flexibility, but it lacks the ability to defend your board state and doesn’t have any true hard removal outside of the Leaflurker package. Including Willpower’s infamous four cost suite (Cloudrest/Hive Defender/Dawnbreaker) and Piercing Javelins gives this deck a lot more resiliency. Plus you get access to the excellent Crusader and Monk dual color cards like Rift Thane and Ahnassi that also provide some multipurpose protection/aggression.

The deck is built heavily around the Plot and Rally keywords, Haunted Manor, and a whole lot of card draw. You have 22 cards in the deck that cycle and your curve effectively tops out at 5, which means that once you make it to mid game you should have plenty of resources and being able to play multiple cards a turn with powerful effects and buffs. Rally cards like Sarethi Scion, Warclaw Mercenary and Khuul Lawkeeper help keep your low cost creatures buffed and relevant into the mid game. Plot cards like Hlaalu Sharpshooter, Lower Canton Smith and Twin Lamps Consul help maintain tempo, protect your threats and give you reach. Haunted Manor deserves a mention here as it is essentially a plot card that buffs up your creatures. The deck functions decently enough without it, but if you do get value out of it, your chances to win increase dramatically.

To trigger your plots, you’ve got some powerful 1 cost events that cycle in Rapid Shot and Shadow Shift, Hlaalu Oathman and Nix-Ox to give you free cards to play and put bodies on the board, and the Goblin Skulk package with a twist: Dres Spy. Dres Spy is huge in triggering plots and gives you massive flexibility with being able to plan out your turn (and combos nicely with all your card draw).

The deck essentially plays like a very aggressive midrange deck. You mostly want to be curving out, but instead of playing a single beefy threat each turn like Mid Sorc, you will generally be playing 2-3 cards a turn and swarming the board with ever growing buffed creatures. This deck is a lot of fun to play as there are often lots of decision points and lots of potential to snowball out of control. If you really like tempo based Archer lists and want to play something similar in the post-HoM world, I highly recommend it.