Picture this: you play the World of Warcraft online game. Your main character on there is a Death Knight. You also like to play trading card games, and you heard that someone (ie. Cryptozoic Entertainment) does a trading card game for the World of Warcraft. You and a friend go out to your local game store, and find starter decks. Hey! One of those Class Starters features a Horde Death Knight. That's what you play online, so you buy it.

You battle your friend, who also picked up a Class Starter, and enjoy the game. In fact, you want to improve your death-loving ghoul-raising Death Knight into something a little more powerful. You have started to realize which cards you no longer want to keep in your deck, as they're simple but can be better replaced by other options once you've learned how to play.

Where do you go from there? Well, that's what I'm here for.

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game's 2011 Class Starter Decks have every combination available to new players who may be familiar with the wildly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Each Starter Deck also has its own feel. While all of them teach the basics and keep things simple when it comes to allies, each Class Starter has a theme that you can recognize after your first game, based on the class that the Starter Deck represents.

In the case of the Death Knight, the theme is Ghouls. Death Knights love turning dead allies into ghoulish minions. Ghoul ally tokens always come in one size. 3 ATK. 3 health. Some of the Death Knight's cards are based around Ghouls as well. Take Death Coil, for instance.

Death Coil lets you deal 3 damage to something, and then it also lets you ready a Ghoul you control. If you shoot the opponent with your Death Coil after you attacked their hero with your Ghoul, that's a speedy 9 damage! Now imagine if your Ghoul was any larger than a 3 ATK ally. Perhaps through the aid of a rare that comes out with the new expansion, Crown of the Heavens.

Yep. There we go! Now we have a theme to carry on from the Class Starters. The deck will be based on turning your Ghouls into even bigger monstrosities.

For those of you who don't want to feel like I've got a bias, I'll be going through both Alliance and Horde options for you to consider when modifying your Death Knight Class Starter towards the Ghouls.

The Key Cards

The key cards you will get out of your 2011 Class Starter deck are the following:

-Brothers in Death
-Gargoyle
-Unholy Ground
-Death Coil

It's hard to ignore a quest that gives you a Ghoul, and in the Core Constructed format (the most widely played format for the game), it's rare not to have an ally to remove for its reward. In fact, you'll guarantee it if you're Horde. More on that later.

Gargoyle is generally considered a staple from the Horde 2011 Class Starter deck, and while the Alliance Starter does not have the powerful pet, I recommend getting four. It's hard to ignore its ferocious strength.

Unholy Ground, if we're building around Ghouls, is another staple to this theme. It transforms any non-token allies that are destroyed on your side into Ghouls to use with your Dark Transformation. Best of all, it lets you have a Ghoul that can attack on turn 5 if this is played on turn 4, assuming you have an ally to destroy on that critical fourth turn. However, as you need to include space for allies, we're going to only run three copies of Unholy Ground. It is very important, but can clog up your hand with non-allies at four.

The other staple is Death Coil, which gets you extra mileage out of your Ghouls. It also lets you live the dream of multiple attacks with your Dark Transformation Ghoul, which should end games quickly. Nothing says "I win" like a 10/10 Ghoul chomping away at all that oppose you!

Given the importance of all these cards (and the importance of Dark Transformation in a Ghoul theme deck), you'll want to be running four copies of each (except for Unholy Ground). That's nineteen cards already!

Other cards to consider including, as it allows Death Knights to live longer in their fight to transform a Ghoul, include Death Strike and Frozen Core. Both serve as early removal for troublesome allies, and buys a Death Knight time to lean on more potent cards like Unholy Ground. Four of each would be ideal.

Chains of Ice is also good at nullifying an ally. While the diseases you can find aren't too amazing, two Withering Decays certainly wouldn't hurt. They power up your Death Strike, and it gives you something to find with your Chains. As you may end up running too much removal, consider shifting your Chains of Ice count to three.

That brings deck contents to the following:

4 Gargoyle

3 Unholy Ground
4 Dark Transformations
4 Frozen Core
4 Death Strike
4 Death Coil
3 Chains of Ice
2 Withering Decay

4 Brothers in Blood

The total contents is now 32 cards. There's a lot of abilities in the deck, but not too many allies. Let's fix that!

Allies

Some of your best allies happen to be neutral, so look into including some of them. The Dragonkin allies, such as Bronze Warden, serve multiple purposes:

-They have effects you often need, such as Protector, or they help you control abilities and equipment
-They activate one of your deck's potential draw engines, Etched Dragonbone Girdle

Unholy Ground gets downright nasty with an active Etched Dragonbone Girdle. Every non-token Dragonkin that you pop two two cards gets replaced by a Ghoul token! These have to be included.

The Dragonkin I recommend running are Bronze Warden (for the healing and the Protector), Bronze Guardian, Obsidian Drudge, and Obsidian Drakonid. The latter two help control non-ally cards, and give you reason to destroy them.

While it's not exactly budget conscious, if you go down this route, consider investing in some Twilight Citadels. The location feeds your Etched Dragonbone Girdle. If you can't afford those, Last of Her Kind is an option to bring back dead Dragonkins.

Depending on which faction you go, there are a couple of options.

Alliance

If you go for the blue team, Stevrona Forgemender is a must-have.

She pumps up all of your tokens, but more importantly her Stash effect lets you get extra damage in with your Ghouls. The real winner here is Dark Transformation with Stevrona, allowing you to kill opposing heroes out of nowhere.

Burly Berta is slow, but provides a steady stream of cards if you keep connecting with the opposing hero. Her Death Rattle can also serve to pump up a Ghoul token for some readying shenanigans via Death Coil and Stevrona.

Your hero selection isn't too pressing. If you want to run King Genn Greymane and more Worgen to fill out your list, then you're limited to Kavar the Bloodthirsty. Otherwise, pick whichever hero suits your game plan better.

Here's what a sample list would look like if you wanted to go for a more powerful flip.

Hero: Barathex, Undeath's Hand

Allies: 24
4 Burly Berta
4 Stevrona Forgemender
4 Obsidian Drudge
4 Bronze Warden
4 Obsidian Drakonid
4 Gargoyle

Abilities: 24
4 Dark Transformation
4 Frozen Core
4 Death Strike
4 Death Coil
3 Chains of Ice
3 Unholy Ground
2 Withering Decay

Equipment: 4
4 Etched Dragonbone Girdle

Locations: 4
4 Twilight Citadel

Quests: 4
4 Brothers in Blood

There are good budget alternatives too if you want to save on the expensive cards like Twilight Citadel. Consider The Crucible of Carnage: The Twilight Terror as a cheap quest instead. The Girdle package is still important for drawing cards though, and it plays nicely with Unholy Ground, so I'd recommend keeping it.

Horde

The biggest reason to go Horde with your Death Knight is for this ghoulish hero.

Ghoulmaster Kalisa's flip feeds into a great turn 2/turn 3 play of flipping to get a Ghoul, and then removing the ally you discarded to Brothers in Death to keep the Ghoul onslaught coming.

If you go this route, you can cut down on some of your Obsidian Dragonkins with effects like "Fungus Face" McGillicutty, but it's not necessary.

Tol'zin has the potential to be big, and also offers a minor Stash bonus if you'd like it. Mazu'kon is also a nice alternative to winning via Dark Transformation, and may be reason to consider Shalug'doom, the Axe of Unmaking as a finisher. Sacrificing your Ghoul army for one hero-charged assault is a fine way to end the game.

Here's a sample of what you can do with Horde:

Hero: Ghoulmaster Kalisa

Allies: 24
4 Bronze Warden
4 Obsidian Drudge
4 Obsidian Drakonid
4 Gargoyle
4 Mazu'kon
4 Jex'ali

Abilities: 21
4 Death Strike
3 Dark Transformation
3 Death Coil
4 Frozen Core
3 Chains of Ice
2 Withering Decay
2 Unholy Ground

Equipment: 7
4 Etched Dragonbone Girdle
3 Shalug'doom, the Axe of Unmaking

Locations: 4
4 Twilight Citadel

Quests: 4
4 Brothers in Death

The ability numbers had to be trimmed in order to make room for Shalug'doom, which I feel is too good not to include if you are also running Mazu'kon.

Budget alternatives for this deck include Sava'gin the Reckless, which can act as cheap removal, or more Dragonkins. Zin'sul also makes Scimitar of the Sirocco an appealing option, as it plays very nicely with Unholy Ground's Ghoul generation. Deathlord Jones also threatens opponents with its "Death Coil on a stick" effect, and is another cheaper alternative to Mazu'kon.

Cards to Consider

One card I regret not getting to with these basic deck upgrades is Skullchewer. He competes with Gargoyle as a pet, but is also a Ghoul itself so it gets the same benefits of being able to go under a Dark Transformation. It can also be readied to Death Coil. What a bonus!

Looking to improve upon your Class Starter? Be sure to leave a comment and I'll take a look at a Class Starter at your request, including options to upgrade it on a budget!