Hearthstone

I've seen a couple strategies that work well, aside from what's on the /r/Hearthstone Reddit. I've run into a lot of expensive, Control heavy decks that dump their hand within 2-3 turns. If you can survive that (Annoy-o-Tron, other taunts) you can Equality+Consecrate, Brawl, or something else to wipe the board and then they've lost tempo.

What's honestly worked best for me is Patron Warrior. I hate playing it, I suck at it, but it's been working. They dump their hand and fill the board, so I've been able to do the Warsong Commander/Frothing/WhirlwindX2 murder dance. I think one time I had to Execute a taunted Molten Giant.

Ironshield wrote:Not really loving this week's tavern brawl, can't really wrap my head around building a decent deck, and with Legendaries etc... thin on the ground in my collection, it's a bit annoying. But I've loved pretty much all the previous ones.

Excited about the new cards, but wondering if there is any plan to give newbies a bit of a catch-up mechanic as the number of cards increases...

Yeah, it's tough for the new players for sure.

For the second part: Tavern Brawl IS the catch-up mechanism - a free Classic pack a week that's going to be pretty much useless for the older players but good for the newer ones.

Torquemada wrote:What's honestly worked best for me is Patron Warrior. I hate playing it, I suck at it, but it's been working. They dump their hand and fill the board, so I've been able to do the Warsong Commander/Frothing/WhirlwindX2 murder dance. I think one time I had to Execute a taunted Molten Giant.

Huh, I never even saw a single Patron Warrior. The only Warrior I saw at all was pure face (Arcanite Reaper / Korkron Elite / etc).

I blasted through all my piled up dailies yesterday - lots of 2 turn games make it quick!
(Had stacked up 3 different "win 5 games" quests, with no shared classes. Got through all of them in like 90 minutes max.)

Priest was probably the best (or 2nd best) deck (MC is great, Vol'jin+Nova is great, SW:D is awesome, Resurrect is usually great, etc).

My "mostly midrange Shaman" was surprisingly good, if a bit unorthodox for the format. A full compliment of card draw (Gnomish Inventor / Drake / Tide Totem), lots of DRs and taunts (Shredder/Belcher/DoA), and double Bloodlust as all your small stuff just overwhelms their single big things. 2 Hex and 2 BGH. The only problem is that it wasn't great against:

Old School Miracle Rogue. Is Insane. It makes you remember how obnoxiously good Auctioneer was at 5 mana. Had one game where turn 1 Malygos/Conceal into Auctioneer/Shiv/Prep/FoK/complete ridiculousness. Even something like Auctioneer/Coin/Assassinate is stupidly good against turn 1 monster.

First thing I did in this Brawl was throw together a Mage deck with Mirror Entity, Vaporise, Fireballs, Frostbolts, Flamecannons, Polymorphs, Pyroblasts, and then every good big legendary I could fit.

I went priest. Managed to get Maexxna on turn one which shut down my opponent's "stall with taunt" strategy pretty well.

Look what happened.

Rag vs Nef tavern brawl.
Game 1: Ragnaros, slow, inevitable loss.
Game 2: Ragnaros, slow, inevitable loss.
Game 3: Rangaros, instant loss to Vaelastrasz.
Game 4: Nefarian! Finally, I can... have a slow, inevitable loss as I go through the game and only see two dragons from my deck. I drew everything except the dragons.

Edit:
Game 5: Ragnaros. Slow, inevitable loss.
Game 6: Nef. Better than last time, but started drawing awful cards halfway through, lost.
Game 7: Rag. Game was going fairly evenly... then Nef conceded! Hoorah!

Now I can stop playing this until they release the patch and change it to the new one.

I _really_ don't like the new set so far.

A few really good things (twin valks, the shaman stuff), and a lot of total garbage. I mean, really really total garbage. These Inspire cards are all trash.

Unrelated aside: Has anyone played Troggzor in a serious deck at all? I'm kinda thinking that it might be a pretty good counter to the whole Patron deck (and maybe Oil too) and it seems decent in theory. I don't have it though, and I don't really want to craft it if people have tried and it's junk. I have 5k-ish dust that I've been hoarding. Will probably make Archmage for sure, but it's kind of in the air after that...

Troggzor is a very, very strong card... that's way too slow to be useful most of the time. You have to play him on a board where the opponent can't trade with him, or can't kill him with a spell then trade into the trogg summoned. And they can always just play their own big minion, which, since Troggzor's only a 6/6, will often be bigger than him.

Hmm, ok. It'd be in more pure control decks - was thinking in my CW deck that's trying to play a lot of sticky minions (Shredders are really good in CW...) or Priest. Or Pali. You'd be playing a slow game anyway.

Is it better than Baron? Eh, maybe or not, just different.

Back on topic: More god-awful terrible crap from the next expansion previewed. I hate power-creep as much as everyone else does, but most of these cards are going backwards...

Just did my weekly brawl... I was druid vs a mage. Had 1 hp and the mage had 29. So what do I draw?



Managed to come back for a win.

Attempting to push the ladder a little today:
Win, win, loss, win, win, loss, win, win, loss.
Yeah, it's progress, but it's damn annoying.

KysenMurrin wrote:Attempting to push the ladder a little today:
Win, win, loss, win, win, loss, win, win, loss.
Yeah, it's progress, but it's damn annoying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTHCwU9rUdY

Ok... so it's not quite right, but close enough...

Just lost an arena match against a Paladin because he had a secret I assumed was Avenge and a 2-health taunt, and I spent several turns playing around it to avoid him getting lethal... and it was Noble Sacrifice.

Literally every person except me is playing Hunter on ladder today.

KysenMurrin wrote:Literally every person except me is playing Hunter on ladder today.

Time to break out the Priest deck!

I missed the portal brawl due to being on holiday =(

Lots of new cards revealed today, and most of them not bad. Plus a new anti-aggro mechanic. And new rewards for ranked play (you get golden cards and dust depending on the highest rank you reach during the season)!

Meh, the whole set is by-and-large terrible (so far). Looking forward to the good Shaman stuff (Golem/Totemic, maybe the Valiant) but that's about it. Inspire is super-overpriced.

"Jousting" isn't nearly as good as it seems, because you lose ties. The only one that's good at all is the SuperSunwalker, but even that "hitting" is only 70% in something like Control Warrior vs Zoo.

The only deck at all that might be good in (and have room for it) is Ramp Druid.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/3fwffh/joust_odds/

I guess I could see a Warrior deck using it too, but they'd have to take out all the early stuff (Armorsmith/Taskmaster/Acolyte) - replace that with Bash/WW/Cleave type of stuff and be more of a pure MtG-style control deck. That might work.

Not a fan of the jousting mechanic either. It's also a double edged sword, as it can reveal your or opponents key legendary that you wouldnt usually expect (or can tell you/him that you don't have that key card in your hand).

Plus in general, I hate any sort of RNG card, the game is already random enough without adding even more randomness for what I care.

Worldie wrote:Plus in general, I hate any sort of RNG card, the game is already random enough without adding even more randomness for what I care.

Eh, I don't mind _some_ randomness. Stuff like Knife Juggler and Flamecannon and Fireguard Destroyer and Mad Bomber and Neptulon and Shredder and such don't bother me at all.

I can't stand the ones with gigantic variance, though. Unstable Portal is an abomination of design. The worst offender by far though is the new Bane of Doom - not only is there a stupidly-large difference between the high and low ends (Mal'ganis/Jaraxxus/Dread Infernal vs Blood Imp/Flame Imp/Voidwalker), there's basically nothing in the middle that would be a "fair" result (basically only Felguard) - feast or famine are the only choices.

I think the RNG is what causes me to have difficulties wrapping my head around "good" strategies over games like Magic or Yu-gi-oh. So many little things that can completely alter your ability to win... and not many good ways to counteract them.

*sigh* Another day, another giant pile of junk previewed.

Living Roots is a decent card (probably for Token only but whatever), Warhorse Trainer is ok, maybe. The rest is total garbage.

I suppose you'll be happy you don't need to spend any money on new packs, then, if all the cards are awful.

Well so far I haven't seen any cards that makes me think "hell this card is a must have for my deck", just a lot of gimmick or situational cards.

So much of this new card set seems like it's putting things just on the verge of creating new deck archetypes... but not quite making them strong enough to work.

The new Druid control stuff is probably a little too slow, and pretty inconsistant if you try to go all-in Astral Communion.
The Inspire mechanics tend to be severely penalised in stats for marginal benefit.
Joust is more likely to lose than win, making most of them not worth using over existing cards because they have undercosted bodies. (Tuskarr Jouster is the best of them, and will be played.)

In some cases it's like BRM and dragons: There are solid cards there, but it's not worth the cost of building your deck around the mechanic.

(Don't get me wrong, I will be making a Ramp Druid with Aviana and Astral Communion as soon as I possibly can.)