Hearthstone Players!

kookoobah wrote: I've been grinding this entire season in Wild. I'm burnt out. I reached Rank 1 during the first week, then dropped to rank 2/3 for most of the past 2 weeks, and now I'm in rank 4. Getting to Legend is rough.

thats amazing, though. I am strictly Dad Legend material. I don’t have the killer instinct or, frankly, playing time, to get much past 5 in me. That’s a long time to go 55%.

I watched your game, @Jackwraith. I can’t believe they didn’t kill the Spirit on turn 7. “Oh, this thing that poops out 12 in stats every turn? I’ll let that slide for now. Gotta clear these 1/1s.” That’s how you beat them though. Hit them so hard they need to spend cards on your board and make Mountain Giant expensive. Risk there moves to a Sea Giant, but that is not always as tough as 12cc.

Yeah, I kinda wondered about that, too. Maybe he thought he had time to draw into something or expected that I wouldn't be churning out anything more than 1/1s after a couple Frost Novae? Dunno. I screwed up the distribution on one of the giants, too. My girlfriend was talking to me while I was playing, so I ended up wasting the 6/6 and another 4/4 to clear it, but I was still in total control of the board. Hidden Wisdom has been the (ahem) secret weapon of this deck, too. I only run one copy, but it shows up as the random fairly regularly and almost always pays off. The few games I've had it go off with Rhyssa in play have been hilarious. Again, it's horrible that they made her a 4/3. The card would be so much better as a 3/4, such that it might survive for a while despite the super-taunt. No Secret decks are defensive, so there's no situation where playing Taunts to protect her would be viable.

So, Uldum:

Druid- Quest isn't difficult, but it definitely lends itself toward midrange or control decks. It's brilliant with Crystal Merchant. The reward is solid (Loti becomes a 3-cost 4/6 Taunt/Rush/Poisonous/Stealth/Spell Damage minion; not bad.) I really like the concepts behind Bees! and Oasis Surger. Token didn't get much other than the Gnome, so I'm not sure what might be viable.

Hunter- Quest is better than the Un'Goro one, but not that much better. It's "summon", which means it works off Hounds and the new Swarm of Locusts, but even with the great quest reward, it doesn't seem like it will replace Mech Hunter and its variations. Wild Bloodstinger seems excellent, especially against "Big" decks. And Hunter's Pack is amazing. Raiding Party got nerfed because it was 3 cards for 3 mana and yet, here we are. On a personal note, Pressure Plate is going to suck for my Bet Twist deck.

Mage- I hate the Mage quest with every fiber of my being. It's not difficult to accomplish and going back to 8 mana Pyroblasts is just going to be awful. Both Epics are trash, unfortunately. But Flame Ward and the two Secret minions are quite solid. I don't think it's consistent enough to displace Conjurer's, though.

Paladin- The quest is misaligned, because it wants you to play trash minions in what needs to be a control deck in order to get use out of it (2/2 copies of larger minions.) You don't want trash minions in the early game and, given the stats of many of the Reborn minions, you don't want them at all. But it's the same pattern for the whole set. Paladin has been shoved toward healing, but that didn't work. So then it was dragons, but that didn't work. And then it was Secrets, but that didn't work, either. So now it's aggro minions and Murlocs... which have nothing to do with the quest. They said that expansions this year were going to be more coherent (i.e. carry themes from one to the next, rather than the tangential nature of last year (This week- Mechs! Next week- Trolls!) But that message apparently got to every class except Paladin. Pharaoh's Blessing looks interesting, but feels as disjointed as the rest of the set. And, of course, they got stuck with Sir Finley. I give it ~2 months before buffs arrive.

Priest- Priest got the pendulum swing! Rather than upgrade their base set, once again we have to do a Mean Streets boost. The quest is ridiculously easy and the reward is kind of insane. Amet is meh. Psychopomp is random. Grandmummy is killer if she comes back with the Deathrattle and I don't see why she wouldn't. Wretched Reclaimer is amazing. Sandhoof Waterbearer is what Healing Well should have been and Penance is the early removal that Priests have been (literally) dying for. Great set.

Rogue:-The quest is easy for current theft decks and they've added more, including the excellent Bazaar Mugger. The reward is a Fiery War Axe that doesn't damage your face. Everyone was complaining but I fail to see the problem. Anka is meh. Whirlkick Master is poor, but Shadow of Death is amazing, especially with Myra's. I think there are some decent tools here.

Shaman- The quest is OK. The reward is... questionable. Battlecries are about efficiency. Spending two mana cuts down on your efficiency in the late game. Like usual, it will swing wildly between amazingly effective and too expensive/useless. Vessina is interesting and, clearly, a lot of this is built up around horde/aggro decks, including totems, which also encourages people to maindeck Storm Bringer, which no one plays even after the buff because it's virtually impossible to maintain a board these days. Obviously, EVIL totem and Weaponized Wasp and Totemic Surge all support this approach. Maybe it works? I was wrong about Murlocs, based solely on the power of Underbelly Angler, so perhaps there's something here. I just wish Mogu had been 6 mana, instead of 7. Earthquake is amazing, despite the fact that, just like Hagatha, it clears your whole board, too.

Warlock- The quest is OK. The reward is godlike, but Plot Twist decks are very narrow and that's generally the only way to get this completed. Tekahn is potentially amazing, now that they included another way to get Lackeys. Expired Merchant is what discard always should have been. The damage yourself stuff still suffers from the lack of healing in Standard. Three cards were printed with self-damage stuff last year and no one touches them. Spirit Bomb is 1 mana for 4 damage to a minion and can't see play. Diseased Vulture and Riftcleaver seem vaguely viable, but without better ways to heal, I can't see it working. Not a lot of help to Zoo here, either.

Warrior- The quest will be fairly difficult and then summons 4/3s, which are bad. And, really? Taunt Warrior? Again? Bleah. None of this stuff seems capable of dislodging Dr. Boom, although Restless Mummy is excellent and I have to laugh at Plague of Wrath. Finally! A board clear for Warriors!

The high end neutral stuff is full of Timmies. But Colossus and Siamat have serious potential. There've been suggestions that Siamat is the new Ziliax, but the latter has Lifesteal and Magnetic and only costs 5, which makes him far more versatile. Body Wrapper is kind of amazing for things like Big Shaman... except that you don't want average stuff like that to be targeted by your Muckmorphers. Notice how Blatant Decoy is obviously a Mech but isn't part of the tribe? I guarantee you that was a "Dr. Boom is a bit too strong for this." Neferset Ritualist is a potential Zoo card and Khartut Defender is kind of awesome (and killer for Arena.) I can see Fishflinger going right into Murloc decks.

Seems like a decent set, barring the spastic chaos that is Paladin.

Yeah, I was totally wrong about the Shaman quest. It's insanely good. Unfortunately, I was totally right about the Paladin quest. I've tried three different Reborn decks. None of them are worth a damn. Reborn minions, by and large, suck. We could all see that most of them other than Khartut Defender and Colossus are fragile. So, I tried a mild aggro/midrange version with Mechs. Either I had Reborn in play and couldn't magnetize them or I never played enough Reborn and I had a weak mech deck. So, I switched to a control version, trying to exploit Da Undatakah, Eggs, and Immortal Prelate and continually making copies of him so he keeps coming out with the ability to produce cyber dinosaurs. This is where the weakness of Reborn really got exposed. I went full control: Consec, Equality, Wild Pyro, Shrink Ray, Truesilver. But I can't produce enough of a threat before other people complete their quests, which vastly outstrip mine. By the time I actually draw and play all the components, the game is long since lost, assuming that I actually get there, since mostly I just got beat down.

Then I tried to build more of a mid-rangey thing that even used Khartut. Again, most Reborn minions are just bad. They're vanilla guys who don't affect the game state and only occasionally have to be killed twice, because usually your opponent will just run past them to kill you.

Compounding all of this is that I actually spent dust on this stupid card. Back in Un'Goro, I pulled the Paladin quest from a pack, so experimenting with it didn't feel awful. I did eventually dust it because it was useless outside of one of Kibler's meme decks and never got better no matter how they tried to support it last year. But I could have used 1600 dust on something actually useful. Opened an even 70 packs (60 from gold, 3 free, 7 for $10, just to increase my odds.) I got 3 legendaries for classes that I don't play. I had to forge everything else and I'm still short Dark Pharaoh and two Vultures for my Zoo Lackey deck. So, needless to say, my Uldum experience so far has been pretty poor, outside of winning every game I've played with quest Shaman, because it's insane.

Went back to the drawing board and had some conversation on Reddit and came up with another formulation of the Paladin quest deck. Wrapped Golem has turned out to be kind of key, for as lame as that is. It's still not good, but at least it isn't abysmal like it was yesterday.

In contrast, Warlock is here to save the day again. I know the rest of you will be thrilled to know that Zoo is viable again. I'm still lacking a Tekahn, but I had enough dust to get the Vultures and went ahead and built it without the legendary.

### Steppenwolf
# Class: Warlock

# 2x (1) Beaming Sidekick
# 2x (1) Crystallizer
# 2x (1) Flame Imp
# 2x (1) Mecharoo
# 2x (1) Sinister Deal
# 2x (1) Spirit Bomb
# 2x (1) Voidwalker
# 2x (2) Dire Wolf Alpha
# 2x (2) EVIL Cable Rat
# 2x (2) EVIL Genius
# 2x (3) EVIL Recruiter
# 2x (3) Magic Carpet
# 2x (3) Neferset Thrasher
# 2x (3) Nethersoul Buster
# 2x (4) Diseased Vulture
#
AAECAf0GAA8w2QfCCPH3Aqr5Avb9Avr+ArSRA4idA7WfA/qkA/ukA/ykA4GlA/2nAwA=

It works like classic Zoo: Keep spewing out dudes and try to make good trades. My couple of games against Control Warrior and Conjurer's Mage were basically slaughterfests where they were on the back foot the whole time. The Neferset Thrashers are excellent and Sinister Deal being a Discover card is amazing; (almost) always the right Lackey at the right time. Plus, they all get the benefit of the Carpet when it's in play and can then all be targeted by EVIL Recruiter, which is amazing.

I've opened 45 packs and not had anything that makes me want to build a deck around. My free quest was the Hunter which I did attempt, but I think it's a bust: "Summon Hunter" feels like a viable deck but the quest is a win-more card. By the time you've summoned 20 minions, you're either dead or already on top of the game.

Playing against, the big horror so far is the Druid quest which looks absurd. Really easy to trigger and then generates massive value for the entire remainder of the game. It should be able to beat most mid-range and control decks hands-down, as far as I can see.

But it's early days yet. There may be a lot I can't see.

I did get Tekahn, and updated by Troll Sapper deck — not the greatest card, but I like it. The new cards are great

I’ll post the deck as soon as I’m off my phone.

Still opening packs and reading cards. It's been a busy summer here, so I haven't really been following the new set's releases or anything. I got the Hunter and Shaman Quests and some high-cc jank I'll probably grind up once I figure out what I want to do. My first impressions are that Priest is better. The only deck I was having success with (success is a strong word) was Smorc, and even that got a little juice. Deathrattle looks like a real thing, and my first dabbling there was pissing some folks off. Once things get going, like half my guys don't die. I got two "recent opponent would like to be your friend" in three games last night. I'm sure they were going to tell me all about the Bloodlusts that were going to kill me or whatever, or how I needed exactly that card to win (Reader, I did not need that card). You can stabilize the early game with Pyro and the new pew pew, secure some card advantage with Mass Hysteria, and then start building really difficult boards of recurring creatures in the late game.

As an aside, I feel like Knife Juggler's stock went up, right? Between Reborn, BEEEES! and that new Hunter card, I feel like crazy shit can happen if you have a Juggler out.

And this is how you outrace one of the easiest quests in the set: hsreplay.net/replay/kVkJ9U3NznpH3QrFjsz7U3

Granted, Druids often have real problems with wide boards these days. Notice the Vultures sitting in my hand? They're starting to strike me as a "win more" card, except that there are so many things that take advantage of them in the deck/class and they'd certainly be useful in longer contests or against things like Control Warrior that have a variety of removal.

But now that Murloc Paladin is taking over the game again, I'm sure board clears will be even more prevalent, so my time in the sun with Warlock may be ending soon. Still screwing around with the Reborn deck. I think I'm on version 5.

T1: Biology Project
T2: Juicy Psychmelon
T3: Zilliax
T4: Coin, Linecracker
T5: BEEES! targeting Linecracker, swing for 80.

It was against Quest Druid though, so I still feel good about myself.