Hearthstone Players!

Part of me can't wait until Thaurissan is rotated out. As soon as a Mage plops him on the board I know I'm screwed unless I'm north of 20 health and, like Mr. Diggler, I'm sick of all the wombo combo game-winning bullshit. I pulled a Soggoth the Slitherer recently and even though he's no protection against spell damage I'm tempted to put him in decks just to mess with people; I don't give a crap if he's "too slow."

@ jeb: The solution is to play a C'Thun and N'Zoth Rogue. Nothing beats recasting N'Zoth when it comes to deflating an opponent who thought they'd dealt with your board. "Yeah, here he comes again, but this time he brought a couple more guys than last time..." I've never gotten a chance to recast a C'Thun but I imagine that would be ridiculous too.

I might build a Reno Rogue, too, since I really like playing what I think of as "toolbox" decks.

Reno rogue is by far my most fun deck ever. With N Zoth and Yogg sprinkled in naturally. It's fun even if you lose.. And since so many people have decks built to go the distance it shines in that scenario as threre are multiple win conditions especially if you shadow step N Zoth. Make sure you include Burgle and Huckster because more often than not you get some great stuff from opponents class. Malkorok and upgrade recently! I will sheepishly tell you I have maybe lost 10% of the games with Reno in hand because I got greedy/ didn't see lethal coming.

Just today against Warrior. He opens with nothing but draw cards and control. Then Thaurissan. So I am thinking... Oh fuck, he is about to shove a Raging Worgen up my ass sideways. So I Reno early and shadow step. He gets down to low twenties again and I Reno again. I don't have taunt in hand to protect my face. But then he goes old school and drops a few patrons. I betrayal and do some other stuff to clear. Then he patrons up again and double whirlwind. I am staring at a board filled with pissed off patrons. I say my prayers and top deck..... Yogg! A bunch of shit happened when I cast leaving me with Yogg and him with one patron. Then he does some more warrior tricks and spawns out more patrons goes face, does not clear Yogg. I top deck..... Wait for it.... Vanish! Put all our shit back in our hands and his full board can't fit in his chubby warrior hand. Recasts two patrons and Bloodhoof taunt. So I recast Yogg ( why the fuck not?, and who wouldn't? ). Then he resigned with tears. Well, I know I had tears anyway. It was beautiful, man.

It occurred to me Mechs are dead. I never see Mechs in any constructed deck anymore. Like none. And Loatheb. We all have him. Nobody uses him. They gotta bring back mechs and maybe a few more pirates. Also I miss Puddlestomper Murloc. Or some murlocs with a bottom bigger than 1.

MacDirk Diggler wrote: It occurred to me Mechs are dead. I never see Mechs in any constructed deck anymore. Like none. And Loatheb. We all have him. Nobody uses him. They gotta bring back mechs and maybe a few more pirates. Also I miss Puddlestomper Murloc. Or some murlocs with a bottom bigger than 1.

A lot of mechs/mech interactions were in GvG, rotated away. Loatheb is in Naxxramas, also rotated. Murlocs... eh. Gimmicky.

www.hearthpwn.com/decks/581974-kripp-blade

Decided to try out Kripp's Blade of C'Thun deck. I actually had two Blades and a Shadowcaster sitting around, never expecting to be used. It's a little janky but I can produce some ridiculous C'Thun's in the lower ranks. Kripp's video showed him pulling off a 60, which was impressive. I've gotten up to 42. It's kinda fun, but there are obvious gaps in it (i.e. you usually can't wait until turn 4 or 5 to drop Dark Iron against Zoo.

The new rule about hearthstone is we don't talk about Hearthstone?
Dang, this was a hot thread for a long time and now crickets.

When someone posted that Firebat YouTube here it led me down the rabbit hole of watching streams. It's a very guilty pleasure watching somebody in their pajamas playing a card game. But I have witnessed some amazing shit. I saw Kripp get 1.6 billion damage on the city last night in this weeks tavern brawl. Saw a couple of 12 win arena runs. One weird one was Kripp made a deck that played the Paladin card that lets you draw a card and deal its cost as damage. A card nobody plays... Two games in a row he fired Molten giant damage 25 at some poor unsuspecting bastards face. I don't even really enjoy watching Kripp all that much, his personality bores me. Same for 90% of the streamers. They would be wallflowers at most parties yet have a channel with 5k people watching them. I do like me some Reynad though. Ya he is an egomaniac, ya he bitches about everything. But he also wears his heart on his sleeve, talks about his life while playing, and most of all is bold player. Most of the streamers play some meta deck and try and describe how to play it and why, which is fine I suppose. Reynad challenges himself and makes all kinds of crazy decks on the spot and they do pretty well. He is currently trying to make legend with priest only, which is known to be the crappiest class. He made an aggro priest deck built around going shadow form with garrison commander using his hero power 2x, Justicar of course, and the 5/4 guy nobody uses that deals 4 damage to both heroes. He was taking people down in 6-7 turns with it.

Then when I wake up I will watch some P4wnyhof with breakfast. He is the opposite of Reynad, upbeat and bubbly. Kilbler is about the only other one I can watch for more than 5 minutes.

One of the most hilarious things I have seen on the Internet was couple of weeks ago some guy named Jeff Leach (comedian/streamer of another game?) was at Reynads house. They were talking about life girls politics while Reynad played. Jeff was stepping all over Reynads story about a fight he was in at Seatstory cup in Germany couple of years ago. Reynad started pouting hard and you could see he was wishing Jeff wasn't there. Jeff saw this and wanted to lighten the mood and they sang Summer Love from grease karaoke together. Then Jeff wrapped a bow on the whole thing by telling a medieval fantasy story over Game of thrones music that was comprised of all the dialog and intrigue from that podcast. I was dying laughing.

Anywho. The ladder is all about Warrior where I am at (14 right now). C'thun warrior sucks and I beat it all the time, OTK Worgen is unstoppable though, I am sick of it. Dragon warrior I have mixed results. The two decks I favor right now are Paladin control Nzoth with the 4 good murlocs that OTK on Anyfin. Nobody else uses that much and I hope it takes a few people by surprise like it did to me a few months age. Jeb said murlocs were gimmicky a few posts up the thread, I took it as a challenge. The other deck is idea I got from watching Reynad try and make legend the last night of last season (he didn't btw... First time ever he didn't make it). It's half dragon warrior with the good aggro pirates and Korkron Elite and Weapons. It's a respite of playing control paladin where you spend many games trying to pull the 4th Murloc from the bottom of the deck. It's pretty much face Warrior.

You all into Overwatch now???????

No Overwatch for me , just WoW and Hearthstone.

Pulled Ysera finally so I made a dragon Paladin deck that usually does pretty well. Also been working slowly on Heroic Naxx.

Looking forward to Karazhan but I haven't seen many of the cards yet.

...I just don't have anything really interesting to say. The meta is kind of stale, and I am not willing to just Face Shaman folks to advance, so I languish in the 16/15 range. (19 and climbing right now whooo!) Looking forward to the new Adventure coming next week. That should spice things up.

Streamers: I have opinions here. I think Reynad is toxic and I basically can't watch a stream with text-to-speech. Whatever floats your boat. I am definitely in the Johnny mold, so I gravitate to streamers that play slightly "off-meta" decks. Hotform, J4ckiechan, bmkibler, lolnostam fit this mold. They also talk about what's going on, "thinking out loud" about the state of the game. For just pure excellent play, I watch Zetalot (Priest), Ryzen (Rogue), Thijs/Sjow/Kolento (Whatever). I want to specifically call out Firebat. He is an acquired taste, given his patter, but his game awareness is AMAZING. Same goes for Purple, but it's like he never streams anymore. For Arena, I watch ratsmah or itsHafu, but rarely now, as Arena is not kind to me. I did see that Jeff Leach guest star turn and loved it--I check his stream from time to time. He's funny. So is Day[9]. On the last day of the season, I watch JustSaiyan for his Watchstone stream where he drops in on all his Friends to spectate games as they jockey for position on the elite ladder.

I did have a quest I hadn't seen before during the challenge a friend week. I think it was play a friend and you each got 80 or split 80, I can't remember for sure, I never seemed to catch any of you guys on so I ended up re-rolling it

Yep. I play my dailies, then bail.

Often I only play them every few days. Most of the decks I see down in my scrubby levels are sloooooooow, and they drive me insane. Like, do people enjoy playing the Control Warriors that just armor and remove?

I would find piloting that to be like licking soap. But whatevs.

The Tavern Brawl this week is literally auto-win. Like, if you play until the City kills you--you win. Just don't Concede. Re-roll those 40 gold quests, you can do better this week for sure and at your leisure. My record so far is 45 in 6 with Warrior. I have come very close to doubling that with some Priest OTKs, but it always pokes me right before I explode. I don't want to go down the "broken AI" path, so these are legit. Crazed Alchemist/Confuse is good at taking out the big Taunts, Saboteur can slow down the damage from the Hero Power a couple times.

The game is stale to me and has been for about a year now. I enjoyed a lot of the stuff that came out of Whispers (I didn't play at all when League was released) but pretty soon it falls into the same, old model. Plus, two of my favorite classes are Priest and Paladin. The latter is cornered into a control deck that I like, but which takes forever to climb the ladder with. The former is in the worst shape it's been in since the beta, when Shadow Word: Death didn't exist (It replaced a card called Fade: Give all your minions Taunt. The problem then was, as now, that you couldn't keep any minions on the board to Taunt with (or to heal.)) Meanwhile, Brode says that a card called Book Wyrm could help Dragon Priest. So, let's look at Book Wyrm:

It's 6 mana, which is dog slow in this environment. Either you're on the verge of death against aggro or you've just cast a card that control Warrior doesn't give a shit about, since it has awful stats for six mana. It's a 3/6, which means it can't kill most 4 mana cards, the best of which have equal stats (9) for two less mana. But, wait, Ben Brode says, it has a Battlecry! Right. Its Battlecry is the equivalent of Shadow Word: Pain, which is conditional. If your opponent is playing control, he likely doesn't have any minions with an attack of 3 or less, which means SW: P is a dead card in your hand and this is a ridiculously overpriced 3/6. Even worse, you need a dragon in hand to play it. So it's DUAL conditional. Even if the aggro deck has 4 minions out that make great targets for Book Wyrm (at which point, you'll be killing one and then taking damage from the other three; hooray?), if you don't have a dragon in hand, it's still just a ridiculously overpriced 3/6. This is the state of Priest: when a dually-constrained minion with horrible stats is considered "help" for the class.

Plus, although they drastically cut back on the RNG that ruled the day with GvG, I still don't like card games that don't give you the option to manipulate your draws. It's the equivalent of flipping a coin: "You got a better draw than I did? OK. You win. Wanna play again?" I'd just rather have more input on the eventual outcome than that. So, I'll still play off and on, but I'm done as a regular player. Of course, since they haven't revealed any Priest cards yet for Karazhan, the possibility is that they're either saving the best for last or they're trying to shorten the time of outrage to just before the release of the adventure. I just don't have a lot of faith in the dev team right now (obvsly) and I find Heroes, a game where personal (and team) performance has far more impact, to be more interesting.

I'm not the best deck-builder so I've primarily been messing around with a Deathrattle Hunter and an off-meta Control Paladin, both running N'Zoth, obviously, and both are just tweaked variations of existing meta decks. I hate, hate, hate the Control N'Zoth Paladin list because I chafe at having to wait on drawing Sylvanus, Cairne and/or Tirion in order to get value out of N'Zoth, and I invariably draw like crap.

This is the current iteration of my N'Zoth Control Paladin:
Forbidden Healing x1
Argent Squire x1
Equality x2
Wild Pyromancer x2
Acolyte of Pain x2
Aldor Peacekeeper x2
Harvest Golem x2
Ironbeak Owl x1
Seal of Champions x2
Consecration x2
Hammer of Wrath x2
Keeper of Uldaman x2
Truesilver Champion x2
Anubisath Sentinel x1
Cairne xL
Sylvanus xL
Lay on Hands x1
Tirion xL
Soggoth the Slitherer xL
N'Zoth xL

Only one Argent Squire because I'm absolute crap at drawing my 1 drops, so screw it. I don't know if I've used the Owl yet and I'm hoping the surprise factor will make it valuable, but I'm on the fence about its utility. Seal of Champions and Hammer of Wrath are both amazing in this deck. SoC allows me to trade up with the Golem or a SHR in the early game and HoR does the same while also giving me more draw. Better yet, nobody plays those two cards so no one plays around them and I've caught a lot of opponents flat-footed.

Harvest Golem and Anubisath Sentinel are also surprisingly good. I use both of them to set up awkward trades for my opponents and they, along with Cairne, are insurance against AOE after I drop N'Zoth while also obviously provide more N'Zoth value. Soggoth is also pretty good when you've exhausted your opponent's hand and they're top-decking. Probably not as good as Rag or Ysera but it's spell-proof and can be a pain in the ass.

It's a super slow deck - which is why I have a lot of board clears to go along with all of my glacial cards - so I don't have a lot of data points to go by, but it craps all over Control Warrior and can hold its own against most of what I've faced as long as I don't completely whiff on my AOE's or my high-impact late game dudes. C'thun Druid can be handled as long as you don't play greedy (like I did one game and lost, luckily my next game was against another C'thun Druid and I won that one after playing more intelligently) and it even beat that new Tempo Yogg Mage after going to fatigue. That was the game where I was able to live the dream and my Anubisath buffed Soggoth to an 8/12 that my opponent couldn't handle.

But that deck is too fatiguing (heh) and I've been kind of burnt out on HS for the last couple of weeks. I crafted Leeroy so I could mess around with an actual optimal Zoolock build in Wild but I haven't played it much yet this month. So far the new expansion cards are underwhelming and I've gone from wanting to pre-order to considering saving up the gold to pay for it. I'm not even saying the cards are underpowered or useless, I just don't find them all that interesting and I'm having a hard time imagining building decks to include them. I like the Paladin healing spell but the Druid and Mage portal cards strike me as just two more ways to screw me over with more HS RNG nonsense.

I am not sure why I am down on the game--I agree with some of the sentiments here that the drama seems a little lighter than before. It used to be the problem was you had some good games and you had some games where you were dead by turn 5. Now it seems like you have some good games and you have games where your dead by turn 7 and you have games where it takes forever for you ultimately lose, but it was coming from about turn 7 or so. It's slowed down, but I am not sure it's meaningful. That's the issue Priest has--you just don't have enough pro-active cards. You don't get to decide the fate of the game, you just have to wait for your opponent to draw or play badly and then you have a shot. Lightbomb was a huge loss--it let Priest recover from a board state that was overextended. What do they do now? Play a Taunt? Maybe have NZoth bring back some Taunts? It's a rough spot.

On the ladder, novelty pays off in a HUGE way. There is a tremendous advantage in knowing your opponent's deck. You understand their options and can anticipate the lines of play and set things up. This is what is making Warrior so successful right now--you don't know which viable build you are dealing with until it might be too late. With Priest, you know by turn 2 if it's Dragon or Control and you can start manipulating the game state to your advantage. C'Thun decks all play the same way and telegraph as of turn 2 or 3. I have a lot of success with weird Rogue/Druid builds and Shaman Crusher and slightly off center stuff because my opponent reacts to what she thinks is the threat instead of what is actually going to kill them in my hand.

2x Ancestral Spirit
2x doomsayer
2x Lava Shock (Not Eternal Sentinal--the Sentinal can make you lose Jousts)
2x Elemental Destruction
2x Far Sight
2x Healing Wave
2x Hex
2x Lightning Storm
2x Facelss Shambler
1x Flamewrathed Faceless
2x Earth Elemental
1x Faceless Manipulator
Lx Hallazeal the Ascended
Lx Emperor Thaurissan
Lx Sylvanas Windrunner
2x Thing From Below
2x Bog Creeper
Lx Ragnaros the Firelord

I think I'll start playing against Warriors with this simple combo:

T1 - "Thanks" -> "Concede"

Fuck it. Take the star. You're going to win with some bullshit anyway, and I'd rather not spend the time watching it unfold. I could get two other games in. Or go do literally anything else with that fifteen minutes.

Jackwraith wrote: Of course, since they haven't revealed any Priest cards yet for Karazhan, the possibility is that they're either saving the best for last or they're trying to shorten the time of outrage to just before the release of the adventure.

Holy fucking shit, were they saving the worst for last. Purify: 2 mana, Silence a friendly minion and draw a card.

I'm sorry... Wut? In what universe is Purify the equivalent of Mark of Y'shaarj or Slam or Flare or Battle Rage or any of the other 2-mana card-drawing options out there? In what deck would you possibly play this? The Priest version of Handlock so you can release your Ancient Watcher or Eerie Statue? Except that the reason that Handlock worked was based around Molten Giant and Life Tap, as one served the other AND drew cards. So here you have Purify, which cycles, but which also doesn't save you, since if you play it on the majority of the rest of your minions you'll be removing the Taunt that keeps you alive. You can't play it in Dragon Priest because from Whelp on up, every minion you play has an ability that you'd like to keep on the board. Although, I guess you could play it on Book Wyrm, since it's a ridiculously overpriced 3/6 with a Battlecry that you don't give a shit about; consequently, you don't give a shit if you silence it, either.

The best card revealed was Priest of the Feast, a 3/6 for 4 mana (proper stats!) that restores 3 health for every spell you cast. I guess it gives you a reason to play PWS in the late game, since you'll get a draw and 3 life, but the fact is that 3 life doesn't gain you that much in comparison to the use of a card. If Warlock spends 2 life for a card, Priest should be gaining something like 4 life for spending one, since they also need a 3/6 in play to do it and it's not a hero power. And that was the best card... This game is dead to me.