Hearthstone Players!

People are talking about Lifedrinker comboing with Shudderwock and Grumble in all kinds of contortions, but I don't think they quite see just how random that is; not to mention the requirement of a specific draw and play order and waiting until turn 10 to get it all to work properly.

At this point, the real problem for Warlock is figuring out which cards to fit in their deck. As noted, the loss of N'Zoth and Mixtress means both a late game and early game setback, respectively. They can't be as cavalier with their Tapping and they can't rely on anything other than Gul'dan for a reload. In basic terms, aggro's answer remains beating them before they can get all the parts in play and control's answer remains removing those parts in such a way that they're not as easily recyclable. The other option is just beating them at the fatigue game, which new healing-centric Priest and Paladin MIGHT be able to do, since Warlock will always be at a disadvantage in that respect simply by Tapping. But that doesn't do anything about their burst potential.

I was doing decently against them with Control Priest, based largely on stealing their Voidlords whenever one appeared. But that relied upon proper draw and Pint-sized Potion, which no longer exists (except for Warlock...), so I think the Cabal Shadow Priests are going back to Neverplayed Land. You'd like to think that Quest Priest would be able to take advantage of Cube in a similar fashion, but the lack of a Charge minion is what prevents it. And, of course, the fact that the quest reward doesn't actually help you win the game, so much as simply extend it so that you don't lose and can find another way to win.

Warlock has some decent options to replace Mixtress of Mixtures -- Rotten Applebaum is a bit expensive, but taunt is nice. Also, I might put Felsoul Inquisitor in my Kelseth deck.

I'm most excited about Vodoo Doll --- a cool little card.

I will probably pair curse of weakness with Void Ripper -- pretty flexible board clear if you have both cards in hand

My free Witchwood legendary was The Face Collector. Which was nice as I think it's the card I like best in the whole set. Not because it's particularly good, but just because the concept is so awesome.

Opened 100 packs and got:
- Hagatha the Witch
- Blackhowl Gunspire
- Prince Liam
- Chameleos
- Toki, Time Tinker
- Tess Greymane

Which isn't a bad haul in terms of frequency. Chameleos looks the most fun, letting you spy on your opponent's hand without them knowing. We'll just have to see how the cards play in the new meta. Odd that I didn't get a single neutral legendary in the whole lot, but at least they don't feel so indulgent if you have to craft them.

LOL



hsreplay.net/replay/SFzwPw2XnNscLU5Ekd7xyd

Got Genn, Baku, Liam, and the Druid, Rogue, Hunter, and Mage legendary, none of which I wanted or kept. Out of almost 140 packs. Seems normal. I had better luck with Epics, pulling almost everything I wanted. The above game is an example of the ridiculousness that Shudderwock will bring. I also wrecked a Secret Mage playing Secret Paladin (casting Secrets into my two Secretkeepers may not be wise...) and played a ridiculous "all the new cards" Priest deck to see how things worked. It lost to Quest Warrior with the Gunspire(!) Chameleos is as good as expected, though. I knew that he had a Brawl from turn 1 and pulled a Witchwood Grizzly from him about halfway through the game.

I've tried assembling a decent Control Paladin list and it just doesn't seem viable so long as the entire class is predicated around Call to Arms. It just weighs down the top half of your deck now that Dirty Rat is gone. There's going to have to be a deck that simply doesn't use the best card in the game, which is crazy, but there are too many good cards at 3 or above that it ignores. So you have to play them the old-fashioned way, which usually means you can't keep up with other decks of any kind. Bleh.

I got the Lady In White as my freebie. I'll have about 75 packs to open when I get home. It's a family thing. I am going to cull my collection once I get these open and start looking for winners. because of the rotation, I feel comfortable dusting the mediocre-to-Arena-good stuff from older sets. I am pretty open minded on quality and I tend to keep weird deck-building shit like Hobgoblin, so I don't know how much I will clear, but I think I will be in good shape.

Matt: Hagatha isn't good right now, but it could potentially BE really good. That's why there is so much chatter about it. It's on the cusp of greatness.

I got lucky with my free 86 packs, I actually opened 3 legendaries in back to back packs.

Face Collector (free one)
Baku the Mooneater
Glass Knight
Darius Crowley
Blackhowl Gunspire
Emeriss
Shudderwock

Emeriss is trash tier and the Gunspire is a meme deck. Everything else seems like it could have some potential.

Having played a few games with her this afternoon, I can confirm that "not good" is probably the accurate terminology. You can't play her until turn 8 and unlike the more expensive Death Knights of a few other classes (Mage, Warlock, Warrior), she doesn't actually do anything when you spend 8 mana, other than Hellfire the board, which can be counterproductive to you, but is also often ephemeral to the opponent. By the time you hit turn 8, there are a lot of minions that can effectively shrug off a Hellfire. You'll notice that Warlock control decks run Hellfire AND Defile AND Doomsayer, etc. because Hellfire has the same problem in later turns, even though it only costs 4. Once she's in play, you get one spell per minion. But the question at that point becomes: what minions can you play that will actually be effective on turn 9 and will the RNG of the spells be enough to save you.

I will say that Donais was utterly full of shit when he declared that Earthen Might, Blazing Invocation, and Zap were sufficient to alleviate the poor quality of Shaman spells overall. That game I posted above does see me getting a fairly timely Ancestral and Forked Lightning, but I wasn't under tremendous threat at that point, either. Plus, the Overload cost (as always) of Shaman spells continue to be a serious hindrance to being able to turn things around. You can look at the downside of Blazing handing me a Void Ripper (that I never actually used) or the upside of getting a Kalimos, the turn after I played Bogshaper. That's what really led to the victory in the game; not Hagatha. In other words, I took control of the game by pure luck, not because anything worked as it should have.

I mean, I'm going to keep trying. Maybe there's a combination other than the OTK combo that makes her and the Shaman cards an actual upgrade (it would have been difficult for the class to get worse.) But right now, I don't see anything that's going to make any combination of Shaman a Tier 1 deck or Hagatha as the key card in anything vaguely competitive. First day, though.

The most interesting thing I've played today has been the Paladin Secret deck. I have a midrange design and a total aggro design with Liam which is probably better, but that's just usually not my style. Also, everyone that was wetting their pants on the Reddits about Cathedral Gargoyle was as wrong as I thought they'd be. Pulling it with Call is virtually useless and there just aren't enough good dragons around to make it work. You'd think "Well, Faerie Dragon!" because it can get pulled by Call. But it also can't be buffed with any Paladin spells, so it's as much a vanilla 3/2 as the Gargoyle is a vanilla 2/2 when it gets pulled.

Opened 150 packs. Half from gold I had. Blizzard was very generous as I had my best haul of any first day expansion pack busting. I didn’t get the Odd guy, dollmaster, lord godfrey, chamelios, either rogue one or glass knight. Otherwise I got all the legos. Even got two in one pack for the first tine. After dusting my dupes and golden cards I have 10k dust and can get the stuff I need. Was a great day. I am set.

Looking forward to some warrior, warlock and priest. Not exited at all to try any rogue Druid or Mage. Got both Shaman legos, so I guess I will mess around with that as well.

I am halfway through my 74 packs, and already opened four Legendaries (Glinda Crowskin, Face Collector, Dorian Dollmaster (WHAAA), and Azalina Soulthief. Then I went and ground up some janky stuff from Wild sets and built Houdmaster Shaw, Shudderwock, Baku the Mooneater, Chameleos, so any other Legendaries I open will be gravy. It would be nice to have some in this set {Darius Crowley, Lord Godfrey, Tess Greymane, and Archmage Arugal}.

My first projects will be Odd Priest and Midrange Hunter. We'll see what else comes to mind.

//edit: And two more in the last half: Archmage Arugal and Countess Ashmore.
Missing Commons: 1@ Rebuke (DAMMIT), 1@ Tanaglesure Mystic

Nothing else screams for crafting except Pyschic Scream #2 right now--ooh and I had to make Glittermoth #2.

I opened 146 packs and got 8 legendaries, one of which is probably the worst in the set. I usually open at least one godawful, sub-meme legendary per set:
Grand Tournament: The Mistcaller
Old Gods: Anomalus
Gadgetzan: Madame Goya (honorable mention: Sgt. Sally)
Un'goro: Ozruk (I opened the Warlock Quest but it was much later)
Frozen Throne: Moorabi (honorable mention: Archbishop Benedictus)
Kobolds: King Togwaggle/Temporus (tie)

This time I not only opened Duskfallen Aviana, but Splintergraft, too. My free class legendary was the Mage card, Toki Time-Tinkerer, and the remaining five were: Prince Liam, Tess Greymane, Shudderwock, Glinda Crowskin and Countess Ashmore.

I didn't have much time to build anything but I did tweak my Spell Hunter deck (i.e., goodbye Barnes, Y'Shaarj and Cat Trick) to make it Standard compliant. I added 1x Rat Trap for giggles but I don't have high hopes, and I also put in a Flare since, if I can't run Silence tech, at least I can run Secret tech. I also put in 2x Wing Blast and even though it came through for me against a Cubelock it's too early to see how good it'll be. I kind of like that it's a conditional Soulfire with no drawback and it shouldn't be too hard to proc the cost reduction if you have any sort of board at all.

Aw, don't diss Benedictus. He shows up in all kinds of Control Priest builds and made it into my Odd Priest. That's how you beat Warlocks. Just BE them in the second half the game and kill them with fatigue.

I'd like to try Odd Priest, since I pulled Baku, but I didn't get any Moths and I don't have Benedictus, either. I did do one run with the Even Paladin recipe, since I have both Genn and Glass Knight and I won, oddly (ahem.) It's strange, because getting the button for 1 doesn't really mesh with the other cards in the deck. Yes, you can always take advantage of the spare mana, but I ended up using the Coin on one turn 5 to play two cards and I just don't remember the half-cost hero power doing much.

And I did finally figure out a Control Paladin deck that's working. As in, I haven't lost with it yet today (6 wins.) The Glass Knight is just hilariously effective and Sound the Bells is as good as I thought it would be, late-game. I'm only playing 1 because that's the amount that feels right, but when it comes up and I have three straggly minions on the board (a wounded Saronite, a Hydrologist, and a Dude) and I can turn them into a threat that basically closes the game out, that's a card that works. I beat Shaman OTK twice by doing the late-game beatdown. It uses Val'anyr and the Spellstone and brings back what was once thought to be one of the greatest cards in the game: Aldor Peacekeeper. Gotta find room for Spellbreaker. I didn't run into any Cubelocks with that deck (I ran over a couple with Fungal Glinda Zoo), so I'm not sure how well it will do there.

The Shaman OTK decks I am seeing are dumb. That's a really fragile thing and it's not worth waiting around for. Shudderwock is some good in a Control Shaman deck, period. I punched for 6, gained 6 life, killed something 2-or-less, shot myself in the face for 3 (oops), and got two 6/6 Taunts for 9. On like turn 13 or so. It's solid as a rock, you don't need to get all crazy about it. It's like Yogg except you know what's going to happen for the most part.

I think Fatigue Druid should be a thing. Folks are super greedy right now and they can mill your deck pretty savagely with their 1/6 guy and Naturalizes. And they can play super defensive games and sneak wins with that Attach/Health-switching Demon.