Hearthstone Players!

My daughter opened a golden Cairne Bloodhoof today and literally danced around. Hearthstone is awesome.

We watched Day[[9] on Twitch laddering with Dragon Hunter, streaking from 10.x to 8.x before taking a loss. Not sure what the list is, but a lot of games come down to Gladiator's Longbow!

I have been successful with Erasmus B. Dragon on the ladder. It can at least hang with smorc and can just serve a bunch of other archetypes. In the Casual room, I have been playing Resuwrecked . This deck isn't viable on the ladder due to all the aggression, but it is so crazy fun. If you make it to turn 6 or so with ~15 life, you should be all set. Things get crazy.

I love playing themed decks, too. I have a Druid deck filled with huge cards, but I'm legendary-poor as well.

I just built a Rogue deck stuffed with Pirates (I call her Anne Bonny) that I'm having a ton of fun with. It plays pretty well, but wouldn't stand a chance against serious competition.

Yeah, theme decks are really fun...but failures. WHen I first started, that's all I tried to do. Just doesn't work.

I think the mech thing works now, and the dragon thing kind of works if you have the right cards. Mayhaps pirates and ninjas will make those themes viable.

Legendaries...man...you read Hearthstone forums and it sounds like everybody has everything. I have like maybe four or five. They're so damn rare, and too damn expensive to craft.

Then you get one from a booster and it's a sorry one, and you have that "should I disenchant" dilemma...

Gregarius wrote: I love playing themed decks, too. I have a Druid deck filled with huge cards, but I'm legendary-poor as well.

I just built a Rogue deck stuffed with Pirates (I call her Anne Bonny) that I'm having a ton of fun with. It plays pretty well, but wouldn't stand a chance against serious competition.

I love Pirate decks. I was so geeked to see Pirates in the GvG preview last fall and immediately re-assembled my Paladin attempt, which failed. So then I went with Rogue, and it failed. So then I tried Warrior and it burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. Pirates are just too weak and, for some insane reason, the damn Parrot ISN'T a pirate. WTF?

Neither is Edwin Van Cleef! Is that even canonical? I heard he was one in WoW.

Salty Dog is the spoiler. If that guy was 6/5--whole different ballgame. Everyone can kill a 4 toughness guy.

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Matched up my decent aggrish Priest deck against a Warrior @ 3-1 in Arena today. His deck was just sick! I saw almost all of it, pulling out the win at the end, but look at this suite of weapons:

• 2x Death's Bite
• 1x Arcanite Reaper
• 1x Gorehowl
• 1x Upgrade (which he used on Gorehowl)
• 1x Ogre Warmaul (frown--he never swung with it though, it was endgame garbage.)

He also had Fen Creeper and Sen'jin Shieldmasta to hide behind, with Gadgetzan Auctioneer and 2x Acolyte of Pain for card draw. I stole his Gadgetzan with Shrinkmeister/Cabal Shadow Priest and flipped the game, but it was awesome. We friended after the match and I told him I would be a blemish on a 12 win deck. Turns out he went up against 2x Flamestrike, Alexstrazsa, Blizzard, Snowchugger, Water Elemental the next game and went out 4-3. That's Hearthstone.

You can do some stuff with Pirates+Warrior or Pirates+Rogue but neither is as good as Rogue+Mech or Warrior+Warrior creatures.

I think of the races Mechs are probably the only truly viable option. Murlocks are probably second best, but I don't really see a situation in which they're better than Mechs.

I still don't think much of Dragons. Not enough options lower in the mana curve. Dragons need a butt kicking 1 or 2 drop that synergies with stuff that can come after it. Right now that card is the dragons egg, I guess? Doesn't do much for me. Dragons egg is just a shitty nerubian egg.

I was playing some last night and was able to get a new pack. Here was my pull

Needless to say I was pretty happy, even though I already have Greenskin. Thalnos is a good card and the 400 points for greenskin is pretty good.

I saved up so I could get Dr. Boom and Ragnaros, who I think are the two best neutral legendaries. Not sure where I'm going to go with my next crafted, thinking either Mal'Ganis or Archmage Antonidas.

I finally bit the bullet and just crafted Boom. If they change him, there's always the buyback option, so it's a safer buy than anything else.

My deck opens continue to be flat-out garbage. I pulled a Legendary the other day, and it was Flame Leviathan, aka "Mage is good enough already". First one I've seen in who knows how long, and it totally sucks.

Arena Priest stalled out at 6-3. Lost to another Priest. I did manage to Shrinkmeister/Kodo both a Fen Creeper and a Shieldmasta in successive games. One ended up as bunch of surprise hits to his face, the other just forestalled my losing.

jeb wrote: Neither is Edwin Van Cleef! Is that even canonical? I heard he was one in WoW.

Salty Dog is the spoiler. If that guy was 6/5--whole different ballgame. Everyone can kill a 4 toughness guy.

Van Cleef is actually the leader of the Defias Brotherhood, who aren't pirates but more like rebels/bandits. They rebuilt Stormwind after the second war (VanCleef is actually an engineer) but when the time came to pay the workers, the rulers reneged. So VanCleef encouraged a riot, which got all of them expelled from the city. Now they control nearby regions as a kind of criminal syndicate.

Even a 6/5 wouldn't change the fact that most of the Pirates just aren't durable enough to make decent decks with. A 3/3 taunter? A bunch of 2/1s, 1/2s, and 2/3s that have limited effect even with their Battlecries? They're just not going to work against even other tribes like Mechs (Spider Tank, Mech Yeti, Deathrattle effects/Spare Parts, etc.) They need either more beef or much bigger impact when they come into play and they have neither right now.

And Ship's Cannon isn't even a pirate!

I saw a story somewhere earlier that the next expansion could possibly be Pirates vs Ninjas. Boosting pirates sounds like a good idea to me and would hopefully flesh them out making pirate decks more viable.

You know how this ends, right?

Nice! Once I had Gharzilla on board and the opponent played Goblin Blastmage for some reason.

Things did not go well for him...

I had a great Arena run with a Mage. TONS of removal. I lost one because my connection dropped which sucked. I ended up 7-3 so I played again with my won gold and proceeded to go 0-3 as a Warlock. Just terrible cards.

Picked up 9 wins with a Priest on my Europe account (non-primary, just so I can get more runs in).

Arena rewards:
i.imgur.com/SxtnJr2.jpg

Pack rewards:
i.imgur.com/5UEnqP2.jpg

Of course.

Totally rampaging yesterday with this really dumb Paladin dragon deck...I built it thinking "this'll never work". I went like 8-10 with it. Mostly packed in every dragon card I had (all but Nefarian from BRM) and some things to buff them and the occasional infantryman up. Mostly did it just for fun, but then it was just stomping all comers. Obnoxious. It got me into Arena, where I promptly went 0-3 with the WORST Rogue deck quite possibly ever built. It was just heartbreaking. Draft after draft, just GARBAGE. A man only needs so many Saps, I mean come on. No combo fodder, no Gang Ups, only one Shadowstep, one Sharpsword Oil. The rest of the deck was like a couple of pirates, a stray Murloc, Jeeves and some other bullshit. I was so disheartened that I paid for another Arena ticket and made what I thought was an amazing Druid deck...that also went 0-3. Out of the award packs, 8 out of 10 cards were dupes. No legendaries.

HEARTHSTONE!

eSports!

I am losing about half my iPad games to disconnects now. Anyone want a quick win? Just make it turn eight against me and play a Shadowflame on a busy board. I will blink out for ten minutes.