Hearthstone 22: Evening the Odds

[Tvtyrant]

On turn 1, Heal Zoo with coin can pump out: Flame Imp (3/2), Voodoo Doctor (2/1) and two 3/3s.

That start is tied for closest busted start with coin to Token Druid with the 1/2 Pirate + Patches + Double Raven Familiar + Innervate + Mark of the Lotus.

That should be a 2/3, 2/2 with Charge, and 2 3/3s, but an empty hand with no ability to reload like Warlock can with life tap. On the plus side, Druid also didn't have to face a turn 2 Defile XD

I remember when Undertaker starts were the scariest starts in Hearthstone, yeesh.

I was thinking kobold who draws a card to injure yourself t1, vodoo doctor and the free if you heal yourself guys. A little slower but you are up a card and some life.

My preferred deck has always been Anyfin Paladin, but even with a deck devoted to trades and slowing the game down it just isn't fast enough to stabilize. Besides ladders with control is exhausting.

The thing with zoolock is there are so many cantrips and free cards I feel like I never run out of gas.

[Rodin]

Ah whoops, I forgot about that card. That is an EXTREME high roll, but I guess it checks out.

Funnily enough, the first time I saw it was in one of the Hearthstone tournament streams. The Warlock lost that match. I forget exactly how, but I think it was something like the opponent being a Handlock that managed to Defile into Hellfire into Hellfire or some nonsense.

[Psyren]

Funnily enough, the first time I saw it was in one of the Hearthstone tournament streams. The Warlock lost that match. I forget exactly how, but I think it was something like the opponent being a Handlock that managed to Defile into Hellfire into Hellfire or some nonsense.

I'd say every good control deck has a god draw that can compete with that god draw. A control warrior for instance can counter that by T2 Drywhisker Armorer for +8 life, followed by T3 Tar Creeper and now you don't have to worry about them dropping a T3 Saronite since they used their coin as the opener. You should have little trouble getting to the T4 double Warpath or the T5 Brawl at that point.

[Boci]

I'd say every good control deck has a god draw that can compete with that god draw. A control warrior for instance can counter that by T2 Drywhisker Armorer for +8 life, followed by T3 Tar Creeper and now you don't have to worry about them dropping a T3 Saronite since they used their coin as the opener. You should have little trouble getting to the T4 double Warpath or the T5 Brawl at that point.

But you're comparing a multiple turns of a warrior to deal with one (admittedly spectacularly good) turn from the zoolock. You're having the warrior wipe the board with double warpath or brawl, meaning the zoolock player will have had 3-4 turns to draw since then, so can recover. Zoo is probably unbeatable with perfect draw, but since perfect draw very rarely happens its not too relevant.

[Rynjin]

But you're comparing a multiple turns of a warrior to deal with one (admittedly spectacularly good) turn from the zoolock. You're having the warrior wipe the board with double warpath or brawl, meaning the zoolock player will have had 3-4 turns to draw since then, so can recover. Zoo is probably unbeatable with perfect draw, but since perfect draw very rarely happens its not too relevant.

The thing is, Control Warrior HAS multiple turns. In fact, he has ALL THE TURNS.

Zoo needs momentum. When the momentum is broken, it becomes a bad time. The longer the match lasts, the more inevitable Control Warrior's win becomes. Sure, the Warrior might be spending turns 4 and 5 to "do nothing" but wipe the board, but at that point the Warlock has 2-3 turns to win before the Warrior becomes entrenched in a fortified bunker of taunts, armor, and enough removal to survive the apocalypse.

[Psyren]

But you're comparing a multiple turns of a warrior to deal with one (admittedly spectacularly good) turn from the zoolock. You're having the warrior wipe the board with double warpath or brawl, meaning the zoolock player will have had 3-4 turns to draw since then, so can recover. Zoo is probably unbeatable with perfect draw, but since perfect draw very rarely happens its not too relevant.

Aside from what Rynjin said, you're also comparing 4 cards from the zoo player (5 if you count the coin) to in many cases 1-2 cards from the Warrior. The Zoo player's 3-4 turns of draw after that alpha strike would largely be to catch up to where the warrior already is. (And, expecting zoo, that Warrior would definitely have held onto more answers and stall in their hand from the mulligan anyway.)

[Joran]

I'd say every good control deck has a god draw that can compete with that god draw. A control warrior for instance can counter that by T2 Drywhisker Armorer for +8 life, followed by T3 Tar Creeper and now you don't have to worry about them dropping a T3 Saronite since they used their coin as the opener. You should have little trouble getting to the T4 double Warpath or the T5 Brawl at that point.

Might get a little rough for Control Warrior if Zoo keeps nut-drawing.

Turn 1 Crazy Turn: Zoo plays all 4 cards out, 1 card remaining: Zoo player has Keleseth in hand
Turn 2: Keleseth: Zoo player draws Soulfire. Trades the 2/1 into Whiskerer, puts 9 to Control Warrior (Control Warrior at 29)
Turn 3: Draws Flame Imp with buff, plays another 4/3 and then Soulfire + Keleseth into the Tar Creeper, puts another 9 into the Control Warrior. Control Warrior now facing a 4/3, two 3/3s, and a 3/2 with a turn 4 play and at 20 hp.

It gets a little hazy there, but the Warrior needs to get a Chain Gang down here to basically have any hope of surviving and I'm not sure Control Warrior runs Chain Gang.

Edit: This iteration of Zoo has pretty good reload since you can always hit a Kobold Librarian into either Doubling Imp or Saronite Chain Gang and keep presenting awkward boards for the Warrior to deal with until Warrior runs out of AoE clears and Zoo finishes them off.

Also, it has sneaky damage because I've had times when I basically stabilized, the Zoo drops a Lightwarden that I can't clear and the AoE healing and I get hit for 9 =P

Edit 2: The Control Warlock nut draw is unbeatable by Zoolock though. Defile into Doomsayer, then stall until the weapon comes and brings Voidlords.

[Hamste]

Just finished the lethal puzzles, they seemed pretty good. I actually had to think a bit on the later ones at least.

Mirror puzzles done. Again somewhat challenging towards the end though I think the lethal puzzles were harder.

[Zevox]

Got to say, I like this more than getting yet another version of Dungeon Run. Puzzles are fun.

I've finished the lethal puzzles. They definitely get hard towards the end - I actually wound up looking up the answer to the very last one. Not proud, but since it was just a significantly harder version of the one before it, and I'd barely found a way to finish that one, I genuinely didn't think I would find a solution to it myself, at least not tonight, and didn't want to redo the three before it later, since all were tough enough that I spent some time on them and was not confident I could remember the exact answers later.

[Hamste]

Just finished the survival, it was the hardest of the three I have done so far. I actually had to search up one of the answers for a glow-tron level, though I think if I kept trying I would have realized the slight difference between what I was trying and what was right.

[Destro_Yersul]

The survival puzzles were the hardest. Then I went on to the Dr. Boom puzzles...

Got to say, the Lethal ones are just not fun. The patrons are finicky, the bomb one is just about guessing the right order to play cards, and The northshire card draing animation takes so long, and he's got so much health, that even when you get the right answer you're sitting there waiting for it to finish. I just looked up the solutions and went to do something else while I waited.

[Anarion]

The survival puzzles were the hardest. Then I went on to the Dr. Boom puzzles...

Got to say, the Lethal ones are just not fun. The patrons are finicky, the bomb one is just about guessing the right order to play cards, and The northshire card draing animation takes so long, and he's got so much health, that even when you get the right answer you're sitting there waiting for it to finish. I just looked up the solutions and went to do something else while I waited.

I liked the lethal ones, despite being difficult. That Patron one is finicky indeed, but it's actually quite accurate for how the deck used to play before Warsong Commander got nerfed, and I think it's a real indication of how much more a practiced and skilled player can get out of a complex deck than someone who's just picking it up for the first time. Ditto for all the stuff dealing with the gnome experiment and repeatedly collecting all your buffs back, which is a thing now.

The board clear ones were the ones I found most annoying because killing your own stuff is such a weird thing to look for and makes a lot of the puzzles counterintuitive to the rest of the game.

Edit: Admittedly, the Northshire Cleric animation times are a pain in the butt and I wish you could skip them.

[Seerow]

So I finally got around to breaking up to Rank 10 last night. I've been memeing around rank 15 this last month or two not really progressing at all. Then on a whim decided to try pogo rogue again, swapped out a few cards (switched out a couple of draw cards for some rotten applebaums for extra sustain in the long grindy matchups), and suddenly went on a pretty solid win streak to 10. I don't think Pogo is going to be hitting meta or anything, but another solid day like that, I could easily push back to rank 5 which I have not gotten to in standard in probably 4-5 months (just not been pushing ladder this last few months the way I was).

I think a large part of my win rate is just people expecting odd rogue and muliganing for early removal, and instead I just play slow and win the value game hard. In the match against odd rogue it is much harder, and that matchup is honestly pretty brutal if the opponent draws well. I need to get 3-4 pogos in the first 6 turns to really be able to match the tempo they generate.

[Zevox]

Whew, cleared the whole Puzzle Lab at last! Have to say, it felt like the survival challenges were the ones where I had the most trouble on the largest number of them, yet it's also the only category where I didn't get so frustrated with any of them that I just straight-up looked up the answer (which I did on the final Doctor Boom challenge of each of the others - and the final non-Boom challenge of board clear, I think), so that felt good.

All in all, I quite like the mode. Sad that it has no replay value and the reward is still just a card back (as if I'm ever going to use a card back other than the rainbow one), but it's a great change from the Dungeon Run/Monster Hunt style of single-player content IMO.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, I'm still on Lethal puzzles. I'll have to get around to solving them all.

in other news I'm still on a winning streak with Whizbang. meta? deck planning? who needs that? I need only faith in the new RN-God, Whizbang. Praise him, for he is wonderful. watch as he gives me a priest deck that allows me to pull out four to eight Amara Wardens of Hope on the board.

[ChaosOS]

Puzzle labs were fun. I used the Icy Veins hints (so not quite full solutions) for board clear #1 and lethal #1 plus the survival one with the two omega defenders, didn't need help to get through the regular puzzles. Only have the final defile-based Boom board clear puzzle.

[Psyren]

I've been getting through them slowly. There's just so much to do in WoW at the moment that Hearthstone has taken a serious backseat.

[Tvtyrant]

Laddered all the way from the bottom to rank 13 this and last weekend as Zoolock. I'm still in awe at how much more powerful Hearthstone has become since Pirate Shaman was on top (the last time I played regularly). I probably won't get into rank 12 though, I haven't won a game against odd paladin yet.

Speaking of which, anyone have suggestions on that matchup? Getting drowned in an endless wall of 2/2s isn't my idea of fun.

[Resileaf]

I tend to hang between rank 10 and 5, depending on my luck that month. I'd like to get to rank 5 (for that sweet golden epic) but I've gotten used to the fact I'm probably not good enough to do it reliably because I don't really play the flavor of the month decks everyone else does. Since my goal in the game is to collect cards over making consistently powerful decks, I tend to just build what I like and get as high as I can.

As for the puzzles, I've done a few of them. Completed the lethal ones, only needed help for a single one of them. Am at the last bunch of mirror ones atm, but haven't tried to do them yet.

[Anarion]

Laddered all the way from the bottom to rank 13 this and last weekend as Zoolock. I'm still in awe at how much more powerful Hearthstone has become since Pirate Shaman was on top (the last time I played regularly). I probably won't get into rank 12 though, I haven't won a game against odd paladin yet.

Odd Paladin has really swingy matchups. If you're running a deck that tries to play lots of minions, like Zoo, it's a terrible match for you because they're just going to kill you faster. It fails quite badly against a lot of the druid decks and even warlock (defile ruins odd paladin).

[Tvtyrant]

Odd Paladin has really swingy matchups. If you're running a deck that tries to play lots of minions, like Zoo, it's a terrible match for you because they're just going to kill you faster. It fails quite badly against a lot of the druid decks and even warlock (defile ruins odd paladin).

That is my experience as well. I think defile would water down the deck too much to include (darn none-sideboard game), but I inevitably hit one in every seven games or so and it breaks my streak.

[Psyren]

That is my experience as well. I think defile would water down the deck too much to include (darn none-sideboard game), but I inevitably hit one in every seven games or so and it breaks my streak.

That's an interesting discussion topic in and of itself: should they implement a sideboard in Hearthstone, and if so how?

Traditional sideboarding is swapping out some cards after a match - either to beat the thing you just fought, or to anticipate their attempt to beat the thing you just won with. I think turning matches into 2/3 (even ranked ones) would be a bad idea - you lose a lot of the speed of play that makes Hearthstone appealing to begin with. And if you let players choose whether they want to do best of 1 or best of 3 on ladder, now you've split your community and made queue times longer for everybody, much like Overwatch did when they added more Arcade modes. The flipside is that those new queues may simply end up becoming the new normal.

That leaves the other kind of sideboard - doing it sight-unseen at the beginning of a match, when the only info you have to go on is the opponent's class and their position on the ladder. Basically, embedding it into the mulligan phase. For some matchups this is easy - if I'm up against a Warrior deck that made it high up it's probably control, while if I'm up against a Priest that made it high up it's probably a combo deck. Against others it's hard - Warlock is probably Zoo, but it could also be Handlock or Controlock. Similarly, Mage could be more aggro with Elementals or Tempo, or it could be more control with Hand or Big Spell.

One the one hand, I'm in favor because it might give more decks a fighting change against aggro; you can put in more early speedbumps and removal, and then when you see a Warrior opposite you (again, at a certain point on the ladder it's probably control) you swap those out for pressure or card draw instead. On the other hand, sideboarding screws classes that only have one viable high-tier deck archetype at the moment -Control Warrior and Combo Priest for example.

Finally, depending on how many cards they let you sideboard, you might be able to swap out your entire win condition. For example, you could trade Malygos and Floop for Azalina and Togwaggle.

[Tvtyrant]

That's an interesting discussion topic in and of itself: should they implement a sideboard in Hearthstone, and if so how?

Traditional sideboarding is swapping out some cards after a match - either to beat the thing you just fought, or to anticipate their attempt to beat the thing you just won with. I think turning matches into 2/3 (even ranked ones) would be a bad idea - you lose a lot of the speed of play that makes Hearthstone appealing to begin with. And if you let players choose whether they want to do best of 1 or best of 3 on ladder, now you've split your community and made queue times longer for everybody, much like Overwatch did when they added more Arcade modes. The flipside is that those new queues may simply end up becoming the new normal.

That leaves the other kind of sideboard - doing it sight-unseen at the beginning of a match, when the only info you have to go on is the opponent's class and their position on the ladder. Basically, embedding it into the mulligan phase. For some matchups this is easy - if I'm up against a Warrior deck that made it high up it's probably control, while if I'm up against a Priest that made it high up it's probably a combo deck. Against others it's hard - Warlock is probably Zoo, but it could also be Handlock or Controlock. Similarly, Mage could be more aggro with Elementals or Tempo, or it could be more control with Hand or Big Spell.

One the one hand, I'm in favor because it might give more decks a fighting change against aggro; you can put in more early speedbumps and removal, and then when you see a Warrior opposite you (again, at a certain point on the ladder it's probably control) you swap those out for pressure or card draw instead. On the other hand, sideboarding screws classes that only have one viable high-tier deck archetype at the moment -Control Warrior and Combo Priest for example.

Finally, depending on how many cards they let you sideboard, you might be able to swap out your entire win condition. For example, you could trade Malygos and Floop for Azalina and Togwaggle.
It is an interesting question. As a primary magic, secondary hearthstone player I waffle a bit. In MtG sideboards lets them keep blatantly stupid and overpowered things in the game, and print silver bullets to deal with them. Dredge, affinity and storm would all be far too strong in every format if there wasn't narrow but overpowered sideboard cards.

Without a board Hearthstone has to work harder to prevent blatantly unfair decks, which is good for gameplay but bad when they repeatedly kill my decks out from under me (Anyfin Paladin and Pirate Shaman each ate multiple nerfs until they died.)

One of the things I would like is a classic ladder. Original unnerfed cards and only the original sets.

[Rodin]

I'm against, with speed and ease of play being a major contributing factor. For casual play, having to add an additional set of cards designed to counter today's meta seems tiresome, and adding another phase at the mulligan stage just slows the start of games down. There's also a level of skill in the deckbuilding where you have to decide how many tech cards you put in, and how bad those cards will be if you don't run into what you're teching against. Sideboards allow just building the strongest possible deck and then swapping on the fly.

Sideboards are also most notable at a tournament level where multiple matches against a single opponent are common. Hearthstone already handles this fairly well I think - between open deck lists and formats (like Last Man Standing) that allow explicit counter-queueing, the ability of high level players to give themselves an advantage in the re-match is already pretty high.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, I like everybody being set with the deck, because I like the current deck paradigm of the game: some decks are advantaged against some decks and disadvantaged against others and that keeps most deck winrates in the same basic tier pretty even, usually. Those dis/advantages are often predicated on one to two cards being present or absent from a deck, since Hearthstone decks are pretty trim compared to some other card games.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I'm really not a fan of silver bullet sideboard design, because it's a boring way to fix overtuned decks. It's an ugly bandaid that reduces a significant portion of the rematch to "do you have the bullet? Then you probably win." I think it's far more interesting if you're able to beat a strong deck by attacking its weaknesses and vulnerabilities, not by randomly drawing a card that negates its strength. It's a harder design route, but the payoff is a lot stronger, to give archetypes tradeoffs and weaknesses that require thin margins of error, windows where opponents can punish mistakes.

[Psyren]

For the record, I'm against sideboards too. But to play devil's advocate:


I'm really not a fan of silver bullet sideboard design, because it's a boring way to fix overtuned decks. It's an ugly bandaid that reduces a significant portion of the rematch to "do you have the bullet? Then you probably win." I think it's far more interesting if you're able to beat a strong deck by attacking its weaknesses and vulnerabilities, not by randomly drawing a card that negates its strength. It's a harder design route, but the payoff is a lot stronger, to give archetypes tradeoffs and weaknesses that require thin margins of error, windows where opponents can punish mistakes.

The problem here is that for a strong deck "attacking its weaknesses and vulnerabilities" largely involves "randomly drawing a key card" too. What we're left with in other words is a deck full of silver bullets, because no sideboard means you have to prepare for everything else you might run into in the meta simultaneously. That or just accept that against Deck X and Deck Y you just lose.

[Tvtyrant]

For the record, I'm against sideboards too. But to play devil's advocate:



The problem here is that for a strong deck "attacking its weaknesses and vulnerabilities" largely involves "randomly drawing a key card" too. What we're left with in other words is a deck full of silver bullets, because no sideboard means you have to prepare for everything else you might run into in the meta simultaneously. That or just accept that against Deck X and Deck Y you just lose.

With magic this becomes a problem anyway, because some plans are just so much faster then everything else. Legacy reanimator basically requires turn 1 grave hate or scoop for most decks, and just bombs against miracles/hard control.

[Psyren]

With magic this becomes a problem anyway, because some plans are just so much faster then everything else. Legacy reanimator basically requires turn 1 grave hate or scoop for most decks, and just bombs against miracles/hard control.

Well of course Legacy is ridiculous, it's worse than Wild :smalltongue: the folks playing it know what they're in for. I'd only see it as a problem if T2 was that bad.

[Tvtyrant]

Well of course Legacy is ridiculous, it's worse than Wild :smalltongue: the folks playing it know what they're in for. I'd only see it as a problem if T2 was that bad.

For sure. I play 12 Post, a combo deck that hunts control decks.

My point is that sideboards don't help matchups much, you basically have to have a deck devoted to beating another deck just like in Hearthstone (but more so.)

So having sideboards might not help in the long run.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

For the record, I'm against sideboards too. But to play devil's advocate:



The problem here is that for a strong deck "attacking its weaknesses and vulnerabilities" largely involves "randomly drawing a key card" too. What we're left with in other words is a deck full of silver bullets, because no sideboard means you have to prepare for everything else you might run into in the meta simultaneously. That or just accept that against Deck X and Deck Y you just lose.
Not necessarily. I'm talking about structural weaknesses, like how Druid sacrifices card advantage and board presence to ramp mana crystals...

...well, they used to. But back when this was a legit weakness, you could actually leverage that factor against them. They got to do their cool stuff, but you got a window to hit them.

[Boci]

Not necessarily. I'm talking about structural weaknesses, like how Druid sacrifices card advantage and board presence to ramp mana crystals...

...well, they used to. But back when this was a legit weakness, you could actually leverage that factor against them. They got to do their cool stuff, but you got a window to hit them.

But without a sideboard, how would control decks take advantage of that window without a sideboard?

[Rodin]

But without a sideboard, how would control decks take advantage of that window without a sideboard?

It wouldn't, because the entire point of mana ramping Druid is to beat control decks before they can get their greedy cards going. Instead of losing to the Druid with your Control deck and then swapping out half a dozen cards to try and beat it with a deck that isn't designed to beat Druid, you simply swap decks and run and aggro deck into the Druid's face.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but with the way Hearthstone is designed it would pretty much kill Aggro decks - all decks could sideboard in Aggro-hate by the bucketload, but an Aggro deck would have great difficulty sideboarding in a counter to midrange and control decks. There's a few tech cards you can throw in to counter specific cards, but if an Aggro deck is diverging from its main "hit you in the face" plan, it's pretty much dead anyway.

[Psyren]

It wouldn't, because the entire point of mana ramping Druid is to beat control decks before they can get their greedy cards going. Instead of losing to the Druid with your Control deck and then swapping out half a dozen cards to try and beat it with a deck that isn't designed to beat Druid, you simply swap decks and run and aggro deck into the Druid's face.

The problem is that you have no guarantee of running into that druid though. So you swap to aggro and your next matchup is Warrior or Priest. You could end up in a spiral of swapping decks and repeatedly being countered. So most people stick with their one deck, but even that can have a bad streak and get countered repeatedly, which is what is going on when you start a match with someone and they immediately concede.



Correct me if I'm wrong here, but with the way Hearthstone is designed it would pretty much kill Aggro decks - all decks could sideboard in Aggro-hate by the bucketload, but an Aggro deck would have great difficulty sideboarding in a counter to midrange and control decks. There's a few tech cards you can throw in to counter specific cards, but if an Aggro deck is diverging from its main "hit you in the face" plan, it's pretty much dead anyway.

Indeed it would - sideboards benefit control and combo far more than aggro and midrange. If aggro had better aggro cards to swap in, they'd already be in the deck.

But I'd argue that even swapping those cards in doesn't guarantee a win against aggro - you still need to draw them. Plus it's a similar situation - if you had that more effective early removal it should already be in there. A control warrior for instance might drop in Whirlwind for a little extra punch, but if he doesn't draw it early then he's either already dead or its a pointless draw later.

[Anarion]

The problem is that you have no guarantee of running into that druid though. So you swap to aggro and your next matchup is Warrior or Priest. You could end up in a spiral of swapping decks and repeatedly being countered. So most people stick with their one deck, but even that can have a bad streak and get countered repeatedly, which is what is going on when you start a match with someone and they immediately concede.

This is almost as core a skill as actual hearthstone gameplay, imo. I run to Legend most months almost entirely on my ability to read the meta a little faster than the big websites do (for example, my earlier post on deathrattle hunter, wherein I was running the exact deck that later ended up on the vs report as the best version of a top meta choice). I think if you added sideboarding and some kind of multiple match structure, it would completely change the hearthstone meta. Instead of building for something like 60% wins across the ladder with tech for the decks you would expect to face, you’d build the most streamlined version of your strat possible and then everyone would pack a mix of weapon destruction and other specific counter cards.

[Psyren]

Oh it's absolutely a skill. But there is still a luck/RNG component to it - sort of a macrocosm of the game itself, vis-a-vis it's a skill-based game where you're nevertheless often hoping to topdeck the right opponent to progress, similarly to how you'd be hoping to topdeck the right card. And when that doesn't happen several games in a row (either case) it can be frustrating, and leave you feeling worse after a session than you were when you sat down to play.

I'm not necessarily pointing this out as a problem to be solved (if indeed it even can be.) Some amount of that is inevitable. Though I'd be curious to see whether their matchmaking is truly as random as it seems.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

But without a sideboard, how would control decks take advantage of that window without a sideboard?
Honestly, this points largely to the lack of mechanical options and choices in the core Hearthstone/Magic game. The core is kept simple so that it's easy to learn, but this also means that your options are dictated almost exclusively by your card techs. In a more robust core game (Netrunner, Decipher's LOTR), there's gameplay decisions you can make to adjust to your opponent's gameplan. It doesn't negate the role of your cards, but it shifts the percentage closer to, say, 70% dependence on your cards or more.

The other option would be to provide a mechanism for decks to shift and adapt during the game, so that the player who most quickly identifies the best form for their gameplan gets a better position. Codex does this by having both players build their deck as the game goes on, punishing early poor choices by keeping those cards in your deck, diluting your draws.

[Coretron03]

After getting both Kangor and Kangor’s endless army from Boomsday, I really want to put together a good Midrange-control Paladin deck that uses said cards to play mecha for board control, delaying until your Kangor’s endless army goes off. Problem is, Kangor just doesn’t seem very good. My attempts at adding a healing package and Kangor just seems to be worse then mech/control. The healing package seems really medicore in terms of surviability (I would kill to have forbidden healing back in standard) and it just seems more efficent to pack more board clear and card draw instead of any healing cards.

I am aware that heal paladin is pretty weak, but I still want to find a deck I can mess around with at rank 20-15. I have a pretty diverse set of cards, like Zillax and a bunch of Misc Legendaries.

In other news, if their was a deck that I simultaneously had both fun with and felt horrible for playing, it would be Mechthun druid. Having a 0 cost Auctioneer from Dreampetal Florist and drawing 15 cards reminds me of the gold old days of miracle rogue. Occasionally though (Read: Every win Vs Aggro) just feels unfair. In particular, their was an odd paladin that got me down to 1 HP, before I promptly gained 30 armour and cleared their board. Ended that game with 1 hp and 20 armour. That kind of game has got to be incredible frustating to play against. Acolytle+Wild pryromancer+Barkskin is something that goes off pretty consistently and draws and clears at the same time.

Case in point t, it just seems like the deck is one of hesrthstoned featured “Fun to play” Frustrating to play against” kind of deck. I still really like Boomsday though, its a pretty awesome expansion.

[Gandariel]

Pretty sure Kangor and Kangkor's army are not meant to be in the same deck.

One is a super greedy control card that only works in a very old school, grindy Control list. The other is a decent finisher for a fast midrange deck.

[Tvtyrant]

So I discovered that my level 12 zoolock deck is actually standard legal, switched from wild to standard and standard is actually harder to ladder in...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Case in point t, it just seems like the deck is one of hesrthstoned featured “Fun to play” Frustrating to play against” kind of deck. I still really like Boomsday though, its a pretty awesome expansion.
Probably because big combos are fun to set up (similar appeal to pinball machines, honestly) and Hearthstone doesn't offer any way to play against combo other than "kill them first".

[Kish]

So I discovered that my level 12 zoolock deck is actually standard legal, switched from wild to standard and standard is actually harder to ladder in...
That's very interesting. I guess that Wild players are more often people who don't like that their favorite deck got declared obsolete than people who are actually that into making broken combinations of old and new cards. I wonder how far up the ladder that holds true.

[Tvtyrant]

That's very interesting. I guess that Wild players are more often people who don't like that their favorite deck got declared obsolete than people who are actually that into making broken combinations of old and new cards. I wonder how far up the ladder that holds true.

I think that has a lot to do with it. There are lots of decks that are too slow in wild that I just run over, standard has a lot cheaper answers.

[ChaosOS]

Wild gets serious above rank 5, similar to Standard, but the lower visibility means that you don't see netdecks below rank 10 while Standard has netdecks all the way down to r25. Lots of people just casually experiment in the lower ranks of wild, Standard is a lot more cutthroat pre rank 5. However, the 4-Legend range is similarly full of people playing good decks and playing (reasonably) well.

[Resileaf]

It's true. I insist on using decks that I know very well by now don't work in Wild because they're just plain fun to play, like deathrattle hunter.

[Zevox]

So, I've acquired enough dust to craft a legendary, and am hesitating over which one I want to make. Advice?

Probably the top choice I'm considering is Lord Godfrey. He's from Witchwood, so he'll be in standard for a long time yet, and is so strong I can't see him not being used in any non-Even, non-Zoo Warlock for that whole time. But my Control Warlock has gotten by without him so far, so perhaps something more key to another deck might be preferable.

Others I'm looking at are Kangor's Endless Army, Luna's Pocket Galaxy, Electra Stormsurge, Zilliax, and Azalina Soulthief. And a couple of tempting ones from last year's sets, Val'anyr and Rin, who if I don't make them now I will certainly never make, but will be out of standard in half a year or so.

[ChaosOS]

So it depends a bit on what classes you like playing. If you like control warlock, Rin and Godfrey are obvious winners. Of your secondary list, Luna's Pocket Galaxy just isn't a good card. Ziliax and Azalina are the most generally useful as they're neutral legendaries that have multiple unique functions in different decks, Kangor's, Val'anyr, and Electra are playable but either have other requirements (eg you really want Ziliax in a Kangor's deck) or their decks aren't currently strong but could be (Electra)

[Zevox]

I would tend to think most of you know my proclivities already - Control decks with an occasional side of Midrange, cool with any class but Hunter. No aggro and little if any combo decks.

Luna's Pocket Galaxy does seem bad I agree, it's only really on my list because I heard about a Control Odd Mage from a week or so ago that was running it and a lot of big cards and doing not terribly, which seems like it would be fun to at least try. That is hard to justify over things that are known to be strong and likely to be so for a while like Godfrey though.

[ChaosOS]

I pulled Luna's and have been trying to make it work. The current card pool simply doesn't support it and I don't expect to see it well supported any time soon.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I pulled Luna's and have been trying to make it work. The current card pool simply doesn't support it and I don't expect to see it well supported any time soon.
I've seen an Exodia Mage that uses it to get a 1 mana Antonidas a lot of the time. Could try the same for Malygos.

[heronbpv]

@Zevox:
Of the ones you mentioned, Azalina is always a tech consideration for control decks (and sometimes, a reload method for faster decks), so if you're considering crafting a general purpose legendary, that's certainly the one.

Now, as for the Control Warlock, I wouldn't recommend crafting Lord Godfrey, as he's considered low impact in the deck (at least, as per the analises I've read so far). In this deck, Rin is better simply because she wins you some games by herself (the greedy, control vs control matches), and would be my recommendation instead.

[Zevox]

@Zevox:
Of the ones you mentioned, Azalina is always a tech consideration for control decks (and sometimes, a reload method for faster decks), so if you're considering crafting a general purpose legendary, that's certainly the one.

Now, as for the Control Warlock, I wouldn't recommend crafting Lord Godfrey, as he's considered low impact in the deck (at least, as per the analises I've read so far). In this deck, Rin is better simply because she wins you some games by herself (the greedy, control vs control matches), and would be my recommendation instead.
Well, thank you for the suggestions, but I did already go and craft Lord Godfrey since asking. And I'd still be very hesitant about Rin, both because of the shorter time she'll be in standard and because I often pull her from Stonehill Defenders anyway.

[heronbpv]

No problem. I believe he was used in place of a Void Rift, but considering the amount of board reload we've got recently (as well as board stickiness; looking at you in particular, Cube Hunter), I wouldn't be against the idea of having both him and 2 Void Rifts, just to be sure.

Just got out of a game: playing against a Cube Hunter, as Odd Control Warrior. Holding my own up until fatigue, when he zombeasted me with a charging flappy bird, which then got cubed, and stalked, and the new birds discovered windfury... never lucky :smallsigh:
Wonder if there's any way to put a win condition on Odd Warrior, other than fatigue (and a unchecked Crowley). Game was still fun, though.

[Zevox]

No problem. I believe he was used in place of a Void Rift, but considering the amount of board reload we've got recently (as well as board stickiness; looking at you in particular, Cube Hunter), I wouldn't be against the idea of having both him and 2 Void Rifts, just to be sure.
Void Rifts? What? :smallconfused:

[heronbpv]

*Twisting Nether!
No idea how I came to Void Rift! xD

[Zevox]

*Twisting Nether!
No idea how I came to Void Rift! xD
Oh. I only have one of those anyway. And two seems kind of greedy, given the huge mana cost.

[Rynjin]

Nah, its not really greedy, since as a Control deck, spending your turn to kill everything and do nothing else is a gain for you (they lose board control, waste cards, and basically just lose a turn for your one play). If you play Doomsayer right after, they lose TWO turns, which is a huge swing for you.

[Hamste]

I just learned today that elven minstrel only draws minions. Was quite confused when I saw one only draw one card.

[Epinephrine_Syn]

*Twisting Nether!
No idea how I came to Void Rift! xD

My guess would be "Void Ripper", which has also been a fairly useful tech card recently in a lot of matchups, and specifically messes with Spreading Plague an awful lot.

[Anarion]

I just played against a heal zoo warlock that I think got an actual perfect draw.

Turn 1: lightwarden, coin, lightwarden
Turn 2: Kobold Librarian, Vodoo doctor
Turn 3: Kobold Librarian, Soul infusion, Soul infusion
Turn 4: Play double buffed 6/7 Saronite Chain Gang

Unstoppable.

[Tvtyrant]

I just played against a heal zoo warlock that I think got an actual perfect draw.

Turn 1: lightwarden, coin, lightwarden
Turn 2: Kobold Librarian, Vodoo doctor
Turn 3: Kobold Librarian, Soul infusion, Soul infusion
Turn 4: Play double buffed 6/7 Saronite Chain Gang

Unstoppable.

And then you have a game where you draw nothing but four and five drops against control warrior...

Coin, keltest is also pretty much GG IME.

[Kish]

Coin, keltest is also pretty much GG IME.
Coin, what?

[Tvtyrant]

Coin, what?

Keleseth, my bad. My brain just cross fired.

[Anarion]

Keleseth, my bad. My brain just cross fired.

Mentally, I just think of him as Prince Kelly. It works pretty well.

[Psyren]

I just played against a heal zoo warlock that I think got an actual perfect draw.

Turn 1: lightwarden, coin, lightwarden
Turn 2: Kobold Librarian, Vodoo doctor
Turn 3: Kobold Librarian, Soul infusion, Soul infusion
Turn 4: Play double buffed 6/7 Saronite Chain Gang

Unstoppable.

Nah, Exploding Trap negates Turns 1 and 2 and Misdirection will help handle Turn 4 if you can remove the T3 librarian.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Remember when force of nature got nerfed because it was an empty board two card 14 damage combo? Well, apparently Leeroy cold blood cold blood being an empty board three card 14 damage combo is just worse enough that Blizzard turns a blind eye.

I... dislike this meta. Or at least the game has a conscience and wants me to stop playing it. I play a deck that can beat the decks that don't run small clears and huge taunts that summon more (token druid) and then after playing against 3 cube control warlocks in a row who got skull on 5 into voidlord on 6 and 7 I switch to a deck that runs weapon destruction and then I face 4 odd paladins in a row who got the perfect curve of purifier's maul lost in the jungle into level up turn 5 level up turn 6.

And then there's the few games where I have a favorable matchup and I lose anyway because both copies of the card I need are on the bottom of my deck.

[ChaosOS]

Matchup and draw RNG happens, unfortunately part of the answer in this game is "get used to it". One other thing I'd offer is that you can always improve your play if you introspect - what seems like an unwinnable game may actually be winnable if you played better to your outs. Playing to win, not to not lose.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

You misunderstand. I'm not angry that I'm losing. I'm angry that I run into the exact deck that crushes me multiple times in a row who has the perfect curve and answers every time and I draw none. Like just one defile to clear a board of 7 silver hand recruits? but never, no, not once.

[Anarion]

You misunderstand. I'm not angry that I'm losing. I'm angry that I run into the exact deck that crushes me multiple times in a row who has the perfect curve and answers every time and I draw none. Like just one defile to clear a board of 7 silver hand recruits? but never, no, not once.

What quality of mulligan are you keeping? If you don’t have the exact cards you need for a matchup, you should be mulliganing aggressively in most decks. A hand that looks average and has an early game play is typically interchangeable with your other cards and should be thrown back to get the important stuff you need.

[Joran]

What quality of mulligan are you keeping? If you don’t have the exact cards you need for a matchup, you should be mulliganing aggressively in most decks. A hand that looks average and has an early game play is typically interchangeable with your other cards and should be thrown back to get the important stuff you need.

The most tilted I get in game, outside of my own misplays, is when I specifically add two tech cards into a matchup, mulligan aggressively for them and still don't get them.

I remember putting in two Gorlakka Crawlers into my deck, hard mulliganing for them, and still not getting a crawler in 3 straight games against Pirate openers. The odds of that happening are low, but not astronomically low.

[Anarion]

The most tilted I get in game, outside of my own misplays, is when I specifically add two tech cards into a matchup, mulligan aggressively for them and still don't get them.

I remember putting in two Gorlakka Crawlers into my deck, hard mulliganing for them, and still not getting a crawler in 3 straight games against Pirate openers. The odds of that happening are low, but not astronomically low.

Oh yeah, I totally feel you there. Like, you know you've got the cards to win a matchup, and you get several games in a row where you hard mulligan for them and end up with nothing cheaper than a 5-drop in your starting hand. That is fate telling me to take a walk and get something to eat because those games are not gonna be wins.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

The type of mulligan where I agressively look for swipes, fan of knives, etc. vs token druids and odd paladins, and I seriously never get them. Or when I do, it's my turn 4 and the odd paladin just gave all his minions divine shield, or the druid had ramped up and his wisps can no longer be cleared by the removal and minions I have on board. Like I mulligan for swipe, but then consequentially I don't get ramp, and the druid opponent beats me to the wispering soul of the forest, I begrudgingly play my swipe because it's my only play, and they savage roar power of the wild for 37

[Anarion]

The type of mulligan where I agressively look for swipes, fan of knives, etc. vs token druids and odd paladins, and I seriously never get them. Or when I do, it's my turn 4 and the odd paladin just gave all his minions divine shield, or the druid had ramped up and his wisps can no longer be cleared by the removal and minions I have on board. Like I mulligan for swipe, but then consequentially I don't get ramp, and the druid opponent beats me to the wispering soul of the forest, I begrudgingly play my swipe because it's my only play, and they savage roar power of the wild for 37

You're playing token druid yourself? Or some other druid? If you're playing token in a mirror, you'll want to keep your acceleration no matter what and as much card draw as you can hold. That mirror matchup is won by drawing your deck faster than the opponent does. If you're playing Malygos or Togwoggle for some reason, actually don't play Togwoggle, but if you're playing Malygos, you want acceleration and spreading plague, not swipe.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

I mean I get something like a mulligan UI UI Violet Teacher or UI Malfurion Violet Teacher and toss it all since you don't really want any of that anyway in the mirror and then I get swipe violet teacher oaken summons.

[The Glyphstone]

Felt a little bad with the Brawl I just finished. Mostly crushed the other guy, he never really had board control at all, but right at the end he plays Emeriss, who must have been sitting in his hand the whole game, followed by an entire hand of 0- and 1-costed buffed minions. Unfortunately, one of them was Blood Witch. My unopposed board against his face put him exactly at 1, and he got lethaled by his own Witch.

[Psyren]

Climbing ladder with Tempo Mage on a long drive back (I'm in the backseat). Crafted my last expensive piece, Aluneth, over the weekend.

I've run into 3 quest rogues on my way up (rank 14 currently) and it's amazing to me how they've basically become free wins at this point. I remember when just playing the quest could cause a concession. But now, the top aggro decks in this meta are just too fast, and the nerfs appear to have taken their toll.

[Anarion]

Climbing ladder with Tempo Mage on a long drive back (I'm in the backseat). Crafted my last expensive piece, Aluneth, over the weekend.

I've run into 3 quest rogues on my way up (rank 14 currently) and it's amazing to me how they've basically become free wins at this point. I remember when just playing the quest could cause a concession. But now, the top aggro decks in this meta are just too fast, and the nerfs appear to have taken their toll.

We're in a cyclical meta right now. The scary druid decks (most notably malygos, which has all the tools) totally crush aggro mage, have a very strong match against aggro rogue, and generally beat aggro warlock too unless the warlock gets a particularly strong start. But they lose to quest rogue, and somewhat to deathrattle hunter. Quest rogue folds vs. the fast aggro decks though. I think quest rogue into tempo mage is something like 90-10 in the mage's favor, maybe better.

[Rynjin]

I too have been playing Tempo Mage...and have been getting absolutely dominated. 9/10 games, lost. I have played against nothing but Hunter though, including MULTIPLE TIMES some weird, dumb Hunter deck which is basically Spell Hunter except it has Stitched Tracker and Highmane in it for no apparent reason.

Tempo mage is super reliant on a good early game draw and a minion heavy opponent it feels like; if the opponent has a passive playstyle you end up with nothing to react to, so you cant make any plays, and there are terrifyingly few proactive moves you can take in the deck, since most of it is removal and secrets.

[Psyren]

I too have been playing Tempo Mage...and have been getting absolutely dominated. 9/10 games, lost. I have played against nothing but Hunter though, including MULTIPLE TIMES some weird, dumb Hunter deck which is basically Spell Hunter except it has Stitched Tracker and Highmane in it for no apparent reason.

Midrange Hunter I believe. They basically figured that the benefit of including creatures like Highmane outweighs To My Side and Rhok'delar, which are the only three cards that wanted you to be creatureless anyhow. It also makes you less vulnerable to priest, since an untimely Scream won't neuter one of your key legendaries.



Tempo mage is super reliant on a good early game draw and a minion heavy opponent it feels like; if the opponent has a passive playstyle you end up with nothing to react to, so you cant make any plays, and there are terrifyingly few proactive moves you can take in the deck, since most of it is removal and secrets.

I can only assume that we're talking about two entirely different variants of it then, because the version I play is extremely proactive. I'm using Trump's spell damage version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzHHQg9s2yA) that he hit Legend with. All of the burn can hit face, and you cycle through the deck very rapidly, so there's definitely always something to do.

And the mulligan is easy - against most matchups you want some combination of Mana Wyrm, Arcanologist, Apprentice, Kirin Tor or Luna in your opening hand, and you can safely mulligan almost everything else.

[Rynjin]

The only difference between that one and the one I'm using is Trump's has Thalnos, which I don't have, so I have an extra copy of Counterspell.

And the second bit is what I mean by "lucky draw". Out of the 10 games, I've started with Mana Wyrm precisely once (I still lost), never seem to have Kirin Tor and a secret at the same time in the early game, and have only drawn Luna twice (I was able to get two draws the first time before she was killed, and won; the second time it was far too late to matter). Card draw is sparse and has rarely turned up much of value, up to the point where the card draw suddenly becomes GODLIKE on turn 8...at which point your hand is filled with ****ing garbage you can't play to actually accomplish anything like multiple copies of Shooting Star or a 4/3 with spell damage against someone who has an actual board.

Apprentice and Arcanologist come up more, but playing a secret raw is rarely good tempo (Explosive Runes and Mirror Entity are worthless against most Hunter archetypes, and Counterspell is easily played around), and playing the Apprentice on 2 just means it dies instantaneously against the Hunter's amazing ability to easily deal 2/3 damage and GAIN resources instead of losing it.

Pretty close to just going back to Spell Hunter full time; there are very few bad draws with that deck, whereas it seems like you're statistically unlikely to get anything usable with Tempo mage; it's a feast or famine deck.

[Tvtyrant]

I'm not particularly good (actually very bad) at arena and I have proof.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/343867556140023810/488833392985636895/Deerly_op.png

[Psyren]

...But Mirror Entity isn't even part of that list? :smallconfused:

I too was using the 2x counterspell instead of Thalnos, and to say that I haven't had the bad luck you've had is a pretty large understatement. I went from rank 20 to 14 in about an hour using this deck. And the chances of drawing a secret to go with your Kirin Tor are pretty high - even assuming you have none in hand at all, it's 6/26 if you count the Arcanologists and only goes up from there. That's almost 1 in 4 as a worst case scenario. Starting with Mana Wyrm is similarly great but far from being a requirement.

Playing around Counterspell isn't really the point - the point is that doing so slows them down. Druids don't get to ramp as quickly, Spellhunters have to burn a trap or wait a turn on their spellstone, Warriors can't Brawl on 5, that kind of thing. To say nothing of how cautious it makes the combo decks.

This and Odd Rogue are easily my favorite aggro decks this cycle. I'm sorry you haven't had similar success with it, but the deck is plenty viable.

@TVTyrant: I mean, regardless of your arena skill that would be one hell of a board to deal with!

[Tvtyrant]

I actually did the best I have ever done on an arena run there, I ended 7-3. But that game was awful, I didn't feel like scooping and the opponent refused to kill me. I ended up decking out.

[Joran]

I was watching the Asia-Pacific Hearthstone tournament and one Mecha'Cthun combo for Control Warrior really stood out to me.

It was Control Warrior shell, but also with a ton of draw and with a Mecha'Cthun backup plan against Control.

The combo was BoomShip + Malygos + Mecha'Cthun + two inner RAGE + whirlwind. I never saw it actually played, but that's pretty darn clever.

Edit: oops, inner fire is a Priest card.

[Hamste]

I saw it before (I think Kripp did it for a bit), though didn't seem to be doing too well.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I saw it before (I think Kripp did it for a bit), though didn't seem to be doing too well.
Ladder and tournaments often wind up really different in terms of meta because you aren't blindly queuing a deck against the entire meta. Instead, you're trying to queue against one of three decks at worst, and even without scouting, you know classes (and get a ban). This makes some decks a lot more viable since you can ban or dodge their hard counters.

[Zevox]

I was watching the Asia-Pacific Hearthstone tournament and one Mecha'Cthun combo for Control Warrior really stood out to me.

It was Control Warrior shell, but also with a ton of draw and with a Mecha'Cthun backup plan against Control.

The combo was BoomShip + Malygos + Mecha'Cthun + two inner fires + whirlwind. I never saw it actually played, but that's pretty darn clever.
Yeah, I remember seeing a couple of Youtube videos about it. It's yet another of those "I really hope this doesn't catch on" type of decks that I fear we'll be seeing all too much of until Boomsday rotates out.

I guess I should be glad the biggest impact Boomsday has had on the meta at this point has been Giggling Inventor, a card I actually quite like, considering most of the alternatives are those awful Exodia decks. Just have to cross my fingers that Blizzard doesn't decide to pull another set of mid-expansion nerfs that winds up making those more prominent.

[Psyren]

The combo was BoomShip + Malygos + Mecha'Cthun + two inner rages + whirlwind.

FTFY

I like it in the sense that if you get hit with Demonic Project or Gnomeferatu, you can still win with your armor buffer + Boom. And I do have all those cards. Well, not the Boomship but I can probably craft that.

[Thomas Cardew]

I was watching the Asia-Pacific Hearthstone tournament and one Mecha'Cthun combo for Control Warrior really stood out to me.

It was Control Warrior shell, but also with a ton of draw and with a Mecha'Cthun backup plan against Control.

The combo was BoomShip + Malygos + Mecha'Cthun + two inner fires + whirlwind. I never saw it actually played, but that's pretty darn clever.

It took an embarrassingly long time to figure out what a Priest spell is doing in a Warrior deck. Then it clicked. Clever, but I generally hate Exodia decks. They feel really bad to lose against particularly if you're poor as you get to see all these cool/fun cards you'll never be able to play with.

[Tvtyrant]

So for my wild heallock I turned one of my fungalmancers into jeeves, it is going fairly well. Being able to discard to doomguard then draw three is amazing.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Interesting news: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/22483774/hearthstone-in-the-works-september-18

Next month we're finally getting replacements for the Classic class cards that were shuffled into Hall of Fame. 2 Mage spells, a Warlock spell, and a Rogue spell. They don't look very impressive, but I suppose that protects them from possibly being Fame'd in the future. The blog post says as much. The important thing is the total number of cards in Classic, I'd say.

Not relevant to most of us, but ranks are being extended to 50! That was unexpected, at least from where I'm sitting, but maybe it'll help the new players. As I understand it, this only affects players who start playing after ranks 26-50 are implemented (since you can't drop stars in the 20-25 range), so tough luck if you've already started and are struggling at rank 25. This one might not be next month, I'm not sure exactly from the text ("more details in the future").

[Zevox]

Interesting news: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/22483774/hearthstone-in-the-works-september-18

Next month we're finally getting replacements for the Classic class cards that were shuffled into Hall of Fame. 2 Mage spells, a Warlock spell, and a Rogue spell. They don't look very impressive, but I suppose that protects them from possibly being Fame'd in the future. The blog post says as much. The important thing is the total number of cards in Classic, I'd say.
Yeah, those are some seriously weak cards. The only one with any remote potential to see actual play is Icicle, and then only if Mage gets a lot more good freeze effects than they've ever had before. I mean hell, Tome of Intellect is just Babbling Book without the body, which is just sad.

I mean, I want to say that adding cards to classic to offset the Hall of Fame stuff is a step in the right direction, but honestly, if this is the power level they're going for with them, I don't think it matters one bit. Classic cards existing but being practically useless is little different from them not existing at all.

[Gandariel]

Well, the 1 mana mage spell isn't complete trash.

I would have maybe considered it in the Flamewaker Sorcerer apprentice tempo mage.

Overall... meh. Would have been happier if they took cards from a Wild set to throw in instead of those uninteresting and weak placeholder cards.
But I suppose there's no point in raising the power level of Classic without a reason.

[Anymage]

The new spells look like they fit the same role Whizbang does. Budget options that might enable a new player to experience a card without having to shell out full cost for it, while someone with the dust would be happier just putting a reliably good card in that slot.

[Mando Knight]

Well, the 1 mana mage spell isn't complete trash.

I would have maybe considered it in the Flamewaker Sorcerer apprentice tempo mage.

Except as a trigger for "whenever you play a spell" minions like Flamewaker or Mana Wyrm, it is pretty much trash--a Mage spell that only generates one random Mage spell is a worse use of a card in your deck than any other tangentially-related Mage spell, since it'll be a third Fireball just as frequently as it will be something like a Book of Specters in a spell-heavy deck or a Polymorph against a wide board.

[Gandariel]

Except as a trigger for "whenever you play a spell" minions like Flamewaker or Mana Wyrm, it is pretty much trash--a Mage spell that only generates one random Mage spell is a worse use of a card in your deck than any other tangentially-related Mage spell, since it'll be a third Fireball just as frequently as it will be something like a Book of Specters in a spell-heavy deck or a Polymorph against a wide board.

Which is exactly what I said.
It's bad, but it's not completely trash because I can think of one deck that might have seriously run it.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

They also hall of famed several neutral cards in the past (Azure Drake, Sylvanas, Ragnaros, Molten Giant) unless I'm forgetting some. Seems like they have no plans to replace those legendary cards, even with a harbinger celestia level minion

[Psyren]

It should have been "Discover a Spell" imo. Would be inferior to Primordial Glyph but usable after it rotates.

Having said that, it could be used to bring Quest Mage back for one last hurrah maybe?

[Geno9999]

It should have been "Discover a Spell" imo. Would be inferior to Primordial Glyph but usable after it rotates.

Should be, but I have a feeling Blizzard wanted to keep the Non-Basic Keywords out of the Classic Pack, "so that it's not confusing for newer players."

[Haruspex_Pariah]

The post has been edited to say the new Classic cards will only be available in November, when earlier it said next month.

Also, the new Tavern Brawl seemed interesting at first, until I realized that there's a reason why some Death Knights cost more than others. And some (looking at you Jaina) don't even need a Constructed-tier deck to be overwhelming.

[Rodin]

Also, the new Tavern Brawl seemed interesting at first, until I realized that there's a reason why some Death Knights cost more than others. And some (looking at you Jaina) don't even need a Constructed-tier deck to be overwhelming.

I've been playing it and simply re-rolling until I find not-Jaina. Some of the matchups are quite interesting, like Warrior v. Hunter. Warrior starts with a big honking weapon they can use to totally control the board, but if the Hunter survives long enough to get Zombeasts rolling the matchup swiftly turns. Paladin is also surprisingly hard to deal with thanks to the weapon. The only class I've found that really sucks is Shaman, because so much of the power is front-loaded into the Battlecry which you don't get.

I did manage to beat a Jaina with Anduin, which felt pretty satisfying.

[Resileaf]

Does Jaina start with a water elemental up? Because if yes, that sounds like it would be impossible to even be able to hope to come back from a free 4-cost minion first turn.

[The Glyphstone]

The Warrior I fought didnt start with his weapon, i dont think.

[Rodin]

Does Jaina start with a water elemental up? Because if yes, that sounds like it would be impossible to even be able to hope to come back from a free 4-cost minion first turn.

No, she does not. The only classes that get the battlecry are Warrior and Paladin, who both get their signature weapon. When I won as Priest, I just played around Jaina's ability to make Water Elementals by using my hero power to nuke any minion (on either side) that could become one. Since there are only a handful of spells in the decks, it can be difficult for Jaina to make one. She's still the most powerful by a long way, but not totally unbeatable.

[Tvtyrant]

No, she does not. The only classes that get the battlecry are Warrior and Paladin, who both get their signature weapon. When I won as Priest, I just played around Jaina's ability to make Water Elementals by using my hero power to nuke any minion (on either side) that could become one. Since there are only a handful of spells in the decks, it can be difficult for Jaina to make one. She's still the most powerful by a long way, but not totally unbeatable.

I'll admit I tried all of the others then spammed Jaina for my 5 win mission.

[Geno9999]

The Warrior I fought didnt start with his weapon, i dont think.

It has been patched so that Warrior and Paladin start with their weapons, (https://twitter.com/joemag_games/status/1042538114441404416) Paladin in particular seems pretty strong, being able to protect the early Horsemen. I fought one as Hunter, and I only delayed the inevitable with cheap beasts with rush, but I couldn't establish any lasting minions. When the Paladin played a Corpsetaker that gained Taunt, that was basically GG.

[Nerocite]

The none Mage vs Mage brawl matches were fun, Shaman was particularly interesting.

[The Glyphstone]

It has been patched so that Warrior and Paladin start with their weapons, (https://twitter.com/joemag_games/status/1042538114441404416) Paladin in particular seems pretty strong, being able to protect the early Horsemen. I fought one as Hunter, and I only delayed the inevitable with cheap beasts with rush, but I couldn't establish any lasting minions. When the Paladin played a Corpsetaker that gained Taunt, that was basically GG.

Ah, that makes sense. I ran Warrior today, got a weapon, and was very very confused because I had flattened a Warrior yesterday who had no weapon.

[Seerow]

It has been patched so that Warrior and Paladin start with their weapons, (https://twitter.com/joemag_games/status/1042538114441404416) Paladin in particular seems pretty strong, being able to protect the early Horsemen. I fought one as Hunter, and I only delayed the inevitable with cheap beasts with rush, but I couldn't establish any lasting minions. When the Paladin played a Corpsetaker that gained Taunt, that was basically GG.

Yeah, I ground out my 5 wins with Paladin. Warlock is nearly impossible, but it's at least possible to win against mage (I went 2-3 there and one of those losses the mage did penguin coin hero power turn 1, then penguin hero power on turn 2. Another loss I literally just could not draw a minion that had more than one health), absolutely crushed a pair of shamans, and won a Paladin Mirror.

[Rodin]

Yeah, I ground out my 5 wins with Paladin. Warlock is nearly impossible, but it's at least possible to win against mage (I went 2-3 there and one of those losses the mage did penguin coin hero power turn 1, then penguin hero power on turn 2. Another loss I literally just could not draw a minion that had more than one health), absolutely crushed a pair of shamans, and won a Paladin Mirror.

I would have thought Warlock is easier than Shaman, Hunter, or Warrior. His hero power is very powerful early in the game and the life steal is invaluable later. Against Paladin I can see him having difficulty keeping up with the hero power while also fighting against the Paladin weapon. and Mage is naturally insane. Warlock v. Priest seems pretty balanced.

[Zevox]

Warlock felt fairly strong to me when I played it. Even just in theory, I'd figure it to be one of the stronger ones - not as good as Mage of course, but probably the next power level down from that. I mean, its hero power is almost like Druid's two options in one, and makes it one of the few that can consistently keep Paladin hero power minions under control without spending cards.

Anyway, I like the idea of this Brawl, but less so the execution. Starting with the Death Knight is interesting and fun, but gods damn it, couldn't they have put in the effort to make decks for them, rather than randomizing them? Even the stronger hero power can only make up for so much in terms of getting bad cards, and if you're drawing any 1-health minions against Mage and aren't a Mage yourself, those become unplayable due to being more detrimental than helpful.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Observation: if your opponent burns a bomb card due to having a full hand, it doesn't deal damage, which is kind of disappointing. Interesting to know I suppose. Wonder if that's the case for Scrolls of Wonder, spider ambush shuffle cards, etc.

[Kish]

Yes, it is. If the card burns, it was never drawn at all, for good or ill.

[Joran]

Warlock felt fairly strong to me when I played it. Even just in theory, I'd figure it to be one of the stronger ones - not as good as Mage of course, but probably the next power level down from that. I mean, its hero power is almost like Druid's two options in one, and makes it one of the few that can consistently keep Paladin hero power minions under control without spending cards.

Anyway, I like the idea of this Brawl, but less so the execution. Starting with the Death Knight is interesting and fun, but gods damn it, couldn't they have put in the effort to make decks for them, rather than randomizing them? Even the stronger hero power can only make up for so much in terms of getting bad cards, and if you're drawing any 1-health minions against Mage and aren't a Mage yourself, those become unplayable due to being more detrimental than helpful.

The event in general feels lackluster. The two 300 gold quests are the kind of grindfest that the old quests used to feel like "Play 40 Frozen Throne cards" and "Win 5 Tavern Brawls". The Tavern Brawl itself is boring and unimaginative.

I tried playing Shudderwock (that's 4800 dust I'm never getting back...) for about an hour and dropped 5 straight games and only played 10 Frozen Throne cards. I ended up just putting together a dumb Tempo Rogue deck and banging out the quest over 2 games. It's annoying to try to figure out which of my decks has the most Frozen Throne cards.

Now I need to grind 5 Tavern Brawl wins (I'm 2-0 with Paladin) and I want to strangle whoever decided this should be the second quest.

[Spore]

The event in general feels lackluster. The two 300 gold quests are the kind of grindfest that the old quests used to feel like "Play 40 Frozen Throne cards" and "Win 5 Tavern Brawls".

Uhm, I only got one of those (due to filled slots). Any chance to get the second one?

[Rodin]

Uhm, I only got one of those (due to filled slots). Any chance to get the second one?

If you complete the first one, the second will appear immediately.

[Joran]

Uhm, I only got one of those (due to filled slots). Any chance to get the second one?

As Rodin said, when you complete the play 40 Frozen Throne cards, it'll be replaced by another 300 gold quest that requires you to win 5 Tavern Brawls.

I'm tempted to just play casual games with my wife and just trade wins back and forth with Paladin.

[Tvtyrant]

I got to get a lot of arena in due to this quest set, seems like a good deal to me.

[Anarion]

The 40 cards one I treated pretty casually. Most decks have a few, I just did a few different arena drafts and played some standard, didn't try to think about it that hard, happened over a couple days just from playing normally. The tavern brawl one is a mess and I hated it. It took me about an hour and a half playing out seven games to finish it, at least one of which was utterly unwinnable because the opposing mage had an entire hand full of her own 1 health cheap minions to make elementals out of. Mage and Warlock are probably the best two, don't play hunter (it's a trap), and Rogue can be the best if you get lucky with your random cards but otherwise sucks.

[Seerow]

So on a whim I decided to try some arena tonight. I generally average around 3-4 wins, and have been playing about 1-2 a month since the Hallow's End event last year.

I proceeded to draft the craziest druid deck I've seen. Like even pre-boomsday when board high value cards were way more common, I don't think I saw a deck this good.

https://i.imgur.com/MZo9i7S.png

Got carried on deck quality all the way to 12 wins. Lost a single game in the middle to a Warrior. Main weakness of the deck? I had enough low drops to generally hit one by turn 3, but not enough to be able to play a couple low drops in mid game. On the bright side my curve was high enough that I would consistently curve out despite that. Problem is, Warrior drops Super Collider on turn 5, and now instantly he's going to 2-for-1 all of my pretty valuable mid drops. Basically I couldn't get a minion to stick for more than a round between turns 5 and 9, while he built up a board, and I lost on 10 before I could play any of my swing cards.

Other than that though, everything went super smoothly. I had a few games that went to fatigue, when both UIs were at the bottom of the deck, and one really annoying game where both UIs and both Primordial Drakes were in the bottom 10 cards, but in general the other cards were still good enough to keep me going until they showed up to seal the deal.


https://i.imgur.com/B2ztjR9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/03AkFX1.jpg

[Kish]

Your spoiler boxes are both empty.

I suspect this is related to your avatar currently being the words "Seerow's Avatar".

[Psyren]

Imgur has disabled image linking here I think. Don't know if it's for most message boards or just this one.

Grats on your run Seerow!

[Seerow]

Bah I didn't realize, I will find a different hosting service when I get home

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Jaina gets fairly hard countered by Uther if you can get some big minions or taunts and stick some horsemen

[Zevox]

Jaina gets fairly hard countered by Uther if you can get some big minions or taunts and stick some horsemen
I found the opposite the one time I played that matchup - Jaina just spends a couple of turns early Icy Touching down Uther's first horesmen, then locks him down with water elementals.

[Geno9999]

The actual counter to Jaina is praying that 1) they don't have 1-Health cards for the first 3 turns, and 2) you have a Mindbreaker (https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Mindbreaker) in your deck that you can play on curve (which might not be that hard, I think the random decks might be weighted towards KotFT cards anyway), and pray that they don't draw into Fireball or build up a board to kill it.

A bit of an aside, I have Watch a Friend Win a Game and a Challenge a Friend quests right now. My Battle Tag is Geno9999#1674, I play in the US servers.

[DaedalusMkV]

Wound up playing the Brawl quite a few times, since I chained a 'win 3 Brawls' quest into the 'win 5 brawls' event quest. 15 or 16 rounds played overall. My experience...

Shaman, Rogue and Druid don't exist. Warrior also doesn't exist, but is theoretically less useless than the other three. All of these have hero powers that are either just weaker than the really good ones or aren't great in the early game, meaning you get rapidly snowballed by one of the better heroes.

Priest looks good on first viewing, but is really just a worse version of Warlock with typically less useful cards. Not good.

Hunter is theoretically playable, and beats Mage in the long run if they can survive past turn 6 or so. Auto-loss to Paladin, bad odds versus Warlock unless the 'Lock has bad RNG and gets a deck they can't snowball at all. Practically, it's not spectacular and I only ran into one or two of them.

Paladin and Mage are clearly the best of the two, with Paladin having the ability to put an outrageous amount of pressure on and the Mage hero power having the ability to drown the enemy in Water Elementals right from the early game. It's the most common pairing (or, was for me. I mostly played Pally, and Mage is everywhere), and depends a lot on both skill and luck. The Paladin has a ton of outs in the matchup, but needs to put on as much pressure as possible to overrun the Mage before the Mage can get board control, because the Pally is never going to get it back. Paladin has tons of cards to make the battle work out, of which Mindbreaker and Dark Conviction are the biggest blowouts. If you drop a Horseman on 1 with the coin or 2 without, then respond to the Mage pinging it by playing Dark Conviction, it's basically game over. They can't ping that one down, lost a crucial tempo turn doing nothing and can't keep up with future Horseman plays. This pretty much always ends with the Mage dead around about turn 6. Mindbreaker, likewise, means a near-automatic victory. Other than that, pretty much any method of buffing or protecting your Horsemen makes things very hard on the Mage. Smash that hero power as often as you can, and don't be afraid to send your weapon and a 2/2 into the first Water Elemental to hit the board. Overall, I only lost two of the eight or nine games I played against Mage, one to the Mage having two wisps and a coin in his starting hand (yeah, that's fair...) and one to a Mage with a bunch of AOE spells who just wiped out my board repeatedly. Otherwise, I won with lethal about half the time and four horseman kills the other half.

Frankly, Paladin feels the strongest to me. I'd say the only really poor pairing it has is against Warlock, and Warlock pretty much auto-loses to Mage. It felt like the Paladin counter to Mage is 'have at least one taunt or buff you can play in the first three turns', while the Mage counter to Paladin is 'hope to hell you get AOE damage spells or Wisps in your deck'. Because just pinging down Horsemen? Not good enough, even if the Paladin doesn't have a silver bullet to make it impossible.

[Spore]

The brawl quest results in: "People auto concede vs. mage." It is not exactly win trading but if they see a guy playing mage, they know they're not interested in a fair fight but want to farm wins. Both sides save time.

I havent seen anything this opposed to fun gameplay since the RNG brawl.

[Seerow]

Reuploaded images from Arena

http://i67.tinypic.com/34estqc.png
http://i66.tinypic.com/svtmyp.png
http://i63.tinypic.com/1z721yd.png

[Zevox]

I havent seen anything this opposed to fun gameplay since the RNG brawl.
...so, roughly 80-90% of all Brawls, then? Because really, the vast majority of them seem to be dumb RNG-fests. Very rarely do we get the boss v boss or cooperative Brawls or the like that aren't.

[Psyren]

That Bundle Up... bundle is a pretty sweet deal. Got two legs out of it (Sindragosa and Bloodreaver Gul'dan), so the universe is seemingly telling me to play more control.

[Grytorm]

A card I want to see would be something along the lines of:

3 Mana, 5/6 Minion
Stealth
~ enters the battlefield frozen.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

A card I want to see would be something along the lines of:

3 Mana, 5/6 Minion
Stealth
~ enters the battlefield frozen.
Eh, I wouldn't. It's comparable to Devilsaur Egg, but without the synergy requirements, which means it would be a nightmare in Arena. You can't efficiently use your hero power to deal with a 5/6, so it's dependent on you curving out or drawing an answer. Once the downside is over, it becomes a dominant presence on the battlefield and ends the game in 6 turns. IMO, big stat sticks with drawbacks that eventually go away can increase the effect of RNG on the game by requiring you to draw into cards to deal with them.

[Psyren]

I'd say that statline is too good even with the delay, especially if you have a silence. The closest parallel I can think of is Marsh Drake, and that's a 3-mana 5/4.

The stealth plus the fat body for cheap would make it great in Big Priest, where it works both as a lategame finisher with DSIF, or as early game board control just by silencing off all its drawbacks.

[Tvtyrant]

Finally got to rank 11 as even shaman in wild, now I am stuck because I keep running into that combo druid and the mirror. The combo I'm too slow to beat before it goes off, and the mirror whoever goes first wins (like every time.)

Anyone have advice on those?

[Gandariel]

Well it's simple, you should go first more often

[Tvtyrant]

Well it's simple, you should go first more often
Haha it worked, I am rank 10 now!

In other words, jade anything is basically an auto-win on the new brawl.

[The Glyphstone]

Jade loses to Inner Fire Priest, but yeah, against almost anything else it works.

[Tvtyrant]

Jade loses to Inner Fire Priest, but yeah, against almost anything else it works.

I'm really enjoying magnetic priest though. Giant Voltron robots!

[The Glyphstone]

Astral Communion Druid is another fast deck i saw. I figure the slow grindy decks like Jade will get pushed out by Big Aggro decks.

[Tvtyrant]

Astral Communion Druid is another fast deck i saw. I figure the slow grindy decks like Jade will get pushed out by Big Aggro decks.

I played that one a few times and creamed it. My jades got big faster then they could dump giant monsters.

[The Glyphstone]

I played that one a few times and creamed it. My jades got big faster then they could dump giant monsters.

I got Lich King on turn 2, and a Yssarj on turn 3.

[Tvtyrant]

I got Lich King on turn 2, and a Yssarj on turn 3.

Better choices in monsters I think. The people I played ran the big taunt guys that come with Druid.

[Rynjin]

I booted up with Jade and got my win off an auto-concede, easy Brawl.

[Nerocite]

I booted up with Jade and got my win off an auto-concede, easy Brawl.

Same here, I played Jade Blossom and my opponent scooped.

[Epinephrine_Syn]

A card I want to see would be something along the lines of:

3 Mana, 5/6 Minion
Stealth
~ enters the battlefield frozen.

Honestly something like that could work, though I'd say it'd be a 4/4 of stats to be balanced, or maybe you could get away with 5/5 if you ditch the Stealth.

[AmberVael]

Personally I went with an aggressive mage deck for this Brawl. Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mana Wyrm, and low cost damage spells. It worked pretty well.

[Zevox]

Eh, the trouble with this Brawl is that it'll likely end up dominated by either some super-aggro deck or a nutty combo deck. Since you have such precise control over what cards you have, you're guaranteed either your crazy opening, or your crazy combo. So, yeah, not for me I think. Played a few games (Jade Druid and Kingsbane Rogue - the former is good, the latter less so), got a couple of wins, and I think that's about it for me.

[AmberVael]

So I decided to play a few more rounds of the brawl, because why not. I encountered a pogo-hopper rogue using Myra's Unstable Element. Given it had 11/11s on the board by turn 4 or so, I suspect the deck will end up on top.

[otakuryoga]

So I decided to play a few more rounds of the brawl, because why not. I encountered a pogo-hopper rogue using Myra's Unstable Element. Given it had 11/11s on the board by turn 4 or so, I suspect the deck will end up on top.

that was my 1st thought as well for this brawl(helped that i had a win 2 as rog or warr quest)
though no myras..just used pogo and lots of draw

kinda want to try out a necro discard deck since there is no big downside to discarding

[Psyren]

I feel that the complaints about Brawl being unbalanced miss the point a bit. You're fully intended to {richard} around with borked decks and such, and the "meta" does indeed get stale quickly. That's why most brawls typically just have the one-win award, it's not intended to be something you play repeatedly.

[ChaosOS]

Best deck I've found (concede until you run into Mage/Priest)


Murloc Tinyfin
Snowflipper Penguin
Target Dummy
Unstable Evolution
Ancestral Knowledge
Prince Taldaram

Wait for them to play Radiant/Sorcerer's Apprentice, Profit!

[Haruspex_Pariah]

It's been a while since I've been happy to tinker with a deck concept and take it to ladder. But I've had some good times with a Shudderwock - Stonetusk Boar deck. Good times: not necessarily strong, but decent enough to not auto-lose at the rank 16-20 bracket. A lot of "fun" decks I come up just don't work...at all.

Basically you curve into ever increasing buff Battlecry minions (must either target friendly minions or be positional like Fungalmancer). Then at ten mana if your board is empty (you're Shaman, they'd be crazy not to!) you play the boar and then play shudderwock. In practice I've only managed an 18 damage boar, but technically it can go up to 30*. Because of Shaman's hero power, cheap buff minions later in the game can always find a target.

So there's a board buildup reminiscent of past midrange or aggro strategies, but as you play you're also investing in a potential OTK (if enemy heals or controls really well) or finisher boar. Naturally the weakness is that the deck isn't a true aggro deck and tends to be overwhelmed by them.

*Windspeaker, 2 x Bonemare, 2 x Fungalmancer, +2 Attack from anywhere else, Stonetusk Boar = 15 Attack Windfury Charge.

[Psionic Dog]

Best tavern brawl in a while. I've already entered a dozen times and will probable come back later.

Pogo Rogue was just obvious enough to be my first deck and first win, so naturally I had to find a more creative winning deck.

My jade rogue attempt never quite came together and freeze mage was disastrous.

Then I tried quest-discard warlock, and that was awesome. Malchezar's imp and a refreshing deck eliminate all downsides to discarding and I actually managed to win games with Lakkari Sacrifice for the first time in... a long time.

[Joran]

Wife and I had different approaches to the Brawl. I saw 6 cards and thought "JADE!"

Druid, all the jade cards + Wild Growth. Won my only game, but it felt a little slow.

My wife saw the 6 cards and thought "EDWIN!"

Rogue, Prep, Backstab, Eviscerate, Sap, Counterfeit Coin, Edwin.

[The Glyphstone]

Got a Win 3 Mages quest.

Decided to see if Ice Block was permitted.

It is.

Kabal Lackey, Arcanologist, Ice Block, Research Project, Arcane Intellect, Fireball.

Invincible combo against anyone not packing Secret hate.

[Psyren]

I have a "play 40 TFT cards" quest, so I made a deck based purely around stalling as long as possible with 5/6 TFT cards that would let me play as many as I could. Ice Walker, Breath of Sindy, Saronite Chain Gang, Lich King, and a single Glyph to be my wildcard.

Unfortunately it hasn't worked as well as I wanted it to, because people keep conceding/DCing when the Lich King comes down on a frozen board and I don't get to keep playing TFT cards :smallredface:

[Tvtyrant]

Got a Win 3 Mages quest.

Decided to see if Ice Block was permitted.

It is.

Kabal Lackey, Arcanologist, Ice Block, Research Project, Arcane Intellect, Fireball.

Invincible combo against anyone not packing Secret hate.

Gross.

I invented the worst combo of all time. Barnes, Gadgetron, a bunch of ramp and a single pump spells as druid. Just cycles through the six cards until I have a single massive creature based on pumping, then slam. 2-20 :P

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Gross.

I invented the worst combo of all time. Barnes, Gadgetron, a bunch of ramp and a single pump spells as druid. Just cycles through the six cards until I have a single massive creature based on pumping, then slam. 2-20 :P
Earthen Scales for maximum hilarity.

[Tvtyrant]

Earthen Scales for maximum hilarity.

Now I have to go back and play it again, thanks :/

Reached rank 6 5! for the first time in wild.

[Thomas Cardew]

Got a Win 3 Mages quest.

Decided to see if Ice Block was permitted.

It is.

Kabal Lackey, Arcanologist, Ice Block, Research Project, Arcane Intellect, Fireball.

Invincible combo against anyone not packing Secret hate.

I should probably feel bad about using this but I only had to play one game to finish my play 30 mage cards as my opponent decided to spend 5 turns roping me before just afking...

[The Glyphstone]

I should probably feel bad about using this but I only had to play one game to finish my play 30 mage cards as my opponent decided to spend 5 turns roping me before just afking...

It's very cruel, yeah. I was quite surprised that Ice Block wasn't banned, since IIRC they blocked it from the previous narrow-selection Brawl after it proved to be the meta-defining combo element.

[Rynjin]

So, been bummed with most of my decks lately, and decided to tinker with my own. This variant of Odd paladin has been...oddly satisfying and powerful.


### Oddball Mechs
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Raven
#
# 2x (1) Glow-Tron
# 2x (1) Righteous Protector
# 2x (1) Skaterbot
# 1x (3) Blood Knight
# 2x (3) Bronze Gatekeeper
# 2x (3) Unidentified Maul
# 1x (3) Void Ripper
# 1x (5) Blessed Champion
# 1x (5) Frostwolf Warlord
# 2x (5) Fungalmancer
# 2x (5) Giggling Inventor
# 2x (5) Level Up!
# 2x (5) Mechano-Egg
# 2x (5) Wargear
# 1x (5) Zilliax
# 1x (7) Kangor's Endless Army
# 1x (7) Vinecleaver
# 1x (9) Baku the Mooneater
# 2x (9) Bull Dozer
#
AAECAZ8FCPAD8wXyC4PHAv3qAp74AvH+AqCAAwvjywLR4QLW5Q K15gKf9QKl9QLi+ALW/gKLgAORgAPMgQMA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

I have the flexibility to go wide OR tall depending on matchup which helps get over the Druid hump standard Odd Paladin has had issues with IME and Kangor's is a pretty solid refill in the late game. Plus smacking people with bigass minions feels SO GOOD.

[Hamste]

Got a Win 3 Mages quest.

Decided to see if Ice Block was permitted.

It is.

Kabal Lackey, Arcanologist, Ice Block, Research Project, Arcane Intellect, Fireball.

Invincible combo against anyone not packing Secret hate.

Just tried it today and slight modification, frost bolt instead of fire ball. Current combo will eventually result in too many fireballs filling up your hand if you do the full combo. This way you draw six cards and play six cards. If you get to 10 mana it is nearly impossible to beat you. Also I found out if you destroy the last card in your deck due to a full hand then the deck doesn't reset until the start of your next turn. Using naturalize or research project can then mill your opponents.

[Zevox]

And we're right back to the pure RNG brawls. Blech. Feels like I exist in the vain hope of something as good as the Boss v Boss or co-op Brawls each week, only to be eternally disappointed except like, once every three months or so.

We ought to be due for the next expansion getting announced soon, no? Boomsday is a couple of months old now, feels like it's almost that time again.

[Seerow]

And we're right back to the pure RNG brawls. Blech. Feels like I exist in the vain hope of something as good as the Boss v Boss or co-op Brawls each week, only to be eternally disappointed except like, once every three months or so.

We ought to be due for the next expansion getting announced soon, no? Boomsday is a couple of months old now, feels like it's almost that time again.

New expansion will likely come mid-December, I wouldn't expect an announcement until Blizzcon.

[Zevox]

New expansion will likely come mid-December, I wouldn't expect an announcement until Blizzcon.
So, end of the month google tells me? Eh, guess that's fair. I just hope the next expansion's better than the last couple. Aside from Gen enabling Handlock to kinda-sorta return, not much that I've been too happy with has come out since... gods, I think Frozen Throne with the Death Knights, actually.

[Rodin]

The expansions have been fairly weak recently I'll agree. I have finally found a deck that looks to keep me interested though - Tesspionage decks can be utterly hilarious.

In the past week, I have:

Out-fatigued an Odd Warrior with 50 cards remaining in my deck by turning into Dr. Boom before he did.
Beaten up a Shudderwock Shaman with Shudderwock, who triggers Tess's Battlecry again.
Gotten a 1-cost Lyra with a full set of Miracle Rogue cheap spells in hand.
1-mana cost Ultimate Infestation into a board full of 4/4 Spiders to make a Druid cry.

[otakuryoga]

late posting this..but on wednesday when the brawl came up i had two "win 3 games as a warr" quests so i hit the button and tooks my chances
1st and 3rd games i get the 6 mana warr card "draw a weapon from your deck and deal dmg = to cost to all minions"
yeah...no weapons in brawls

how BLEEPING hard would it be to exclude dead cards from brawls?

[Psyren]

I was very happy with KaC. Not so much with Witchwood and Boom though, which have enabled some truly annoying decks. (I LOVE Witchwood's Odd/Even mechanic though, it's like a quest that you complete immediately.)

Got Onyxia out of the Welcome Bundle, and nothing else of note. Meh.

Are those new Classic cards live?


And we're right back to the pure RNG brawls. Blech. Feels like I exist in the vain hope of something as good as the Boss v Boss or co-op Brawls each week, only to be eternally disappointed except like, once every three months or so.

I also love the boss/co-op brawls, but having a wide variety of brawls is important too and they can't hope to please everyone. When it's a brawl you don't like, just get your winning pack and take off would be my suggestion, or if it's a constructed brawl, meme around until your quests are complete.

[Zevox]

I also love the boss/co-op brawls, but having a wide variety of brawls is important too and they can't hope to please everyone. When it's a brawl you don't like, just get your winning pack and take off would be my suggestion, or if it's a constructed brawl, meme around until your quests are complete.
That's exactly what I do - well, the first part anyway; I don't "meme." But the thing is, so many Brawls are ones I don't like that it gets frustrating having them constantly and only rarely getting one that seems actually fun to play. They just happen to have erred heavily on the side of designing Brawls around parts of the game that I don't like, such as heavy RNG, or the constructed ones are usually designed in such a way that a deck type that I hate (either aggro or combo) becomes the best way to play it, meaning that after the first hour or two it's about all you'll see for your opponents.

It just makes the mode frustrating for me, is all.

[Man_Over_Game]

PSA for everyone: There's probably going to be a decent jump in new Hearthstone players soon.

The Elder Scrolls Legends game recently swapped developers, and the new build is incredibly buggy and some players can't play and haven't been able to for the last couple weeks. I don't foresee the game lasting longer than a month at this rate, and there aren't many competitors worth mentioning.

Bit of a shame, really. I actually like TES:L more than Hearthstone, but I'm sure a lot of players are going back to their roots to HS.

I'd suggest hitting the arena right about now, as there's probably more inexperienced players participating.

[tonberrian]

PSA for everyone: There's probably going to be a decent jump in new Hearthstone players soon.

The Elder Scrolls Legends game recently swapped developers, and the new build is incredibly buggy and some players can't play and haven't been able to for the last couple weeks. I don't foresee the game lasting longer than a month at this rate, and there aren't many competitors worth mentioning.

Bit of a shame, really. I actually like TES:L more than Hearthstone, but I'm sure a lot of players are going back to their roots to HS.

I'd suggest hitting the arena right about now, as there's probably more inexperienced players participating.

Yeah, I'm really pissed at the new build. Not pissed enough to switch back to hearthstone, mind, but pissed enough to maybe quit TES:L.

[Joran]

PSA for everyone: There's probably going to be a decent jump in new Hearthstone players soon.

The Elder Scrolls Legends game recently swapped developers, and the new build is incredibly buggy and some players can't play and haven't been able to for the last couple weeks. I don't foresee the game lasting longer than a month at this rate, and there aren't many competitors worth mentioning.

Bit of a shame, really. I actually like TES:L more than Hearthstone, but I'm sure a lot of players are going back to their roots to HS.

I'd suggest hitting the arena right about now, as there's probably more inexperienced players participating.

On the flip side, both Artifact (the Valve/DotA2 based game) and Magic the Gathering: Arena are launching soon, so there will be other card games.

Both look to be more competitive than Hearthstone and I doubt either will unseat Hearthstone as the most popular digital card game.

[Psyren]

Both look to be more competitive than Hearthstone and I doubt either will unseat Hearthstone as the most popular digital card game.

Certainly they won't if they don't go mobile.

Am I reading right, and Artifact has an up-front cost in addition to buying packs? :smallconfused:

[Seerow]

Certainly they won't if they don't go mobile.

Am I reading right, and Artifact has an up-front cost in addition to buying packs? :smallconfused:

Yep. And no way to earn packs without real money. Even mtg:online has ways to earn free packs.

[Man_Over_Game]

Yeah, I'm really pissed at the new build. Not pissed enough to switch back to hearthstone, mind, but pissed enough to maybe quit TES:L.

I don't even mind if it looks totally crappy or the graphics are all choppy. Now, though, my client locks up at least twice a match. Sometimes, I get lucky and get back in before my turn timer runs out, but usually it just leads me to throw the damn game.

It's a lot more tactically inclined than HS, which is why I left HS in the first place, but I'll probably be going back to HS if MtG:Arena is a dud. Or maybe go back to Gems of War (PvP Bejeweled)

[Fairy]

It genuinely does feel (to me at least) that Hearthstone is near a monopoly - I don't think any competitors are of particular note, especially with Elder Scrolls going the way it's going. Really hope MTG Arena is good enough to steal away HS players. I feel like Odd / Even mechanics were fun but generally the last group of expansions seem questionable to me. Playing against something like mech-paladin just makes me question the sanity of the developers.

[Rynjin]

Playing against something like mech-paladin just makes me question the sanity of the developers.

How so? It's a very fair deck...which is why it's pretty low tier.

The sanity questioning comes in when you wonder why they enable so many "solitaire" decks like Mechathun Priest and Quest Rogue.

[Fairy]

How so? It's a very fair deck...which is why it's pretty low tier.

The sanity questioning comes in when you wonder why they enable so many "solitaire" decks like Mechathun Priest and Quest Rogue.

I think mech-paladin and its 'mech' ilk very aggressively define the meta. Play against it with a deck that isn't spec'd out to beat it - okay it goes without saying that you're more likely to lose against a deck you're not prepared to counter - but mech-paladin will positively steam-roll you with hyper-strong minions if you can't counter it.
This isn't something new, certain decks always define the meta, it's natural, but what stands out to me is both just /how/ meta-defining it is, it really steamrolls you if you're not prepared (which just leads to more net-decking), and, also important, how 'supported' the deck is by the game. It's a very basic recipe, the magnetic thing which defines it is literally the main gimmick of the most recent expansion.
I honestly had similar feelings back when C'thun came out, generally powerful minions with an ultra-strong finisher, and it felt like the game was both designing and playing itself. Quest rogue was the same, and I'm glad of both its nerfs. Mechathun priest I've rarely seen on ladder, but to get my point across it feels like a 'players created this' deck, which is the less-worse kind of overpowered, since the response is 'please nerf this'. Like there's still hope it can be fixed. Similarly with quest rogue there was one obvious problem card, so 'please nerf' was still a valid response. To my feeling of things, the only response to the old C'thun decks, and now the new magnetic decks, the only possible response is 'Err... Please give me something more powerful to fight this?' because the whole deck was both handed to you by the developers, and was fundamentally (too) strong.
A funny note, people really liked WotOG, but to me it marked the beginning of a problem that hasn't been fixed / can't be fixed. The decks themselves were balanced, but the variety of strategies were being being strangled out. Boomsday and magnetic seems like a new / worse offender to this trend.

I remember enjoying Yu-gi-oh as a kid. When I later played it briefly as an adult, I was torn apart in a petty number of turns by an obviously overpowered deck near the top of the meta at the time (can't remember well, light something?). I figured the game had leaked out some accidental super-combo, so I just shrugged and hoped they would fix it. I then later found out the deck I played against was pretty much the main deck of their most recent expansion. As in the creators somehow felt it necessary to design and add a deck that powerful to the game. Sure enough, I never returned.
It's a known thing to happen to all card games, but that doesn't stop it being depressing that it's been happening to Hearthstone.

[Rodin]

I don't think you understand what defining the meta means. A deck being low tier, and low tier enough that it doesn't even appear on the Tier list, is definitionally not being played around by the meta.

A card like Giggling Inventor helps define the meta - it was run sufficiently that people began teching in Blood Knights and Mossy Horrors to specifically counter it, and those cards have been so heavily run that the number of Giggling Inventors has actually gone down as a result. Decks like Odd Paladin and Odd Rogue are certainly played around, because they will just eat your face if you aren't prepared for them.

Nobody is playing around Mech Paladin, because there's no need. The aggro decks just trample over Mech Paladin before it can get its egg game going. The more Midrange decks have solutions built in - Shudderwock just hexes, removing the big Mech from the pool. Deathrattle Hunter simply Spiderbombs the giant mechs away. Druid uses Naturalize or just generates a big enough board to hack through them. Odd Warrior has it's staples of Brawl and Reckless Flurry. And that's assuming none of the decks are running Silence to deal with shenanigans coming from other classes, like Taunt Druid.

I wouldn't say Mech Paladin is a bad deck - I've seen it show up in a couple of tournaments as an off-beat pick to screw up people who teched to counter Odd Paladin. But it's still one of the weaker decks in the meta at the moment.

It sounds like Mech Paladin very badly thrashes your deck of choice, but that's hardly Blizzard's fault.

[Psyren]

Yeah, comparing Mech Paladin to Yu-Gi-Oh of all things is beyond ludicrous :smallconfused:

And yes, almost any aggro deck worth their salt can take it out before the mechs get going, while control can keep the board clear. Midrange and Combo might have issues if they can't deal with the mech-ramp in time.

[Joran]

I wouldn't say Mech Paladin is a bad deck - I've seen it show up in a couple of tournaments as an off-beat pick to screw up people who teched to counter Odd Paladin. But it's still one of the weaker decks in the meta at the moment.


To elaborate, I've seen Mech Paladin played only in Hearthstone Global Games, but that's because each team had to submit a deck for every class. It did win though, so hey, it worked in that specific situation.

The HCT Fall championships are happening this weekend and NO ONE brought Paladin. Paladin's in the dumpster at the moment.

I play at rank 5 on ladder and I've seen Mech Paladin maybe once or twice way back in the beginning of the expansion. Mech Paladin also was the strongest deck in the pre-built deck Tavern Brawl, but that's because of how unoptimized all the other decks were and how none of them had silence.

That said, Mech Paladin is too linear of a deck to be good in the current meta. Paying fair mana costs for fair minions is no way to win a Hearthstone game XD

[Geno9999]

To elaborate, I've seen Mech Paladin played only in Hearthstone Global Games, but that's because each team had to submit a deck for every class. It did win though, so hey, it worked in that specific situation.

The HCT Fall championships are happening this weekend and NO ONE brought Paladin. Paladin's in the dumpster at the moment.


Which amuses me, because Odd Paladin has an above average win rate (https://hsreplay.net/decks/#playerClasses=PALADIN&archetypes=216&sortBy=winrate), and is currently sitting at the top of the Tier list. Granted, I don't have HSReplay premium, so it's possible that Odd Paladin is only the king of Rank 20 but not of Legend.

[Joran]

Which amuses me, because Odd Paladin has an above average win rate (https://hsreplay.net/decks/#playerClasses=PALADIN&archetypes=216&sortBy=winrate), and is currently sitting at the top of the Tier list. Granted, I don't have HSReplay premium, so it's possible that Odd Paladin is only the king of Rank 20 but not of Legend.

VS Reaper has Odd Paladin being tier 2 in winrate at all ranks, but you lose so hard against Druid.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-108/

[Rynjin]

VS Reaper has Odd Paladin being tier 2 in winrate at all ranks, but you lose so hard against Druid.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-108/

Druid is actually the reason I subbed in some of the better Mech cards into my Odd Paladin (plus its just such a BORING deck). Having the option to go tall gives you more options in certain matchups like that, and increases your chances against Odd Rogue as well, since they get stalled pretty good by big taunts before turn 6.

[Zevox]

Yeah, if you're seeing much Mech Paladin on ladder, I've got to say you're experience some weird matchmaking results there. My experience is that Odd Paladin is the only type of Paladin around - and not even Odd Paladin with mechs, basically just Witchwood Odd Paladin plus Giggling Inventor. And even that's not that common. I think the most common deck I've run across from the last few times I played standard ladder was Odd Rogue, followed by different types of Hunter (spell, deathrattle). Granted, I'm never higher up in ranks since I just don't play that much, but still.

Aside: oh hey, an actually good Brawl! It's been a while. I'll probably play a fair few matches with the White King this weekend, always love playing Hearthstone-Chess.

[The Glyphstone]

Warlock is still awful. if your opponent needs more than 5 board slots to kill you, they werent going to win anyways.

[Zevox]

Warlock is still awful. if your opponent needs more than 5 board slots to kill you, they werent going to win anyways.
Sindragosa has at least one good matchup: the Curator. Hero power to deal 2 on command means he can remove Curator's early minions better than most, which basically screws his whole gimmick and main way of winning. Ran into that while trying each hero to remind myself what all the options are.

I think King Togwaggle (Druid) is new. Anybody know how he fares? I won my game with him versus Nazzjar, but it was fairly close for a while, and I never found the time to use his hero power. Felt like I needed to keep up tempo lest her evolving hoards overrun me.

[Rynjin]

Togwaggle is an exercise in pressing your button and winning the game, IME. You can set up easy OTKs if you can stall long enough o get them off, with the "3 fireballs" spell and a bunch of Bags of Coins for instance.

[Kish]

Sindragosa has at least one good matchup: the Curator. Hero power to deal 2 on command means he

She. Sindragosa is a she. Don't know how you could mistake the voice.

My King Togwaggle defeated Putricide handily, using one of his Treasures to flood my side of the board with four Growing Oozes, and another to disintegrate Putricide's sole Growing Ooze and Boogeymonster.

[AmberVael]

Sindragosa is pretty nasty against Toggwaggle, who tends to get a lot of spells from treasures and plays slow.

I have yet to win with Toggwaggle. His base deck is terrible and his treasure pool is unreliable. Bag of stuffing is not a treasure you want.

[Resileaf]

I got my win with Toggwaggle by using a treasure to transform all of my hand minions into the ape that buffs everyone by +1/+1 on the field when you use your hero power, used the spell that reduces the cost of every minion in your hand to 0 for the turn, played 4 in a single turn, and buffed my entire board.

[Zevox]

She. Sindragosa is a she. Don't know how you could mistake the voice.

My King Togwaggle defeated Putricide handily, using one of his Treasures to flood my side of the board with four Growing Oozes, and another to disintegrate Putricide's sole Growing Ooze and Boogeymonster.
Lack of hearing it much, mainly. Almost never see her card played and I played her exactly once for this Brawl so far.

Speaking of Putricide though, I really question his viability. 0 mana secrets are nice and all, but they don't seem strong enough to carry his deck against the other bosses' advantages to me. I lost pretty badly the one time I played him - don't recall who the opponent was though.

[Joran]

Nerfs incoming: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/22549775?linkId=100000003759965

Mana Wyrm: from 1 mana to 2 mana.

Giggling Inventor: from 5 mana to 7 mana.

Aviana: from 9 mana to 10 mana.

Surprised Spreading Plague or Branching Paths didn't get a look.

[Resileaf]

Wow, those are some pretty substantial nerfs. Mana wyrm is particularly surprising, it's been a staple of mage decks since forever.
I imagine this is going to break the giggling inventor, though. For 7 mana, I expect a lot better than three minions with low stats.
And Aviana's change nearly breaks the current druid combo (can still work with innervate), and that's not something I'm necessarily going to complain about because I hate fighting it.

[Psyren]

Wow, those are some pretty substantial nerfs. Mana wyrm is particularly surprising, it's been a staple of mage decks since forever.
I imagine this is going to break the giggling inventor, though. For 7 mana, I expect a lot better than three minions with low stats.

Big ouch on the wyrm indeed. My Tempo Mage is going to have a much harder time against other aggro decks like Zoo.

A Giggling nerf I saw coming, but my Odd Rogue is still sad. Now I can't Inventor into Slayer as a big lategame swing play :smallfrown: And where are all these Quest Rogues that are dominating the meta right now anyway?


And Aviana's change nearly breaks the current druid combo (can still work with innervate), and that's not something I'm necessarily going to complain about because I hate fighting it.

You can still get it off with Innervate but this breaks Psychmelon, making it much harder to do so regularly. Not that I would ever play Wild anyway.

[Tvtyrant]

Nerfs incoming: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/22549775?linkId=100000003759965

Mana Wyrm: from 1 mana to 2 mana.

Giggling Inventor: from 5 mana to 7 mana.

Aviana: from 9 mana to 10 mana.

Surprised Spreading Plague or Branching Paths didn't get a look.
These all benefit me personally, but seem kind of silly? None of these felt oppressive, although Aviana is annoying.

[Rodin]

Surprised Spreading Plague or Branching Paths didn't get a look.

As always, I remain very surprised by what does not receive a nerf. I think all of the nerfs were warranted in the grand scheme of things, but Mana Wyrm is really only important because it's in the Classic set. Tempo/Aggro mage isn't OP in the slightest at the minute, so I'm really surprised they chose now to make the change instead of rolling it out with the new expansion that caused the change to be necessary. "Your staple card is nerfed, but here's a set of cool spells we couldn't implement without nerfing it" stings a lot less than "Your staple card is nerfed, suck it up pansies".

What gets me about Spreading plague is that it's already pretty much Giggling Inventor+. If you have less than 3 minions on board, chances are the Druid will laugh off your puny damage and thrash you. If you have 3 minions, the 3/15 of Taunt that Plague summons is easily as powerful as Giggling is and isn't weak to Blood Knight.

Frankly, Frozen Throne can't rotate out fast enough for me.

[Spore]

Mana Wyrm is odd.

[Anarion]

So, the giggling inventor nerf is warranted. That card is everywhere. Even if you're not seeing it as all that powerful given the specific deck you might be playing at present, the card is single-handedly keeping aggro archetypes out of the meta (btw, Zoo warlock is benefitting a lot from these changes). Also, quest rogue with deathknight out can't play two inventors in the same turn anymore. Yay!

Mana wyrm, I suspect is one of those future cards nerfs. I actually think aggro mage was a good meta deck at the moment, it keeps some of the control warlock decks down in particular but was not obviously too strong. Nerfing mana wyrm will make that deck a lot weaker, and hopefully will be compensated with new good mage spells in the future.

For standard, the combo here is almost certainly going to boost up the tempo warlock decks and perhaps aggressive paladin decks.

[Zevox]

Nerfs incoming: https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/22549775?linkId=100000003759965

Mana Wyrm: from 1 mana to 2 mana.

Giggling Inventor: from 5 mana to 7 mana.

Aviana: from 9 mana to 10 mana.

Surprised Spreading Plague or Branching Paths didn't get a look.
****. And here I was thinking we might actually get through an expansion without balance changes for the first time in the last... what's it been now, a year? Year and a half? More? I've lost track. And goddamn, I haven't been more ticked at their choices for balance changes since Firey War Axe.
Giggling Inventor is literally the only card to come out of Boomsday that I just straight-up, no-caveats like. A strong but not overpowering defensive card in the vein of Sludge Belcher, who also has the side-effect of giving some life to tech cards we haven't seen much if at all before, like Mossy Horror and Blood Knight? Perfect. Exactly the type of thing I want to see. And wow, is that one hell of an overreaction to it. I know some people thought it was too strong (obviously I disagree), but bumping it up by 2 mana? Seriously? 1 mana up would be a rough enough nerf already that it might kill it, but 2 will make it unplayable for sure. It's not even close to comparable to 7 mana cards.

And Mana Wyrm? Seriously? A card that's been just fine for five years they're just now deciding needs a nerf? When they can't even claim it's a key part of the most defining meta deck like they could with Firey War Axe back in the day, since Tempo Mage is just one of many good decks at the moment? I call BS. This isn't a balance decision, this is Blizzard deliberately steadily nerfing the strong cards from the Classic set in order to make decks steadily more reliant on new releases. Which completely undermines the whole supposed point of making the Classic set evergreen. Screw them for changes like this one.
Yeah, damn it. I swear, if I ever decide to stop playing the game entirely, it will be because of crap decisions like this. :smallfurious:

[Rynjin]

Hearthstone pros (or at least Kibler and Trump) have had some pretty decent discussions recently on why Mana Wyrm was likely to get a nerf. it basiclaly constrains design space; a 1/1/3 is already a great statline, and throwing on the ability to grow with very cheap mana spells means it's going to rubberband in usefulness depending on the current set.

Best case, it's an insane snowball; an instant pick in a meta that has a lot of viable, cheap spells for Mage and half-decent to meh in any other meta.

Frankly it probably could have used a rework instead of a nerf to make it more perennial. Something like "Gain +1 attack THIS TURN for each spell cast" or even "gain +1 attack this turn equal to the mana cost of the first spell you cast this turn", something like that; makes it a good early game card for tempo decks (since it can trade up if they play a low level spell on turns 2/3) or a good late game card instead, rather than this dominating board presence from turn 1 until it dies.

[Mando Knight]

Everything still has to deal with Druid, which got away scott-free here--the class would suffer by proxy if the nerfs allowed its counter-decks to gain prominence, but almost everything that loses to Giggling Inventor also loses to Spreading Plague. Mana Wyrm is a "we want design space" nerf, and nerfing Aviana doesn't touch Standard (and Juicy Psychmelon is still very powerful even if it can't draw both Kun and Aviana at the same time).

[Zevox]

And yet it's been totally fine for years now, and wasn't nerfed during periods when aggressive mages were much more prevalent than they are today. Yeah, not buying it. Mana Wyrm's fine, just like Firey War Axe was - all this does is make Mage that much more dependent on cards from new sets by denying them one of their good classic cards.

[Mando Knight]

And yet it's been totally fine for years now, and wasn't nerfed during periods when aggressive mages were much more prevalent than they are today. Yeah, not buying it. Mana Wyrm's fine, just like Firey War Axe was - all this does is make Mage that much more dependent on cards from new sets by denying them one of their good classic cards.

Mana Wyrm and Fiery War Axe were "fine" for years because they were basically the only good early game plays in those classes' basic/classic sets (Mage also has Frostbolt, but Warrior doesn't have a single good early game card left). This is a "design space" nerf in that Blizzard wants to be able to push new, different early-game options without letting the class explode into an all-powerful aggro deck (like what happened with Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman in the past), but cripples the classes' early games into relying on whatever new cards are in Standard the way Paladin is.

[Zevox]

Mana Wyrm and Fiery War Axe were "fine" for years because they were basically the only good early game plays in those classes' basic/classic sets (Mage also has Frostbolt, but Warrior doesn't have a single good early game card left). This is a "design space" nerf in that Blizzard wants to be able to push new, different early-game options without letting the class explode into an all-powerful aggro deck (like what happened with Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman in the past), but cripples the classes' early games into relying on whatever new cards are in Standard the way Paladin is.
Mage has had other good early game cards to go with Mana Wyrm before. Remember Mech Mage? Or Flamewaker? Hell, it still does now, with Sorcerer's apprentice and the like that make up Tempo Mage's early game. And other than that part of the remark you seem to be agreeing with me.

[Anarion]

Everything still has to deal with Druid, which got away scott-free here--the class would suffer by proxy if the nerfs allowed its counter-decks to gain prominence, but almost everything that loses to Giggling Inventor also loses to Spreading Plague. Mana Wyrm is a "we want design space" nerf, and nerfing Aviana doesn't touch Standard (and Juicy Psychmelon is still very powerful even if it can't draw both Kun and Aviana at the same time).

Giggling still hits token druid, which has been running the card along with whatever the name of that taunt buff guy is, something Shell Protector. So people will have to rejigger token Druid a bit, and if that deck gets weaker, it will also make it easier to play around other druid archetypes.


And yet it's been totally fine for years now, and wasn't nerfed during periods when aggressive mages were much more prevalent than they are today. Yeah, not buying it. Mana Wyrm's fine, just like Firey War Axe was - all this does is make Mage that much more dependent on cards from new sets by denying them one of their good classic cards.

Hmm, I honestly just think I disagree. Like, I hear that it's frustrating to have a card you've liked and even a card that have been around a long time and see them change, and that it's particularly frustrating when it means you're reliant on new cards to make viable decks. But, well, first off, Giggling was broken. I've been expecting a nerf for the last few months. It's especially prevalent at legend, where I've been easily seeing it in 50% or more of decks. It's one thing to have a strong card, it's another to have the entire meta warped around it. Having tech cards doesn't help either in that case, it just turns the game into a coinflip about who drew which card of a small set of two to four.

Regarding mana wyrm, if it's any consolation, I suspect that Blizzard will make most of those early game cards common or perhaps rare at worst. It's very infrequent that they make the cheap stuff legendary or epic, and even when they do, it's often misleadingly cheap like Arugal and Pyros (both of which cost 2 mana but are really bad 2-drops). Yes, there's usually one format-warping cheap legendary floating around (see: Patches, Keleseth) but it's usually neutral and would be a desired crafting choice regardless of what cards get nerfed.

[Zevox]

Hmm, I honestly just think I disagree. Like, I hear that it's frustrating to have a card you've liked and even a card that have been around a long time and see them change, and that it's particularly frustrating when it means you're reliant on new cards to make viable decks. But, well, first off, Giggling was broken. I've been expecting a nerf for the last few months. It's especially prevalent at legend, where I've been easily seeing it in 50% or more of decks. It's one thing to have a strong card, it's another to have the entire meta warped around it. Having tech cards doesn't help either in that case, it just turns the game into a coinflip about who drew which card of a small set of two to four.

Regarding mana wyrm, if it's any consolation, I suspect that Blizzard will make most of those early game cards common or perhaps rare at worst. It's very infrequent that they make the cheap stuff legendary or epic, and even when they do, it's often misleadingly cheap like Arugal and Pyros (both of which cost 2 mana but are really bad 2-drops). Yes, there's usually one format-warping cheap legendary floating around (see: Patches, Keleseth) but it's usually neutral and would be a desired crafting choice regardless of what cards get nerfed.
Giggling being popular is totally fine I'd say - Sludge Belcher was likely that prominent back in the day too, being run in every non-aggro deck, yet he never got nerfed. And Giggling Inventor is filling precisely the same role: a strong mid-game speed bump that's not easily removed by most single cards. We haven't had one as good for that since Belcher rotated out, and now we'll be back to not having one at all.

And no, that's no consolation on Mana Wyrm. Because honestly, I don't care that much about Mana Wyrm itself - I hate aggro, it hasn't been in any decks I've played in a long time. What ticks me off is what it represents: Blizzard's continuous series of nerfs and Hall of Faming of the classic set. (Mana Wyrm in particular just gets my gourd more than most because I see no balance justification for it at all, not even in the short-term.) Because when rotations were introduced, they made the classic set evergreen, saying that it would represent a baseline of cards that players would always have available, as a stable base for anyone who might take a break and come back or the like. And I think that was the right call. But it doesn't matter in the slightest if they're not willing to let the classic set have good cards that people will actually want to use, and it feels very much like we're well on the path to the day when it will have none left. Already we've lost Ragnaros, Sylvanas, Azure Drake, Ice Block, Firey War Axe, and Rockbiter Weapon, along with more niche-useful cards like Ice Lance, Conceal, Power Overwhelming, Coldlight Oracle, and Molten Giant. Execute and Hex were fortunate enough to still be usable even after their nerfs, but most haven't been so lucky. Plus there's the many that were adjusted around the time when the rotation system first went into effect, which I wasn't entirely comfortable with even then, but I at least thought they would be the last of it as Blizzard figured out the power level they wanted the classic set at for the game's future. Boy was I wrong about that.

And now we can add Mana Wyrm to that pile, reduced to being a maybe-better Mana Addict. What's next, Wild Growth? Frostbolt and Fireball? Power Word: Shield? Because I sure don't have any reason to expect them to stop at this point. The Hall of Fame in particular is as regular a part of Hearthstone as new sets it seems, and nerfs to classic cards have become more common the past couple of years.

[Rynjin]

I'm also with Kibler on that one; most of the "problem cards" are from the Classic set. Particularly for classes like Druid. Most of the OMGWTFBBQ power level Druid cards really aren't that much of an issue in a vacuum...but Wild Growth and Nourish making the Druid consistently hit 10 mana by turn 6 MAKE them that OP.

Something needs to be done about the Classic set cards being so much more powerful than any released set, though I do also favor his suggestion of rotating cards TEMPORARILY rather than permanently or nerfing them.

Hearthstone's meta, looking back, has been surprisingly stale in the grand scheme, with decks like Miracle Rogue and Exodia Mage never truly dying...merely receding in anticipation of an expansion breathing new life into them and making them dominant again. If Preparation, or Archmage Antonidas, or Equality/Consecrate, etc. weren't perennials, Blizzard would have a lot more design space to experiment with new cards that perform similar roles. EX, what use does Shrink Ray have in a meta where Equality exists? I have it teched into my Odd Mechadin deck, but that's only because I literally can't run Equality and Consecrate.

If Equality was removed from the game for the next year (and added back in nextyear), would Shrink ray be seen as a more viable option? Maybe, maybe not, but it would open up room to experiment, rather than the default question for any new card being "Why is this BETTER than the cards that launched with the game", and if the answer is "No", the card is basically never touched.

Temporarily rotating (or permanently nerfing, for the less desirable option) these cards that have been good to great from day 1 allows for less power creep over time and opens up more interesting avenues to keep the game fresh.

[Zevox]

I'm also with Kibler on that one; most of the "problem cards" are from the Classic set. Particularly for classes like Druid. Most of the OMGWTFBBQ power level Druid cards really aren't that much of an issue in a vacuum...but Wild Growth and Nourish making the Druid consistently hit 10 mana by turn 6 MAKE them that OP.

Something needs to be done about the Classic set cards being so much more powerful than any released set, though I do also favor his suggestion of rotating cards TEMPORARILY rather than permanently or nerfing them.

Hearthstone's meta, looking back, has been surprisingly stale in the grand scheme, with decks like Miracle Rogue and Exodia Mage never truly dying...merely receding in anticipation of an expansion breathing new life into them and making them dominant again. If Preparation, or Archmage Antonidas, or Equality/Consecrate, etc. weren't perennials, Blizzard would have a lot more design space to experiment with new cards that perform similar roles. EX, what use does Shrink Ray have in a meta where Equality exists? I have it teched into my Odd Mechadin deck, but that's only because I literally can't run Equality and Consecrate.

If Equality was removed from the game for the next year (and added back in nextyear), would Shrink ray be seen as a more viable option? Maybe, maybe not, but it would open up room to experiment, rather than the default question for any new card being "Why is this BETTER than the cards that launched with the game", and if the answer is "No", the card is basically never touched.

Temporarily rotating (or permanently nerfing, for the less desirable option) these cards that have been good to great from day 1 allows for less power creep over time and opens up more interesting avenues to keep the game fresh.
Such a system might seem preferable to those who play consistently, but I think it fails at what the classic set being evergreen is supposed to do. If which cards are available from the classic set varies from year to year, then there really isn't any stable set of cards that players who take breaks can expect to have at all - they might easily come back and find that nothing they want to use is available.

No, I think they should have stuck to what that stated design intention implied: if the Classic cards were to be the baseline of the game, then new sets should always have been built with them at that power level in mind. Those cards define what each class is and what play style(s) it's good at, and expansions should build upon, not try to reinvent that. Just don't print a card like Shrink Ray, make something else that actually has a role the classic set hasn't already done better. Keep in mind that Druid is the Ramp class when you're making their high-mana cards, and maybe don't give them something as crazy as Ultimate Infestation because of that. If that "restricts design space," then that's a restriction that I feel should be there, because it helps keep the game approachable.

[Tvtyrant]

I got one win away from Rank 3 in Wild, then got stomped in the mirror. I have never got to rank 3 and if my habit of winning 4 then losing 4 holds I won't be this month.

I managed to play the same guy two more times :(

[Joran]

I would have preferred the Mana Wyrm to be nerfed to a 1/2 stat line. It'd be playable and there's other cards similar like Lightwarden.

2 mana Mana Wyrm is unplayable.

[Spore]

I really hope they take, the Izzet idea og creatures gaining value and generating tempo from cast spells for future expansions. Flamewaker was one of my favorite cards. And I enjoy Face/Tempo Mage a lot. I like control mage too but it is quite slow and you can often predict your win or loss 20 turns in advance. But since this is HS and rng is part of the game you still have a chance so giving ruims your winrate.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I don't really have a problem with old decks still being meta relevant, tbh. A diverse meta would have room for old and new decks alike, and there's a lot of enjoyment to be had from a wealth of options. Then again, I care more for deck piloting than deck construction, so that shapes things.

[Psyren]

I would have preferred the Mana Wyrm to be nerfed to a 1/2 stat line. It'd be playable and there's other cards similar like Lightwarden.

2 mana Mana Wyrm is unplayable.

Yeah I'd rather a health nerf than this. They also ruined Odd Mage which was struggling to begin with.

[Resileaf]

Does mage have any viable 1-drops now? What could possibly replace that card?

[Anarion]

Because when rotations were introduced, they made the classic set evergreen, saying that it would represent a baseline of cards that players would always have available, as a stable base for anyone who might take a break and come back or the like. And I think that was the right call.

I think it was the wrong one. If the game becomes boring, people stop playing and it stops getting supported. Even if you, individually, enjoy coming back from time to time with your evergreen cards, I don't think that's representative of the casual population or the infrequent playing population either. Most of those people are not going to come back and start playing because their old Sylvanus is still around. Blizz should make the game approachable for new and returning players by ensuring that whatever cards happen to be out at a given time offer a relatively quick and cheap option for making some good decks. That's why you always want to design some strong cards at common and rare, and ensure that new mechanics appear on good cards across multiple rarities. So that at any point that someone picks up the game, they can quickly get into it, even if they have to spend time (or money, which is the real goal) to play several different decks or certain expensive lategame strategies.


Does mage have any viable 1-drops now? What could possibly replace that card?

Control Mage has Arcane Artificer, which costs one mana, but is not actually a 1-drop (though it could be in some formats, just not this one). For comparison though, Druid does not currently have a standard legal 1-drop minion. Neither does Rogue. Shaman has 3 but they all suck. The other classes all have a good one for at least some strategies. The best Mage 1-drop now if you're running an aggressive deck is probably Fire Fly (and his buddy Flame Elemental).
Edit: Although SecretKeeper might be worth playing around with, especially if hunter gets more popular again.

[Psyren]

Does mage have any viable 1-drops now? What could possibly replace that card?

Artificer is still viable but it's a control card, so wouldn't replace Wyrm anyway.

Secretkeeper might not be too bad in Tempo Mage.

[Anarion]

Artificer is still viable but it's a control card, so wouldn't replace Wyrm anyway.

Secretkeeper might not be too bad in Tempo Mage.

So, the way this looks is that running secretkeeper probably means you need a 4th, maybe a 5th secret, which is a little dicey. I might consider 1 secretkeeper and a 4th secret in place of the two mana wyrms, with the hope of adding a little more disruption rather than trying to just do a lesser version of early aggro.

[Psyren]

I was already running 4 secrets in my Tempo Mage actually so dropping the Wyrms for Secretkeepers should be fine. I might run a single Mirror Entity or Frozen Clone.

[Anarion]

I was already running 4 secrets in my Tempo Mage actually so dropping the Wyrms for Secretkeepers should be fine. I might run a single Mirror Entity or Frozen Clone.

Huh, really? I'm pretty sure the build right now with 2xExplosive Runes and 1xCounterspell is better, at least if you have Starseeker Luna.

[Zevox]

I would have preferred the Mana Wyrm to be nerfed to a 1/2 stat line. It'd be playable and there's other cards similar like Lightwarden.

2 mana Mana Wyrm is unplayable.
I can agree with that, that would be preferable to this nerf. Still wouldn't be happy with it, but at least it wouldn't be as bad.


I don't really have a problem with old decks still being meta relevant, tbh. A diverse meta would have room for old and new decks alike, and there's a lot of enjoyment to be had from a wealth of options. Then again, I care more for deck piloting than deck construction, so that shapes things.
I'm the same way, particularly on that last point. I mean, hell, my favorite decks in the current meta are basically the modern incarnations of my favorite Classic decks - Odd Warrior and Even Warlock, for Control Warrior and Handlock respectively. I far prefer those old decks to the various flavor-of-the-expansion gimmicks Blizzard keeps throwing in to try and make new deck types, to varying degrees of success. Even ones that I've liked, such as Jade Druid or Quest Warrior, I don't like as much as those classics.


I think it was the wrong one. If the game becomes boring, people stop playing and it stops getting supported.
Well, that certainly explains why we're at odds here at least. I don't think for one second that them treating the classic set the way they originally said they would would make the game become boring or result in people playing less than they do now. Not when we're getting expansions on a regular basis and have the set rotation in place.

[Psyren]

Huh, really? I'm pretty sure the build right now with 2xExplosive Runes and 1xCounterspell is better, at least if you have Starseeker Luna.

It might be, I got my decklist from a Trump video. *shrug*

I usually hate one-offs unless they're Legendaries, and even then I try to get them in pairs (Luna and Aluneth in this case.) Though in this case, I think a 5th secret might help with consistency if I'm dumping the wyrms for secretkeepers.

[otakuryoga]

I forget..is it the 1st or 2nd hero whose power you use in the dual class arena?

[Nerocite]

I forget..is it the 1st or 2nd hero whose power you use in the dual class arena?

2nd hero is hero power.

On another note, the class quests for the Tavern brawl seem a little buggy, I completed a druid/rogue quest by winning as the priest and shaman equivalent.

[Grytorm]

Hello again. I uninstalled Hearthstone because I didn't feel like keeping up with downloads/meta and my computer doesn't have great memory...

However I wanted to share another card idea I had. Booby Trap, 2 Mana Hunter Secret. At the end of your opponent's turn deal 2 damage to your opponent and draw a card.

[Kish]

I think that would be an auto-include for most decks.

[The Glyphstone]

Two free damage and a cycle? That's insanely good.

[Gandariel]

Yeah, it's surprisingly overpowered, for how unimpressive it looks.

Maybe add some trigger, like "if you control no minions"?

Ah, the create a card game.
It was pretty fun.

[Anarion]

Power level aside, a secret that automatically triggers regardless of circumstance breaks the rules of secret design, I think. Blizzard has taken pretty good care to keep it possible to play around secrets, and having one that's just a damage spell on a delay would probably be a new card type, rather than a secret (although suspended cards would be an interesting hearthstone mechanic and they already have the tech to have a card kind of float to the side of the main play area).

On a totally unrelated note, I just had someone play Millhouse Manastorm when I had a single flame elemental in play and Sound the Bells in hand, and managed to play it 29 times before the rope ran out and kill them in one turn. :smallbiggrin:

[The Glyphstone]

Why would anyone play Millhouse Manastorm?

[Psyren]

HS kinda has suspend cards already. There are two types - the ones that plop a permanent down on the board that can't be interacted with directly until the countdown elapses (e.g. Stasis Dragon) and the ones that shuffle an effect into somebody's deck that shows up later at an unspecified time (e.g. Iron Juggernaut). There's also cards that combine both approaches like The Darkness.

I wouldn't be opposed to the "float a card/countdown off to the side" approach too though.


Why would anyone play Millhouse Manastorm?

Yeah, even Gutmook loses when he does that.

[Anarion]

Why would anyone play Millhouse Manastorm?

*Shrug* It was an arena match, it was turn 4, I only had a few cards in hand, I guess he figured a cheap 4/4 wouldn't bite him that hard. And, then it did.

[Resileaf]

*Shrug* It was an arena match, it was turn 4, I only had a few cards in hand, I guess he figured a cheap 4/4 wouldn't bite him that hard. And, then it did.

I can't imagine how terrible the other two legendaries had to be for him to decide Millhouse was the best choice.

[Mando Knight]

*Shrug* It was an arena match, it was turn 4, I only had a few cards in hand, I guess he figured a cheap 4/4 wouldn't bite him that hard. And, then it did.

Nobody expects Sound the Bells to come in clutch, either.

I probably still would've held off on Millhouse against a Paladin--not for a Sound the Bells OTK, but the threat of a free Blessing of Kings, Spikeridge Steed, or Dinosize is bigger than a turn 4 4/4.

[Rynjin]

I had a fun experience with the Arena playing a Warrior-Paladin: I actually managed to activate Keleseth pretty early into the game (I drafted like two 2 drops in the whole deck, drew them, got Tanglefur Mystic, and Keleseth popped out). That was a fun win.

Still only went 4/3 grand scheme, but it feels nice to "get away" with something every now and then.

The Mage-Druid I drafted after feels more unfair. I'm basically a Mage with Spreading Plague and Ultimate Infestation to bail me out when I start losing. Plus I got lucky and got offered Lich King (aside Deathwing and another solid Legendary). I haven't felt this lucky in Draft in a while.

[Tvtyrant]

Is there ever a good time to cast Millhouse? He needs to either be an 8/8 or make the next spell an opponent casts cost 1. As is he is essentially suicide.

[Resileaf]

Is there ever a good time to cast Millhouse? He needs to either be an 8/8 or make the next spell an opponent casts cost 1. As is he is essentially suicide.

On the second turn, when your opponent has no cards in his hands.
Which is to say, you should never ever play it.

[Kish]

It's good for co-op brawls. Same answer as for Arcane Golem, now.

[Zevox]

Power level aside, a secret that automatically triggers regardless of circumstance breaks the rules of secret design, I think. Blizzard has taken pretty good care to keep it possible to play around secrets, and having one that's just a damage spell on a delay would probably be a new card type, rather than a secret.
That's true - a secret without a condition required to trigger it doesn't match how secrets work. Even the closest existing secret to that, the Paladin one that gives your board +1/+1 at the start of your turn, still won't go off unless you have at least one minion on the board at the time. This is just a spell on a delay for no particular reason.

I don't think it's op like is being suggested though - since it just goes face, it's basically Hunter hero power in card form, like how Novice Engineer is Paladin hero power in card form. Aggro Hunter decks would likely always run it, sure, but I don't know if the current array of slower ones would want it. I guess if the cycle was just that important to them, but for the existing decks it really isn't. Hunter has so far never been a combo deck class.

Edit: Finished my free arena today (which is the only time I play arena). 9-3 with what what felt like a pretty meh Warrior/Rogue draft, pretty happy with that. And in one of the packs I bought with the gold from it I picked up not one but two legendaries - The Soularium and Kangor's Endless Army. Pretty happy pulling the later, mulling whether I want to disenchant the former since I have a hard time seeing it being in any non-Zoo deck.

And with that pity timer reset, I think it's about time I stop buying packs and start saving gold for the next set.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Not to mention that Hunters with good draw goes against their "class identity" or whatever.

With Witchwood, I tried (fruitlessly) to try to make every deck that came out of it. With Boomsday, I've tried to make every prevalent combo deck that isn't mill druid (Cause I still have memories of playing against lucky mill players). Current list is Malygos Rogue, Shudderwock (with Zilliax) Shaman, Malygos Druid, Malygos Shaman, Mecha'Thun Druid (Both the taunt version and the draw version) Mecha'Thun Warlock, and Mecha'Thun Priest.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Not to mention that Hunters with good draw goes against their "class identity" or whatever.

I mean, 2-mana cycle a card and get some face damage in is, while power creep from Explosive Trap, not much better than Flare. And Flare doesn't get run unless there's reasonable odds that it'll proc. It didn't even work well as a tech against Mysterious Challenger decks back in the day.

[Grytorm]

Yeah, I see now the various reasons that trap wouldn't be good. I have a few comments though, I doubt that the card would see play in aggro because it is a terrible top deck in the late game and in the early game and in the early game it would slow down the aggressive opening. But I might be wrong. And anyway, its not like Hunter is allowed good aggro cards. And, thematically the idea was its main point was that it isn't really a trap, you make your opponents play around it in case that it is and then it turns out to be nothing. A possible nerf would be "at the start of your turn activate your hero power and draw a card"

[Epinephrine_Syn]

It's actually quite a bit better than "hunter hero power on delay", because it A, tricks the enemy into playing around secrets for a turn, and B (much more importantly), procs Spellstone. Spellstone'll still be around for a little while yet, and this is certainly better than many other secrets.

[Nerocite]

Just got my packs from Choose Your Champion, unfortunately didn't get anything good.

[Spore]

I don't booby trap could work as some sort of decoy trap. "If your hero is attacked, deal 2 damage to the attacker (to face or to a minion) and draw a card" sounds reasonable enough to stop aggro and somewhat enable secret synergy.

[Zevox]

Okay, favorite game in a little while: my Odd Warrior versus a Deathrattle Hunter. Long story short, between using both Cubes on his Eggs and Play Deads on the Cubes, dude managed to give me an opportunity to fill up his whole board with Eggs. Rendering him completely powerless to do anything while I picked him apart.

Gods, I hate that deck so much, and it's so hilarious to see someone screw up that badly with it. :smallbiggrin:

[Gluteus_Maximus]

I had a few encounters with an odd rogue that runs 1 devilsaur egg, 1 necrium blade, 2 cube, 2 vial, and 2 witchwood grizzly at mid-rank 5. Basically, it's odd rogue, but with a potential anti-aggro in cubing grizzlies.

[Psyren]

So apparently the Horseman lets you complete quests, like "Play X cards from Y class" - for those of you who would prefer to get quests done solo.