So I just fired up ranked for the first time in a while to do some quests and even at rank 17 or whatever I started at it’s wall to wall cubelocks. This was predictably boring. What’s the best counter deck?
Looks like Secret Mage, quest/exodia mage, or various priest decks do well against warlock. vS Data Reaper Report #82 - Vicious Syndicate
So with this expansion being the start of the new “year”, will its launch be when the last couple of expansions will shift to Wild?
Apologies if this is made clear in the launch announcement - I couldn’t play the whole thing here at work.
Yes.
Yes, but not the “last couple of expansions”, but rather the Year of the Kraken expansions - Wrath of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, plus the Hall-of-faming of Ice Block, Coldlight Oracle, and Molten Giant.
Save your daily quests. On Monday they’re starting a promo for a few days where doing daily quests earns packs, so save two over the weekend.
Thanks for the heads up.
so save today’s quest til midnight.
All of the Witchwood cards have been revealed and it launches on the 12th. Here’s a full list:
Inexplicably, it seems like Warlock gets the best haul. Lord Godfrey is a strong legendary and Curse of Weakness is a killer stall and allows you to trade without taking damage. They also gave them two more tools to pop Lackey/Cube. Dark Possession pops the Lackey for one mana and gives you a discovered minion. For 3 mana, Ratcatcher will pop a cube and become a 6/8 with rush. It looks like we are entering the year of the Warlock.
There’s a few new archtypes that can possibly be good:
Lady in White casts inner fire on your deck for Priests. That’s a ton of value, but it’s slow and relying on one legendary for you win condition is bad news. It might work with a bunch of high value taunts and relying on Coffin Crasher for additional value.
Mage got some powerful draw tools for minion heavy decks. I don’t think it will work because Mage minions aren’t that good and they’ve lost their secret package.
Warrior got some rush tools and synergy, but nothing that I see making a strong deck.
Same with Shaman. Shudderwock has the potential to be bonkers, but again it’s slow and relying on one legendary minion to win is always tough.
Paladin will continue to be powerful based on the strength of Call to Arms alone.
Rogue got fuck and all.
Dammnnn. I don’t know what to play this season.
IMHO there’s (1) Warlock, (2) Paladin, and then everyone else is way back. Shaman is the only possible contender I see. They have great battlecry synergies between murmuring elemental, Grumble, and now Shudderwock. Not sure I see a full deck there competive with Warlock and Paladin, but there’s definitely huge value cards.
Sooo… molten giant, which is scheduled to be removed from Standard in 2 days, has just had its cost lowered back to 20 (from 25). If anyone has an old hand-lock list they want to update for Standard, the time is now.
Argh the update just dropped while I’m at work?
The actual update hasn’t dropped, but the patch changing to molten giant hit a couple days early.
I’m not sure why they have to retire 3 expansions at once. It feels like if they rotated one out as they brought another one in, we’d have more variations in the meta (we’d have a stage where one expansion was active while the previous expansion was not), but I suppose it simplifies the design space to clear all of it up at once for the new cards. Still, it makes me less than totally enthusiastic for rotation day - we lose so much at once. It might not be so bad if they treated Wild like a real format and did some balancing for it instead of basically declaring it to be the crap heap.
Times for the roll-out announced:
Americas: April 12 10:00 a.m. PDT
Europe: April 12 7:00 p.m. CEST
Asia: April 13 2:00 a.m. KST / 1:00 a.m. CST
China: April 13 6:00 a.m. CST
I agree with the Beefman – don’t understand at all why they insist on the yearly removal of cards. The meta would stay fresher if they rolled out cards as they release new ones. I think they should even consider rolling out cards monthly or even weekly instead of only three times a year.
In other news: I’m still F2P and finally got Ysera today in a pack from the daily quest … and it’s golden.
Pack opening day!
58 packs opened (all bought with gold/rewards, no $ spent). Of those 290 cards, 128 (44.1%) were auto-disenchanted as extras for 865 dust. Of the remaining 162 cards I got:
95 Common (58.6%)
52 Rare (32.1%)
13 Epics (8.0%)
2 Legendaries (1.2%): Azalina Soulthief and Baku the Mooneater
Meh.
Opened some 29 packs, ended up dusting 4 rare and 28 common cards.
4 legendaries: Prince Liam (login bonus), Hagatha the witch, Darius Crowley, Countess Ashmore (Golden)
4 epics (1 golden)
27 rare (1 golden)
Early play experience:
Shudderwock deck with minimal creatures, bog keeper, bad small spells: Bad but at least I got the full combo off once.
Genn/Even paladin: Seems solid, maybe because most other players are on meme decks right now and I’m just pushing my 1 mana button and going face.
Spiteful Mage with Arugal, 2 book of specters, 2 pyroblast, 2 flamestrike: Also quite good. Also, PSA: Book of Specters does NOT discard Frost Lich Jaina.