58 Packs.
Genn Graymane.
Fucking. FACE. COLLECTOR.
So mad right now.
That Shudderwock is a thing. Not that I needed reminding that Blizzard releases cards that simply dominate until nerfed, but damn, I’ve played 3 of those Shamans in 5 games so far.
By the by, the double damage hero power card with the Sulfuras/Ragnaros is 16 points of damage for 2 mana. Per turn.
Ahhh, Blizzard.
I ended up saving 8500 gold - not for any particular reason, I just haven’t felt like playing arena lately but I’m playing enough to do my daily quests. I usually like playing arena, though, so it would feel wasteful if I just bought a ton of packs. But it’ll take a long time to get a lot of packs that way, if I play an arena run or two a day, and so I won’t have much of a decklist with the whole retiring 3 expansions at once thing. I guess maybe I should buy 30 or 40 packs and save the rest for arena runs.
Enemy is at 5 hp. I have low HP, only one card to draw, and ultimate infestation. So I use UI to deal 5 damage to him, thinking that’d win. But it goes through the entire action, including drawing all the cards, and the fatigue kills me too. Unexpected. I might’ve been able to squeeze out a win in another way if I knew that would be the interaction.
Ended up opening about 25 packs (including the promo ones).
My free expansion legendary was Toki And I opened Dollmaster Dorian which I could see being big in deathrattle decks, especially big priest type stuff, and I opened Lord Godfrey, which seems pretty good in any sort of control lock.
I hope some sort of fun control lock becomes viable - I feel like this expansion might’ve empowered Cubelock, with a few good new cards and not losing much, but it seems like a boring deck and I don’t really chase the flavor of the month stuff. Maybe there should’ve been more silence or anti-deathrattle tech cards.
I’m sitting on about 8k dust and 3k gold, but I don’t think I’m buying any packs or crafting cards until Shudderwock is dealt with. It’s shaping up to be the next Quest Mage. I don’t know that the winrate will be that high because you need two specific legendaries to win. But it definitely is a “let’s find out who got the winning draw” deck where there’s not much you can do to impact the outcome.
I’ve been watching the tournament today and I don’t think the Shudderwock thing is really that big of a threat. It’s slow and RNG-dependent to get the combo off. People are more concerned about Warlock (Cubelock continues to be viable) and Paladin (which has playable versions of both the odd and even deck archetypes).
Yeah, I went from 15 to 10 with even paladin:
2x Knife Juggler
2x Direwolf Alpha
2x Plated Beetle
2x Acidic Swamp Ooze
2x Loot Hoarder
2x Argent Protector
2x Hydrologist
2x Call to Arms
2x Truesilver Champion
2x Consecrate
2x Blessing of Kings
1x Spellbreaker
1x Mad Hatter
1x Genn Greymane
2x Spikeridged Steed
1x Sunkeeper Tarim
1x Lich King
1x Tyrion
Mad hatter is excellent but I don’t think I want 2. Went 0-2 vs. Warlock, 2-1 vs. Genn paladin, and N-0 for a fairly large N against everything else (a couple odd hunters, a couple odd warriors, some spiteful priests, some rogues, only a couple shamans).
EDIT: Shudderwock is super annoying because it takes forever to go off, but it’s not very hard to beat with a focused aggro deck. I feel very bad for the warlock control players who were hoping to spend the next 12 months hiding behind walls of 3/9 taunts.
Incidentally, while my list is very legend heavy, you could sub out Lich King and Tyrion for some other top end stuff. Supposedly the new 8 mana sword is very good.
(sorry, that should be 2-1 vs. Baku/odd paladin. Didn’t play the mirror.)
Jabberwock was designed as a deck to counter mobile players. By the time the animations are finished, the mobile device shut down 5 minutes go due to low battery.
I’m finding odd Paladin to be quite good and flexible, though I’m still struggling against heavy control decks (Warrior and Warlock). I didn’t pull any Level Up!s, but seems worth crafting them for this deck.
I haven’t really looked into what decks are fun this expansion, but I’m not sure there’s that much interesting going on. Having rush being so common makes things feel less interative - there’s more the enemy can do on their turn that you never have a chance to counter. Echo isn’t a bad idea, but I’m not sure it’s much to drive an interesting meta. There aren’t a lot of interesting new cards. I guess this is the expansion that will set up the base level plain minions and the subsequent ones will add the interesting effects, but my admittedly very early impression which may be totally wrong is that there’s not a lot of interesting stuff going on right now, certainly not enough to offset losing 3 expansions worth of cards.
No I agree, it’s not a particularly exciting expansion (although I do love the aesthetics, and the artists did a knockout job as always).
Yeah, it’s a solid meh from me.
I somehow pulled Tess Graymane, so I guess I’m playing a Burgle Face Collector Rogue this expansion.
I did close out a game by summoning Al Alakir and Grommash from Face Collector, re-summoning them with Tess, and shadowstepped Tess for round 3, but this seems more like a RNG freakshow than a real win condition.
They said that about Yogg, too - the thing is, even if all you get off Tess is a couple of decent-sized dudes, that’s still a pretty big swing turn.
Heh. Reminds me of one of a few deaths of mine playing a Tempo/Secret Mage with Aluneth. You can draw yourself into fatigue so quickly with that deck that it’s easy to forget that you are actually on a faster clock than you think (i.e have plenty of burn in hand but not play it fast enough because you fatigue out before you have enough mana to play it all).
For Witchwood, Odd Pally is really strong (got lucky and opened Baku in one of my intro packs) but I’m not super good at it yet. Need another Level Up! I think to make it more consistently able to buff the board.
I’m actually have a ton of luck with a Tempo Mage deck with just a few secrets and using Antonidas as a win condition. Vex Crow + Cheap spells can create huge board swings. And if you can get a Vex Crow + Antonidas to stick it’s game over. Probably going to swap in Arcane Blast (I think that’s it… the one with 1 damage to all enemy minions) just to deal with Odd Pally tokens.
Oh, and I think I’ve only seen one or two Shudderwock Shaman - and I think the closest anybody got to the combo was two turns away. Once you know what it is it’s pretty easy to just burn them down before they get there.
Anybody else have some good decks? Odd Warrior seems pretty strong with Tank Up (although I think I won that matchup too with my Mage deck - I think the only things I’ve lost more than once to with that are Pally and Hunter so far). And obviously Cubelock is still a big dog.
I went from low-10 to high-8 with even hand-lock (warlock with Genn Graymane). Plays just like classic Handlock except you can tap for 1 and can pretty easily drop a stone giant on turn 3 (if you play second/with coin) or 4 (playing first). No cube/void lord/DK Gul’dan nonsense, just tap tap big dude. It even plays the Ancient Watcher package (taunts/silences).
Edit: Pretty much this deck, though I had 1 more doomsayer and 1 less drain soul: KillerWeed's Witchwood Genn Even Handlock - Hearthstone Top Decks
Looks like both even and odd paladin are in the top 3 decks in terms of winrate. Spiteful druid is the other one. Secret paladin is back in 5th, making 3 of the top 5 decks paladin decks.
I might give spiteful druid a shot - not because I like to do flavor of the month stuff but because I’m only a few cards away from it anyway and I need a standard deck for some quests while I play through my gold at arena and see what cards that brings and what options it opens.
Outside the metas, news that Ben Brode is leaving Blizzard to help start up a new gaming company.
Dunno what this actually means for the future of Hearthstone.