As I say that, I just pulled off a turn 3 deathlord, turn 4 power word shield, divine spirit, inner fire. 20/20 on turn 4. I didn’t even play cards on turns 1 and 2, and I’ve got a super overkill turn 5 win. Oh, and an idea. I crafted the priest silence spell, so I can silence my deathlord in the event that he’s likely to die. Of course it’s hard to predict one card removals. Two turns worth of cards played, -10 overkill on turn 5.
Ok, so here’s a few tips.
turn 3 IBM + circle is often the best move. A 4/7 is really hard to deal with for most classes, and if for some reason you get the DS/DS/IF in hand, 28 damage whoop.
Watch the pyros. They’re tricky, but key to keeping board control. Your opponent flooding the board? Pyro + PW:S + smite usually takes care of business. You can also use it to cycle a LOT of cards, if you have minions on the board. Play pyro, some other spell (deal 1 to all minions), COH - draw as many cards as there are minions - pyro procs and deals 1 to all minions, ready to COH again if you have it.
Shadow madness deathrattle minions if you can. If you can shadow madness a loot hoarder and suicide it into your opponent’s minion, you get the benefit of the deathrattle. This is also good for dealing with sludge belchers.
If you ever face a twilight drake, drop a pyro and silence it. BAM! Always makes me smile. The rest of the taunts will still kill you though.
Keep shades in your mulligan if you can. Against hunter, priest you can often keep cleric and play it on T1, but never do so against Rogue, Shaman etc - basically the classes with early 3 damage. Losing your cleric without drawing any cards is often a death knell.
Keep holy smite against everyone except druid. You can’t afford to let him snowball, and killing undertakers is key.
Think about when to suicide/trade your Dark Cultists. Often they are more important dead than alive, I’d rather have the buff on my sludges than have both minions be taken out by AOE and lose the buff.
EDIT: I find deathlords more trouble than they’re worth. If they stay on the board, sure, you protect yourself and your combo piece against minions, but often the opponent has spell removal and you just gave your opponent tempo. If your opponent just runs their stuff into the deathlord, he isn’t even good for the combo. Very inconsistent, I’d rather have the IBMs, which you can control and which are almost as good combo pieces.
Kel Thuzad seems extremely powerful. If you have some minions on the board, you can use them to kill the enemy minions and have your pop back to life even if the enemy has a removal card ready for him. If the enemy doesn’t, you can pair him with a sludge belcher or the minion that has taunt and divine shield, and make it very difficult to kill the taunting unit and then Kel Thuzad on top of that. You can use some of the shaman resurrection abilities to get multiple Kelz going. You can use faceless manipulating to get two of them going at once making it very hard to kill both.
I finally built up a deck I like (Mage), and I’ve come to realize something. There are a ton of players who suck at playing Hearthstone.
I can now, without any legendary or epics, still win most games and many more of them against loaded decks than I had ever been before. There are just so many people with great decks, but absolutely no skill in playing. They’re fun to beat.
I ran with KT for quite a while, but the problem with KT is that while he can turn a board into a win, if you have no board, he can’t do anything. I started noticing that the games that went to turn 8+ and had KT in hand, he didn’t do anything to help me win, I would have either won anyway, or had no board and he couldn’t turn the game around. For that reason I dropped KT.
I have to say, though, if you have an unanswered Sludge Belcher or Sylvanas on the board and you drop KT, it’s often enough for your opponent to concede right there. 
What’s the consensus on how big an advantage going first is?
I actually strongly prefer to go second with my priest deck. The extra card, and being able to re-draw the extra card really help me get off to a good start because getting the right cards early is so critical. I suppose for decks with a lot of similar cards where the order of the draw isn’t as critical, like zoo decks, benefit more from going first.
Had a funny game just now. There was a wild pyromancer that went off and left 8 damaged minions on the field - 3 of his and 5 of mine. Among my minions were 2 northshire clerics and a lightwarden. He cast a circle of healing, healing all minions. I’m not sure if he realized what would happen, but I drew 8 cards (with like 5 of them getting destroyed) and my lightwarden ended up with like 15 attack after that, and I won easily on the next turn. The animation lasted over a minute easily.
Are there decks based around flooding the Shaman board with low value units and bloodlusting on turn 5, wrecking everything?
Never go full Northshire! - - YouTube
going first is a big advantage, provided you can put a minion down on the first turn and then keep board control.
Ha, that’s amazing. I’ve been too lazy to record my hearthstone games because I need to keep flipping shadowplay back to desktop record mode, and I alt tab a lot while playing which makes for poor videos.
I did just do a 32/32 death lord one hit victory on turn 5.
Going first has a small advantage for most classes, but interestingly this is reversed for certain classes like Rogue (who can take advantage of the fact that the coin is a spell, as well as an enabler for “combo” cards), and Priest (I have no idea why). These days, with Undertaker coin Leper Gnome, going second might have been given a slight boost, but I’m not sure.
There are certainly bloodlust decks, but they tend to be inconsistent. You would run cards like Haunted Creeper, Sludge Belcher, Spirit Wolves, Violet Teacher to get some sticky minions/tokens, and build totems on the board waiting for a big Bloodlust burst.
Actually, these decks tend to look like standard midrange Shaman decks, but with a copy of bloodlust.
http://www.gosugamers.net/hearthstone/decks/786-reckful-s-bloodlust-shaman
A big part of why Priests have an easier time going second is because the majority of their cards are reactionary. The “Kill-Minions with 3/5 atk” cards need a body on your opponents side to work. You clerics need to get hit before you can take advantage of the card draw. Mind control needs a minion. etc.
I can’t have fun playing rogues. They don’t build up the board like every other class, there’s not a natural feeling progression. You just sit there for your turn while they play card after card with various effects that are just annoying. Return your units to your hand, lots of damage out of nowhere, just… annoying. Gimmicky.
Sounds like Miracle Rogue. That’s about par for the course - you have to keep in mind that they have a certain amount of damage and spells, and once he’s out, he’s out. Count the saps.
You might meet Control Warrior or Freeze Mage soon, that’ll be a hoot.
Are there some useful neutral cards that are good with different kinds of decks that I should be aiming at crafting? I think I’d like to use faceless manipulator in a few decks for example. What should I be saving up my dust to craft to use for different playstyles?
with the new slew of cards next month, you might consider waiting until after the dust settles.
True but faceless manipulator seems like a sure bet. It’s also quite fun to use.
it is fun to use! faceless Ysera and then sheep it.
Faceless isn’t used in many decks right now, though. It’s a little slow for the meta, only really used in miracle rogue now for the south sea deckhand cold blood combo. Other than that… Not even control warrior is running faceless now, it seems. What kind of deck are you thinking of? It’s only 5 days to gvg, you might want to just wait a bit…
I’m currently playing an arena deck with the sea giant, and it seems REALLY easy to get him on the board, since it’s 10-(total minions on battlefield) cost. Against a zoo deck you could get one on the board very early on. Is there a downside I’m not seeing?
I’m with those who suggest holding off a little while to do your crafting. You’re about to experience the monthly reset where all the high level players are temporarily pushed back down to your level … the game will be very different until they gain their levels back.
When the new expansion opens it will be a totally different game with lots of different decks. Some cards that are very popular and useful right now may end up becoming pretty much unplayable after the update.
Personally, right now I wouldn’t craft anything above a Blue and then only Neutral cards unless you are for some reason really committed to playing a certain class.
I don’t often see Sea Giants being played. I sometimes run one in a Hunter deck where I can use Unleash the Hounds and/or Snake Trap so I am the one putting a bunch of minions out to lower its cost and at the same time being able to immediately remove the enemies small minions. I think it will often be a dead card in your hand if you are depending on the enemy to fill his board so you can play the Giant … and you really shouldn’t be allowing him to get board control in the first place.
Faceless is one of those cards where I wish I had saved my dust. I haven’t found it very useful – too slow/clunky, often causing me to make questionable plays trying to save the Faceless for a better opportunity. It’s great when it works out but that just doesn’t seem to happen very often.
Yeah, I find it really obnoxious that you won’t be able to get the original set of cards through the arena anymore. I’m not going to start buying packs, because the arena is a lot of fun anyway, but now to get the old cards my only option is to craft them, which is shitty.
Their excuse of it being too complicated is incredibly dumb, and shows contempt for their audience. They could just do something like giving out card pack tokens from arena runs, and then you go to the card purchase page to decide which pack you want to buy. Not confusing at all.