So I had a pretty mediocre run today. Had a massive winstreak up to rank 8, then lost focus and switch to my Shaman Whirly zap deck and my Bounce Rogue deck, and went back down to 9, almost down to 10.
Ah, Hearthstone.
I climbed straight up from 18 to 12 with my zoo deck, and then straight back down to 16. It was 80% win rate one way, then 80% loss rate the other. It’s possible my deck adjustments were at fault - I tried to integrate a few slower elements into my zoo deck like swapping out a zombie chow and a dire wolf for 2 voidwalkers, and an abusive sergeant for an antique healbot. I worked Leeroy into the deck, but he usually ends up getting discarded waiting for the perfect moment.
It doesn’t feel like making those seemingly minor adjustments would change me from a huge win streak to a huge loss streak, but maybe it was a bigger factor than I thought.
I changed the deck back to be faster/more aggressive and so far it seems to be working. Although sample size ~7 games.
I replaced some of the slower cards with succubi (which most zoo decks don’t seem to include, but they’re really good value if you can play them with an empty hand) and some demonfires since I’m now running 6 or 7 demons per deck.
If I’m running zoo deck with 1 or 2 silences (usually 1 owl), is it worth spending one to silence a harvest golem if I have board control? It seems like a waste to save a mere 2/1 minion compared to some of the other important buffs you can silence, but on the other hand, it tends to ensure my board control at a critical early junction.
It depends, but generally I would say yes. Zoo lives or dies by board control, and if you don’t use your owls you’ll end up discarding them anyway.
Besides, what’s the best thing you could silence otherwise? Probably a belcher, and not every deck runs that. What if you save the owl for a belcher that never comes?
A Harvest Golem is kinda borderline, though. If it were a Haunted Creeper, definitely silence that. That thing gives so much card advantage against zoo like you wouldn’t believe. You might not believe it, but those 1/1s ruin Zoo so bad.
EDIT: Also, succubus generally isn’t run for 2 reasons, first a 4/3 is a bad distribution of stats, a 3/2 will kill it, for instance, and so will a 1/1 with Abusive. So will a deadly poison, lightning bolt, etc. Neither can it 2 for 1 3 mana cards like Earthen Ring Farseer, Si:7. 3 is generally a poor number for health. Now it wouldn’t be so bad if it were a true 2 mana creature, but there’s a discard attached to it. Which brings me to point 2, you will either play this on curve (i.e. turn 2) and be forced to discard because you can’t empty your hand that fast, or play this after turn 4 and a 4/3 is not worth much at that point.
The power of a minion is not only its stats, but its mana cost. A zombie chow is crazy good because it’s a 2/3 on turn 1. A 2/3 for 1 mana on any other turn is almost worthless. Same thing with a succubus, a 2 mana 4/3 would be really good on turn 2 (not amazing because 3 health), but on any other turn, it’s collateral damage from a flamestrike.
That’s a good analysis and makes sense. What do you think of running ancient watchers in zoo decks? Since I’m already running 2 defenders of argus, and a silence, it seems like it might come in useful sometime.
I’m also not a big fan of zombie chow exactly because he only works when you draw him at once. Especially since I already have undertakers to use as turn 1 minions, so they’re only really good in the specific case that I have the coin and I have undertaker/zombie chow.
Zombie Chow is like the ultimate aggro counter. I used to play deathrattle priest, and turn 1 undertaker + coin + chow for 2 2/3s on turn 1, and I wasn’t going to lose to any Zoo.
That said, it’s better in priest because you can still combo it with Auchenai after the early game. In Zoo, it’s mostly a tech card, you use it when the meta is very aggro heavy and you DEMAND board control (i.e. won’t go face). If the meta is more control, zombie chow will be counter productive. In the mirror match, though, chow will win you games.
Right now the meta is still kinda all over the place, but if you’re seeing a lot of mech decks, try putting the chows back in and have a go. T1 chow against a clockwork gnome, leaving you with a 2/1 on the board against whatever he’s going to play, abusive it and take out a tinkertown tech, play more stuff, you now have board control and he can’t get his mech synergy going.
Zoo is a board control deck. Ancient Watchers provide zero board control unless you use the Owl, and doesn’t even protect your other minions unless you use Defender of Argus.
What is the probability of getting a particular card on turn one, taking mulligans into account? Different answer for player one and two of course…
Assuming two copies of the card…
If you’re going first, I think the odds of getting at least one copy of a specific card is 35%.
I derived that thusly: chances of your first three cards NOT being the one you want are (28/30) * (27/29) * (26/28) = 0.807. In order to miss out even including the mulligan, that would have to happen twice in a row. (0.807)^2 = 0.651. So, 65% of the time you won’t see the card you want on two independent draws of three cards.
For four cards, the chance of missing out entirely would be (28/30) * (27/29) * (26/28) * (25/27) = 0.747. The chance of that happening twice in a row are 0.558, which means you’ll get the card you want about 44% of the time.
Someone should probably check my math. 
I’ve been facing Dr. Boom in a crazy amount of my games, maybe 20%. And those only the ones where he was able to be deployed. I guess everyone saved up a lot of dust for GvG and he seemed like the best first one to craft?
One wrinkle is that for the second draw, you cannot draw the same cards that you threw back. So the chances are slightly higher.
Dr boom seems like the best neutral legendary at this point, but you never know…
Foe Reaper - also very good in arena. Just for the record. (Edit: especially vs. paladins.) Doc Boom looks like he should be pretty ridiculous there, too.
the analysis is interesting to read, and i should give Zombie Chow a try!
It seems I may have gotten my zoo deck back on track. I think I was dabbling too much on higher value units in case the game ran late - stuff like a floating watcher, antique healbot, and even Kel Thuzad.
But I’ve refined it back to be super aggressive, mostly 2-3 value units, with only defenders of argus, dark iron dwarves, and doomguards as 4-5 cost units. It seems like you basically always have to have your board control and face smashing foot to the max at all times, just flooding the enemy. AOE will hit you really hard, but that’s the nature of the deck.
I’m experimenting with the felguard, which is a 3/5 taunt with a 3 cost, but you lose a mana crystal. Since I’m generally not ramping up to high value cards that may be a worthwhile sacrifice to keep another aggro deck from trading favorably with my low hp units. What do you guys think? I don’t generally use it … what’s the term for spending a unit on the first turn you can? In tempo? I’ll usually wait until I have 5 or 6 mana crystals and good but vulnerable board control to drop it.
The term you’re looking for is “on curve”. As in, on the mana curve. Think of a graph with the number of minions on the y axis and the mana cost on the x axis, you can see this by tapping on the hero portrait when deckbuilding.
I’ve not heard of people trying that before, but it’s an interesting idea. The problem with most things not played on curve is that tgey tend to get discarded, as you’ve found out. That, and taunt tends not to be very useful in general. But give it a go and let us know how it turns out! 
It’s hard to make conclusions about a deck in like a 20 game sample size, but I’ve gone something like 17-3 since I tightened up the zoo deck, up to level 10.
Here’s the deck I’m using. Tell me how I can improve it:
2x Power Overwhelming
2x Soulfire
2x Abusive Sergeant
2x Flame Imp
1x Leper Gnome
2x Undertaker
2x Voidwalker
1x Zombie Chow
1x Dire Wolf Alpha
2x Haunted Creeper
1x Ironbeak Owl
2x Knife Juggler
2x Nerubian Egg
1x Felguard
1x Harvest Golem
1x Shattered Sun Cleric
1x Dark Iron Dwarf
2x Defender of Argus
2x Doomguard
I’m thinking the imp-losion card would go well with knife jugglers.
Also: hunters using feign death with nerubian eggs is brutal. It seems like you could really build a deathrattle deck off that card, maybe even working in that legendary that doubles deathrattles. You couldn’t use zombie chows, but leper gnomes go up in value. Nerubian eggs can become huge.
I think your deck is at the stage where the bad cards have generally been weeded out, so the next step is to look at potential synergies and anti-synergies, as well as consistency.
The only questionable cards I can see are the Shattered Sun Cleric, Harvest Golem, maybe Felguard.
Leper Gnomes and Zombie Chow are counter synergistic. You put in Leper Gnomes when you want to face (i.e. aggro). Having a Leper Gnome in there means that your plays will generally go face a lot, and your deck places more importance on face damage than board control. Zombie Chow on the other hand is the exact opposite - you want to keep board control and not go to the face. The ideal situation for a chow is you get it out on turn 1, take out whatever they play on turn 2, and the heal is worth nothing to your opponent since he’s still at 30 health.
So, either Chows and play board control, or Leper Gnomes and focus more on face. Both are valid directions to take the deck, depending on what you face more (if you face more aggro, chows, if you face more control/slower decks, Leper Gnomes to close out before they can stabilise and recover). Both buff undertaker so that’s not an issue.
I’m not sure that shattered sun and Harvest Golem do enough these days to warrant keeping in the deck. Haunted creeper kind of functions like a HArvest Golem, it being a sticky minion (ensuring that you always have abusive targets and defender of argus targets), and one mana cheaper, and you get 2 bodies.
Similar for Shattered sun, +1 health doesn’t seem to go far enough these days. You also already have a lot of egg enablers with all your abusives, PO, dark iron dwarves, ARgus, Direwolf Alpha etc. Also, if the buff target dies, then you kinda wasted half of the SSC. Also, consider that SSC is a 3/2 for 3 mana, which is kinda overcosted. Contrast with Dark Iron Dwarf, which has a +2 attack, and is a 4/4 for 4, which passes the vanilla test (a 3 mana minion should have 3/3 of stats, a 4 mana should have 4/4, a 2 mana should have 2/2 etc).
I might consider replacing with another dire wolf, for consistency, so that you more often than not draw into a dire wolf early, when it’s the most useful. It also synergises well with Haunted creeper (use the spectral spiders as “missles”, i.e. first one dies and the second one slides next to the dire wolf for another +1 attack), eggs, void walkers, and to a certain extent, doomguard (finish attacking, then place the doomgard next to it for a “Free” +1 attack).
Honestly though, I think the next step is to improve your play. This deck should be good enough to take you to legend, even, as long as you play it to it’s fullest capacity. You need to trade well, know when to go for face and when to hold back, when to place more minions and when to watch for AOE (hint: against Pally, 4 mana is consecrate, place your eggs and haunted creepers before that, Mage flamestrike on 7mana, if a Rogue holds his 3 damage weapon watch for blade flurry, Shaman lightning storm is 3 mana but has 2 overload, so he will generally not LS on 5 as he doesn’t want to overload on 6, if he LS on 3 then turn 4 he only has 2 mana to work with and will just totem, so you can continue to flood the board on turn 4 - keep your 1 and 2 mana minions for the turn after lightning storm if no creepers/eggs).
That was a long parenthesis.
Anyway. If you can, watch some streams, or VODs. I love watching trump
because he talks a lot and explains what he’s looking for and what he’s playing around. He like to play control, though, so you might not see zoo play out of him. Actually, not many streamers like to play zoo, as it does get kind of repetitive after a while, but often it’s the deck which is the standard most other decks are compared against (just take a look at how many decks are described as “zoo killers”).
My experience is that I can generally beat aggro decks. Usually it’s the AOE control decks with flamestrike and lightning storm that give me problems. Or control warrior decks with lots of weapons. So face seems like the better way to go overall. Against aggro decks I tend to go for board control, but against anything else I tend to go for face. I often silence and work around taunts, and if the board composition lends to them trading favorably next turn I’ll try to drop a taunt. The voidwalkers aren’t very face smashing, but a 1 mana 1/3 unit with taunt is a really good value. I like them eating up the 2/1 units, or having a 3/2 unit have to go through them and then get eaten by a spectral spider or whatever.
I see what you mean about leper vs chow. I actually just built it that way because I had one of each, and I wanted 1 mana minions to pair with undertakers, so I ended up going half and half. I will probably craft another leper gnome.
I should probably craft and add a second dire wolf. I especially like when you get a bunch of spectral spiders or other low value units, and you can have them die against some big minion, and then their little 1/1 brother moves in to their vacant spot next to the wolf, and then repeat.
I love me some Nerubian eggs, and the many ways I have of activating them really help me in this deck.
Are there any legendaries that go well with my decks? Does Loatheb do anything for me? Maybe drop it on turn 6 against a mage, but that’s super specific. Just deploy it sometime when my board is particularly full and particularly vulnerable to AOE?
Wow. I just played against a warlock, had him down to 3 hp and I controlled the board. He played a Lord Jaraxxus, gets back up to 15. I spent my next turn getting him down to 1 hp this time, and he plays an Alexstrasza for 15 more HP. I got him down to low HP again, and out come the Molten giants and sunfury protector. Never had to face the double health reset before. He had a shadowflame in there that wiped my board out and I lost badly.