I topped out at rank 6 last season and wasn’t able to get over the hump.
I just played in a game against a jackass that wanted to toy with me instead of finishing the game. He had 4 or 5 units on the board, I had a few units but no taunts, and I only had 1 hp. He could’ve lethaled me, but then he decided to deploy a bunch of cards, buff his minions, and just kill mine rather than inflict that 1 point of lethal damage. Just to show off or whatever.
I had some defenders of argus at the ready so I was able to hold him off for two turns, at which point he was out of cards and I had Jaraxxus ready to go. Ended up turning it around and winning. Suck it.
My least favorite people are the ones who wait until the last second to end each turn starting on turn one. I’m not talking about slow players who use the time to think, just the jerks doing it for some asinine reason. I wonder how many wins they get because people concede becaus they don’t want to play an extremely tedious game.
This is a top pet peeve for me as well. Like you said I’m sure there’s other reasons for some slow play (especially over-thinking and doing other stuff while playing), but these people seem to do it on purpose. I agree most likely motive is to get people to quit rather than deal with it, obvious dick move. Wondering how often it is successful, even if its say 1/10 it would still have an effect on their record and boost their ranking or whatever. I sometimes wish there was a feedback system and/or a way to better match slow players with other slow players and let the quicker players not have to deal with it.
Another pet peeve I have is pretty much what SenorBeef describes when opponents start messing around with killing minions when they have an way to finish/win the game. Pretty awesome to hear that one backfire on your opponent SenorBeef! I see this rarely to have an opponent try to “toy” with me over multiple turns, its more common (but still annoying to me) for me to see them start to try to kill minions or play a lot of cards on their last turn or whatever before killing me rather than taking the direct approach. I’ll typically let an opponent “finish the job” on the last turn if they have me, however I’ll concede once they start messing around.
Brings me to a question I have, being somewhat new to the game, I’m still learning etiquette and stuff. A lot of matches end with the “well played” back and forth, which I get, but a lot of times I’ll end my last turn when I’ve been “check-mated” and it seems like the opponent is almost waiting for me to concede. I typically end the turn rather than quit there to let them have the satisfaction of that last move, and like I said above I’ll pretty much only concede once they start messing around with unnecessary moves. Wondering if maybe its more typical or almost expected for the “check-mated” loser to give up rather than let/make the winner play those last few cards?
It really doesn’t matter, although I have to say I see a lot less BM (bad manners) once I get to the higher ranks. The most that happens is that my opponent uses a few more cards and overkills me.
That said, I do concede as soon as I know I can’t win, or if he can win next turn and I have no way of stopping him. What’s the point? I’ve heard people say that conceding and preventing you from finishing off your opponent is somehow impolite or cowardly, but I couldn’t care less, frankly (and I doubt if the majority of people think that way). I mean, what are you, 5? In Chess, Go, etc, a concede is standard if you cannot win, and if fact it is impolite for you to drag the game out. Heck, even in Starcraft it is standard to concede rather than force your opponent to kill all your buildings.
I just came across a rogue that had some utterly bizarre suicide exhaustion deck. His whole deck was based around replaying coldlight oracles, which make both players draw 2 cards. He had 2 vanishes, 2 shadowsteps, some brewmasters - just endless card draw.
And he actually managed to time it - using the oracles yet again after we were both fatigued, to barely win. It’s the weirdest deck I’ve ever been beat by.
It’s an old Magic strat - “milling” (so called because the first card that had the “opponent loses cards” was called Mill. Cool to know it works in HS.
It’s not just that - you also have Deathlords and potentially Dancing Swords to pull cards for your opponent.
Think of it this way - in order to get 30 points of fatigue damage, you need 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8 = 28 (+8) to have your opponent 8 cards “in front” of you. 2 Deathlords and that’s 6 cards. 2 Gang Ups and that’s your 6 cards, not included incidental face damage throughout the match.
That’s in the worst case scenario, where your opponent doesn’t have any card draw (unlikely) and them dying before you take a single point of fatigue damage. If you take take a few points of fatigue damage (healbots, and ganged up healbots) you can last even longer.
The danger is not fatiguing more than your opponent, it’s not being able to deal with your opponent’s cards long enough for fatigue to matter. So, always have a sap in hand to deal with whatever your deathlord gives them if they’re control, and manage your vanishes welll.
This week’s tavern brawl is pretty fun. At first glance druid seems like it might be the best class with so many buffs - it can simultaneously summon a bunch of minions and buff them heavily.
I got a golden Alexstrasa out of a deck. I’m not sure whether to keep it or re-craft it. I’m not sure I really use any decks that would benefit from Alex, and I should probably convert her to a Rag.
Are there any decks besides control decks that use her?
Basically, on the top tier decks, there’s control warrior, freeze/grinder Mage., and handlock used to run Alex as a tech choice. For fun decks, combo priest sometimes runs Alex, sometimes echo Mage.
Also, dragon decks.
I would be tempted to dust a gold one, but if you’re at all interested in these decks, I’d say give it a shot first.
I’ve thought about a freeze mage since it seems kinda fun and is frustrating to play against. I guess I can try it.
The golden animation on the card is actually really good. I’m hesitant to shard it.
But I’m not sure I have the cards for all that sort of thing.
Did they tweak the amount of >40 gold daily quests there are? Seemed like you could reroll and and a domination quest fairly often, and a 7 wins quest occasionally. Now it seems like 1/12 or fewer quests are domination and I think I’ve only had one 100 gold quest in the last 3-4 months.
I’ve played this week’s Tavern Brawl a lot, and after a bit of experimentation, I settled on Druid.
It has two big advantages:
Mana acceleration in the form of Innervate and Wild Growth.
Mass buffs in the form of Power of the Wild and Soul of the Forest.
An ideal turn 1 play for me is Coin, Innervate, Soul of the Forest. This gives me two zero-drops and a four drop, and every time my opponent kills one I get a free 2/2. On turn 1. That’s ridiculously good.
Well, it depends. Freeze Mage is rather cheap, relatively speaking. The Epics you need are 2 Doomsayers, 2 Ice Block, 1 Pyroblast. The rest are commons and rares, and you should have most of them. The only expensive legendary you need is Alex, some have Antonidas and some have Malygos, but honestly its not much of an improved win rate over plain old Pyroblast.
I watched this video which helped me a lot with the thinking behind playing freeze mage. It’s definitely not an easy deck to play, and the right play is not obvious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka1Y4Jdw1X0
It is fun, though. I tend to play it most of the time, until the kezans start coming out - those basically hard counter you, so it’s a little frustrating.
Another deck, another legendary. Unfortunately it’s a Dr. Boom, so it’s just going to be 400 dust. But that puts me not too far from crafting another legendary, probably rag. 4 legendaries in 3 decks.
I tried Gazlowe in my shaman deck, since they have so many valuable 1-mana spells. The problem is that Gazlowe makes you think, “well, I could play this now or I would wait until Gazlowe is out and then get even more value!” I haven’t really been able to make him work.
Right now, Gazlowe is not viable. He is too much of a tempo sink for not much benefit - you first have to play him, then play the spells, then play the mechs. Crazy slow, and then all you end up with are a bunch of crappy mechs. I can’t see a meta where he would be viable, it would have to be a very slow value based meta.
Troggzor isn’t much better, though. It’s like a Loatheb, but does t prevent playing the spell, only giving you value for your opponent playing a spell. And yes it can get out of hand if he doesn’t have a board to clear troggzor with, but if your opponents board is clear, and it’s turn 7… Play Dr Boom!! Again, I don’t see in what meta Troggzor would be useful. Maybe against the old miracle rogue which controlled the board with spells, and didn’t have board presence, but Dr Boom might be even better anyway given his immunity to Sap.
Yeah, Gazlowe feels like he should be a 4 drop with 2/3 stats or something for his ability to be useful during a game. Not sure if I should dust him. I guess I’ll tinker with him a bit.
The only thing I can say that’s good about him is if you’re doing a tempo deck with Antonidus, you’re going to be generating a lot of spare parts anyway, so you don’t have to change the deck for him.
