I won’t lie - I love running SoJ, but I think of it as a mid-to-late game play more than for trying to get extra value out of early cards (it just slows things down so much).
Murloc Knight is a fun card and makes me want to try a paladin murloc deck. Maybe combined with silver hand recruit tokens. Murlock knight + that 3/3 unit that spawns recruits on inspire + the recruits from the actual hero power… lots of murloc synergy plus you can do quartermaster buffs and such.
I’m not really willing to invest in all the purples I need to make this happen though. But I got murloc knight a couple of times in arena and it was fun, especially when it spawned another murloc knight.
I’ve tweaked my deck a bit with your suggestions, and this one is much more effective. Win rate is up by quite a bit.
I prefer to open with Avenge. Turn two will preferably be Coin + SoJ, or Shield bot without the coin. This will deal with most early threats after which I can set up my board.
Still wondering if I should take out Divine Favor and a Muster for Battle for something else. Divine Favor is only very situationally useful, and I rarely need the second Muster for Battle. But I’m not sure what to replace them with. Maybe a Tournament Medic or Guardan of Kings?
That should have been Coin + Muster for Battle of course.
I would probably look to cut divine favor for some other card draw. Probably the draw 2 cards with cost reduction card, I can’t remember the name right now. Your deck looks a little low curve, so I think you’ll probably find yourself running out of cards often - I would look for a way to draw more cards. That, and you have a lot of dudes, so you can reliably get the cost reduction.
I wouldn’t cut muster - your deck is going for dude synergy, so muster is a key card, I think. Maybe cut the second quartermaster?
Another suggestion for a replacement to divine favor is Cult Master. This card is a lot better than people realize for a couple reasons. I use it in my Paladin deck (which is more of a rush deck but it would still be great in yours).
First, you get a body that’s fairly substantial (4/2). For whatever reason, people seem to make some real dumb plays whenever I drop it.
The other benefit, especially in a deck like yours, is that you’re almost guaranteed 3 cards from it even if dropped on turn 4. Turn 3 muster gives you 3 1/1 that can usually kill the one card on their board plus give you three in return. if you can get a sludge belcher out on 5 after thats usually another two cards.
Try it out and see if it works.
Okay, I’ve burned through the 1300 gold I had saved with 18 arena runs and here’s what I’ve learned.
My average wins was 4.5, half a win better than pre-expansion but not the 6 win average I had for the first night. Either the noobs all left after the first day or my experimenting with my non-normal classes brought me down.
Paladin used to be my best class but on my 5 Paladin runs I did 3.6 wins. It’s a small number of runs but it certainly looks like the paladin cardpool really got hurt by dilution. I received fewer Mini-Bots, Truesilvers, and Kings than normal. And it’s really hard to get back on the board if you lose the early game. The only new Paladin card I had good luck with is the Murloc Knight, but by turn 4-6 I was far too often already way too far behind for board-flooding to work.
Warlock was my second best class pre-expansion and in 6 runs I had 5.8 wins. Three of those runs were 7+ wins :). I was only offered 1 Imp Gang Boss which is normal an auto-pick for me and I really missed it in some games. I also ‘had’ to take Demonwrath in two drafts and it was surprisingly effective.
2 Druid runs, both 2 wins. Apparently I’ve really, really lost my touch with druid. Both decks seemed decent to start, and had a very nice curve, but I just got stomped. I’m going to have to watch some good arena streams to see what I’m doing wrong with this class.
I still suck at arena hunter.
I only took Rogue for one run but took it to 6 wins, a personal best with the class (by a lot). I didn’t think the deck would work out for me, I only had a single 4 drop and no weapons, but somehow it worked. I tried to play it much more aggressively and with less concern for value; I don’t think I ever ended a game with more than 2 cards in my hand. And win or lose most games didn’t make it to turn 10.
Overall Colliseum Manager is a better card than I thought. I normally wouldn’t bounce it back since the negative tempo would be worse than just letting it die. It is a fabulous totem stomper and I saw a lot more shaman than normal. But every now and then hero powering a badly damaged Manager back to your hand is handy and almost a kind of pseudo-card-draw. I did lose one game where I accidentally bounced a just-played Manager back and 2 extra face damage the next turn would have won me the game :smack:.
So in this week’s Tavern Brawl I discovered an interesting new Warlock card - the Dreadsteed. At first glance 4 mana is pretty steep for a 1/1, but since it’s essentially invincible unless it’s silenced, I started loving this guy. I had a round where I drew a Baron Rivendare, and they started multiplying, then I drew a Mal’Ganis, so I had this nice little army of unkillable 3/3s. It was quite fun. 
Yeah, Kripparrian has a video that shows some fun Dreadsteed plays. I haven’t pulled one yet so I haven’t had a chance to try in myself. Plus I don’t have a Mal’Ganis, and I’m holding off from crafting any expensive cards for a few weeks at least.
Yeah, dreadsteed is basically 4 mana to give yourself a 0-mana version of the mage ability. (That can be taunted but on the other hand can be boosted by various means.) Great for knocking off divine shields/finishing off 7/1 dudes/et cetera, though I think I’d still rather have a yeti.
Had an arena run where I was down 28 to 3 health and even had a card disadvantage. Had a few taunt minions and power word:glory, saved myself from the brink, and actually pumped my health way back up to full. Power Word Glory is actually really good in a lot of situations, especially for a very healy-oriented priest.
Yeah, Priest got some powerful cards and heal synergies (the Holy Champion being a more durable Lightwarden that could get pumped ridiculously high in some situations) as well as IMO one of the best new legendaries, Confessor Paletress (which of course I didn’t get in any of my packs). Combine that with a Garrison Commander and pump out 2 new legendaries in a turn - good game.
Just had my first 12 win arena run ever - had done 11 once before. 475 gold as a reward.
Wasn’t anything special - just an incredibly balanced mage deck with no cards I felt bad about taking. One legendary in The Beast, who certainly commands a lot of attention when he shows up on the board. Two fireballs, a flamestrike, a polymorph and an owl gave me lots of ways to deal with big threats. Lots of good common arena cards - Yeti, Harvest Golem, Water Elemental, Gilblin Stalker, Sen’jin, Zombie Chow. North Sea Kraken and a Kvaldir Raider were other standouts.
I think my favorite win was when my opponent had 20 health and had three minions on the board, I had just played the Kraken which was my only minion. He decided to go face, leaving me with less than ten health, and dropped a Belcher to protect against the Kraken. Owl, fireball, fireball, Kraken, Well Played.
Congrats, first 12 win arena is definitely a great feeling. Kvaldir Raider has definitely been doing some solid work in the arena lately.
I’ve been in a 12 win rut lately, I haven’t had one in over 3 months.
Holy Champion is just ridiculous in Arena (he says having played all of four games with his 4x champion arena deck). I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up getting nerfed to 1 power/activation.
How powerful has control warrior become now with all of the new taunt-generating mechanics and taunt-buffing mechanics they get? Between that and some cards like the 6-5 jouster with taunt/divine shield, it seems like they could last all day.
I kind of want to try control warrior now, but I’m not sure how much is necesary to meet the minimum requirements. I have a Sylv, Rag, and Alex, but I feel like I probably need Grom at least.
Control warrior hasn’t seemed to change much at all. If anything, people are swapping out shield block and shield slam for the new ‘bash’ and replacing shield slams and brawls with more legendaries (such as Baron Geddon who deals with the huge influx of palladins now)
so far taunts aren’t able to keep up with the speed of play generally. and by the time you get bolster, you haven’t got any minions to combo it with, until late game perhaps but you’ll be wanting to place down your legendaries then.
SenorBeef you might want to make do with other large legendaries like Loatheb, Boom or Nefarian as well.
Oh and is tgt the second-coming of Blood Knight?! surely other’s have considered him once again haha
I’m trying to make a “milkshake” deck with Rogue.
The milk shake deck, a.k.a “I drink your milkshake”, was originally a priest deck with nothing but cards that screw with your opponent. Mind vision, Thoughtsteal, Cabal Shadow Priest, Mind Control, all that stuff.
I wanted to make a Rogue version that focuses on messing with your deck/hand, so coldlight Oracles, Burgle, Beneath the Grounds, all that stuff. It’s not really working, though.
There has to be a way…
There is Mill Rogue, which involves filling your opponent’s hand with junk, bouncing their stuff back to their hand, and generally just forcing them to throw away so many cards that they lose their win condition. Beneath The Grounds should have been a good card for this archetype, but Blizzard made it so that overdrawing an Ambush or Burrowing Mine does not trigger it.
That’s the thing though, beneath the grounds inherently isn’t a mill card.
I’ve thought long and hard about them. Beneath the grounds is best classified as a value type card, paying 3 mana for 12/12 in stats is fantastic value, but that’s all it is, really, just plain value. Same for burgle - it’s basically card draw. The 2 things that mill doesn’t need is card draw or value - if I could run a 1 mana 4/4 that cycled itself in mill rogue, would I do it? I don’t think so. A 4/4 doesn’t help either speed up the race to fatigue, or help to stall the game.
Instead, I think the right type of deck is a grinder type deck that focuses on pure value, like the grinder Mage that was run a while ago. Btg will likely get value due to the length of the games, and same for burgle, which is better than real card draw since it doesn’t make me fatigue faster.
We’ll see…