Right, it seems like the trend is basically
Minion
X mana
X Damage, X+1 Health
Add +2/+2 to C’thun
So basically Chillwind yeti with a free C’thun buff, spider tank with a free c’thun buff, etc.
They’re not, though. They’re pretty much on curve vanilla minions with the C’thun buff. If you’re facing a deck that’s just playing C’thun minions, a tempo deck should be able to out tempo it, an aggro deck should be able to kill by turn 6, and so on.
The deck building skill comes in deciding what C’thun minions are worth including in a deck, and how to design the deck so it’s not so vanilla and instead has a win condition that’s not “hope my opponent can’t kill me until turn 10 and I draw my C’thun”.
My Rogue C’thun deck for instance is not a vanilla C’thun deck. Rogue doesn’t lend itself well to playing vanilla minions anyway, so I went with a tempo style deck, with the c’Thun minion that does 2 damage, squidface, saps, preps, to stabilise I have the C’thun taunt and the C’thun twins, and then double sprint for draw.
Actually, I’ve been playing a while around Rank 4 in Standard, and seeing very few C’Thun decks at this rank in competitive constructed. I’m experimenting with one myself (Warrior variation on the “Serve the Old Gods” deck suggested by the game) and doing alright, though. (by the way, everyone gets him for free so you can’t not draw him, unless you don’t play during whatever the promotional period is)
The deck that creamed me the worst was an extremely interesting Pally deck running Ragnaros, Lord of Light and N’Zoth (his deathrattle summons were Sylvanas, Corrupted Healbot, Infested Tauren, and Selfless Hero). It also featured Reno and Lay on Hands, for a shit ton of healing. Went to fatigue on that fight and even played my C’Thun twice but could not grind him down.
Almost forgot the card Forbidden Healing in the aforementioned Pally deck.
Fatigue Paladin using all this stuff is absolutely disgusting.
Oh man, I’m in an arena match. He has 28 hp, I have 6. I’ve gained an edge in board control but have no taunts, but if everything goes my way, it may turn around. I drop a sacred trial. He puts out the divine shielded tank, whatever it’s called, the 7/7 one. Sacred trial eats it, he insta-quits. Instaquits in a game where I’m 50/50 to come back at best.
Adds me to his friends list.
I accept. The following conversation happens:
Me: Time for the salt!
Him: Nah
Me: It was a good game
Him: I wanted to see how you lost a game in this run
Him: And now I see you’re a level 16 scrub
[he de-friends me]
No salt for him, no sir.
I’ve played around with a couple new decks for the new Standard format, and a Hallazeal evolution deck is my favorite so far. There’s a ton of luck involved with the evolve, but a Hallazeal on board with a lightning storm or elemental destruction (5 damage to all minions) is crazy good for healing.
Evolve really pays off when you have a large board of damaged creatures. The value you get from evolving 5 creatures at a time is crazy. It’s even more ridiculous if you’re evolving free Things from Below or cheap Nerbuian Prophets.
Well, I haven’t gone on as big of an Arena binge as I planned, but I’ve managed to get 6 runs in and I’m certainly enjoying the new meta.
I managed to get all 6 runs as different classes (just missing Warlock, Priest, and Hunter) and have a 5.33 wins per run (darned DC ended my Druid run early 
).
Small sample size, so take all stats with a grain of salt, but I saw proportionally twice as many Shaman and four times as many Warriors as I saw during LoE. In 50 runs during LoE I saw a grand total of 7 Warrior opponents; in the 6 runs since OG dropped I faced 4 :). As for average reward per run, I’m up on gold and down on dust, I got one extra pack on a run so I’m hoping that the extra pack is coming at the expense of dust rather than gold. I wish Heartharena or someone else with lots of data could tell us for sure.
On standout new cards: [ul]
[li]Bog Creeper: Awesome and you’ll see it everywhere. If you’re aggro and don’t have hard removal you better hope to win by turn 7 since this guy murders small and midsized minions.[/li][li]N’Zoth’s First Mate: Warriors with multiple pings are scary. I didn’t manage to draft this one but the one Warrior I lost to had at least two. The value you can extract from this is insane.[/li][li]Blood to Ichor: Again, a Warrior ping is amazing. I used it to clear out damaged minions, help my minions trade up and leave a 2/2 body, and to power up my enrage minions. It’s real easy to find 1 mana for it too.[/li][li]Journey Below: MVP Rogue card for my run. Turn 1 play to find something to smooth out my curve. Combo activator. Huge chance to find the new legendary Xaril. The only thing I didn’t have a chance to do was cycle with Auctioneer or get a token with Violet Teacher (neither was offered to me that run).[/li][li]Nerubian Prophet: This is going to be a tricky card to use but can be amazing at best and meh at worst. If it’s in your opening had a 4/4 on 3 is great. and 4/4 and a 2 drop on 4 is awesome and a 4/4 and a 4 drop on 5 is amazing. I really had to pay extra attention to my possible future plays when this was in my hand (which I probably should have been doing anyway).[/li][li]Flamewreathed Faceless: Wow. Drop and smash face. Let your opponent worry about trading. This thing is like a better, common, Fel Reaver.[/li][li]Master of Evolution: At worst this was a Yeti. At best it won me games.[/li][li]A Light in the Darkness: It would have been MVP if I didn’t have a Coghammer in my Paladin draft :D. I never kept it in my opening hand but later on I could either squeeze it in when I’d otherwise float mana or found the net 1 mana ‘loss’ was worth it for the Discover effect lategame.[/li][/ul]
Bog Creeper really is super scary. Just ran into one with rogue aggro and was very lucky that I already had a ridiculous Mukla’s Champion board state.
Silithid Swarmer is pure awesomeness in rogue aggro/tempo. Don’t think I would pick it for any other class (even Druid). Maybe late in a Warrior deck that had 4-5 weapons.
Weird, I got a regular pack and a new pack from an arena run. It was only a 3-win run too. Is that a new thing?
Yep, it is. You’re more likely to get a pack from the latest expansion too.
New reward table here. Arena - Hearthstone Wiki
The guaranteed pack is always the latest expansion now, I believe. The extra pack you can get is from one of the standard-legal sets (Classic, TGT, OG). Though I’m not sure if it’s possible to get two OG packs.
This change is good for me, since I didn’t buy the pre-order I need lots of OG packs. (I still wish they would just to a pack token already) Plus I hope the increase rewards lure unsuspecting constructed players to the Arena 
Joke’s on you, I’m 3-0 and climbing. 
Real talk, though, it’s just dumb luck. Looking at the cards that my opponents drafted and their lines of play, I don’t think I won through skill or anything. I just drew better, simple as that. I’m really disliking that about cards games more and more…
If you want to play Midrange Shaman, don’t dust Hallazeal - being able to quite literally full heal AND board clear in the same turn on turn 8 is insane.
I’ve found a new deck that I want to play! Crusher Shaman is back, baby.
Basically, HUGE taunts that keep coming and coming. Things like Ancestral Spirit Earth Elementals. And then Faceless Manipulator it.
It’s lost something with GVG out of standard (I’ll miss you Reincarnate and KT) but it’s working better than ever with BGH gone.
Still haven’t hit the Hallazeal dream yet. I’ve only drawn him once, and never with any of my board clears.
Tempted to dust some wild cards and Gold Hogger for another Earth Elemental.
Someone talk me down
Your math is wildly incorrect. Do it when you’re less high 
What has the new deck done to the arena classes? Are mage and paladin still at the top? I’m guessing mage might even get better on account of faceless summoner.
Mage, Paladin, and Rogue are all still top 3 I think. Shaman’s moved up a bit, Warlock maybe down a bit or my runs were just unlucky (I didn’t see too many others so it’s hard to judge). I don’t think Mage has actually improved, relatively, but Faceless Summoner did make up for them losing the offering bonus on Ethereal Conjurer.
I’m finding my runs pretty inconsistent though; I’m either doing great or horribly from run to run. I’ve had three 1 win runs! That’s as many as back in all of LoE. And I already have as many 9+ wins as back in LoE with only 1/4 as many runs in total. My average is actually down to 3.94, and I haven’t been below 4 since GvG!
I think I need to change up my play more. My old strategy of gaining just a bit more tempo every turn in the early and mid game and then cashing it in for either face damage or favourable trades in the late does not work with the new taunts (Bog Creeper, Psych-o-tron, and even Infested Tauren) or the new late game value minions. I’ve lost too many games from way ahead on tempo when I run out of resources that I’ve started favouring more late-games threats, removal and draw. We’ll see how it works out.
So I got one and it was as good as advertised. (8 mana Ragnaros, 8 mana Tirion, 3 mana … 1/4 taunt oh well). Won a couple games on the strength of those two 8 mana plays.
Sitting on 2000 dust, what’s the must-craft generally useful legendary this expansion?