OK, I couldn’t sleep so I went and did it. I crafted a pair of Renounce Darkness and then made my deck.
The deck is not Renounce Darkness-Yogg, I went all in on a Reno-Renounce Darkness-Yogg And it is every bit a nuts as that sounds.
Decklist in the spoiler to save space
Unlike a traditional Reno I have a lot of 2 ofs; the point is to exchange em all for random cards after all.
2x Forbidden Ritual
2x Mortal Coil
2x Power Overwhelming
2x Flame Imp
2x Renounce Darkness
2x Dark Peddler
2x Demonwrath
2x Sense Demons
1x Shadowbolt
2x Imp Gang Boss
2x Hellfire
1x Shadowflame
2x Bane of Doom (More randomness is good, right?)
1x Siphon Soul
2x Dread Infernal
1x Reno Jackson
1x Sylvanas Windrunner
1x Yogg-Saron
This is about the 3rd variation on the deck I’ve tried. I started with a more traditional zoo shell with most of the neutrals removed. I found that without the Abusive Sergeants, Dire Wolf Alphas, etc I could not grab the board and would die quite quickly. Adding the neutrals back in made my post-Renounce turns fairly bad. I yanked out the minions that didn’t seem to work without the activators and went with a more reactive, removal based survival strategy. I may replace the Flame Imps since I’m taking a lot of damage before I can Renouce most games. And the Sense Demons may be a bit too greedy.
So far, from my small sample size I’m able to run at about a 40% winrate at Rank 5. Some of the wins have come, I’m sure, from the sheer WTF reaction from my opponents. I’ve never chatted with so many opponents post-game before (and no one has been salty!). I’m still figuring out the details on how to pilot the deck. It’s a real balancing act between how low you can go, HP wise while trying to build a decent handsize for your Renounce turn.
Some highlights so far:
[ul][li]Very first game is against a Tempo Warrior. I managed to play 3 Yoggs. I lost to a 6 damage fatigue draw (overkilled me by one) with my opponent at 1 health and an empty board vs my 2 minions and half-depleted Gorehowl. [/li][li]A C’Thun Warrior lost to my 3 turn combo, Wisps of the Old Gods into Cenarius into double Savage Roar.[/li][li]N’Zoth Priest lost in a game where I Renounced into Paladin, got Equality/Consecrate in my hand, cleared the board and played a Murloc Knight. My opponent Thoughtstole another Murloc Knight. I draw Anyfin Can Happen and for the next two turns every Murloc Knight spawns another Murloc Knight:eek:. Yogg manages to Thistle tea me 3 Redemptions and my next draw is Tirion. You can imagine how that worked out for the Priest.[/li][/ul]
If anyone wants to spectate add LurkerAbove#1580. I think I’m going to be playing this for the rest of the season (apart from quests).
I can’t be certain, because I wasn’t paying that close attention, but I’m pretty sure my opponent last night discovered a Cabalist’s Tome with his Cabalist’s tome. At any rate, the combo of two of those turned what was a tenuous victory for me into a through trouncing almost immediately afterward.
Someone did a Monte Carlo Simulation of Yogg, and basically the conclusion is that it’s most likely to be a board reset and draw cards. It’s most likely compared to Deathwing.
It is a card that can bring you back into a game like no other, and for that reason, I think it’s reasonable to craft it. It’s certainly not going to be in a Tier 1 deck, but sometimes, you need the chance to flip the table, and Yogg is it.
Yogg n Load looks like a lot of fun, but I think it requires too many epics for me to craft. I’d probably have to put about 4000 dust into the deck including Yogg.
How far can you go with a deck like that on the ladder?
People have taken Yogg n Load to legend, so it certainly is possible. What epics are you lacking, though? I would rather run a budget version for a while before spending that much dust - this deck is like no other, and you might regret it if you pull the trigger on Yogg and hate the deck.
Well, I don’t see Call of the Wild not going into any hunter decks for the next two years, so that’s probably a safe craft. Yogg is usable in a lot of spell heavy decks as a last ditch ‘nothing else can save me’ play at the very least.
So the big cost is going to be 2 Lock n Loads. And it doesn’t really look like you could run a budget version without those two. So I guess watch a stream or two of someone playing the deck and see if you like it before pulling the trigger?
Agree 100% with what Lurker says about the Hunter cards. I’ll add that if you haven’t yet crafted Yog that it doesn’t appear so far to be a “must craft” card; I think there are many others that should take priority.
You wanna talk torture … try the new Tavern Brawl. My quest today is “Win 5 Tavern Brawls”. I am now 2-12. Damn thing reminds me of playing Arena … and I suck at arena – never play it.
Played 9 games, three each of Warrior/Mage, Warrior/Priest and Warrior/Hunter. Lost all 9 games badly. Only got the hero of two games below 20.
About 4 games I got all high mana cards to start with and the first couple of rounds the draw was 5+ mana. So I get smacked for 3-4 turns with nothing to counter, except buffs but since I had no minions out they were useless.
I like the idea but the mana curve is sucking for me.
My wife got stuck with a brawl last night where all she had was a hand full of heals and her opponent seemed to have a deck of nothing but legendaries.
Warlock
Forbidden Ritual
Power Overwhelming
Possessed Villager
Zombie Chow
Darkbomb
Annoy-o-Tron
Darkshire Librarian
Mana Addict
Murloc Tidehunter
Imp Gang Boss
Mind Control Tech
Scarlet Crusader
Shattered Sun Cleric
Spawn of N’Zoth
Shadowflame
Burly Rockjaw Trogg
Gorillabot A-3
Spellbreaker
Bane of Doom
Antique Healbot x 2
Kvaldir Raider
Sludge Belcher
Spectral Knight
Corrupted Seer
Nerubian Prophet
Sunwalker
Bog Creeper x 3
It can struggle a little in the early game, but I got really lucky curving out most of the time, and if I survive to endgame, I have a fairly large amount of beef and some really nifty board clears (I got so much mileage out of Shadowflame), as well as the advantage of two cards per turn instead of one. My 10-2 game was actually against a Shaman with an absolutely insane start - Flame Juggler, Flametongue Totem, Tuskarr Totemic into second Flametongue, third Flametongue, Feral Spirits… I won because I managed to pull off Power Overwhelming into Shadowflame, followed up by a healbot to get out of burst range. Shit was pretty great. Oh, and some games were just won on the strength of a single Bane of Doom. So that was nifty.
Grats. It’s all I can do to scrape out 3 wins. I thought I got smart after a few 3 or 4 win runs where i drafted myself, and used HearthArena’s drafting tool, promptly went 0-3.
3 wins isn’t bad (it’s actually pretty much spot on for the average run), but you can’t go too horribly wrong just blindly following HearthArena’s advice. Ss you get better you’ll know when to go against it (and any difference of ~10 points may as well be a tie).
For play improvement I found watching videos of co-op runs (ADWCTA/Murps has some good ones) where they discuss their picks/plays helpful. Ratsmah had(has?) a good series where he’d coach a subscriber through a draft/run.
I started about where you are and I’ve brought average up to 6 wins over the last 17 runs. I had a bad start to WotOG where I was still completely focused on tempo, but I changed my drafting and strategy to include some more value and did way better. Overall WotOG average is at 4.97 now.
HearthArena helps a lot. You know what’s also really useful? Kripp’s videos. Kripparian is pretty much the authority on competitive arena, and he has so much useful information on how to play the mode. By watching him play, you can get a really good idea of how it works, how to win, pitfalls to avoid, etc. It’s just all-around great stuff.
I’m familiar with Kripp; my wife has his videos on the TV anytime she’s nursing the baby. I’ve learned a bit from them I just have trouble translating that when the rope is burning.
I won’t say it’s easy to play. HA has this to say:
I played a game with it last night and won (against a shaman), and much like the description says, I was doing what I could to stay alive until Bog Creeper and Hogger turned the board around for me.
And it is every bit a nuts as that sounds.
Oh, and some games were just won on the strength of a single Bane of Doom. So that was nifty. 
