Yeah, but with all the AOE dilution in Arena you can almost pretend it doesn’t exist and still win games.
I’m going to play my run tomorrow, when I’m rested and have no distractions. I did play one so far vs a Druid that I have to assume was brand new to the game (Highlights: played a 1/1 Forbidden Ancient Turn 1 when I had a Voidwalker on the board, used 3! Naturalizes).
I’ve gone back over my picks and even knowing what I was offered later in the draft I don’t think I’d do anything different. There were a lot of auto-picks and only a few where I actually had to sit and think
[ul]
[li]Pick 8 I was looking hard at Antique Healbot until HA reminded me that I had taken an Imp-losion already[/li][li]Pick 9 Fearsome Doomguard vs Burly Rockjaw Trogg. I went with big scary late-game card vs meh 4-drop and the Bizzard gods rewarded my faith with the Voidcaller later[/li][li]Pick 11 I so wanted the fun Renounce Darkness (see my previous posts re my Reno-Elise-Renounce-Yogg deck) and with 17 Warlock cards it may even have worked. But the Crowd Favourite was the right pick[/li][li]Pick 16 I debated going for the Tiger since 7 mana for the Stormwind Champion seems really late game for the deck. But with all the token generation I couldn’t say no to the upside to the Champion[/li][li]Pick 21 Argent Horserider vs Murloc Tidehunter. The deck is sooo good for tokens so far, and somewhat overloaded on 3’s, but I went with the fast damage of the Horserider since I really miss a ping when playing lock[/li][li]Pick 26 Dark Peddler vs Darkbomb. I’d love the reach/initiative from the Darkbomb but I couldn’t say no to a 2nd Dark Peddler[/li][li]Pick 30 Non of the choices were very exciting at all. But seeing as I already have a good number of 2’s (and I’m really not a fan of the discard on Librarian messing up planning for no real upside), and had 2 small taunts already, I went with the tech-ish choice of Kezan Mystic. Maybe I’ll manage to steal an important secret this run, maybe not. But it seem the most likely choice to win me a game vs the other two ‘meh’ picks.[/li][/ul]
Ugh, embarrassing 4-3 result. I’ve made notes on that run re individual games.
The TLDR is that if my opponent managed to steal initiative early/mid game I was boned without my Imp-losion or Shadowbolt in hand. And while my deck was really good at grabbing early board I was matched into players who managed to steal it back. I really felt the lack of big removal.
First loss the Rogue used a Deathlord, high-tempo spells to keep me clear for a couple turns to build then Wailing Soul’d just before I could kill the Deathlord.
Second loss opponent go a freezing spare part to lock down my (cheated) Fearsome Doomguard then flooded to board and protected with Sunwalker. I managed to clear his tokens/shield with a Dread Infernal and wipe his board, but I was so low health that and Eadric the Pure Neutered my 3 big minions (to his clear board) and I was in range for his reach over 2 turns (Kraken/Hammer of Wrath).
Third loss was to a Rogue who managed to protect a Cutpurse long enough to get two coins. I managed to make him sink almost all his cards into clearing my Imp Gang Boss and 2 Councilmen but he managed to land a Kvaldir Raider fairly early (thanks coins!) and smashed me with it twice.
As consolation I did get a (second) Yogg in the reward pack.
Well, went from 11-1 to 11-3 this afternoon with this one:
Honestly very surprised I did as well as that. I only had one game where my lack of 1-2-3 drops came back to bite me - the other two games I lost I was just out-valued (the final game I managed to draw both of my secrets along with one of my mad scientists in my opening hand after I mulliganed all four cards).
Obviously the draft was not as that one lists it since I didn’t record the cards as I was drafting them and heartharena doesn’t apparently have a way to say " i just had these cards never mind the other choices"
Well, I managed to redeem myself somewhat with this 10 win Shaman deck. Smashing my previous Shaman record of 5 (obviously not my most-played class). 355 gold!
I was off to a rocky start with a 1-2 record but managed to take it almost all the way :D. Final boss was an obvious Warrior cheat who managed to queue up with his constructed Pirate deck :p.
Two measly wins. Anytime I started on the coin I never could keep minions on the board, and the only time I felt like I could actually play this as an aggro deck my opponent surprised me with a Reno Jackson (still won, I felt good about that).
More disappointing than the result was that my reward was a pack and a crummy common card I auto-disenchanted.
How do we feel about this week’s tavern brawl? Since I only started playing two weeks ago, I never do well with these “build a deck from scratch” brawls. I really enjoy the ones where the decks are made for you and I get to play cards I don’t have.
I hate the Brawl on principle, but my Murloc Shaman deck has a ~70% win rate. My opponents always seem to think they can race a deck with two Bloodlusts, two Everyfin Is Awesomes, two Flametongue Totems and a minimum of three charging minions. Spoiler warning: they can’t.
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s confirmation bias or a streak of bad luck but I feel I’ve been getting a lot more common card rewards from Arena in OG. Always feels bad
I used a variation on J4CKIECHAN’s token Druid deck (I’ve been having fun with that on ladder). Less ramp, more removal (Naturalize’s downside isn’t so bad in this format) and Rafam. T1 Rafam (+Naturalize, possibly), T2 3/3 Zombie flood, T3 AOE buff worked quite well.
I could probably build a deck that would win a bit more than it loses, but I like to use the TB to do my daily quests, so sometimes on weeks like this I’m stuck with classes I can’t build winning decks for in Brawl or Play modes.
It’s funny - I teched out a deck preparing for something like this (demonwrath, hellfire, dread infernal, and even spreading madness)… Haven’t run into a single aggro deck. It’s all just dudes with big dudes. No weenies. Closest I got was a zoolock/handlock hybrid (which I stomped). Maybe I should try your deck.
If you hard mulligan for any single card you’ve got (If I’ve done my math right) a 23% or 30% chance to have it on your first turn depending on if you have the coin or not. Hardly great chances but surprisingly high. And it sounds like his entire deck is either A) Archmage or B) Archmage fuel, so there’s no downside to throwing back everything non-Archmage.
I’ve actually started building a spreadsheet to help me make mulligan decisions in Arena, so I’ve been doing a lot of the calculations lately. It’s actually surprising how few one drops you need to be very likely to have one playable T1 if that’s your only mulliganing criteria.
I only did it to get the free pack. None of my dailies involve mage. So it was just a one off thing. And yeah if I didn’t get Antonidas on initial or second card offering I conceded and tried again until I got him and could use him on T1. That’s why it felt like cheating.
Rank 5! Using mostly a zoo list very similar to this one (-Gormok -Leeroy since I don’t have em. +Dark Iron Dwarf + Argent Commander. -1 Soulfire -1 Defender of Argus +1 Acidic Swamp Ooze +1 Harrison Jones because Shaman) and J4KIECHAN’s token Druid
Typically this is where I stop try-harding and go for a fun deck. But with nearly two weeks left in the season I think I’ll shoot for legend. 3rd time’s the charm!
That’s amusing - I just switched to Mill Rogue to complete a quest in the Tavern Brawl, and my first two games have been against Mill Rogue and Mill Druid.
Damnit, I came so close to finally having a 12-win run but ended at 11 wins with this Paladin run.
Was actually at 11-1, got trounced by another Paladin, then went into the last game against a Mage. For most of it I was “winning”, but he started gaining board dominance although he was at much lower health. A couple turns before the end he plays a Scaled Nightmare which I have absolutely no way of removing, and that starts the clock ticking for me to try to finish him off before it gets too big and kills me.
Well, he had removed most of my minions when I was down to just an Argent Squire left and his hero at 2 HP. I draw a Keeper of Uldaman: bam, lethal! But the turn before, he played an Ethereal Conjurer and then a secret. “Oh God, I hope it’s not Ice Block.”
Another personal best for me that’s so close but not quite there: made it to Rank 1 with Zoolock. Have never been higher than Rank 3 prior to this month. Gonna try my best to hit Legend tomorrow before the season resets, but I’m sure I’ll manage to screw it up somehow.
Yeah, I’m at R1 3 stars (and was R1 4 stars earlier today). I was up around here in December, during my first attempt at legend.
The temptation to monkey around with deck selection/tech choices after every loss is almost irresistible. I don’t want to switch things up too often, because then I never really learn one deck well; but I don’t want to ride another deck down in flames (I took Pirate Warrior to R2 3 stars last week, then the meta shifted and I fell all the way back to R5 in a day) that’s hurt my rank every time I’ve tried for legend before. So I’m switching back and forth between 3 or 4 decks (Midrange Hunter, Pirate Warrior, Dragon Warrior, Token Druid) after losing streaks, but only after carefully looking at my records to see if it’s just bad luck or I’m running into counter-decks.
I’ve also changed two! cards in my Midrange Hunter deck since I’m seeing fewer and fewer Doomhammers, but more C’Thun. With any luck I can grind out the net-3 wins I need tonight/tomorrow and finally get my cardback. Maybe I’ll get the wins off of the low-legend players I’m starting to run into running ‘interesting’ decks.
