Hearthstone Players!

jeb wrote: Ooh, I would love to hear more about minmaxing my chances at 3,000 pazzzZZZZzzz ..zZzz..z.z.z......zzzzzzz
Complete Quests, earn chances. Got it.

I know, right? Yes! I'd love to spend three hours of my life opening 3000 packs of cards that I neither want nor will use. Can you, uh, just give me the approximate dust equivalent? Watch it be someone like Kripp or Kibler, whom already have almost a complete gold set, win the prize.

jeb wrote: Hey, man. It's not like I was walking around saying Val'anyr is great and Mauls are shit. (Was I? /checks, NO, in fact, I wrote: "...good and not easily matched in other decks play for play. Not to mention buffs you might get from your Unidentified Maul." HA) Paladin is just kind of bad. The early game rushdown is their best strategy, but their lategame cards are so good. You end up with this weird midrange pile. I feel like maximizing Val'anyr onto Leeeeroy must be worth doing though. That's 10 for 5.

I know. I'm just giving you shit because I thought Mauls were going to be great and you were appropriately skeptical about anything random. As it is, the other two Unidentfieds have been as thoroughly underwhelming as everyone expected. The Maul just filled a niche with Paladin that is still just completely unremarkable as a class. I've been thinking about my control Paladin deck in the wake of the nerfs, though. Kibler was muttering something in one of his videos the other day about control Pallie possibly being the answer to Cubelock, simply from the amount of healing and roadblocks it can dish out.

It's funny how many of the current Standard decks can actually do OK in Wild. Rumors of powercreep confirmed?

The grand prize has enough value that it has some IRS implications. The wild card is the price tag of Lich King helmet. To break even you will need to sell that to a deep pocketed Hearthstone Pro to keep the tax man at bay.

The only real problem with the beginning of the month is that if you just want to run a few games to finish quests and avoid all the people playing metadecks on ladder, you go to Casual. But EVERYONE goes to Casual, which means you run into the same metadecks and get crushed if you have a stupid Shaman quest. I'm happy to say that Blizzard's questing algorithm seems to have either finally glommed on to the fact that I turn down anything not connected to my four classes or is giving me a nice run of luck, since I haven't had to reject a quest in a couple weeks. But playing Shaman is something that probably everyone should reject. I tried a few games on Casual with the Guild deck and an Evolve deck and was just getting mauled. So I switched over to ladder, figuring if I do get my two wins, they might as well count for something. No hope there, either. So I gave up and went back to the Frog deck. Two games, two wins, with both my opponents backpedaling the whole way.

Then I started tweaking my Priest Dragon deck. Unidentifieds are finally out, as are any big dragons past Drakonid OP. If I need them, I'll get them through a plot twist. I also dumped a couple other experimental things, like Shadow Ascendants and a Cabal. for the Divine/Inner package. With those spells in, I added Radiants, since over 1/3 of the deck is now spells (but still only one each of SWP and SWD.) And since I had so many spells, I filled the last spot, appropriately, with the Dragon Soul. We'll see how it works out. I expect any game with the weapon to be an utter failure. I also have no idea how this deck can reliably beat Cubelock. I wonder if the answer to Dragon Soul is just to play solid Control Priest with Velen as a finisher? Dunno. Not sure it'll ever be viable with this card set.

A Dragon like that should run Let Me Change Your Mind and Twilight Acolyte over the Weapon. You can get "The Combo" with Acolyte and DS/IF powering a Madness-hasted fatty or just steal their juiced Cubes/Voidlords outright.

I too am into some Dragon Combo Priest. I have wanted to try it since Sintolol brought it to HCT. It should be strong post nerf is what I am figuring. There is a bit of a learning curve for me. Like do you keep Lyra off the mulligan etc, I mostly mulligan for the cheap end minions and hold any dragon. I am starting with Sintolol exact list and will adjust from that.

I caught Mr Yagut playing a version w Ysera and the guy who flips attack and defense so you don’t need to draw inner fire to otk. Sintolol does have the Twilight Acolyte /potion of madness combo which can kill warlock with his voidlord. That achievement is definitely on my bucket list. Stick Ysera and if you had the discipline to hold your divine/fire combo is game over.

The deck runs no removal per se so Duskbreaker is necessity v aggro. I struggle against tempo rogue. Hard to keep the board and hard to get it back.. Anyhow here is the deck... JackWraith. It won’t be long until you give up the soulreaper weapon dream. It sucks. You spend 3 mana and you might live long enough to make two 5/5 a few turns later provided you had a fistful of spells when you played it. Not worth it...at all.
### Combo killer
# Class: Priest
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Mammoth
#
# 1x (0) Circle of Healing
# 2x (1) Inner Fire
# 2x (1) Northshire Cleric
# 2x (1) Potion of Madness
# 2x (1) Power Word: Shield
# 2x (2) Divine Spirit
# 2x (2) Netherspite Historian
# 2x (2) Radiant Elemental
# 2x (2) Shadow Visions
# 1x (2) Wild Pyromancer
# 2x (3) Kabal Talonpriest
# 2x (3) Twilight Acolyte
# 2x (4) Duskbreaker
# 1x (4) Mass Dispel
# 2x (4) Twilight Drake
# 2x (5) Drakonid Operative
# 1x (5) Lyra the Sunshard
#
AAECAa0GBPYH0grWCr7IAg34AuUEjQjRCvIMgrUCtbsCursC8LsC0cEC2MECy+YC/OoCAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

Opened my first dual-Legendary pack. Go me!

I'm already running Twilight Acolyte and I had a Cabal Priest in there but she wasn't having enough impact and it was often too much trouble to get a 3-card combo to work effectively (dragon in hand, play Acolyte, play Priest: 9 mana.) I saw Firebat running a version of the deck that MD is talking about, with Crazed Alchemist so you don't have to have Inner Fire as often.

And, yeah, I've tried Dragon Soul before. It's worthless. I'm just kind of screwing around and I had an open slot in the Dragon deck and figured I'd see what it could do. It still kills me how everyone thought that weapon removal was going to make this huge comeback until everyone discovered that the legendary weapons are simply bad.

The Recruit Shaman deck I am running is at least fun to play if you want to goof with Shaman.

### Recruit
# Class: Shaman
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Mammoth
#
# 2x (2) Ancestral Spirit
# 1x (2) Devolve
# 2x (2) Jade Claws
# 2x (2) Maelstrom Portal
# 2x (3) Drakkari Defender
# 2x (3) Feral Spirit
# 1x (3) Healing Rain
# 2x (3) Injured Blademaster
# 2x (3) Lightning Storm
# 2x (4) Flamewreathed Faceless
# 1x (4) Hex
# 2x (4) Jade Lightning
# 2x (5) Earth Elemental
# 2x (5) Guild Recruiter
# 1x (5) White Eyes
# 1x (6) Aya Blackpaw
# 1x (6) Thing from Below
# 2x (7) Corridor Creeper
#
AAECAfe5Agb+BfuqAqa8ApS9Ava9AvPnAgzuAZQD9QTVCPUI96oCoLYCh7wC0bwC/s0C+9MC9ecCAA==

I posted this a few pages ago and the deck has these changes
-1 Ancestral Spirit
+1 Devolve

I am debating -1 Devolve for +1 Thrall Deathseer. The Recruit effect is so solid. I can make some great boards without much issue. The deck feels really heavy but can make it there with all the Taunts and the one Heal. I've been keeping Guild Recruiter on the draw against anything non-aggro.

In Wild, Aggro Druid is bog easy to climb with from 20 to 15. it's boring though. I've been playing a Tempo Mage deck that feels unfair. Find a list of ApxVoid on Hearthpwn and swap out bad cards for Dr. Boom, Duplicate, and Ragnaros. Everything else hums along. Explosive Runes is so sick. Mysterious Challenger gets whacked and Dr. Boom becomes pingable. Or they play something small into it (testing for Mirror Entity) and eat 4+ damage. Good times.

Let my quests build up for a couple days (OMG! I missed out on TWO chances to win 3000 packs! What am I doing wrong?!) I had Win 3 with Any Class, Play 30 Battlecry Minions, and Play 10 Weapons. I can do any of those, so I kept them all (for once.) The Battlecry one is best done with a Shaman Elemental deck (almost ALL Elementals have Battlecries; the lone exception I can think of is Tar Creeper.) and the weapon one is obviously best done with a Shaman or Paladin deck among the classes I play. But I'd reworked my Wake Up! quest Priest deck, so I decided to play that. The rework? Dragons, of course. You basically need Dragons to play any Priest deck but Big and Razakus now. I've seen more than one pro playing the Dragon version of Divine Inner OTK. The key dragons are, as you might expect, Duskbreaker and DrakOP.

I hadn't played any Ranked at all this season so I was sitting at rank 20. Clearly, the netdecks had moved on, as I played two Warriors(!) and a Shaman en route to three wins. The first Warrior was kinda cool, since he had maxed out Pirates and weapons, including two cards that I had never seen played before: Grave Shambler and Grimestreet Pawnbroker. He also had the Pirate who gains the stats of your weapon (Not Bloodsail Raider, although he had her, too. The other one.) He was playing the Spellstone, too, of course, since he had so many weapons. It was interesting but I just outlasted him, completed my Quest by turn 5 or 6 (Twilight's Call makes Awaken decks playable, if not really competitive), and won without Amara. The Shaman was a Frog deck. I had the good luck not to encounter Priest when I was rolling with my frogs the other day because Duskbreaker just wreeeeecccckkkkks them and does it two turns earlier than Dragonfire. I finally drew another dragon (the other Duskbreaker...) on turn 5 after stalling him with Beetles and SWP for a couple turns and cleared his board. He responded with a Crushing Hand(!) on the Duskbreaker. I thought he was just really pissed, but then I discovered that he had both Warleaders in hand, either of which the Duskbreaker could remove. He eventually got them out as part of a full board which then died to Dragonfire. I never went below 24 life.

The other Warrior was a much newer player, I think. It was Keleseth Pirate stuff, but he was also running Green Jelly, as he was mildly terrified of taking damage. That manifested itself most obviously when I Duskbreakered away Patches and a Bloodsail Cultist on turn 4. He responded with FWA and a 3/2 Dickhand. He proceeded to hit my face with the weapon and trade the Dickhand into the dragon. Really? He drops Creeper for 0 and it's only turn 5 so I have no answer (and neither SWD nor Visions in hand) so I just Call and he follows on turn 6 by playing Green Jelly, right into my Dragonfire which solves all my problems. He hit me again with the FWA so he could clear the way for an Arcanite. I played Bone Drake and now that he has a Frothing out there, he decides it's OK to take 6 to the face. He still had a Dread Corsair, so it wasn't like the Drake was going to be able to clear anything without buffing the Berzerker again to enable more precious face damage. But maybe he knew I had the second Dragonfire in hand? The couple games with Bone Drake have shown me ridiculous pulls. I got Onyxia off this one. With that, he was down to a First Mate and a Bloodsail Corsair and the still-unplayed Coin. I a hand of Bloodsail Cultist, Obsidian Statue, Onyxia, Lesser Mithril Spellstone, and Drakonid OP. And it's turn 9. So, yeah. I let it play out a few more turns, once again not bothering to play Amara, so I could collect a few more Battlecries. Finished the three wins quest and even picked up my first step on the weapons one with a captured Arcanite in this one.

The whole Quest for Packs thing is fucking me up--it's like I don't WANT to play Ladder, for fear of missing out on a ticket. Odd incentives at work there. I am working the kids' accounts too though, so there's that. It's tough out there with bad cards. I am frankly amazed at how many really solid collections folks have at Rank 23. They must be terrible.

I assume the maintenance will issue the nerf today. I think I will try to Ladder with Hunter because I am a masochist. It can go fast enough to threaten Cubelock and I will PACK that fucker with Silence to finish things off. Wish me luck.

I saw on r/hearthstone that they are adding some cash to the Grand Prize to offset taxes. I knew they would do this, I just assumed it would happen after the fact. Paying gross-ups is pretty routine in this kind of thing.

They ARE terrible. Really. That guy yesterday who hit me for 3 with War Axe and then lost his charging 3/2 to my 3/3 was a perfect example of that. If I had nothing to kill his 3/2 for a couple turns, he does 9 to me with it, rather than the 3 he did with the Axe. All it would cost him is 3 to the face. As a Warrior. With, y'know, a hero power that obviates 2/3 of that the next turn.

Nerf is issued. 4000 dust was instantly in my hand. I have to rework a couple decks and I may go ahead and get the Creepers again for an Evolve something or other. But right now I think I'm going to create either Taldaram or Elise, since either of them function decently in the kind of decks that I play. Or maybe I'll just hold it.

I think the only one I'll nuke is Patches. I am such a collector and Raza still seems playable in Wild. I like Creeper as a free Beast, so no movement for me there, either. There are some Epics I need: Shadow Visions #2, Twilight Acolyte #2, Primordial Glyph #2, and then either Voidlord #2 or Obsidian Statue #2.

//edit, what I did.

OUT
Lx Patches the Pirate
Lx Raza the Unchained
Lx Nozdormu (golden)
1x Weasel Tunneler (golden)
(other stuff found by keyword Extra)

I used keyword Missing to find stuff I was lacking.
IN
1x Dirty Rat
1x Spiteful Summoner
1x Primordial Drake
Lx Deathstalker Rexxar
Lx Bloodreaver Gul'dan
1x Twilight Acolyte
1x Primordial Glyph
1x Voidlord
1x Possessed Lackey
2x Drywhisker Armorer (!? A common!)

I still need lots of Epics, sigh. No Branching Paths, no Call to Arms, no Faldorei Striders, no Unstable Evolutions. I feel a little better now though. Just tidied up my decks, adjusted cardbacks (very important).

Streaking Rank 19 to 16 (so far) on the Standard Ladder post-nerf with Beast Hunter, tweaked for extra Silence.

### Beasts
# Class: Hunter
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Mammoth
#
# 2x (1) Alleycat
# 1x (1) Candleshot
# 1x (1) Dire Mole
# 2x (2) Crackling Razormaw
# 2x (2) Kindly Grandmother
# 2x (2) Scavenging Hyena
# 2x (3) Animal Companion
# 1x (3) Bearshark
# 2x (3) Eaglehorn Bow
# 2x (3) Ironbeak Owl
# 2x (3) Kill Command
# 1x (3) Rat Pack
# 1x (3) Unleash the Hounds
# 2x (4) Houndmaster
# 1x (4) Spellbreaker
# 2x (5) Bittertide Hydra
# 1x (6) Deathstalker Rexxar
# 2x (6) Savannah Highmane
# 1x (7) Corridor Creeper
#
AAECAR8I8gXbCey7AtfNAobTAvvTAuHjAovlAguiAqgCtQPrB+0JgQr+DLm0Auq7Aq/CAo7DAgA=

I was lucky enough to have four Corridor Creepers, so I dusted three of them. Kept one just as a placeholder in my collection - I can always re-craft another at effectively zero cost if it proves worthwhile. Collection or not, I also dusted Patches, because 1600 dust is too much to ignore. Essentially I already spent all that on crafting the cards I needed for Cubelock so I'm back on balance.

(I've got a number of useless golden legendaries among my cards, including Milhouse Manastorm. But they'll always be worth 1600 dust, and they're protecting me from getting another copy when I could get a better legendary. They'll wait).

"Balance" is 8k dust on hand though, so it's tempting to craft Taldaram. My Cubelock isn't doing too well because the entire meta is primed against it right now: even Coldlight Oracle has become fairly common because it's ruinous to Cubelock. Taldaram might help, or it might not against teeth like that. Plus I genuinely do seem to have rotten luck drawing combo pieces: I always seem to draw the Demons early, and Lackey and Skull late.

Biggest deck right now seems to be Murloc Paladin. There are several builds of this, but the only nerfed card they ran was Corridor Creeper and that's easily replaced with ... more Murlocs. My Paladin is already golden, so there's less incentive for me to play it.

Shot up to 14.2 and I am now in a sea of Warlocks, going 50:50. I think I am favored, my losses have felt like some highrolling bullllllshiiiiiit (Dirty Rat pulls Spellbreaker, not Bittertide, followed by Mind Control Tech stealing a Taunt rather than one of the other three minions.) I am beating Mages pretty handily, outpacing Rogues unless they have the full Kingsbane package, and ROMPING on Paladins and Priests, lord. Why aren't people playing Tar Creeper? That card is tough for Hunter and used to be everywhere.

...just had another win over Warlock, and another loss. Goddamn, I need to draw Silence. I have THREE. I can assure you, drawing Silence and winning the game are directly proportional. This loss featured
Turn 5: Possessed Lackey (I can't silence it)
Turn 6: Run it into Savannah Highmane, fetch Doomguard, Run Doomguard into Highmane, Cube Doomguard, Dark Pact for 8 life and two Doomguards, run THOSE into the Hyenas.
Turn 7-8: Bounce their shit against my Bittertides, I am pinging and slinging them down to 8-12 or so.
Turn 9: Voidlord (again, no Silence, I have another Highmane that has to chill on the offchance I draw a motherfucking Silence for once in my life, god)
Turn 10: Bloodreaver Gul'dan to kill me with a pile of Doomguards (I was at 14).

My opponent gained 4 + 7 + 8 = 21 life over these turns. I killed 3 Doomguards (none of which they cast), a Mountain Giant amongst other stuff and dealt 44 damage to their face (they dealt the other 7 with Hellfire and Imp effects). Brode wept.