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WaPo piece on Hearthstone finals. Astute enough to highlight the UI hold on mulligan

"Voidform" LUL PogChamp Kreygasm

Can't read without a Post subscription, unfortunately. I'd be find giving them money normally, but I'm not working at the moment...

I decided to jump the gun a little and dust all of the Arena-type cards I'm never going to use from Whispers, Mean Streets, and Karazhan. I also dumped Soggoth, since he never quite paid off as a 9-cost 5/9. Eh. With that accumulated dust, I forged the Skull. First game out, I run into Deathrattle Hunter. This is gonna be cool:
hsreplay.net/replay/G7GPAsb6We7oBSPj8uYoi2

On the mulligan, I figure I can wait on the Cube. Maybe not a good idea? Dunno. But I end up with a solid hand that can take care of crucial early stuff and I can get a Lackey down on 4. I keep the Mistress in hand because I don't want to waste 2 points of healing if it dies after me just tapping, which it probably will against Hunter. He does the trick with the Stalker and right away I have to think differently. He's going to have minions, but still be slower, like Spell Hunter. And, thankfully, he really is kind of a control model, as he's playing Mistress, too, which only serves my interests. I get my Lackey on 4, as planned. Unfortunately, he pulls a Voidlord, rather than the DG I wanted to Cube. But he has Random Shot, anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered. I will say, it's weird to be playing Warlock against Hunter and be on 27 health entering turn 5.

Turn 6 sees a Savannah appear, right on cue. But my Spellstone (maybe the best card for Warlock in Kobolds?) is charged to the level of removal and I just clear both boards. I actually can't Tap because I'll burn a card. I spend most of this game with a huge hand, but that's what control v control matchups are like. He plays Oozeling! That's awesome. It gets the Dino Egg deathrattle. Again, turn 9, I can't Tap. He does the trick with the Stalker again and gets the Dino. His board is huge. But it's turn 10 and I have the Twist. Second Lackey brings me a DG, which I use to clear the Dino, but he's going to get cleared by the Wolf to protect his second Savannah. Dammit. Having nothing else to do, I drop Umbra and Cube her. Her power, of course, only works if she's alive.

N'Zoth arrives and I finally draw the Skull (little late.) I Pact my Cube and use my dual Umbras to fill my board with Voidwalkers against his horde. You can see what's coming now, can't you? All those varying health totals... Mmmmm. Best Warlock card in Knights. /Homerdrool. I get six damage in and trigger the trap so I know what I'm dealing with. Defile clears everything but Baine, but including the four Hyenas because of the sequential pulses. So awesome. I was thinking of playing the Skull to get the DG on the board to be Cubed next turn, but decide I can wait one more turn and Hellfire Baine away. With N'Zoth and both Savannahs gone, he's pretty much blown his wad. I make sure of it by bringing out Gul'dan. So, yeah. That's Cubelock without burst and without the Skull.

But the best game of the night, by far, was my Big Priest against a Dude deck: hsreplay.net/replay/TobgjxsEbDGDpdkNxxHXgD

I did not draw the nuts, but starting with SWH in hand against Paladin (remember how awful everyone thought that card was in Whispers? Was it just because Priest was so awful? Maybe.) is pretty good. First three turns are typical Priest, but that many Dudes on turn 3 tells me that he's probably Coining out Level Up or just playing a Stegodon on his next turn. SWH don't work on 3- and 4-strength guys, so I clear. He drops 2-cost Creeper. I topdeck SWD. Symmetry. Spores off the Stegodon is a pretty solid result, since I'll still have to contend with weenies even if I clear again. But Shadow Essence gets the deck rolling with Arthas, anyway. Level Up does, indeed, arrive and I figure that's a good enough board once I draw the second Dragonfire. Arthas will have to wait a turn for his servitude. Vincleaver and a free Creeper is a pretty good turn 7. With me at 15, that's good enough to use the 2nd Dragonfire.

Next turn sees me at 13 and facing 3 Dudes and a Jailor. I'm just waiting for another Stegodon, another Level Up, or Tarim and I'm in real trouble. So I Visions for SWH... and don't get it. But I could have pulled Psychic Scream, which would have solved most of my problems. But at that low life total, I was afraid of something exotic coming out like Leeroy, so I stick with Smite and drop a GHP. At 27, I feel relatively secure. Plus, with a charge left on the Vinecleaver, he could just do what he did next turn and Level Up more Dudes. With me at 16, he has exact lethal on the board and SWH is no longer an option. One tack was Servitude for Arthas and then GHP. That gets me out of danger, but if he draws a weapon and has Equality, I'm still under real pressure. The other approach is Y'shaarj and a 50-50 chance to pull a Statue, rather than Barnes or Ysera. I decide to roll with it, because if he pulls the right one, I can then Servitude a Statue instead of Arthas and be in a more dynamic position. The big ugly does pull a Statue. But he has Equality AND Consecration(!) That is not something I expected from this kind of deck. The Statue hits one of the Dudes, which leaves him one off lethal. Next turn...

Equality still does damage and if he'd had the other Consec, he could've gotten me right back to 1. But no farther. His muted board still gets me back to 10. But then a Diamond Spellstone does what it's supposed to in this deck, pulling the only three minions I've lost. There's no way the rest of his deck can get past that. Really, I fucked up twice, but still managed to squeeze it out. Oh, and finish my 30 Spells quest.

FINALLY!


I made it. Juuuuuuust under 100 Bosses beat before I got my last Hero:


Malygos was MVP over the course of the matches, finishing off a couple of troublesome Bosses, including 7/8 Mogark who is tough as nails with no global clears. The big bad was Vustrasz who was chipping away, but I rolled Alexstrasza off Bone Dragon DR to hit him for 45 or so.

I had a friendly against Jackwraith's juiced Big Priest with my Recruit Shaman and held on for a surprisingly long time. There are only so many Lich Kings (3) and Obsidian Statues (3? 4?) I can handle though, alas. Plus he stole White Eyes from me! Fuckery!

Sweet! Congrats!

Re: White Eyes. Death Grip, man. It was one of the coolest DK abilities in WoW, too. Of course, he died the first turn after he hit the board, as did the Storm Guardian.

Headline: Shitty Elemental deck defeats Cubelock!

(Ever notice that "shitty" and "Shaman" are very similar? Both start with "sh", two syllables, six letters. Coincidence or cosmic indicator?)

hsreplay.net/replay/jQpWkcxvPmXgF6NszdQxJX

Had the Battlecry quest. Every minion but Al'Akir (Like swatting insects!) in this deck has a Battlecry and so do Deathseer and Jade Claws, so it's a pretty easy way to play 30 BC cards. Finished in two games.

Couple of key moments: On his turn 4, he wasted a Defile rather than burn a card next draw because he wasn't willing to Coin out a Lackey. My first few turns didn't give away much, so he probably assumed I was control when the Hot Spring came down and that I wouldn't have much to burn away. But I found it a little strange. I think he got greedy with his Cubes and wanted to do big plays over the next couple turns. But on the next turn, all he did was drop the Lackey, which I was happy to Devolve away, rather than set him up for turn 6 Cube/DG. I clear the Reaver and he's looking at a whole lot of nothing, but has the gall to give me a "Thank you" because it set him up for topdeck Hellfire. Don't know about you, but I don't usually Taunt when someone puts me in a bad spot and I happen to draw the save.

Turn 8: I get a solid Murmuring-Jade Spirit that gives me a healthy board, but I want to put pressure on before the Cubes start dropping and I get him to 9 and then try to Unstable my way to something implacable. Bog Creeper is a good stop, since next turn is almost certainly Cube combo. But the worst possible result comes off the 3/3, since I can't do anything with the Darkness for the rest of the game. On his following turn, he pulls off the combo and clears my board, but I clear his, which means he has one DG left, barring Gul'dan. I try Murmuring-Deathseer, just to have something in play and get an underwhelming result.

Turn 9: He once again gets greedy. Instead of comboing again for significant damage, he decides to try to pull the double with the Faceless and set up for an even bigger man- uh, burst. But you know I'm running Devolve, right? That's the end of your Cubes and your DGs. Kalimos arrives and I clear, but he makes a good play with the Hellfire and Spellstone and I have an empty board and no hand, but at this point, we are arcing toward fatigue and I have a 7 card advantage. Of course, he also has two power cards (N'Zoth and Gul'dan) that I'd have real problems with, now that I have no Devolves left.

Turn 11: I go for the 1/1s with my second Kalimos, because if this game drags out, I want more targets to use Transmute Spirit on. At that point, he's doing nothing but feeding the Creeper and decides to sac a Voidwalker to no purpose other than to get a 5/5 down. Not wise, IMO. But his turn 13 is the killer. He's behind a wall of Taunt that I can't do anything about unless I have Hex in hand, which I doubtlessly would have played before. He can halve my life total and I'll spend the next turn flailing away at Voidwalkers with my bigs. And he goes defensive and tries to clear as much as possible. I topdeck Lightning Storm and basically clear. My only thought then was: Either he fucked up or he's just waiting on Gul'dan as a finisher.

Turn 15: He gives me a "Thank you" for clearing his board so he can play one finisher in N'Zoth. He gets 3 free VWs out of Umbra, but I draw Hex and still have King Mosh, so I'm not concerned. We are definitely going to fatigue and I still have a 7 card advantage. He clears Mosh and empties his hand and I draw... Unstable. I'm looking at 12 damage and nothing I can do about it. Grumble arrives, too late like usual, but he's all I've got. I drop him and think to myself: "The only real save here is Soggoth, since he can't be Siphoned." Power of positive thinking, yo. He clears and I'm down to 8, nothing in hand, nothing in play, looking at a 4/1, 1/3, and 2/2... and he Taps. I'm thinking to myself: He just took x more damage from fatigue in addition to the 2 from the Tap. He either has 2 Siphons and Gul'dan in hand and he's just BMing me or he's really not sure what he's doing.

Blazecaller followed by Blazecaller is some good, though. And then evolving one into Sindragosa and then Ysera is even better. He gets me to 3, empties his hand, and concedes. 1. He's playing Warlock without Gul'dan which... OK. Maybe he just doesn't have Gul'dan. 2. He's playing a control/combo deck without Siphon Soul. W? T? F? It wouldn't have done anything about Soggoth, which is why I said it was my only save, as opposed to something like Lazy Dragon. But there were a half-dozen other instances where he could have removed something, gained three life, and then hammered me. How do you play non-Zoo Warlock without that base set card? Crazy, man.

Changing the Ranked Ladder! Starts in the March season.

All Ranks are 5 Stars.
You only need to win five Ranked games to get the cardback.
Each season you reset back four Ranks.

Finish at Legend? You start at Rank 4. Finish at 15? You go to 19. Matchmaking improves too, as the five-star spread at each rank smears folks out more.

Yeah, those sound like solid changes. Reduces grind for the top-level guys and makes the first half of the month not a total stompfest while said top guys try to get back to rank 5 and beyond. I'm assuming they'll keep the rank breakwaters (20, 15, 10, 5) even though they didn't say anything about them.

Now if they could just do an update on the base sets...

I could actually make Legend with this kind of scheme. I win more than half my Ladder games (or at least, I can), and this whole dropping four ranks thing means I only have to advance ONE extra rank per month and I will eventually make it. June 2019 Legend here I come!

jeb wrote: Changing the Ranked Ladder! Starts in the March season.

All Ranks are 5 Stars.
You only need to win five Ranked games to get the cardback.
Each season you reset back four Ranks.

Finish at Legend? You start at Rank 4. Finish at 15? You go to 19. Matchmaking improves too, as the five-star spread at each rank smears folks out more.

Badly needed and actually far more casual-friendly than I'd expected. Aces!

@jeb. You are not factoring in that it gets harder as you get higher. It might sound crazy but it does. You run into people with bigger collections trying harder. They won’t be substituting a wolf rider or chill wind yeti for Taldaram or Spellsinger Umbra in their cubelock etc. There are no bonus stars after 5 either.

Rumor has it that wild growth is getting retired. That nourish will be the only classic ramp. They build ramp as needed in each expansion with cards that help push new Druid archetypes. Of course there is lots of buzz that corridor creeper takes a hit as well.

I heard valuetown podcast Gaara who grinds for HCT points and tries to get top 20 on all 3 servers, said that it’s worst meta ever. I disagree. I hated the aggro shaman/ PIrate warrior one because that was over 50% of what I faced on ladder. And felt like 90%. If you weren’t playing one of those decks you were losing. His complaint is that top tier decks are so dependent on one card on curve swinging the match. Keleseth, skull of maanari, Raza-Anduin on curve you win, draw patches you lose. At top legend it’s always Raza priest or cubelock apparently. I watched a fair portion of HCT championship and there were lots of great plays that were next level. People are saying it wa best HCT ever. So I do agree cards on curve feels good, there is still lots of decision making and skill in the game. I am at rank 4 and it doesn’t feel that oppressive. There is a meta working where is Razakus vs decks that target Razakus. If I play control warlock and cue into Razakus it’s auto lose. So I am not doing that. Mostly cubelock and big spelll Priest for me. Big spell priest wrecks warlock and can build a big board to kill Razakus Priest. When I get tired of that I play some wild hunter. Or screw around with different Kingsbane Rogue builds.

Outside of the decks I play against on the ladder, this is the only place that I get information about Hearthstone -- it helps me enjoy the process of discovery a bit more. Generally, I play either Warlock or Mage (and maybe a bit of Priest) -- with the vast majority being Warlock.

This month has been weird for me. I started out at Rank 20 in standard and was working on a Warlock Mill deck and just a Warlock deck full of taunts -- I did ok, and got up to Rank 16 and then hit something like 10 of the Anduin-Razkus decks in a row and floundered back to Rank 20. I got pissed off and quit standard for a bit.

Moving to Wild, I was at Rank 25 since I hadn't played in a month or so. I build a Wild Cubelock deck with some of my favorite legendaries and went from Rank 25 to Rank 14 without a loss. I settled in at Rank 7, finally, and then had a bad streak and am currently at Rank 8, so went back to Standard.

I decided to mash my two decks together and created a control Warlock deck that also utilizes Treachery, Doomsayer, and Howlfiend -- the Treachery-Howlfiend-Defile combo is really just for Anduin, that stupid Rogue deck with a recurring weapon, and the rare Quest Mage (it also works against Jade Druid). So far, I have pushed up to Rank 9 with this deck -- quite enjoyable to play. I get down to 7 life or so and then it just grinds to a halt.

I also just started doing some Dungeon Run again -- won with Warlock and have gotten close with Paladin. Jeb, did you beat the Dungeon with all 9 heroes and only face 99 bosses. That is pretty amazing. I'm already up in the 20s with my Paladin (I usually play on my phone, but just realized that the PC version will tell you how many bosses you have beat).

Haha, no, I beat 99 Bosses as Priest before I got a win with it. I did a couple really fast, like one or two attempts (Hunter and Shaman I think?) but most took say, five tries or so. Except Priest. I legit lost in Round 1 as Priest (frigging Bink).

As for Ladder, if I play meta decks, I do just fine. I am confident in my play. I just find them boring. I was playing Raza Priest when that meta was getting sorted out, and it was sick as hell. I think I made it to Rank 9 that season, and I don't get to play nearly as much as all my chatter here makes it sound. But it's boring when everyone is playing that same thing and so I spent a long time trying to make Hunter work (nope) or figuring out if I can make Paladin good with my lack of Tarim, Megasaurs, &c (I can't). This new scheme means I can work my way up sloooowly. And yeah, I might get busted out at Rank 5 and 50:50 forever, but I might not. Right now, there is no way for me to even find out.

Yeah, I'm enjoying the meta around rank 10 at the moment, at least, since there seems to be plenty of variety. That said, Cubelock and (worse) Highlander Priest are the most tiresome matchups. So if that's all you're seeing above rank 5 I can see how it would get stale, fast.

My favourite deck continues to be Tempo Rogue, partly because Rogue used to be my least-used class and it's fun to explore a class I'm relatively inexperienced with. I also enjoy the way it's like a swiss army knife, with so many different tools you can pull out to deal with different situations.

The current version feels a bit too weighted toward big minions to me: it can be hard to pull off Combo keywords sometimes, as everything in your hand is too expensive, likewise with Edwin. Plus it's supposed to be a fairly flexible mid-range deck that can play in an aggro style, and the latter isn't possible unless you get a few cheap minions. Cobalt Scalebane seems the weakest link, as while it's powerful, I find it often ends up buffing small minions that are easily taken out. I'm tempted to try pulling them out for something like Bloodsail Corsair, or even Bluegill Warrior.

It's a pretty effective deck against Highlander Priest, much less so against Cubelock as it's got nothing to get past those wretched Voidlords, and the health curve seems tailor-made to go down to Defile board clears. Oddly the hardest matchup seemed to be Secret Mage, as all those low-health minions meant Explosive Runes always hurt my face, making me easy prey for direct damage. But I'm not seeing much of that at my current rank.

Maybe I'm trying to play it too aggressively in general and running out of small minions too early. Perhaps a better approach is to wait and try and build up a big burst of charge damage with Shadowstep. But that doesn't feel right to me: delaying is certainly not going to pay dividends against Warlock or Priest. I'm kind of tempted to craft the cards for Cubelock (I'm never playing Highlander, ever) because most of the ones I'm lacking (one Cube, Man'ari - plus I have neither Spiritsinger or Taldaram, although neither are essential) are new, with a good shelf-life ahead of them and I've got 10k dust in the bank. But I better wait for the patch, at least, I guess.

Hm. Some serious nerfs coming in February:

Bonemare goes to 8 mana from 7.
Raza now puts your hero power at 1 instead of 0.
Patches loses Charge (Apparently, they're changing the voice line, too. To what? "I'm... just kind of here now.")
And Corridor Creeper's attack will be 2(!) I mean, sure, a 2/5 for free isn't horrible, but that card will just immediately disappear from every deck that it's currently in.

I don't play Razakus. As much as I like Priest, I've just never taken a shine to that deck. So I'll probably cash in Raza for the full dust amount. Maybe Patches, too, since he's not crucial in most of my favored decks at the moment.