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After he played with all of my decks he told me about Treant Druid so I told him to build it. I have to say, it looks like it might be my replacement for pre-rotation Token Druid. It may not be as dominant as old Token Druid but I'm just looking forward to trying a Druid deck that isn't some soul-crushing, non-interactive control/combo thing that takes 20 minutes per game.
I've also been having loads of fun with Subject 9 in my Secret Hunter deck. S9 mitigates some of the problems with Secret Hunter: 1) Secrets are negative tempo in the early game (barring a lucky Wandering Monster) and 2) Drawing a Secret can be terrible in the mid/late game when you're behind on the board. S9 not only thins your deck of Secrets, but at 5 mana his card draw comes at a time in the game when Hunters can start to get low on cards. My son played him in both of his games with the deck last night and in one game S9 drew him three, and in the other he drew five with both Spellstones in hand.
It's unusual to be holding multiple Secrets in a non-S9 deck on Turns 6+, anyway, so it's been a pleasant surprise how well I've been able to set up advantageous board states with a multitude of different Secrets to choose from.
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- Matt Thrower
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... the "random beast" it summoned was the sheep I'd polymorphed his Witch King into.
He quit.
Anyway. Interesting to see some new classic cards inbound. Not so much for the cards themselves as the confirmation that adding to the selection is as good and viable ideas as removing from it.
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- Matt Thrower
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Hit 500 wins with Warlock today for my golden hero. Only another seven classes to go, and they're all a ways away. Warrior is nearest with about 350 wins but it doesn't have a great build right now.
The game before my 500 win I played Wild against a horrible Shaman deck with Reno Jackson and Shudderwork, essentially giving endless full heals. A deck like that only exists to make life miserable for your opponent - it took me about a half hour to lose - and the people that play them are sadists. Reno Jackson should be canned, forever.
Squashing giggling inventor has had the unfortunate side effect of thinning down the top decks. I've seen some interesting builds doing the rounds though. I quite admire the various Rogue decks built around Academic Espionage and loads of card draw: I imagine that's very varied and fun to play. Surprised to see Dragon Priest and a mech-themed midrange Paladin back in the running.
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- Jackwraith
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As for Monster Hunt, I beat it with Tess recently with the most broken deck I've ever gotten in one of these single player modes. I managed to load up on jade cards and, along with the 3x Shadowsteps in my deck, I was able to flood the board with huge dudes once I was able to, with the aid of my hero power, Shadowstep and play multiple Jade Spirits per turn. And even then I would have lost to the final boss (weapon pirate guy) if I hadn't had the foresight to, just prior to the game, pick the treasure that gives your minions +1/+1 and taunt (and then it's upgraded and shuffled back into your deck), and draw and play it twice.
Still haven't tried Hagatha yet, though.
I've also been trying to win Dungeon Run with the "bad" classes first (so far I've beaten it with Priest and Warrior) and I eked out a win with Shaman with a non-Jade deck since the Dungeon Run card buckets hate me, apparently. I had some goofy evolve/devolve stuff going on, and here's the boss fight against Xol the Unscathed. I was able to discard most of her eye beam cards and my turn 3 topdeck of Embers of Ragnaros turned out to be crucial. Watch for the plot twist on Turn 11:
hsreplay.net/replay/VfrU42DH2erDNmgqaaBavF
My son's been playing a lot of big spell lately since he has Alanna and Jaina, but he's missing other cards so he's had to make do, and one of his tech choices was Arcane Keysmith (4 mana 2/2, Discover a Secret and place it into the battlefield). Here's his game against an Espionage Rogue (skip to the end for the surprise lethal):
hsreplay.net/replay/zQkMTrK9cvJBdjvs6Agn8U
He did pretty well considering that he never drew Jaina or Alanna, and Keysmith came up big when he was able to copy one in his hand and get a couple secrets that helped turn the game for him. I'm a fan of offbeat tech cards as substitutes, anyway, so even though it might underwhelm in future games, this time it came through. He's also since removed one of the Polymorphs from his deck because for a couple games it was ruining just about every Dragon's Breath/Spiteful Summoner play he made.
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Whenever I glance at this thread I have no idea wtf people are talking about. I haven't re-downloaded it and don't particularly miss it. It was a solid game, I just lost interest. (I'm not a religious man particularly, but at some point I gave up single-player games for Lent to give a better example to my son [6 or 7 at the time] and never feel like I had to finish a game).
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- Jackwraith
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The mechanic: The Death Knight/loa thing. I don't really want to go back to a situation where one card becomes the key to winning a game that you'd otherwise lost because of the way you played or how your deck matches up.
The cards: Time Out! We just got rid of Ice Block. Yes, it's nowhere near as powerful, since you can't set it up on turn 2 and wait the rest of the game for your opponent to try to kill you. You have to have the card in hand and spend the 3 mana that turn to make it work. Still, I don't think these "death avoidance" techniques are a positive thing for the game.
And the crowner: Void Contract. NFW. I don't play games where my entire ability to play is removed. I don't like mill decks. I never did even back in the MTG glory days. This is one card that can basically be an "I win" condition that doesn't require any of the planning or stalling or maneuvering that Rin does.
Both of those cards are for classes that I play and enjoy, but I'm just not interested in that kind of play, for me or my opponent.
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- Matt Thrower
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2 x Eternium Rover
2 x Town Crier
2 x Frothing Berserker
2 x Blood Razor
2 x Kor'Kron Elite
2 x Militia Commander
1 x Darius Crowley
2 x Dyn-O-Matic
1 x Supercollider
1 x Grommash Hellscream
1 x Scourgelord Garrosh
1 x Prince Keleseth
1 x Acolyte of Pain
1 x Gluttonous Ooze
1 x Raging Worgen
2 x Saronite Chain Gang
1 x Spellbreaker
1 x Witchwood Piper
2 x Fungalmancer
1 x Zilliax
1 x The Lich King
AAECAQcM0gLyBYMJ+wzTxQLCzgKf0wKc4gLN7wKm8AKO+wKggAMJHI4Fm8sCzM0C0eECnfAC0fUCnvsCs/wCAA==
That's the suggested build. I took out the Witchwood Piper for another Raging Worgen.
It's fun for lots of reasons. It runs a few cards you don't often see any more like Town Crier. But most of all it really rewards good positioning, sequencing and timing yet it can still be played quite aggressively if you want to.
At the moment it's doing well partly because people don't know how to handle it. They're expecting something more defensive and make poor plays against it and they don't spot the combos it's capable of.
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This is kind of what's bothering me, I guess. There is a TON of fun to be had in this game, but I'll be damned if I can find people that want to play it. On Ladder, even out here at Rank 19 (bae caught me slippin), it's the same five decks: Odd Pally, Odd Rogue, DR Hunter, Zoo Warlock, and Even Shaman. That's it. It's very VERY BORING. In Casual, it's chaos. Half tuned meta decks, half Gurubashi newbs.
Everything I play is too slow to handle Dudes, Dudes, Maul, Leader, Level Up or the third Flappy Bird/Hench-Clan Thug by turn 4. If it's not those, it's some weird Maly or Mechathun Combo I can watch come in from ten miles out and can't do shit about. Every now and again, I will run into another Johnny and we have a grand old time with our Academic Espionage or Elemental Shaman or Rush Warrior build and that's cool. But we're talking one game in 6, maybe.
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- Jackwraith
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- Matt Thrower
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Jackwraith wrote: I've tried a couple Control Egg decks. I like them, in principle. I just don't think the mechs worked out as well as they'd hoped and there's something that feels clumsy about it to me.
I've quite enjoyed mech egg paladin. It's another interesting change of pace from the current meta. I've also encountered an aggro mech paladin version on Wild which is just brutal.
A thought: I'm not sure the feeling of staleness in the current meta has much to do with the game itself. I read an interesting thing a while ago about how the problem was the way that classes no longer have deliberate weaknesses but now have tools to play around almost any situation: an example was how Warrior now has several foolproof AoE damage cards. As a result, the argument went, the game has become all about long-term value generation, most often from character cards like the Death Knights.
This seems wholly plausible. But at the same time, the meta at high levels has always been stale: it's always been the same handful of top-tier decks shaking it up against one another. What's really changed, it seems to me, is the level at which that kicks in. A couple of years ago it was around rank ten. Now it's no exaggeration to say it's about rank twenty. I think it's just a consequence of more and more long-term players upping their collection and their skills until they're pushing at every rank of the ladder. I'm not sure what you do about that, short of making more ranks.
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