Hearthstone Players!

The key to dealing with those mill decks is to recognize early on that it's happening. If you see those Coldlight Oracles that's a pretty good tip-off. Or if they play Sap on a lousy card of yours.

Key is that most of the cards actually mill your opponent as well. So once you see it's happening, stop playing any cards that draw cards for you, like Starving Buzzard or Acolyte of Pain, and play cards out of your deck as quickly as possible, even if they're less than optimal right then, to make room for more stuff.

They're crazy to play against, but I think I probably win more than 70% of my games against mills.

On Dr. Boom - I think he's strong, but he's not super-dominant. BGH, Fireballs, Peacekeepers - there are all kinds of ways get him off the board.

However my favorite play with my Mage Deck, if I can pull it off, is to get the Emperor on the board to get Doom down to 6 mana. Then I play him and Echos on the same turn. You get another Boom, plus a copy of each of the Bombs. You can end up with a ridiculous number of those little guys out there.

Here are some more tips for Mill deck opposition:

• The only decks that legit play "Mill" are Druid and Rogue. Druid because they can gain life out of trouble and have huge taunts to stall things. Rogue because they can destroy your board with Vanish and have Shadowstep.
• Deathlord on turn 3 by either of these heroes says "I AM A MILL DECK." It's a big taunt and it shrinks your deck by 1.
• King Mukla is another tip off. They want to put Bananas in your hand so you get punished by Sap/Vanish.
• Dancing Swords.
• Most Rogues won't play a Coldlight Oracle until they can Shadowstep or Gang Up on it that turn. Don't wait that long.
• Rogues built to mill don't have enough weapon buffs to get big Blade Flurries, so rush them.
• Think about how to kill Antique Healbot, because if they Gang Up that you will lose the fatigue race for sure. Don't forget they can Gang Up your Antique Healbot.
• Think about how you will kill her Clockwork Giant.

I've been leaning toward playing Paladin for my primary constructed deck. I like Paladin cards and between Naxxramas and some random pulls I've gotten some decent cards to add to it: Avenge (x2), Muster for Battle and Aldor Peacekeeper. I bought a few Classic packs on a whim a couple days ago since all I've opened have been GvG Arena packs, and I pulled a Tirion Fordring. I disenchanted the gold Ancient Mage I also pulled and crafted an Equality so that I now have a neutered version of a decent Paladin deck. I'd still like another Muster and Aldor, and I really want a couple Quartermasters.

My deck was 5-0 yesterday in Ranked play, including a rage quit by a Mage player after I Consecrated 4 of his 5 mechs off the board. I didn't it was that crippling, but whatever, I'll take it. I have no illusions that my deck is unbeatable, I'm just enjoying the winning streak. I'm sitting at Rank 18 right now, is there really any reason for me to push for a higher ranking other than bragging rights?

Speaking of Rage Quitting, what's the difference between that and just knowing when you're beat? Some players I've encountered seem to get irritated when I *don't* quit (only once have I pulled it out to win, but it was glorious!).

I'm fascinated by the restricted communication that's available (and very thankful, honestly). The six phrases seem to have different meanings in different contexts. I would have thought that "Well played" would be the equivalent of the harmless and meaningless "Good game" that coach made you utter to every player at the end of every game. However, most often it feels like it means "Thank you for finally quitting, you completely outmatched loser." I would much rather a "Thank you" in that scenario. Unfortunately, "Thank you" seems to mostly mean "Haha, you fool! That's exactly what I wanted you to do! Now I will crush you."

Of course, I'm sure these interpretations are all in my head, right?

I think the ladder gets a lot more interesting north of 18. Then it gets bad again (i.e. smorc, mech mage, zoo) around 12 or so. There's a sweet spot 17-13 that has all kinds of cool stuff happening. Getting more ranks in any season gets you more stars to kick off the next season. I finished Rank 12? 10? Something like that last month and I started this month at Rank 20.2, i.e., I had the cardback on midnight, May 1. Saves you some time.

I don't have good Paladin cards (Tirion, Quartermasters) Not even Wild Pyro, who procs Equality into a board clear. When I play Paladin, it's just ridiculous rushdown. It's still fun, but it feel unthematic.

Gregarius wrote: Speaking of Rage Quitting, what's the difference between that and just knowing when you're beat? Some players I've encountered seem to get irritated when I *don't* quit (only once have I pulled it out to win, but it was glorious!).

I'm fascinated by the restricted communication that's available (and very thankful, honestly). The six phrases seem to have different meanings in different contexts. I would have thought that "Well played" would be the equivalent of the harmless and meaningless "Good game" that coach made you utter to every player at the end of every game. However, most often it feels like it means "Thank you for finally quitting, you completely outmatched loser." I would much rather a "Thank you" in that scenario. Unfortunately, "Thank you" seems to mostly mean "Haha, you fool! That's exactly what I wanted you to do! Now I will crush you."

Of course, I'm sure these interpretations are all in my head, right?

• If you start a game with Greetings, I will assume your endgame Well Played is without malice.
• Threaten is always a dick move, unless playing against smorc--they deserve to hear how awful they are. It's OK, they love it.
• I use Greetings in the middle of a game when something interesting happens. Maybe I played Dr. Boom and a Taunt--then THEY play Dr. Boom and a Taunt. Or Unstable Portal gets me something fucking ridiculous. I also use it to see if they are AFK.
• Sorry is for bad RNG for the opponent.
• Oops is for bad RNG for me.
• Thanks is when things totally go my way and I squeak out a win in a tough Arena match.

Some of you are new, but spamming emotes or using them like a dick is called BMing ("bee-emming") for Bad Manners. If someone starts doing Thank You a zillion times, you can right-click (or tap on devices) on their portrait to Squelch them and stop the nonsense. It's also considered BM to goof around and miss lethal, say Oops, then show you actually DO have lethal in some cool way and kill them. It's BM, but's it's also awesome.

I should also note that if you turn into Ragnaros via Majordomo Executus, you should spam every emote because they are hilarious. No one will be bothered.

Everything jeb says is true. You'll find that some people will use "Well played" as an encouragement for you to give up when they assume that they have the game in hand; especially Zoo players for some reason. Those are usually the moments when it's awesome to topdeck a board clear and keep playing.

For those wanting to play Paladin without all the "power cards", the class does function pretty well as standard aggro, similar to Zoo. So if you throw together Argent Squire, Dire Wolf Alpha, and other value-creating weenies (Knife Juggler!), you can do pretty well even without things like Equality or Tirion. You're going to have a little trouble with draw, but if you've played through BRM, Solemn Vigil and Divine Favor actually work really well with that mix of cards, as does Cult Master.

Speaking of cool things happening, I ran into a bizarre Warrior deck that was playing everything from Goldshire Footman to Kor'kron Elite to Upgrade last night. I had no idea what the brew was but it was interesting to play a game with utterly no idea as to what would be coming out of his hand. Similarly, Unstable Portal remains the stupidest card in the game. Last night was turn 2 Portal, turn 3 Emperor for me. He's a little OTT for a Waker deck trying to dump its hand. On the emote front, I really did want to say "Sorry" to my opponent, but figured it would be interpreted as gloating. The game before that was turn 4 Ancient of War. Game after was Deathwing. (I had both the "Play 40 spells" and "Win 7 games however" quests, so Waker seemed like the right deck to get them done.) Portal is stupid.

If you "Well Played" me before the game was actually over, you can rest assured I am going to just let the timer run out on my last turn. Don't care if I have nothing on the table and nothing in hand and you've got 30 life and a full rack. You're gonna wait.

I do like threatening when I'm attacking with a really stupid minion, like a polymorphed sheep or something.

Thank Crom this game has restricted communication...can you imagine the toxic environment it would have with full chat options during a match? Like Nintendo, I think Blizzard understands that part of keeping this game accessible and appealing is to keep people from ruining others' fun with bad manners, bad attitudes and bad language.

I have actually squelched some folks that were definitely rude, even with the restriction.

Yeah, I think they learned from both Trade chat in WoW and the open channels in Warcraft III that were available during random games. They were, as you might expect, the text version of an open sewer most of the time.

I, too, am thankful for the restricted chat. My kids love Hearthstone, and that's not possible if every other minute some horror is asking my 11yo for nudz. I have spent $150 (some was gifted to me by a Blizz employee) on this game to get the Adventures for me and the two older kids. We watch some HS streaming on Twitch and there are folks we like that we can't watch with sound because they have text-to-speech turned on and it's an endless litany of racist/misogynistic garbage from the chat. I don't even start the streams where the host is an idiot.

One time when I was still pretty new to the game (before I learned how to Squelch), some asswipe kept constantly tapping "Well played," with an occasional threat to boot. It was way too early in the game for that kind of shit (not that it's ever cool). I tapped Thank You in response to everything and made sure the game lasted as long as humanly possible. A small, passive aggressive victory for me, I guess.

I got a sarcastic "Well Played" from my opponent today when my Mad Bomber screwed me over. I might have been offended if my Arena Rogue deck wasn't such garbage so I responded with an "Oops." Taunting when you have a sheep is an awesome idea, I think I'm going to steal that.

Themed decks are what I find enjoyable, but they don't win too often.
Mech Warrior - in honor of going to Nationals for MechWarrior in the mid 2000's...
as many mechs as I can pack in to a Warrior deck.
Demon's Destiny - an as many-demons-as-I-can-play Warlock deck that has been more successful as
my collection grows.

In MechWarrior: Dark Age, I always went faction-pure and even faction-rank-pure in
most games.

I agree that it's fun to just have a concept and go with it. I've been playing a pretty-much all-beast Hunter deck, except for two Hound Masters. And it's all Hunter Faction cards except for one Owl. It does OK, not great, but it's loads of fun.

I've got a rogue deck that is strictly centered around getting Mimron's Head played and activated, with lots of small mechs and Conceal. Won't win much, but it's fun does trying to manipulate things so Voltron forms.

And I put together a Druid deck that was just Innervates, Wild Growths, 2 Alarm-o-Bots and the rest Legendaries, Giants, and other really big-ass creatures. I played it about 10 ten times before I ever won, but it was fun just throwing out legendary after legendary and watching the opponent try to figure out how to deal with it.

I recently opened a gold Lorewalker Cho, and I'm trying to put together a deck around that - Probably Hunter with zero spells.

Haha, that's almost exactly what my Druid Alarm-o-Bot deck does. There isn't a minion in it below 5 mana (except the 3/2 Panther or +1/+1, but that's a spell).

I'm still awfully poor on Legendaries, and they're mostly not-Druid class ones. But ramping up that mana and busting out huge creatures is awesome.

4-2 with that Control Priest now. I got hosed by my mana curve in one game, when I just couldn't draw anything low and a Pally built a huge board on me. Then it curved out correctly against a Mage and a Rogue, giving me close wins.

The Rogue played Coldlight Oracle early, which I'm sure he thought was a good plan until I dropped a 4-mana Mountain Giant on T5. Then he took that to the face a couple of times.