Hearthstone Players!

That's okay, we all have moral failings. I played a nearly-Facehunter to get two wins in for a quest I'd been avoiding.

I then played a Hobgoblin Paladin with the 1/4 Windfury and Charge/Taunt Gnomes, and some other small crap. Drew a couple of Big Bananas at the right time and gave a Mage two 6-point hits to the face when he was in the teens. Still never saw the Hobgoblin.

It definitely brings out some different cards. Troggs are even coming out to play.

I forgot all about my Questing Adventurer. I'll have to drop that in a deck.

So I've come around on the Banana Brawl, it can actually be pretty fun, if somewhat predictable. There are a lot of stupidly powerful cards when everyone has a hand of 1-mana spells.

My Hobgoblin Paladin just wrecked fools with a few tweaks, I cruised through a "Win 5" easily with it today. I think only Mages really have it easier.

But I also had a "Win 2 Druid/Rogue", so I thought I'd give it a try. In Banana Brawl, where tempo is king, I brought out an old-time play. Coin->Defias Rogue->Shadowstep->Defias Rogue(0) on T1 gives the other guy a fit. Two 2/1s and a 2/2, and to even start killing them off gives me a definite "banana gap". Waiting until T3 and comboing off a 1-drop still worked pretty well.

Combine that "banana gap" with some standards like Echoing Ooze and Questing Adventurer, and it gets ugly fast. I never even drew a dagger, except to squeak out 1 point of damage for lethal.

Interested to see what they cook up next.

Has Tavern Brawl driven everyone off?

I won't be sad to to see the Webspinner week gone, but I'll admit to using it's "flip a coin to see who wins" nature to finish some quests.

It's easier to let my Druid deck be all webspinners and trust in good luck than it is to craft up a decent deck with my collection.

But seriously whoever said "this game is primarily about mana-curve, so let's randomize that and see what happens" should be neck-punched. Because what happens is "it sucks".

I'm certainly off of it at the moment. There's no meta change because there haven't been any solid cards added since last fall (most of the BRM stuff was irrelevant to the major decktypes) and Tavern Brawl does absolutely nothing for me so far. Only one of the three Brawls has let you design your own deck (Bananas) and that was a completely random mechanic, both in cards granted and execution (your guys dying, which is not what you generally want to happen.) I've just had no interest in playing pre-made stuff or in playing the game in a manner that leaves you hoping for something to happen by doing something that's generally negative to how victory is achieved. A lot of people have enjoyed it (I guess) but I'm not one of them. Heroes, in which I'm playing a game that's both fun and leaves me interested in how to play better (rather than hoping for a random result), has been far more interesting.

That said, Blizzard recently sent out actual scrolls ( www.pcgamer.com/next-hearthstone-expansion-teased-for-july-22/ ) to places like PC Gamer, announcing an announcement on 7/22. If that's the next expansion, great. The language is indicative of something like the Argent Tournament from Wrath of the Lich King. If they're waiting to release that until December like they did with GvG, that's death. Naxx was actually released on 7/22 last year and it kept the game moving. We've already seen the far less interesting BRM, so I kind of doubt that there will be another adventure before a real expansion like GvG. Guess we'll see if Blizzard's famed Soon™ release schedule can work with a CCG. They're already lagging way behind on their planned heightened pace to WoW and the player base is dwindling as a result...

Agree on all counts. For me, the issue has been the dominance of the extreme aggro/face decks. I don't find those fun to play, or play against. I prefer where things build and players get a chance to be clever in how they use and combine the cards. Right now if I come up against a 'speed' deck it's just a question of whether I can draw the key cards I need to slow it down (a win) or not (a loss).

I'm actually enjoying the various Tavern Brawls, but mostly only because they're silly diversions. There's nothing competitive about any of 'em so far, so I just kind of think of them as the equivalent of "button-masher" fighting games. We don't need no stinkin' strategies!

I'm still enjoying the hell out of the game in general, though I seem to have finally stumbled on the website that is responsible for about 80% of the deck builds I come across these days. I'd never thought to search on hearthstone deck builds before, but I've had such wretched luck with any Paladin build I've tried, I decided to "cheat" this AM and find some suggested builds.

After 20 minute son the Icy Veins site, I can now identify most Druid and Warrior decks within the first 5 cards played. Kind of a shame, though I kind of assumed a certain amount of homogeneity would set in at some point without a large new expansion to put in the mix.

That said, I'd *really* appreciate it if the devs doubled the cost of the Cleric's "double health" and "fight = health" cards--they're just too damn cheap for their potential payout. I had some guy run that combo with a Velen's Choice on 2/8 Deathload to end up creating a 44/44 monstrosity. My whining aside, it seems to me that they were much more active about nerfing or adjusting cards prior to the GnG expansion. I don't recall the last time I saw one of those warnings on log-in that certain cards had been adjusted, and I can't believe that there are no balance tweaks to be done here....

<dupe message>

The Divine Spirit/Inner Fire combo has been around since the beta and it was almost never viable because the Priest either couldn't stay alive or couldn't maintain enough board control to pull it off. It's kind of funny that it's become all the rage in the last few weeks using a key card that's a year old (Deathlord, which has been basically essential to Priest since GvG), in addition to the combo which has been in the game since its inception. The problem with it is that one silence ruins everything. The issue there is that people aren't running as many silences these days. So the meta will probably lurch back to them soon. I know the one decklist I saw for the Fire/Spirit deck was running 2 Silences so that you'd have some way to get your monster past a taunt before it got BGH'd...

The spider brawl was stupid, the fun of getting a wacky, random card wears off after the 20th time. I won my pack and moved on from it. It was completely random, and it also seemed to me to completely favor Hunter with all of the beast synergy. The match I won was with a Hunter, just overwhelmed him with buffed Webspinners and a couple of choice (well, random) minions.

I dunno, I've kind of been lax on playing lately...the netdeck thing gets really, really old. As stated above, you know almost as early as when you see what class you're against what you are going to be facing. The problem is that with only 30 cards, your options are actually quite limited to do anything BUT play to compete with the net decks. You can put together a cool Shaman deck, but up against Grim Patron it folds in five turns. So you either build your own Grim Patron or keep losing. And it starts to be kind of not fun to just be stomping people with Mage/Flamewaker/Mana Wyrm after a while. But 90% of the people that play want easy wins, not FUN or CHALLENGING wins. I love it when I get into a GOOD game with someone, lots of push and pull, lots of reversals and tension, lots of smart play and clever countering. That's when I really love Hearthstone. But when I'm just whomping some dude with a tray full of Patrons...I dunno, it gets olds, actually.

Too much of the game, as it stands today, is more about getting those game-winning sequences fired up. Like the Patron thing. That whole deck is just to spool up that combo (whichever permutation of it you use) and put the other player not in a compromised position, but in a no-win position.

I do wish they were more proactive about balancing and card tweaks...one of the advantages of this game that they SHOULD and COULD be leveraging is that unlike a print CCG, you can change it on the fly at any time with a patch. Patron should have already been adjusted somehow.

Still love the game, still very excited to see what's next...Peter Whalen, the dude that did Dream Quest, is on their development team now...I would LOVE to see his talent leveraged to do an adventure campaign or something.

I've played against many Patrons. I don't think it's that good. If a combo deck gets it working, then it rocks, but you can say that about a lot of cards.

Jackwraith wrote: The Divine Spirit/Inner Fire combo has been around since the beta and it was almost never viable because the Priest either couldn't stay alive or couldn't maintain enough board control to pull it off. It's kind of funny that it's become all the rage in the last few weeks using a key card that's a year old (Deathlord, which has been basically essential to Priest since GvG), in addition to the combo which has been in the game since its inception. The problem with it is that one silence ruins everything. The issue there is that people aren't running as many silences these days. So the meta will probably lurch back to them soon. I know the one decklist I saw for the Fire/Spirit deck was running 2 Silences so that you'd have some way to get your monster past a taunt before it got BGH'd...

Oh, I know it's been around since the dawn of time. I seem to recall that Lightwell was the preferred target previously. I've never really seen a whole lot of problems with viability since it's pretty much designed to be a 1-shot weapon in the late game. If they had more Silence cards available to the other classes, I'd probably grumble about it a whole lot less. I try to run 2 of 'em but I find that they're usually long used up--more often than not these days to escape a huge taunt critter and then silence that aggravating Emperor T. card before it gives my opponent a heap of cost-free cards--by the time that combo is triggered. Only when running a priest deck myself do I find that I have an easy counter to the bloody thing. I need to work Big Game Hunter into my decks more I guess...

I had the best luck (which is all that really mattered) with Priest or Mage in Spider Brawl. I played mostly Priest and some Druid for the dailies I was getting.

Hunter wasn't more effective than anything else, because his board-clear spells are weak. Seemed like an obvious choice with all the beasts in play, but I found it just didn't work out that way.

Dog, been ages since I've seen you here. Get in touch so I can put you on my HS friends list.

For this weeks brawl I figured most people are going to go Mage. I chose Priest figuring when I cast mind control AND get a ten cost minion it would be gam over. So far I was right. You can just trade a lot until you have 10 mana. Take their best creature and it gives you q 12/12 baddie besides.

I did Priest too...won four straight.

Yeah,two-thirds or more of what I played against was Priests. Everyone had that idea.

I had two 60-gold quests for Paladin so I gave that a try. Won a few.