Board 8 > Hearthstone Topic #??: Time for Blizzcon

(+) Yeah! (+)

metroid composite posted...

So...they've announced that they're changing the tournament format for hearthstone--general speculation on the subreddit is that it will be best of 3 with single decks with a sideboard of 6 cards (this is based on a Chinese leak which has so far been correct apparently).

You mean to say my lack of 4 good decks isnt so bad anymore?

:o just in time for the meta to change and leave me with 0 good decks
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SaintAkira7 posted...

Straight up OTK face kills from Druid incoming. Load up on taunts.

I mean, just don't play creatures, and then they can't build up extra attacks.
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I've heard there's a hidden Concede button that prevents the Druid from being able to hit you for lethal damage is this true
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metroid composite posted...

SaintAkira7 posted...

Straight up OTK face kills from Druid incoming. Load up on taunts.

I mean, just don't play creatures, and then they can't build up extra attacks.

That poses a yuge problem for my Murloc priest deck. XD

Honestly, I don't think this particular potential combo will be the be-all-end-all, and I think most of us would agree that druid got the metaphorical short end of the stick this expansion (because they didn't really need anything any damn way). And I'm not entirely sure this combo is working as intended, with the effects stacking like they do. Though, this example was done using a pre-built deck, so of course this interaction was rigorously play tested. Right? Right. Has to be working as intended. :/
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I mean, I don't see why this wouldn't be working as intended.

When Gonk the raptor is on the field and your hero attacks and kills a minion, you can attack an additional time.

If there are two Gonks, then you can attack two additional times.

Makes sense to me.

I'll note that Gonk costs 7 and Floop costs 4, so you can't normally play them both in the same turn. Your opponent if they suspect you are going for the combo will have a full turn to suicide small minions they have in play AFTER you play Gonk (or just kill your Gonk, that works too). And as the Druid you still need the attack boosting cards in hand AND the mana to play them, AND the health to smash your face into all the minions even if you get double Gonk. (AND it doesn't work very well if the minions have divine shield or your opponent has few minions).

Like...you would never want to rely on this as your win condition. It's more that if you are already running Gonk and Floop, it's something to keep in mind in case the opportunity presents itself. It would probably mostly happen against Odd Paladin and Even Shaman, if anything.
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Gonk is a beast so you could use Witching Hour. Imagine the double Witching Hour + Floop + double Pounce DREAM

Still totally unreliable for every other reason you mentioned
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Had a quest to play 30 Rogue cards, so I loaded up odd rogue.

There were some games win or lose where I played literally 1 total class card, lol.

(Gained 5 stars, but man, this deck just feels very draw dependent. Like...did I get something really scary to stick on turn 1-3? No? OK guess I lose).
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UltimaterializerX posted...

Odd Rogue's problem is that its only wincon is board control, which it doesn't do well in the meta anymore. There's a reason odd paladin has like a 76% win rate against rogue.

I mean, Odd Rogue used to run cards like Fan of Knives for the Odd Paladin matchup, so like...they could put that card back in for starters if they wanted to up their Odd Paladin matchup.

But no, mostly my frustration with Odd Rogue is that...the dagger tends to be really good against other aggro matchups because you can kill all their stuff, like 75% winrate against Zoo or something. (And sure, not as great against Odd Paladin cause you can't kill literally all their stuff). But against defensive control decks you're super fucked. Like...wtf do you do against Odd Warrior? I remember having like an 80%-90% winrate against Odd Rogue as Shudderwock Shaman (the deck reddit told me is supposed to be "weak to aggro"). I sometimes win vs wock as Odd Rogue, cause I know the matchup, and know there's only one or two things that can go wrong for the shaman (dire mole with cold blood attacking on turn 2. Out of control Hench Clan Thug. Board that can't be volcanoed). But that means games are often out of reach if the opening mulligan doesn't deliver.

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Side note, pretty satisfied with my tech choices for my weird version of deathrattle hunter. Faced an Odd Paladin who had everything; Paladin went first, Lost in the Jungle on 1, Raid Leader on 3, Righteous Protector to protect Raid Leader for multiple turns (and Blessing of Mighted his raid leader--somehow had enough buffing to never need to suicide the raid leader so that went face a lot). Also had level up on 5, Divine Favour, An Unidentified Maul with Divine Shield, both corridor creepers, both fungalmancers, the second Level Up. I kept trying to set up a cube on a Witchwood Grizzly or Tar Creeper and my opponent killed them all by buffing the board. Lich King? Killed it. Primordial Drake? Killed it. But my tech choices of Lich King and Primordial Drake undoubtedly won me the game; I would have lost if those were still Savannah Lions in my deck. Lich King got me Army of the Damned, which I didn't play right away cause I had Primordial drake. Army pulled up Shaw, Keleseth, and an Egg, which was enough with Shaw rush to clear the board by triggering the egg a couple times. Stabilized at 4 health, could still be dead to a Vinecleaver topdeck, but I think that was his only out. Next turn trackinged into Rexxar putting me out of range.
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Its been interesting to see how lukewarm artifacts release has been. The hearthstone killer seems to be less of a threat than MTG arena.

ColZach posted...

Its been interesting to see how lukewarm artifacts release has been. The hearthstone killer seems to be less of a threat than MTG arena.

A lot of my coworkers are playing it actually; I was surprised at the contrast to the internet's reaction. Their impressions are positive enough that I might give it a try.

But my coworkers are generally in their late 20s or their 30s, game developers with good salaries, and many of the ones into artifact are game designers who are fascinated by the 3 board system of Artifact.

r/hearthstone was pretty quick to dismiss it, on the other hand. (After months and months of topics on that sub predicting hearthstone's impending doom at the hands of Artifact). But r/hearthstone is the kind of people who express opinions like "hearthstone is too expensive" (which means they take a glance at artifact's pricing model and run away screaming).

It looks to me like Artifact will find a niche, but yeah, it's very much not a direct competitor, not going after Hearthstone's player base.
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The Artifact community is what happens when everyone is Ulti
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I had a Wild game last night with deathrattle hunter, where I had to coin-Rexxar on turn 5 to try and stabilize at 4 HP. Of course he floods the board again the turn after, so I needed to hit a home run with my first build-a-beast, or I was done.

Hit Dreadscale/Swamp Leech.

I finished the game with 29 HP.
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I missed the message, but apparently you can't drop below rank 20 now? Guess it didn't matter that I only played about five games of ladder over the last two months, I wasn't going anywhere.

About Artifact, did they fix their economy issues? I haven't paid a ton of attention to the game so I don't know what all was pissing people off, but I remember it was a lot of pissing and then a couple of days later they mentioned they were fixing some things, but I'm not sure if it placated everyone or if it was like Bethesda and their recent attempt.
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Had a great game as tess rogue vs shudder shaman.

In any case I played espionage when I had like 8 cards (2 spiders) in my deck. And the cards I've been getting have not been great. However, one card was amazing. I draw into a 1 mana hagatha and start to play 1 mana minions to get some spells. And then it hits me. Omg. I'm a shaman now. Tess replays all my rogue cards.

So knowing my opponent just had to double overload to clear my board last turn I basically refill my entire board again, as well as draw several cards (that cost 1)

Man screw shudderwock. Go keep losing to meme decks. (Admittedly tess rogue should naturally have a strong matchup against it)
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re: artifact

I would say that the number of players adopting artifact right now doesn't seem very high. there's potential that there'll be a boom when valve hosts the million dollar tournament, or maybe not. We'll see. This might just be a cult game though that the people who play it love and the mainstream audience passes on.

Streamer attitude about it has been mostly positive though. Disguised Toast didn't really enjoy it and thinks it's just too complicated to enjoy, and Reynad has a pretty weird position on it, but lots of Hearthstone streamers like Kripp, Day9, and Savjz like it a lot. I doubt they'll stream it a TON long term because the viewership likely isn't there, but reception is pretty positive. I doubt any of you are familiar with them but adoption by Dota personalities has been pretty strong with people like Sunsfan, Wagamama, Singsing, Purge, and Slacks. Pretty much anybody open to card games from that community likes it.

re: the economy

Let me recap the way the game worked when the beta went online a week before release

Purchase the game: $20 USD
Purchase a pack: $2 for 12 cards
Purchase cards via economy: unknown at the time as economy wasn't up until launch, but you could buy and sell cards from other players
Play casual Constructed matchmaking: Free
Play expert Constructed matchmaking: $1 event ticket.
Play expert Phantom Draft matchmaking: $1 event ticket (this is like hearthstone arena, you create a deck for a run)
Play Call to Arms event: free (this is an event that gives you access to 6 premade decks that you can play, kinda like a Tavern Brawl)
Play Tournament Constructed: Free (there's a robust tournament mode creator to host tournaments with)

Expert Constructed / Phantom Draft details: 1 Ticket Entry (costs $1).
3 Wins: 1 Event Ticket
4 Wins: 1 Event Ticket, 1 Pack
5 Wins: 1 Event Ticket, 2 Packs
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So if you lose twice your run ends. If you win 0,1, or 2 times you get nothing. 3 times gets you your ticket back, and 4 and 5 wins gets you packs.

So to summarize: by buying the game you could play constructed for free, constructed tournaments for free, and play the Call to Arms event for free to try cards you don't have. There was no way to play Phantom Draft for free, which was a highlight for lots of people

This meant there's three layers of monetization - you have to pay to buy the game, you have to pay for cards for constructed (through packs or the market), and you have to pay the $1 entry fee for Expert Constructed or Draft (the only way to play draft).

The community was outraged for a few days and didn't accept this. The monetization was way too much at every stage of the game. Having to continuously pay to keep playing draft was outrageous. The community became very toxic at this point (and was pretty toxic before this getting impatient for release and at how limited beta access was) You might recall in this very topic I posted about requesting a refund for my Artifact prepurchase because of this issue on posts #126 and 127 of this topic.

Well, Valve responded and gave a free casual Phantom draft to play. That means that once you buy the game you can play Phantom Draft forever with no entry cost. There's no reward in that mode, but you can play it. You can make a phantom draft tournament now as well, with a few other changes.

The community rejoiced. I prepurchased again. Everyone is happy. They took away one of the layers of monetization. entry tickets still exist if you want to play for rewards, but you can play as much constructed or draft as you want. You just have to pay to buy the game and then pay for packs/the market for constructed cards.

release happened, and the community is overally pretty happy. Everyone has the usual gripes you see in communities about "this card being OP" or "this feature should be added" but I would rate the Artifact community right now as VERY POSITIVE. The game is being very well received. I'm a bit confused by Reynad's tweet about Artifact being so toxic. It was VERY toxic pre release, but things have really improved. He released a video talking about how he doesn't like the game, so maybe he got hate for that, but that's gonna be true with any community, so if he made that tweet because of that then I don't know what to say.

The only backlash Artifact is still getting is from free to play type players. There are a lot of people who are very put off by the entry fee and the fact that there is no Free to Play type Gold mechanic. I understand that these players want to be able to play the game without spending anything at all, but.... I think that model is deceptive

Comparing it to Hearthstone:

If you want to spend $0 money, you can grind a ton and get a few decks that you want to play.
If you want to spend money, you can buy a ton of packs, get some of the stuff you want, then use the dust you got to get some of the other stuff you want, then grind to get the remaining stuff you want (or keep spending money)

In Artifact, you spend $20 to play, and then you spend exactly how much you want to get the cards you want.

I think at first glance, it makes Artifact seem more expensive. But to me, the cost in Hearthstone of getting the legendaries I wanted in both time and money was MUCH higher.
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Here's a bit of code somebody whipped up that will tell you the the current cost of a collection in Artifact. Click Run in the top middle and it'll spit out some results on the right. Pauper is the cost of every common, Peasant is the cost of every common and uncommon, and Full is the cost of every card in the game. This is for a full playset, so 1 hero and 3 of every other card, which is the limit for a deck.

As of writing this post, the cost of Pauper is $10.72, Peasant is $35.71, and Full is $272.99

https://repl.it/repls/FrostyLightheartedInstitutes

This is a chart tracking how the full cost of a collection is changing :

https://www.howmuchdoesartifactcost.com/

The cost of a full collection is hanging around $280. That might sound like a lot, but I guess ask yourself two things: 1) Do you need a full collection, and 2) what would the cost of a full collection of Classic in Hearthstone cost?

I think the pauper and peasant costs are super reasonable. Full is way more than I want to spend. But the question is - what is the cost of getting the cards I want? Well, a giant majority of cards on the market are around 5 cents. There's a large collection of cards that are in the 40 - 80 cent range. There's some rare cards that cost a few dollars, then a few expensive heroes. Axe is the most expensive hero at $26 right now. Drow Ranger is the next at $19, Kanna costs $13, then a couple non hero rares at about $10. Then about 10 cards in the $3-7 and everything else is below that.

To me, this means that no matter what deck I want to build, I can just go to the market and buy it for a reasonable price. In Hearthstone, if I want a specific legendary and some epics, it either means a TON of grinding and waiting or buying another $50 worth of packs to get the dust to do it. I find this soooo much more affordable.

To talk a bit more about free to play models - I do not see grinding for gold as "free". I only see it as free if it's what I was going to do anyways. When I log onto Hearthstone, I feel like I need to complete the quests every day and grind the 10 gold win stuff in order to get the cards I want. But my preference would be to just play the way I want to play. Hearthstone isn't my job... it's what I'm doing for fun. If it's directly influencing what I'm doing away from what I naturally want to do, then it's costing me something. I think this is a viewpoint problem people have, and not an actual problem with Artifact's monetization.

Artifact gives me the freedom to play that way.

I didn't really talk about actual gameplay here, but I guess I'l just say this - I absolutely love it. I'm loving the game.

tl:dr: The Artifact community is very happy. F2P players are not happy, but personally, I find the Artifact model very affordable and freeing. I'm very happy with the way the game is turning out. If anybody tries the game out I'd be happy to play you and give tips. I'd love to host some Artifact tournaments here, but it doesn't sound like we are gonna have the playerbase =x
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I don't know how I wrote this much. I saw people talkin shit about my artifact and just started typing and i guess here we are
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Its just funny how many people were heralding Artifact as the Hearthstone killer and it isnt even F2P. Hearthstone cant be beaten by another game that isnt F2P unless something is seriously wrong.

I guess it depends what you mean by beaten

Total playerbase count? There's definitely no way it can compete in total player numbers if it charges just to play the game.

Profitability? Well... maybe. If everyone that *does* pay likes the way Artifact works better, they might spend their money at Artifact instead of Hearthstone. After all, it's the people who spend money on Hearthstone that keep the lights on, not the people who actually do play for free. I personally decided to stop buying packs in the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion when I decided I wasn't getting enough value for what I put in. I doubt the majority of players who pay will switch, but it could have enough of an impact to make Hearthstone rethink their dust economy.

Esports wise? I don't think Hearthstones Esports scene is really that successful. It looks more like Blizzard is just forcing it to exist to keep interest alive in the game. Depending on how successful Artifact's version of The International is, it could overshadow Hearthstone here.

Streaming? Well... it looks to me like Artifact isn't going to be a big hit for streaming. It's just too complicated. Hearthstone will remain top dog here for sure.
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KokoroAkechi posted...

Man screw shudderwock. Go keep losing to meme decks. (Admittedly tess rogue should naturally have a strong matchup against it)

Tess Rogue should nearly always win against Shudderwock, yeah.

TBH, Shudderwock struggles just to beat plain ol' Fal'dorei Strider. If you land a bunch of spiders, they can't clear with volcano, and Shudderwock is basically volcano: the deck. Spiders are also 4/4 so they don't die to Hagatha. There's just no easy answer to spiders. Add in Academic Espionage as well, and yeah, Wock only has like...7 big removal spells/clears; they will run out.
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Lightforge has made predictions on the best cards from the set (in Arena):

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/a2oq0x/top_10_rastakhan_cards_lightforge_arena_tier_list/

For neutrals they're expecting Dragonmaw Scorcher to be on top (the 3/6 with an attached whirlwind) and claim that it will be better than Primordial Drake. I dunno about better than Primordial Drake (I'm the girl who runs Primordial Drake in like...two different hunter decks in constructed) but...maybe. Even in constructed I have been thinking Scorcher is a card that a lot of decks might slot in to boost their Odd Paladin matchup. Better body for the cost than Drake too, just...Primordial Drake having taunt is a big deal to me.

Hmm...honestly, if the whirlwind effect is worth 1 mana, and the 2 damage whirlwind effect is worth 2 mana, then they're comparable; Scorcher is like a 4 mana 3/6, and Drake is like a 6 mana 4/8 taunt (probably about the right cost for a 6 mana taunt--comparable to the average result for Hungry Ettin without the RNG).
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metroid composite posted...

KokoroAkechi posted...

Man screw shudderwock. Go keep losing to meme decks. (Admittedly tess rogue should naturally have a strong matchup against it)

Tess Rogue should nearly always win against Shudderwock, yeah.

TBH, Shudderwock struggles just to beat plain ol' Fal'dorei Strider. If you land a bunch of spiders, they can't clear with volcano, and Shudderwock is basically volcano: the deck. Spiders are also 4/4 so they don't die to Hagatha. There's just no easy answer to spiders. Add in Academic Espionage as well, and yeah, Wock only has like...7 big removal spells/clears; they will run out.

Ae rogue is like significantly worse than normal miracle with spiders in the matchup. Ae is just too slow if you want consistency a lot of times or too luck sack. I have hemetvin my version specifically to try to turbo to espionage cards (and to get a lot of spiders). You also lose all the burst because ae packages often drop cards like Leroy from their lists since more of their deck has to be either dedicated to pushing into the later stages of the game or just has to be more defensive.

Like if my opponent gets shudderwock off by card 20 I think the chances of me winning are below 50% with tess rogue a lot of the time. If I'm normal spider I can still win because of potential in hand burst with Leroy and such.

Spider rogue is only provably a 60/40 or so given both players are good and like I said tess rogue is a significantly worse deck and the strengyhs it gains in the matchup dont make up for the losses. Im not actually convinced my opponents have been good either. Its hard to tell when every shudderwock shaman basically does the same thing. Tess rogues real good matchup is actually odd warrior
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With scorcher, some of the difference has to come down to 5 mana being more flexible than 8 mana, right? Its a dead card less often in your hand and you have more mana to follow up.

NewerShadow posted...

With scorcher, some of the difference has to come down to 5 mana being more flexible than 8 mana, right? Its a dead card less often in your hand and you have more mana to follow up.

Yeah, that's what they attributed the gap to in the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUyGJU19M40" data-time="&start=380
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Had like an amazing finish vs a combo mage. Like he was a turn away from his combo and I had to win that turn. For the entire game hes just been clearing and freezing my board. I've played some good mage dd spells but my board was full -1 and unfrozen so most likely I'd hit my own minions. He has a minion up.

My board is the result of me playing a 1 mana jaina followed by a tess to replay all my rogue cards. This got me several more cards that cost 1 mana. Among them were arcane anomaly, the spell dmg bird, shooting star, arcane missiles, and another jaina. Remember that since I played tess as jaina that I'm shadow valera again.

So I think and in like I cant count I have to go and go face trade my low attack minion in to get +3 spell dmg on the field, shooting star, double arcane, but I realize I'm one off and arcane missile animation takes forever. I play the one mana jaina, whose animation also takes forever, and hero power like right before the game ends.
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CybrMonkey posted...

NewerShadow posted...

With scorcher, some of the difference has to come down to 5 mana being more flexible than 8 mana, right? Its a dead card less often in your hand and you have more mana to follow up.

Yeah, that's what they attributed the gap to in the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUyGJU19M40" data-time="&start=380

Yeah makes sense.

I suppose arena also has less of the control vs aggro dynamic, and more of just both players fighting for board, so the lack of taunt is probably not as important as it will be in Standard; you still probably want to clear off a 3/6 body in Arena (whereas if you're an aggro deck in constructed, you see a 3/6 without taunt and you go face).
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https://twitter.com/firebat/status/1069920278757683201?s=19

See you guys next expansion
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davidponte posted...

https://twitter.com/firebat/status/1069920278757683201?s=19

See you guys next expansion

Tempo Shuddwock being the deck that plays shudderwock once and never replays it, and just uses Shudderwock as one of their large threats?

Why would that cause you to leave for an expansion?

EDIT--here's Firebat's list. No Zola, no Grumble, no way to use wock more than once. But a lot of unstable Evolution synergy including both new legendaries seemingly mostly for Unstable Evolution synergy. Just run Skulking Geist and you should have an answer to that deck.

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/firebat-tempo-shudderwok-theorycraft/
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Shudderwock is probably my least favourite card in Standard. That deck isn't as annoying as the normal list, but any world where a deck featuring the card is tier 1 isn't great.
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if it's not doing the endless combo, what makes the card worse than any other combo card?
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30 packs only got me Wardruid Loti (and some good epics, including pairs of Immortal Prelate and the Execute on a minion card)

got Kragwa as my Loa though so that's neat
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Oh is it out
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56 packs, Bwonsamdi was my free legendary. Opened Thekal, Gonk, Halazzi and Shirvallah in my packs, so having to get Gonk/Bwonsamdi was offset by getting two of the legendary cards I actually wanted.
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Really hope Inner Fire gets HoF'd next rotation.
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Free Loa was Shirvallah. Pulled Mojomaster, Halazzi and Zuljin in 68 packs, and Im within 5 of the pity timer for my next legendary. Also got 2x Blast Wave and at least one execute minion as useful epics.

Crafted both mage legends right away since theyre ones I plan to mess with, might craft some Paladin/Warlock stuff later.

Wedge Antilles posted...

Really hope Inner Fire gets HoF'd next rotation.

Never gonna happen because it's not a Mage card.
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This is the first expansion in a while that I wasn't at my computer for the launch. I've got about 115 packs to open in a couple minutes.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUuw24KlvCE" data-time="

Heads up that this appears to be 100% consistent.
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120 packs

Free Hir'eek, the Bat
Halazzi, the Lynx
Golden Gonk, the Raptor
Shirvallah, the Tiger
Oondasta
Griftah

Seems like a very below average Legendary haul here. I've gotten at least 7 in all of the previous expansions in which I've opened roughly this many packs. I'm 5 packs away from the pity timer though, so I'll have another one soon.

Oondasta seems like the only card that is probably a must-have out of the bunch.
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I just got wrecked by Rockbiter + Doomhammer.

What year are we in?
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I got 3 Legendaries in 57 packs, and two of them were Hir'eek and Griftah.

At least Hir'eek has A+ flavor text....
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/162396569289752576/519646444433440782/unknown.png
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Day of this expansion already makes me want rotation as Cube Hunter is only more annoying with more good cube targets

i got the paladin loa from my free legendary AND the other paladin legendary from my first 10 packs. The game wants me to build healadin.

i also made even rogue... and won a game with it... because the other guy conceded on turn 0.
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