Board 8 > Hearthstone Discussion Topic 519 - The Rise of the Mech

(+) Yeah! (+)

Wedge Antilles posted...

Last day of the month

The Final day will always heavily favor aggro.. even at rank 8 there are a ton of people with dreams of rank 5 dancing in their head.

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I've taken the VIP status five or six times now and haven't been offered the option to have a unique deck once. Getting real tired of Bobs shit.

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Finished the final boss on heroic. Was a long, tough fight that I had no business winning until my final hero topdecked super lethal on my last living turn.

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Getting a little annoyed at my current lowroll on the legend pity timer.

I bought the whole adventure, 15 packs, and have been pretty consistently getting free packs from leaving the HGC stream running over the weekend, like 10 packs from that. And then another 3 packs from the tavern brawl event they had before the single player launch. So like...28 packs, no legendary?

I mean, I was only expecting to get one legendary off of these packs, and I probably still will before the next expansion (plenty more events HGC packs before the next expansion) but I was subconsiously expecting that this week having 6 packs of the adventure would finally push me over the pity timer. LOL nope.
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The fifteen packs and, I believe, five I got from having the streams on wasn't enough to get me a legendary. I ended up buying nine packs and opened one on the eighth pack. Reno 2.0. Not sure how many I already had in the tank but wouldn't surprise me if I hit the pity timer.

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Looks like that leaked list of cards was accurate after all. Official post:
https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23156374/can-you-survive-the-doom-in-the-tomb

Card List:
Druid: Astral Communion, Kun the Forgotten King
Mage: Babbling Book, Flamewaker
Paladin: Mysterious Challenger, Avenge
Hunter: Lock and Load, Call of the Wild
Shaman: Evolve, Thing from Below
Rogue: Shaku, the Collector, Swashburglar
Priest: Lightbomb, Vol'jin
Warlock: Imp Gang Boss, Renounce Darkness
Warrior: Varian Wrynn, Bloodhoof Brave
Neutral: N'Zoth, the Corruptor, Sylvanas Windrunner, Ragnaros the Firelord, The Curator, Emperor Thaurissan

There are also some new tavern brawls, and a bunch of quests with pack rewards, plus dual-class arenas return.

So are these permanently undisenchantable? As in we can disenchant the copies we already have safely without ever losing them?
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I dont think so, I think they go away when this ends
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These cards will be considered "event" cards, which essentially means that they're temporary copies and not permanent additions to your collection. Even if you already own the cards, you'll still receive these event copies. When the event ends they'll disappear, just like the Headless Horseman himself!
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So they're re-added to standard, but only temporarily. That makes a lot more sense. I looked at that list and said there was no way they're simply bringing these cards back to standard.

Now the question becomes which classes are the biggest winners by these reintroductions. I kind of wonder if this wasn't the time to make these choices. There will be another set before rotation, and this particular meta is pretty robust and diverse. It didn't need a shot in the arm like so many in the past have. If nothing else, I would have saved it for the first set of next year, when the card pool is small and relatively weak.
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Im constantly amazed by how much smarter Zephrys is than a human being. I had druid at 10 health and he had a full board up. I played Zeph, thinking Twisting Nether was coming.

He gave Hellfire. Board wipe, Gladiator Longbow to the face, arrow. 10 damage. I love this card so much. Im half tempted to cut Siamat so sandbinder always finds him but thats just a dumb idea.
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azuarc posted...

Now the question becomes which classes are the biggest winners by these reintroductions.

The big winners are mostly classes and archetypes that are underplayed right now. Like...mage gets the most (flamewaker and babbling book), but flamewaker doesn't necessarily go into the most popular mage deck (highlander mage).

The popular Priest deck doesn't get a whole lot, but control priest gets a ton with lightbomb.

The popular paladin decks won't get very much, but secret paladin will get somewhat of a boost. Highlander Paladin will also get a significant boost because Curator fetches Finley.

Biggest boost to decks that are already good are: Quest Druid, specifically quest Malygos (Thaurissan), Quest Shaman (Evolve) and Highlander Hunter (Sylvannas+Nine Lives+Call of the Wild with Zul'Jin still in standard).
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Told you so about Blizzard this whole time guys.
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They've really bungled this Hong Kong player situation so much. It's a bit pathetic really.
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Waker mage is absolutely hilarious. I'm 4-0 so far, stealing games I have no business winning and running over others in hilarious fashion. I'm not sure I've faced a good deck yet, but it's been a lot of fun so far.
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I played three games today. The first two were Quest Druid with Kun. The other was Quest Rogue that randomly generated Kun. I'm already tired of seeing that card.

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I wonder how long it will take before people get annoyed with N'Zoth decks.
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"The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision."

lol

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UltimaterializerX posted...

What class is using it best?

Probably Priest since you get the resurrections and they got Lightbomb too so they are a pretty super Control class

That said I Dont see how Shaman isnt the best class right now, Desert Hare Evolve is so silly and not many classes can deal with 3 4 drops so early

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UltimaterializerX posted...

From what I hear, the meta is dominated by Mysterious Challenger again.

Ehh...no doesn't look like Mysterious Challenger is all that popular.

Going by HSReplay, Secret Paladin is the 7th most popular Paladin deck (behind more popular decks like quest paladin and holy wrath paladin). HSReplay also has it as a tier 2 deck (whereas tip the scales paladin is still tier 1, for instance).

There's also a version of highlander paladin floating around that runs one copy of Mysterious Challenger (some builds of highlander paladin aren't running Mysterious Challenger at all, though). But either way, it's highlander--they only have one copy of the card. (Highlander is probably the strongest deck running Mysterious Challenger, though).

I'm not expecting Mysterious Challenger to do that much when the dust settles--nobody plays that card in wild, and secret paladin and highlander paladin were garbage decks in standard before they brought back the wild cards. Mysterious Challenger is like...a 6 mana 10/10, it's strong, and that might be impressive except Druid has a 5 mana 10/10 (Oasis Surger), I don't think Challenger's going to single-handedly carry weak archetypes, but maybe it can make them into tier 2-3 decks or something.
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There should be an alternate win condition that triggers if you somehow get four copies of Astral Communion in your hand at the same time when not playing Druid.

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On a scale of infuriating to fantastic how has playing with the re-introduced Wild cards been? I haven't played the game in months but I'm starting to get the itch again.
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Things are apparently great if you want to play Evolve Shaman or N'Zoth Anything.

I've just been playing wild trying to get Druid to level 60 so I don't have any first hand experience on what the cancer decks du jour are.

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davidponte posted...

On a scale of infuriating to fantastic how has playing with the re-introduced Wild cards been? I haven't played the game in months but I'm starting to get the itch again.

Full-blown ShayminStone on ladder.

Bringing back Evolve was a mistake.

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Got my 1000th win as Priest yesterday. I don't even have any other class golden yet lol

That said, Hunter, Paladin, Mage, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior are all above 390 wins.
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Priest is my highest as well, but it's just 301.

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I think my highest is Hunter but thats in the 800 range

everything is above 500 though

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UltimaterializerX posted...

The entire experiment with wild cards in standard was moronic.

I like the general idea of "let's bring back some old cards to shake up the meta". Just... man, I don't think they actually gave any consideration to what would actually happen when they brought these cards back.

So, to me, it's a solid concept, and giving everyone access to the cards is nice. But the cards chosen weren't good calls resulting in flawed execution. Fwiw, I think while N'Zoth is problematic, it's nowhere near the level Evolve is at right now, with regards to skewing the meta. Just my 2 cents.


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It's finally done.



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I got someone who was willing to grind Dreadsteeds in the tavern brawl with me, and I got a Lorewalker Cho at some point which allowed us to toss important Dreadsteedy cards back and forth to each other. I'm not sure if it was all the Cho animations or what but he crashed and we had to settle for 400 Dreadsteeds. Sad ending to what was looking like a beautiful marriage, as we had Blessing of Kings, Warpath, Dead Man's Hand, Bring it On and Haunting Visions to keep things going permanently.

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I got someone who just sat there killing off both Dreadsteeds every turn and then passing, so I followed suit, and then he quit after we did 104, so apparently he was very much keeping track.

Anyway, I have to share my new favorite deck that I stole- I MEAN WAS INSPIRED BY Dane, who's been playing mostly Standard since the old cards were brought back.

### Combo Warrior
# Class: Warrior
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Dragon
#
# 2x (1) Eternium Rover
# 2x (1) Shield Slam
# 2x (2) Armorsmith
# 2x (2) Battle Rage
# 1x (2) Loot Hoarder
# 2x (2) Slam
# 2x (2) Warpath
# 1x (2) Zephrys the Great
# 2x (3) Acolyte of Pain
# 2x (3) Bloodsworn Mercenary
# 2x (3) Overlord's Whip
# 2x (3) Shield Block
# 1x (3) Voodoo Doll
# 2x (4) Witchwood Piper
# 2x (5) Brawl
# 1x (6) Emperor Thaurissan
# 1x (7) Chef Nomi
# 1x (8) Grommash Hellscream
#
AAECAQcG+wHSArfxAtKZA/yjA+fSAwxLkAOiBNQE /weyCPsMpvACm/MCs/wCo4sD3KkDAA==
#

I did change something in it, though. He had an Execute in the deck instead of Voodoo Doll, but I figured for a good 80% of every game, you have an Overlord's Whip equipped, so this just saves you from having to face tank something really big.

Anyway, there are two vastly different ways this deck operates, though pretty much every matchup, you're hard mulliganing for the Whip.

- Against Aggro decks, you want to try and stay alive until you have Whip equipped and some combination of Armorsmiths, Rovers, and Mercenaries to copy the Armorsmiths or Rovers and just build up a bazillion armor. You've basically blown more than half of your win condition if you use both Mercenaries, but your opponent won't know that and think it's pointless to continue and concede.

- Against Control Decks, you need to draw out your entire deck as fast as you possibly can. Eventually, you'll try and get both Mercenaries, Grom, Thaurrisan, and Zephrys all in your hand at once while you have a Whip equipped. Play Thaurrisan and copy him once with one of the Mercenaries. You will now be able to play Grom (6), Mercenary (1), Zephrys (0), and the resulting Windfury (2), for 9 mana to deal 30 damage. Or if you were forced to use a Mercenary along the way to try and stay alive or something, Chef Nomi does the job in a lot of those matchups, especially against Shaman. They'll typically save a MCT to try and take two of them and kill a third, but then you have Zephrys to get Bloodlust for 36 damage.

There's a few hiccups along the way, like against N'Zoth Decks with Khartuts, you kinda need to save multiple board clears for the turn they drop him. Or against OTK Paladin, it's a semi-control matchup, but you can absolutely out-armor the 50 damage they can possibly deal and subsequently clear their board. Hell, I've won games against singleton decks where they Zephrys'd a Tirion and I Zephrys'd a Mind Control for the Tirion and they had to spend removal on it they couldn't bear to use, and eventually Chef Nomi rocked their world.

It's super versatile for a combo deck and very few games play exactly the same. Except for the ones where both Whips are bottom 10, but I don't like talking about those.
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Expansion got announced

Descent of Dragons, with Galakrond becoming the big bad (and a hero for the five villain classes)

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23200870/announcing-descent-of-dragons-hearthstone-s-newest-expansion

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Maybe its just the third expansion factor, but a bunch of the revealed cards (https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/cards?set=descent-of-dragons) seem stronger than usual, even in neutral. Dragon synergy seems strong as usual, but even stuff like 7/7/7 taunt/untargetable, 8 mana 4/10, battlecry deal 4 damage to 2 random enemy minions are both strong on commons, and in general on things that are going to be in a tribal discover pool a lot. The breath spells also seem strong when theyre turned on.

2019 World Champion is a female from China. Seeing a woman win any kind of esports title is rare indeed. Good for her.
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I wasn't aware any women were even in the tournament, I had the stream on in the background to get the five packs but didn't actually watch any of it.

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Wedge Antilles posted...

2019 World Champion is a female from China. Seeing a woman win any kind of esports title is rare indeed. Good for her.

Genuinely quite excited about this.

I actually didn't know of her going into this tournament either. (I've been wanting a woman to have a breakout esports performance for a long time in hearthstone, there's several that are decent and whom I've been keeping track of such as Jia and Kat).
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Wedge Antilles posted...

2019 World Champion is a female from China. Seeing a woman win any kind of esports title is rare indeed. Good for her.

That's awesome.

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Play something good

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