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

(+) Yeah! (+)

So this tavern brawl is a thing.

I kind of like it actually, but I tend to like the degenerate ones.

Most people are basically playing crab warfare; Hungry Crab, Golakka Crawler, Dragonslayer, Sacrificial Pact.

There's some 2 drops with pretty impactful aruas. Mechwarper, Underbelly Angler, Ship's Cannon.

3 drops are a little underwhelming mostly--I don't feel like games are won or lost due to Murloc Warleader. Zoobot is probably the best of them; buffs itself so it's like a 4/4 that hands out two +1/+1s.

Shaman has a bunch of strong stuff going on with totem synergy (0 mana savage roar, Thing From Below) and Murloc synergies (Everyfin is Awesome, Underbelly Angler).

But I think of the zooish tempo decks, Warlock has the strongest one. More crabs thanks to sac pact. More ways to draw crabs thanks to the hero power, kobold librarian, and warlock stuff in general.

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However, there are definitely control/combo decks. The one I've played runs almost entirely spells, and then uses Ice Fishing and draw a minion effects to pull out Scargill, Mechwarper, Al'Akir, and SN1P SN4P for the OTK.

This works because Shaman has a ton of cheap board clears. Lightning Storm, Elemental Destruction, Hagatha's Scheme, Volcano, Earthquake. I also added in singletarget removal (lightning bolt, crackle, Likkim, Earth Shock).

I've also heard reports of people doing well with control warlock, presumably leveraging a similarly wide pool of board clears (defile, hellfire, etc) until they can drop Skull of the M'Nari.

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Meanwhile, some people on reddit are hyping up Odd Paladin. I....have tried it, and don't get the hype actually. You have one less crab, no ship's cannon, no mechwarper, so you can fall way behind on turn 2-3, and Paladin really doesn't have odd board clears, so like...you'd better draw a crab to kill that ship's cannon/mechwarper (and you can't even run golakka crawler so you have fewer crabs, although Crystology helps you draw hungry crab). If you can survive a few turns, sure, the hero power will out-value most decks, but Odd Paladin doesn't really feel like it has the tools to come back when way behind on board. (Maybe Odd Pally counters the Scargill control/combo deck, cause they need to spend board clears on your 1/1s? But that matchup is so rare that I've never played against it)
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Fun deck I stumbled upon while doing a play shaman cards quest: Wild Highlander Even Shaman.

https://hsreplay.net/decks/IZr2kFLWI8spXW92ozJpNh/
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I had fun yesterday playing this tavern brawl.
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https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23097373/upcoming-card-balance-changes-august-26-2019

Luna's to 7, Conjurer's Calling to 4, Boom to 9, Extra Arms to 3.

Barnes to 5.
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Was Extra Arms ever actually a problem? I can't say I've kept up with the meta too hard, but I've never thought to myself "this Zoo Priest is just too overwhelming."

The Barnes hit is pretty nice, though. Good to know they haven't completely neglected Wild.
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A Barnes nerf, 3 years+ in the making. At least maybe the wild ladder will finally be less than 20% big priest. I freaking hate that deck.
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Divine Spirit is probably a bigger deal, but Priest doesn't exactly have a lot going for it in the classic set. They apparently weren't interested in giving Priest an actual playable card when they added the new cards to the classic set, so I imagine they'll always try and fix any perceived problem by tackling something else instead.

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Finally got enough gold to complete the dalaran heist and got a gold shield slam from the gold classic pack, finally beat stage 1 on heroic. Infinite unstable evolution with emerald goggles is fun
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CybrMonkey posted...

Fun deck I stumbled upon while doing a play shaman cards quest: Wild Highlander Even Shaman.

https://hsreplay.net/decks/IZr2kFLWI8spXW92ozJpNh/

Whoa, I might have to try that. I've built so many varieties of wild even shaman, so it makes sense that a reno version would work. (I've also seen non-Even Reno shaman popping up, cause hey, Shudderwock copies Reno and Zeph's battlecry).

I've also been thinking of making Wild Even Reno Mage. Wild Even Mage that tried to win off of Coldarra Drake was kind-of a thing for me, but there was a lot of redundancy, a lot of cards I couldn't fit, etc. And nearly all of the highlander trigger cards are even (Kazakus, Reno, Reno2, Zeph). I would have to finally craft Kazakus and Zeph, though. (I really should just craft Zeph, seems like the most interesting card they've made in years).
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If the paladin double costs 5, why does the priest double cost 2, though? Like, I get that doubling attack is more likely to result in an OTK or something similar, and healing is priest's identity, which is hard to do without minions that take damage, but DS has been a part of OTK combos since Hearthstone went live.
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MrSmartGuy posted...

Was Extra Arms ever actually a problem? I can't say I've kept up with the meta too hard, but I've never thought to myself "this Zoo Priest is just too overwhelming."

Yes, Zoo priest was the highest winrate deck at legend, and didn't have any terrible matchups (lowest winrate matchup was like 45%).

This was due to a number of added cards.

The 2 mana 2/3 that heals adjacent minions to full.

The 2 mana 2/6 taunt that deals 3 damage to itself.

The 4 mana 2/7 that sets every minion that enters play to its health.

The 4 mana 3/1 battlecry revive a minion and give it reborn

These all work together rather well. Normally, if you expect to die to Divine Spirit Inner Fire, you can just damage your opponent's stuff, but when they have a full heal card, that's not good enough. Well if you can't damage their stuff, and they can full heal, I guess you need to just kill their Injured Blademasters right? And...sure, seems reasonable, except if they resurrect it with reborn that's really bad. Honestly I can't figure out how I should be playing against this deck, cause almost everything you can do to them they can punish quite hard.

That said, you might be quick to point out that I didn't actually mention "Extra Arms" anywhere in that paragraph and you'd be right. Extra Arms is...just a good card. It's straight up better than Blessing of Kings. It's maybe the 5th best card in the deck at the moment...but that makes it weaker than Power Word Shield for example. I think they wanted the deck to still be a thing, they just wanted it to be weaker.
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azuarc posted...

If the paladin double costs 5, why does the priest double cost 2, though? Like, I get that doubling attack is more likely to result in an OTK or something similar, and healing is priest's identity, which is hard to do without minions that take damage, but DS has been a part of OTK combos since Hearthstone went live.

The paladin double just isn't a good card. like...there's also a 2 mana shaman spell called Windfury, which is usually just a better version of whatever you were trying to do with the paladin double.

TBH, though, I'm not overly upset that they did a round of nerfs and didn't nerf a single Basic or Classic card. Particularly in Priest--like there was a real risk of them doing something like making Northshire Cleric a 2 mana card or something.
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New Wronchi Animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHU1SSF8FbA" data-time="
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OK, crafted Zephrys specifically to try out wild Even Reno Shaman.

So far I've drawn him once, played him on turn 3 cause I was against a Big Priest and had no other 2 drops. Got a Flame Imp and went face. Honestly he probably did win me that game >_>

Otherwise, made some substitutions compared to the list I saw.

I don't have Vessina, so replaced that with Thunderhead. I think Aya is pretty borderline normally, so when she's only accompanied by two Jade cards I cut her. I decided I wanted a corpsetaker, which meant I needed Al'Akir and Walking Fountain. The list I saw was running Splitting Axe, cut that. With Aya as my second cut I made a third cut (Rag: I decided 3 8-drops was enough, and decided to go Lich King over him).

Was a little skeptical of the Whirling Zap-o-matic I saw in the list I copied, but it's actually won me a lot of games. It is unironically really good against Big Priest >_> WHEEEEEEEEEEE
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I ran two Zapo's in my regular Even Shaman before Uldum, and they were surprisingly excellent even back then.
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I remember quite a few turn 4 lethals from whirling zap o matic when I played Mech Shaman

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Does Big Priest just have a hard time with 3-attack minions? I honestly never thought about that.
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Mother fucking "end turn" should have a CONFIRMATION dialog on mobile. The ease with which you can lose a game on mobile because a ghost touch screen input is absurd.
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You have (10) Unspent Mana and (5) minions that still have the option to attack, are you sure to want to end your turn?

[Yes]
[Fuck No!]

It's that easy.
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azuarc posted...

Does Big Priest just have a hard time with 3-attack minions? I honestly never thought about that.

I mean, they often run shadow word pain, and shadow visions that lets them find shadow word pain.

Just...whirling Zap-o-matic is a lot better than Totem Golem against that. If they kill it, you're not overloaded. If they don't kill it, you hit them in the face way harder. It's a win-win.
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So apparently Zephrys is getting more AI fixes

https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/cusd9j/news_new_zephyrs_fixes_coming_next_monday_august/

He's getting way smarter on the Weapon Removal. Give him 2 mana leftover and the opponent has a weapon, he'll probably offer you Acidic Swamp Ooze now;

The Weapon Removal was supposed to work that way already, there were just bugs involved. He knows that he should get rid of 0 attack weapons now;

There were a bunch of cards that were not offered in the appropriate situation, like Holy Fire, Avenging Wrath, Bloodsail Corsair;

There's quite a few cards that are fixed that will get offered now when the time is right. They still won't be super common;

Zephrys is a little bit more interested in board control now.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Mother fucking "end turn" should have a CONFIRMATION dialog on mobile. The ease with which you can lose a game on mobile because a ghost touch screen input is absurd.

I play 90% of my games on mobile and have never once ended a turn by mistake. Are you playing on auto pilot?

Nope. But sometimes when I'm clicking the board to put my hand down it will register an input on the "end turn" side of the screen. It probably only happens one out of every fifty games but it is infuriating.

And you don't need to make a prompt annoying. If your end turn button is green because you don't have any available attacks or playable cards then by all means don't give an "are you sure" box. But when all your mana is unspent and all your attacks are unused, maybe it's with checking to make sure you legitimately wanted to end your turn.
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Specifically when there are unused attacks with no taunts and no secrets, I'm pretty ok with End Turn having a warning in that case.

Yeah, there are reasons why you might not attack even in these situations, like you're playing against quest priest and don't want to help them progress their quest so you're leaving them at 30, or you're in wild and you know your opponent is playing Molten Giants. Still, if you haven't used attacks with no obvious on-board reason for not using attacks like a taunt or a secret, that's probably way more likely to be a misclick than actually playing around something.
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I just realized I had a golden Luna's Pocket Galaxy.

Heh heh I'm in the dust now

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Wow nice.

I had exactly two conjurer's callings, and exactly two extra arms. I don't think I disenchanted my extras or anything, just lowrolled on both of those, so not getting a ton of dust. (Also none of the legendaries except Barnes).
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Fuck yeah, just had the most satisfying ending with Even Reno Mage against a Secret Burn Mage. He had Aluneth going and was going through his cards pretty quickly. I had him down to 2 HP, but he had 3 Secrets up, one of which was surely Ice Block, and 3 minions on the board, so whatever hand he had, I was pretty surely dead next turn.

I use Flamecannon to test for Counterspell (which there was), Conjuror's Calling his Mad Scientist, pulling a secret out of his deck to bring him down to 2 cards, Research Project him to then run his deck empty and then ping his face with 2 mana left to put him to 1HP and fatigue kills him.
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Messed around a little bit with Wild SoU Quest Warrior.

The idea being that in wild you have access to N'Zoth's First Mate, and Forge of Souls, so it's actually reasonable to attack 5 times, complete the quest, and still have weapons left over to trigger the hero power reset every turn.

It's...ok. Doesn't seem to beat like...Mech'a'thun warlock, but seems to be doing better than expected against aggro.
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Topped out at rank 3 this month playing mostly Hunter. Gonna pick a fun deck to hit legend with next month
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So, what's the best, or at least most fun, quest deck out there you can run Reno style? I crafted Zephrys, but that's not enough for me by itself so I need to pair it with a quest.

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Off the top of my head Id think Druid or rogue would be the easiest.

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What class would be best suited for a control + fatigue deck? Probably rogue as well because you can replay Archivist if necessary?
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Camden posted...

So, what's the best, or at least most fun, quest deck out there you can run Reno style? I crafted Zephrys, but that's not enough for me by itself so I need to pair it with a quest.

Quest Druid sometimes runs Zephrys, but they still use duplicates in those decks, they just have a lot of card draw.

Quest Shaman is probably the one you want here. Something like this:

https://hsreplay.net/decks/3sHAbLpHB1wu9rXhoQVQXf/
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Wow you lost a 1/30? That's basically like winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. Have you lined up many talk show appearances to discuss this statistical anomaly?

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New post that I can't see. It appears someone switched to an alt to say something they were unwilling to say on their main.

Edit:. Or maybe just a deleted post. All the alts I have on ignore don't seem to have logged in recently.

Edit edit:. Btw it wasn't even a 1/30, it was a 1/15. I forgot that their were 2/6 odds on the first pull.
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Holy shit did they actually nerf that rogue lifesteal weapon card? I'm gonna fuck up so many god damn rogues now

Seginustemple posted...

Holy s*** did they actually nerf that rogue lifesteal weapon card?

Leeching Poison? That was nerfed sometime last year, yeah.
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

New post that I can't see. It appears someone switched to an alt to say something they were unwilling to say on their main.

It's ulti's main; he posted saying he was blocking you, which I guess makes you unable to see his posts? Didn't know it worked that way, but I guess that makes sense.

Anyway, been messing around with quest hunter. Saw that a quest hunter list had one of the highest winrates on hsreplay, this deck:

https://hsreplay.net/decks/zS7slOPgQTNjjhWIvrqLKf/

I didn't feel like crafting Halazzi so...I didn't. The sensible thing to do would be to replace him with something that can do something similar, refill my hand like a second cult master. But I just replaced it with a Timber Wolf for now (highest winrate of cards that were not already 2-ofs in the stats).

Deck's been winning a lot. Which...I kind-of expected. winrate stats suggested its bad matchups were like...Control Warrior, Mage, and a few aggro decks that are too fast for it. Control Warrior and Mage are pretty rare post-nerfs, and this version is teched pretty anti-aggro, with double bone wraiths and zilliax and Sea Giants and stuff. (Also, there's nothing like going Unleash the Hounds+Timber Wolf+Sea Giant+Revenge of the Wild to really thoroughly ruin aggro's day).
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metroid composite posted...

It's ulti's main; he posted saying he was blocking you, which I guess makes you unable to see his posts? Didn't know it worked that way, but I guess that makes sense.

Ah, that makes sense too. I didn't realize he would be that wounded by me pointing out that his 'omg rng is awful' example was more likely to happen than your run off the mill nat 20 in DnD. Shrug.

.

I had really good luck with my own quest hunter lists last month. I ran both a Highlander and dupe version of the list. I'll have to check that list out and see what a better deck builder could put together.
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On the bright side, this means you just have to make the next topic and then Ulti won't be able to post in it.
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Sooo I want to try out Quest Druid. When looking at the usual decks, the three legendaries I don't have are

The Quest
Flobbidinous Floop
King Phaoris

Obviously the quest is mandatory, but what about the other two? I DO have enough dust to make all of them, I'm just not sure I want to spend it all on one deck like this.

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Floop is a pretty awesome card, extremely versatile since you can make it an extra surger, another Anubisath, another Elise or Nomi, etc...

Phaoris is... good but probably more for a Warrior matchup where they are forced to use AOE to deal with it and then you kill them with Nomi.
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Ehh...Nomi is something you tech for the Warrior matchup, Pharosis is probably just something you want. I opened the quest so I made some attempts with it at launch, and I just...ran out of gas all the time. Like...it didn't have the late game against just about any deck with a serious late game, not just warrior.

Pharosis seems like something that would fix the running out of gas problem.

(The most popular version that doesn't run Pharosis runs Malygos, and the next two most popular lists after that both run Chef Nomi. So like...it doesn't *need* to be Pharosis specifically, but you need an endgame card).
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