Board 8 > Hearthstone Discussion Topic: Voyage To The Sunken City - Year of the Hydra

(+) Yeah! (+)

Man, what a shitty launch.

The Path of Arthas mini-set is obscurely placed in the shop. Some people spent down below 2000 gold cause they couldn't find it and are now sad.

Finally able to open my packs. Got...a grand total of 3 MotLK legendaries in like...75 MotLK packs (And one non-MotlK legendary from my standard packs).

Pretty close to bottom basement pity timers. (On paper could have been 2 legendaries, one at 10 packs one at 50, so okay could have been worse, but still a very bad roll).

Well, tried a bunch of DK decks; they were bad. Tried triple blood DK. It seems pretty good, or at least it really bullies aggro and midrange decks.

Yeah triple blood feels like it has nice conditions to survive early pressure with life steal + board clear and then build towards big Sire and Astalor turns.

I've put 14 runs into arena so far and thanks to some decidedly mediocre drafts and/or RNG I've been averaging about 95 gold per pack. Slightly better than simply buying them outright, but far from what I'm hoping. But that all changes now! Just drafted this absolute monster:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/1/5/AAXBdhAAD94r.jpg

4 legendaries, most notably was Jaraxxus. I wasn't offered a lot of good early game but I just started to take bad early game cards after pulling him to just increase the chance of reaching turn 9. The other 3 legendaries aren't quite as good, but there are still some relevant deathrattles that I might be able to land on Devourer of Souls, and I have the option to use the farmer to put 3 copies of either Arfus or Bonemare back into my deck. I just can't get blown off the board early and this deck should more or less be a lock.

Granted I had a run end early when I ran into a paladin that had two Ragnaros Lightlord's in his deck that managed to sustain him when I took him to 1 hp (multiple times). They weren't discovered either, just part of the original deck build. And that was at like 2-2 and cut a promising run short. But this one is gonna be different, now I have the absurd deck!

So... 12 wins? Or will I fall to the gauntlet of DKs at 6+ wins?

Speaking of which, which runes seem best for DKs in Arena? I think I've had the best luck with Frost because it has so much card draw, but Unholy has Common cards like army of the dead that can flip the board quickly.

NEVERMIND

3-3 WITH THE GOD DECK

fml

i started my first DK arena run last night. First game, my opponent coined into the 6/6/6 that makes your first card cost 0 but kills you in three turns. Suffice to say things didn't go well for him, especially since the three cards he ended up playing for free had a combined mana total of, I believe, 7.

Also, if you play a card that repeats battlecries it doesn't reset your three turns. I thought it was obvious but my opponent played it two turns later and my brain instantly went to 'Well, he's doing that for a reason so it must work?'

Getting that card from The Scourge is the worst feeling sometimes. I can't imagine a world where I'd draft or play that card myself.

It's morning again in America!

I have a 6 weapon Blood DK deck in arena at the moment that I think is pretty promising. It has 3x Soulbreaker and 3x Corrupted Ashbringer.

As far as ways to spend corpses I only have 1x Corpse bride and 1x Malignant Horror. I'd have preferred more corpse spenders or some way to reliably buff the Horror before playing it, but I got locked into 2x Blood early and I kept passing on 1xFrost and 1xUnholy cards to try and keep the possibility alive that I'd be offered something like a Soulstealer.

I think if I lock into 2x Frost or 2x Unholy then I wouldn't mind taking 1x Blood to round it out since there are 3 removals to find, but when it's the other way around I don't know what I'd be crazy about from the other runes to lock in the draft.

But it certainly is an interesting element to an arena draft to consider when you pull DK.

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23892222

Denathrius to Infuse (2), Shockspitter to 3 Mana

oof, that feels pretty significant on sire, but I don't know what else they could have done to it.

And I don't know that it changes too much on shockspitter, that's still a bunch of damage over the top with brann.

Those are the exact two nerfs I wanted to see. Fantastic news.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/1/4/AAXBdhAAD-vW.jpg

Good start with this Arena DK deck so far! Saurfang is straight up demoralizing when he comes down on 5. I did have 1 game where I had to stop paying the 5 hp to keep replaying him, but by that point he'd been played 3 or 4 times and had done his job to win the board. Also getting the early blood weapon into Corpse Bride can sometimes just be 12/12 of stats coming down on turn 5. Really happy with the way the draft came together. There are also 2 buffs that can realistically land onto Malignant Horror, but between Neophyte and 2x Bridge and then eventually late game 2x Commander (if needed) I can have some difficulty banking enough corpses to make Malignant go infinite.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/5/AANxMBAAD_OT.png

So this is currently happening....

Nice! What deck(s) are you using?

I've been using mostly my Triple Blood Death Knight homebrew. For at least somewhat unusual cards, it has Lor'themar Theron, Sir Finley, Raid Boss Onyxia, and Enchanters. I got rid of all the usual 1-mana cards besides Heart Strike, so I could try and outvalue all the greedy other decks I was seeing.

Sir Finley is a huge help to draw into your early game-closers: Theron, Mograine, Patchwerk, Mutanus, and Astalor. If you're able to Theron on 7 and Finley on 8 for the buffed guys, that's another crazy tempo play that no one really expects.

I also have been trying some Plague Priest to some pretty good results, but that deck is really delicate. The decisions you have to make every time you pilot it are super anxiety-inducing. The idea is to draw and play Plaguespreader, let it die and infect your opponent's hand, and then keep reviving it with stuff like Bonecaller and Amulet of the Undying, and then activate a billion of them with Xyrella to make your opponent's hand worthless while you outvalue them with your hero power.

I had a game where late in the game, they had 7 cards in hand and I used Identity Theft, and literally only Plaguespreader came up as my option to take from their hand.

Do you ever tech soul seeker for interruption as well? I've seen some people have good luck with that also, especially into combo DH to steal Jace.

I haven't, no. But I also haven't come across a Jace DH that isn't running the scythe that turns him into a spell, either.

Just ran into an arena deck that had FIVE legendary cards in it. Not discovered, IN the deck:
https://hsreplay.net/replay/Y2pS5ZpcDAm24aKf9HBYGN

Managed to scrape out a win, but it was such a grind.

MrSmartGuy posted...

I haven't, no. But I also haven't come across a Jace DH that isn't running the scythe that turns him into a spell, either.

I've seen a bunch of people running the quest version that uses multiple copies of Tradeable minions to cycle more regularly. The Spell damage tradeable works well into the combo turns too.

Man, trying to play Shadow Dragon Thief Priest right now is impossible. So many Death Knights, so many unplayable corpse cards. The only use for them is when I play Theotar I can hopefully give them back.

I know it's apparently obnoxious in standard, but the vast majority of my playtime is playing garbage forty card Reno decks in wild and I'm not sure if I'll keep playing with Rena being nerfed.

Also, lol at Toxfin going to tier six.

A bunch of DK cards got buffed, that class is about to be even more of a dominant menace in Arena. The only balance is

"DK and Paladin cards that generate more cards will appear less frequently" (in arena).

This doesn't affect me because the game rarely offered me any of these anyways. My opponents would have FOUR copies of the 1 mana paladin card that creates a 5/5 and discovers a dragon, and I'd get offered 1 copy across 7 drafts...

But now Malignant Horror and Corpse Bride are going to be more of a knockout blow than they already were.

Rip my decks, Patooter Shooter stands alone.

https://i.imgur.com/VaxArnV.jpg

Not going to be fun trying to cut all of those wild decks back down to 30 cards.

Went to dust all the nerfed cards and realized I basically had none of them, somehow. Two Unleash Fels, two Sinstone Graveyards....... and two golden Relics of Dimensions. So that's two legendaries.

Keeping Renathal since I'm a control main.

Renathal isn't dustable anyway.

Played constructed for the first time in awhile the past couple days (since the nerfs). Hit Diamond fairly easily using Big Spell Mage. We'll see how much spare time I have over the holidays but Legendary might be in the cards this month.

hovered at D10-D9 for a handful of games and then went on a bit of a streak.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/3/3/AAXBdhAAEA5J.jpg

Just need to win 12 more times than I lose from here I think?

My win-streak was finally snuffed out at 15. Thought that the nerf to Renathal would lead to more people running aggro, so I stuck with my Blood Death Knight deck now that it has more good matchups, but I ran into a greedy as hell Shaman deck that I just couldn't deal with. RIP

MrSmartGuy posted...

My win-streak was finally snuffed out at 15. Thought that the nerf to Renathal would lead to more people running aggro, so I stuck with my Blood Death Knight deck now that it has more good matchups, but I ran into a greedy as hell Shaman deck that I just couldn't deal with. RIP

I ran into a weird shaman deck too. It wasn't quite pure control and it had some odd techs like the 7/7 who doubles the stats of minions in deck. Didn't get far enough to find out much more before I flooded the board with 5/6 taunts

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/3/5/AAXBdhAAEBIz.jpg

Didn't take too many extra games, feels good :)

I really hate the mage mirror.

not because I play it badly, but because it feels like their random spells are always better than my random spells and to such a significant margin that it can feel unwinnable.

Just lost two in a row and in the second one my opponent played the random 20 mana worth of spells three times and TWO of them were in dubious positions that could easily have backfired. Nope, all 3 did nearly perfect things.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/8/AANxMBAAEBW6.jpg

Really didn't feel like this was gonna be a very good deck at all, but this shows what I know.

(Not pictured here: Deathwing the Destroyer, which singlehandedly won 6 or 7 of my games)

Must be nice to draw a game winning legendary after drafting it. I had a warlock deck with Jaraxxus not that long ago and it was like my 2nd or 3rd card pulled so I drafted the REST of the deck for early/mid tempo so I could survive long enough to draw into it. Went like 1-3 because it never turned up.

It made up for it by Nobleman literally never copying anything else if Deathwing was in my hand, just for the copy to always be discarded. It hit a 1/7 one of those times.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/2/1/AANxMBAAECLx.jpg

I'm not entirely sure what line this bot could see to win the game from here.