Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

And everyone else hates mech Mage.

I like playing Mech Mage, I hate playing against Mech Mage. I'm seriously considering grinding to legend this month using the deck, but that would take about 14 hours with a 60% winrate from rank 9, apparently.

I've sort of decided to shelve my Priest deck after failing to keep up a reliable win rate. I think I'll grind on Hunter for a bit. At least I'm not using the cancer version with all charge minions.

Hearthstone Patch 7835 appears to be getting set to deploy. Details are still being determined, but the most important changes seem to be improvements to Spectator Mode, including the ability to remain in that mode between matches (meaning you won't have to reconnect for each game your friend plays) and something called "spectator parties", whose properties are unknown.

It sounds like they're adding exactly what the Spectator Mode needs for tournaments. Right now the tournament organizers have to begin spectating the first player, than quickly the second all during the mulligan phase of each game in a match. If you can keep spectating the next game, it becomes much easier to set-up the stream. I wonder if they have listened to the community feedback of not showing the cards in the second players hand upside down when spectating both players, because it would make tournaments easier to stream and watch.

edited 17th Feb '15 1:21:13 PM by iTeruri

Agreed. I'm also curious what "spectator parties" means — by the datamined strings, it seems to be a way that players can self-organize a tournament format where some are playing at any given time and the others are observing the games.

I think I probably made somebody cry just now.

Control priest vs warrior. He's played mostly weapons throughout the game, we both have pretty high health and 4-5 cards in hand (one card I have is cabal shadow priest). I've got a northshire cleric and a stormwind knight on the board; he has no minions, but a 1-durability death's bite. He drops an armorsmith. My turn, I draw acidic swamp ooze. I play cabal shadow priest, take the armorsmith, play the ooze, the death's bite hits all my creatures for 1 and I gain a bunch of armor. The cleric dies at some point, I forget how. Anyway, his turn 9 arrives, he drops Troggzor and cruel taskmaster (killing the ooze). It's my turn 10, I mind control Troggzor, then run my cabal shadow priest and armorsmith into the burly rockjaw trogg; the former survives, the latter doesn't, now I've got 7 armor. I run the stormwind knight into the cruel taskmaster (knight survives), then realize I could have gained 1 more armor by attacking in a different order, and say 'oops'. His board is once again clear, I end turn. He drops Sneed's. I have two holy novas in my hand at this point, so I run Troggzor into Sneed's and then cast holy nova.

The Sneed's drops Kel'Thuzad.

This is suddenly looking really bad for me. I say 'well played' for BM, and, pretty much resigned to my fate at this point, I use 3 of my 5 remaining mana to cast thoughtsteal.

I steal shield slam.

7 spell damage to Kel'Thuzad, then run the stormwind knight into him. I say 'my apologies', opponent insta-concedes.

I have recently discovered the joys of playing combo Druid. I never really liked Druid before, so crafting a Force of Nature and putting a few Savage Roars and more sticky minions (like Piloted Shredder) into my deck has really revitalised the class for me. Nothing like the old Force of Nature + Innervate + double Savage Roar combo for 22 damage from an empty board.

I just played a game against a Paladin where I'm pretty sure he was playing around the combo the whole time, always healing up when he took a minor amount of damage. Eventually I cleared out most of his minions and decided to just throw everything onto the board - Mind Control Tech, Druid of the Claw in charge form and attack with the Loatheb I already had down, just to get him in range of the combo.

Just as our decks ran out, he finally played Equality followed by Tirion. With the Savage Roar combo I was able to get through that taunt and take him down from around 14 health to zero. I probably would have won a lot quicker if I'd kept my second Innervate for the dual Savage Roar instead of using it for a Swipe that I drew from an Ancient of Lore earlier on. Also I misplayed by forgetting to put down Mind Control Tech when he had Sneed's Shredder and a few more juicy targets on the board.

edited 19th Feb '15 1:45:20 PM by JimmyTMalice

Ouch, I can totally feel the pain of that Warrior player. Priests are truly the dirty thieves of Hearthstone, aren't they?

Face Hunter versus Control Hunter: the opponent does what the opponent does and goes for my face, even using Skill Commmand to bring me down to 9 health. It's obvious that he wants to kill me off quite quickly, and probably has the tools necessary to do so. He has an Eaglehorn Bow equipped and just played Knife Juggler + Webspinner. So, basically I'm in a pretty bad spot. Any kind of damage next turn would kill me.

But I have few tricks up my own sleeve. I play Explosive Trap and Snipe, ensuring that the minions currently on the board will die when he tries to attack, and that he has to have a damage source other than a Charge minion to kill me. I have a Savannah Highmane on the board, which I attack my opponent with, along with my own Eaglehorn Bow. I do this because I hope my traps buy me another turn, but I know I won't have much more than that so I'll have to start doing damage myself in order to win next turn.

He first attacks with his minions. They die due to the Explosive Trap. Then he waits a bit, attacks with his Bow and uses his Hero Power. This puts me at 4 health. He then plays Leeroy Jenkins, probably assuming he has won. The battlecry takes a while to summon the whelps, and I'm laughing the whole time. He concedes as soon as Snipe triggers.

If Snipe had been Freezing Trap, I would've still lost if he had played Bluegill Warrior (because he had 6 mana), which is also quite funny to consider.

edited 20th Feb '15 8:33:23 AM by iTeruri

Uh, if he had 6 mana, Bluegill would have cost him the chance to play Leeroy. (Or vice versa.) Leeroy is five mana now, remember?

edited 20th Feb '15 1:45:03 PM by TotemicHero

Whoops, my thinking process was play Bluegill, attack, play Bluegill again. But the Freezing Trap would've prevented the damage from the first attack, so I brainfarted.

Why are there so many Freeze Mages???

That reminds me of the somewhat odd battle I had against a Priest with my Ramp Druid.

Man, Gallywix is an odd duck, especially in a Druid deck. He gave me two Mind Visions and they both pulled out Shadow Word: Pain.

Hyped has taken over the TempoStorm tier list and I like it much better than Magic Amy's version, considering Hyped had so little time to take over the project. He even fired some shots at Amy in a perfect way.

I really like the write up of the entire meta shifting which does a better way of portraying how quickly the meta shifts. The old tier list kinda just pretended that the meta shifts once a week and that there's no reaction to what's happening on the ladder. There's also some very insightful thoughts about tech cards. All in all, I think that the quality of the tier list has gone up a lot now.

edited 21st Feb '15 1:56:28 AM by iTeruri

Beating a Druid at his own game

He conceded immediately after the second image.

Ah, more trolling with Priest decks.

Well I just had the most ridiculous comeback in Hearthstone. I'm a Paladin against a Control Warrior and I'm on two health with an empty board while my opponent has four minions out, including a Shieldmasta and KT, and is at 30 health and 20 armor. After a lucky steal of the Shieldmasta with an MC Tech, three turns later we're both on four health and I have Tirion and some other stuff out while my opponent's board is empty.

Balanced◊

Gosh, Mechwarper is such a fun card! I'd like to meet the person who designed it and shake his neck hand!

I added my opponent afterwards to congratulate him on his skill but he replied in Russian so it took all of the fun out of it.

Is there a better feeling than holding onto Harrison Jones against a Handlock, and drawing 7 cards because of it? Still having the coin and drawing Force of Nature + Savage Roar (Midrange Druid) made for an easy win after that. I feel guilty, though, not because of this Harrison play but because I made an enormous misplay (enemy has Sylvanas and can trade with my only minion, but I play Piloted Shredder as a free steal) which was followed by another misplay where the RNG somehow favored my stupid ass (MCT stealing the Shredder back with the enemy having 5 minions on the board, including a 1/1 taunt token from Sludge Belcher which I should've removed with my Hero Power before playing MCT).

I beat a golden Hunter with a half-assed Hob Lock deck! There should be an achievement for that :D He had Dr Boom and Ragnaros out even.

It manages to get my oponents to 10 life or less consistently. But loses steam later on with only one Hobgoblin in it. I need a second power overwhelming too.

edited 24th Feb '15 10:33:01 AM by googlebot

Yesterday somebody added me after a Hearthstone game just to say I should die from cancer, and I'm pretty proud of that. Apparently I made such an impression on him that he had no other choice but taking his frustration out on me, which made me feel like I accomplished something. I just laughed, because that person probably takes this game way too seriously.

You can enjoy some schadenfreude with the knowledge that his ego is so bound up in winning Hearthstone games that he feels the need to curse at players who beat him.

Hearthstone Patch Notes - 2.2.0.7835

Voltron's new AWESOME animation, if anyone is wondering what's it like.

I once beat someone with a Hunter and they added me just to say "for a huntard youre nice". That was odd.

Thank god Cogmaster has been fixed, because I was annoyed when the attack didn't add correctly after I used Reversing Switch. I thought I was being so damn clever right up until it didn't work.

Now that IS awesome!

edited 25th Feb '15 12:25:16 PM by Ninja2634

I am so glad I have that as my Mech deck finisher now.