Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

So I got to try the new Brawl, and I have to say that the Astral Communion - Mana Wraith Druid deck isn't working as well as I'd expected, losing to a Mirror Druid match because of Turn 10 Deathwing, and a Tempo Mage with plenty of freezes. I did manage to beat a Secret Paladin that kept the coin to Turn 6 in order to play MC-MC-Boom-Tirion, but only because I got Aviana and Chromaggus on the board at the same time and cloned double Avatars of War and double Ironbark Protectors.

Ended up switching to Midrange Hunter and Tempo Mage, which worked very nicely. Sometimes the simple ways are the best.

Pfft. Figures. Just need one more win and I face people who have nothing but legendaries on my weakest two decks (Rogue + Druid).

Boom. Followed by Varian. Followed by Grom. Followed by Sylvanas. Followed by Sneed. Followed by...yeeeah how about no.

Reincarnate Shaman is my favorite shaman. People call it a gimmick, but it's like the recent influx of those inner fire priests; the gimmick isn't actually that bad if you have the deck to back it up, and as it stands the shaman list isn't that bad.

10 days into the season. Rank 13. Am starting to see Handlocks, Dragon Priests and the odd Control Warrior. (And one Control Priest who managed to play Wild Pyro-Coin-PW:S and wipe my early board. They still exist!) Also seeing a fair number of players who keep thanking me for screwing up Face Hunter. !@#$ 'em all. Having said that, this is probably the point where I start switching into a Midrange Hunter.

On the other hand, the last pack I bought gave me Icehowl, Enter the Coliseum, and a Golden Thunder Bluff Valiant, which is pretty nice.

Also: This week, on Jojos Bizarre Adventure:

edited 11th Oct '15 8:23:45 AM by Pyrite

TIL: I have pretty much all the cards to run Midrange Hunter if I wanted to (and ran it in brawl for questing because lazy). Curious what gets run in that deck by people without Dr. Boom.

Since my laptop has been fixed, I can now play Hearthstone. Unlocked all the classes and the arena. Currently 1-1 in arena losing my first game due to the enemy Palidin having 2 Murlok knights and rolling real well with it's inspire. Won the 2nd game with good use of Vielens chosen on a Dark Cultist with another monster on the field. A dang if you do dang if you don't situation.

Greetings: have some obligatory newbie resource links! Newbie-friendly decks - Trump Teaches Hearthstone

I watch Trump daily so I think that's where most of my noobie skills come from. Currently trying to make a dragon priest deck since I like how it plays, there's just a lot of cards to get in order to make it. I might just start with standard priest relaying on Injured Blade Master plus Circle of healing then slowly move it to dragon priest. Or just play a crap tone of area and get my cards that way.

Elle: Everyone knows that the best replacement for Dr. Boom is a War Golem and two Wisps. Such value! Joking aside: I'm thinking maybe Kel'thuzad if you've got a lot of Deathrattle minions - Dr. Boom is mainly in these decks for strength and not necessarily synergy, as far as I know.

edited 11th Oct '15 5:21:01 PM by Pyrite

I just grabbed the first netdeck Google gave me and put K'T and BGH in for Brawl (have no Kezan Mystic at the moment). Wanted fairly fast wins for questing and the priest deck I started with stopped being so good once the agro players fell out of the matchmaking.

edited 11th Oct '15 5:24:51 PM by Elle

That deck is... slightly outdated, being BRM-era, but not that much has changed for Midranged. I think most netdecks only run one UTH these days, and King's Elekk, Bear Traps and Ram Wrangler may or may not be things, but other than that it's a fairly solid core. If you're facing a lot of Secret Paladins, I'm not sure if it's better to run Flare or to trigger secrets and play Hunter's Mark.

Of course, if you're looking for a fast Hunter deck... you could always try Face- *gets shot* I mean, Hybrid Hunter.

edited 11th Oct '15 7:22:18 PM by Pyrite

Went 3-3 in arena. I got screwed in my last match because Shamen has 2 hexes back to on turns 4 and 5 messing up my tempo. He then proceeded to drop big creature after big creature and I had no answers. Either way, for my first arena, I'd say not bad.

I'm not following the World Championship (I don't even know where I could follow it) but I just saw people reacting to one of Trump's plays against Jab that costed him a position in the winner's bracket that... I don't understand what's the big deal about it. The reactions I saw were all like "OMG, how could a pro take the wrong choice when presented with this other obvious and easy choice!?"

I didn't watch the whole game, but the play itself was: Trump, as Druid and at 7 health, with 5 mana left after playing an Azure Drake, having a BGH on the board, Harrison Jones, Force of Nature, Swipe and Hero Power available; Jab, 27-ish health, no cards in hand and Flamewaker on board. The obvious play was to Hero Power to avoid being killed by Fireball + Ping. He chose to play Harrison Jones. Jab drew Spellsliger, into Tracking, finally into Fireball and Flamewaker triggered ability hit Trump's face. With the 2 mana left, Jab could even have pinged Trump had Flamewaker missed, or just attacked with Flamewaker.

I don't know how many cards were left in Jab's deck, nor if he had already spent one of his Fireballs, but I heard he had already played his big threats. I don't think risking the Fireball topdeck was that bad of an idea. It depends on how many cards Jab had left. If anything, I'd say not clearing off the Flamewaker was a bigger mistake, but even then Harrison Jones made him less likely to be hit. However, I'd say either one should commit to damage, risking being hit by a topdecked damaging spell, or commit to staying alive. The problem with the latter is that it'd take so long for Trump to finish Jab off that he might as well as topdeck burst and finish the game. Really, I think Trump chose well, people are just talking about it because RN Jesus decided against his victory. And what a RN Jesus that was!

I've seen people arguing both sides of that; end of the day though, it was very likely a calculated risk (setting up for lethal with the Savage Roar combo sooner). Trading wouldn't have saved him from a straight topdeck; Fireball is 6, hero power is 1.

Also, pro players of all stripes make mistakes all the damn time and people are dumb to expect them to play perfectly all the time.

Edit: Forgot that hero power would have given Trump another 1. But point remains the same: he was playing for the better win chance rather than the better "not losing" chance. Stalling would have increased the statistical probability of a game-ending topdeck.

edited 11th Oct '15 9:16:58 PM by Elle

Trump got screwed by RNG, but his play was the one that gave him the highest chance of winning.

That kind of crap infuriates me. You get these reddit posts with youtube videos showing failures on the part of professional players, and the entire comment section is just 300 comments about how shit the professional is for not making an obvious play (Even when the play wasn't entirely obvious, as above).

It's just so irrational. Single time error just ceases to exist and the being-a-dick train comes to stop in station for the duration of the thread.

/rant

Strifecro was piloting a really odd Hybrid Dragon/Pirate deck fairly recently. The deck throws out all but two spells in favour of the synergies afforded by both the tribes—and creates a deck with more minions than warlock zoo (sans weapons).

edited 11th Oct '15 9:22:15 PM by Brokenlampshade

Isn't this the 2nd time Trump got screwed over by RNG in a major tournament?

I don't know about RNG but the last such clip to make waves was him losing to Patron playing Handlock (which is actually favored by many in that match) with the Patron/Berserker combo knocking down a pair of taunted 9 or 10 health Twilight Drakes along with the lethal.

Edit: I happen to have a copy of Snake Trap and I know some versions of Midrange Hunter run it; what makes it worth running? (Most lists I'm glancing at cut the Explosive Trap for it.)

edited 11th Oct '15 10:02:56 PM by Elle

This isn't getting screwed by RNG or misplaying so much as it's the calculated risk of JAB not being able to find Fireball of the top, so that Trump could actually win on the next turn instead of just not losing on JAB's turn. JAB got the Fireball in a roundabout way, if it was a normal topdeck or if Arcane Intellect was involved not as many people would complain, but the end result would've been the same.

If you want to see a pro player getting screwed by RNG go watch that clip of Thijs where his opponent gets Kel'thuzad from Sneeds Old Shredder, 2 or 3 times. That wasn't in a world championship qualifier, though, but that was truly a game worthy of the E-SPORTS meme.

Snake trap works well when you combine with Bear and Explosive trap, they will have to activate one or the other.

Once they are on the field they work great with a Timber Wolf, Hunter's Mark and Leokk. Which midrange runs.

Additional synergies for Snake Trap: Beast synergy with Kill Command (and maybe Houndmaster / Ram Wrangler), Token synergy with Knife Juggler, much easier to trigger than Explosive Trap if your opponent doesn't exclusively go for the face. A combination of Bear / Snake / Freezing can be very difficult to play around.

Wait, since when did Midrange Hunter run Timber Wolf? If anything, I'd have expected one copy of Dire Wolf Alpha.

edited 11th Oct '15 10:55:08 PM by Pyrite

Timber Wolf runs in variants with more Beast synergy, from what I've seen.

Anyhow, decided I felt like some fairly non-stressful games so put the deck together and fairly quickly climbed from 19 to 17 14 on the ladder. Refering back to the debate about agro decks a few days ago, I think midrange hunter is a much better cheap newbie-friendly deck than face hunter. None of the essential cards are more expensive than Rare, it fares better in most top meta rankings and it's a better example of How-To Hearthstone regarding board control, when to go face and when not, etc, and is fairly basic to pilot.

edited 12th Oct '15 12:20:45 AM by Elle

Like I said, I've been playing Midrange Hunter for the last 18 seasons, and I can't argue with anything you've said - I have no problems with Midrange decks in general! It's the ultra-expensive control decks that I can't stand!

On that note, I finally pushed to Rank 10, but not with Face Hunter - I've been fiddling around with Token Paladin (despite not having Tirion) and Totem Shaman (despite not having Al'Akir). Amusingly enough, at this rank, they suck against Face Hunter (obviously), but I've had reasonable results against the slower Control decks! I think it's because I can put out more minions than they have board clears, as long as I have value-generating cards to spare.

At this point, I think I need to take another look at the reported matchups, because I think a paradigm shift might be in the works for me.

(Also, if the Control Warrior I just played against gets a chance to read this, I'm genuinely sorry about the double Frothing Berserker and the terrible RNG. Didn't deserve to win that game.)

edited 12th Oct '15 6:33:08 AM by Pyrite

If my Secret Pal is beaten by Secret Midrange Pal, does it mean I'm aggro? I was sure I was midrange because I beat aggro.

Any deck can beat any deck. The notional rock-paper-scissors of Aggro>Control>Midrange>Aggro is not set in stone, so to speak.

There are some all-but-guaranteed wins, though, such as Handlock vs. Control Priest and Control Warrior vs Tempo Mage.

edited 12th Oct '15 8:02:24 AM by Fighteer