Hearthstone [IRC Channel #Skillstone]

[Acklow]

I've been having fun with this deck. Not that it works against aggro or anything, but it's still a fun deck to play.

Resurrect is purely there to retain more Doomsayers for boardclear and/or bringing back a Shade early on if I wanna steal more cards >:3

Obv you do not Nzoth until after Chillmaw/Deathwing have been dropped (but you can drop it sooner if you are pressured).

 

[Omega-Xis]

despite what Pugilist is saying, and at this point he's a troll with nothing to contribute (rank 5 saying "he doesn't want to get legend fucking "lol").I've been playing a lot of Druid lately (one of the two classes that I have that are not level 60 and are not golden), and it's the only class I figure that is 100% dominant on opening hand. While having a Living Roots, Wild Growth, or Innervate is almost necessary to win in match-ups it is also possible to win without them.

I've been playing a ton of the Druid and I do really love how in command it feels and how one card can really make a hand that is completely unappealing suddenly insane. No other deck can have a hand full of 4s and draw one card that makes you able to play them immediately (or in a turn with Wild Growth).

The list I've been using is Sjow's Brokeback list, although in place of the Yogg I have a second AoW which is a list he was using in top 10 Legend on the EU ladder. If I start running into more long game lists (previously had just been running into a lot of Hunter/Shaman) with N'Zoth then I might try out StrifeCro's list that's a tad more token oriented with one copy of Soul of the Forest. Getting that card off of Raven Idol has won me games on its own when I have a good Teacher board, so I think having a copy itself in the deck might be beneficial. It's hard for even some control decks to push through a slew of large minions, Onyxia, and a Soul of the Forest board.

I think the one thing I've really learned from playing the list is having the mentality of sticking to my game plan, to be true to the theme. It might be enticing to pass up ramping to Wrath that Tunnel Trogg, but you bet your ass I'm gonna Wild Growth Turn 2 into my Mire Keeper Turn 3 to have 6 mana when he's lagging behind. Once I have more flexibility, I can take care of his board efficiently and then start dropping Ancient of Wars to seal out the game.

 

[Mr.E]

Turn 1-2 Wild Growth is literally always correct because it buys you so much future tempo. Pay two mana upfront, earn up to seven mana later. Even very aggressive starts hardly kill by T6 if you want to question the game length being long enough to make up for it.

Going second I might T1 Coin Growth but that depends on the rest of your hand and the matchup. Mostly Coin Growth just lets you squeeze in the extra Hero Power on Turn 2 to bump x/1 guys, but keeping The Coin is more flexible and generally useful; a turn early spell power Swipe or big taunt (including Cenarius) is more likely to win you the game than taking two less damage early by bumping an Argent Squire off the table ASAP. I don't like T1 Growth in most cases since it's just "I actually went first, except the opponent had to mulligan with one less card of information" whereas saving The Coin enables otherwise impossible power plays. (Going first with The Coin? Sign me up!) Of course, if you have Living Roots then it's not even a question, you just use that T1 if needed.

T3-T4 Mire Keeper ramp vs dude is a more interesting question against aggro decks, I think, because the ramp is buying you less tempo at that point and the extra body is notable. A combined 5/5 for four mana is strong, and being split across two bodies probably does more for you in general than having an actual 5/5 because it can remove two dudes faster and is less susceptible to single-target removal (e.g. for opponents hellbelt on protecting a T1 Skill Trogg or Skill Wyrm). But ramping also still opens up those midgame power plays faster that may be necessary to stabilize and win, or at least makes a heavy draw sequence less clunky that might otherwise have lost you the game.

 

[Ranger Mike]

Hey so what do you guys think of the whole discard lock theme? I personally feel like while it's cool flavor wise it just isn't practical. Like it seminegates the whole issue of losing card advantage with life tap but not being able to consistently discard the fist of jaraxxus and the silverware golem consistently when you ideally, even as zoo, want to have card advantage which lowers the the consistency of being able to discard the right cards. You might just put the cards in zoo but zoo is super tight in terms of flexible cards in the deck but yeah it just seems kind of eh. Like a deck whose purpose is to lose card advantage for a mild reward seems pretty shitty.
Also holy shit people are blowing the 1 mana 2/2 out of proportion it's a solid card but I wouldn't play it outside of beast Druid.

 

[Matthew]

The only card that actually scares me is Silverware Golem or whatever ( the 3/3 summon upon discard). It removes the negative of Doomguard and Soulfire to read: 5 mana 5/7 with charge summon a 3/3 or deal 4 damage summon a 3/3 for 1 mana. Both of those are fucking gross

 

[SgtWoodsy]

Discard Warlock might be the one time Succubus will ever see play. Turn 2 4/3 and 3/3 is stupid (although removing the downside from Soulfire and Doomguard is also very good)

 

[Ranger Mike]

Holy shit how is this Druid portal card ok like yea you can get corrupted seer by so many cards that are bad eg like fizzle bang which are at least average when they restore 6 and you can also get fucking highmane like wow this card seems crazy good although it might just be too much variance I suppose. Also that warrior card seems pretty interesting I suppose it doesn't look too good next to multi shot or cleave but the whole non random thing is huge I feel. And yeah while t2 succubus into the 3/3 is insane I feel like t just isn't consistent enough. Also holy FishMoley Barnes is crazy in a deck akin to the old malygos shaman that ran like maly and emperor as ye only minions albeit it doesn't have ancestors call but still. Like wow you compare it to gnomish experimentor and it's just so good like it takes so much of what makes shadow caster hard to play but improves upon it. While it's hard to see a world where Barnes is consistent it will be discovered and will be disgusting. Also love these legends in the sense that they are not going into every deck, but the decks they do go into they are hands down the best card in the deck. Also Medivh is super hard to evaluate but I'm inclined to say in a more spell based control paladin it's ok although even then it's a hella greedy deck. Like you want to play higher cost spell which is kind of pointless because a lot of the spells you play are efficient removal but there's some sort of deck that Medivh is great in. Also we should host a review thing or something on your twitch Matthew.

 

[SgtWoodsy]

So I've been thinking: why exactly do we continue to play Hearthstone?

Have we all just sunk too much time or money (or both) or are there other reasons?

 

[Matthew]

Personally I really just like the game. I've developed a huge meta understanding and what is good is what is not (trading or going face). And these are things that interest me in constructed as it's not always clear unless you have a game plan.

All decks I play now are three turn figures against my opponent's mulligan, how he's responded, and if I can play around cards I think he has. The occasional top deck does not bother me anymore. If he top decked an answer my line of play was always correct and getting out of that draw is my new focus.

Maybe I'm finally really good at a video game and that gives me pride, but it would never be a time or money sink.

In response to do something on my twitch my nicotine addiction and wonky work schedule makes shit like live streaming hard as I'd never have a consistent schedule (factor grad classes and all that in too). I'd really love to stream more but it's incredibly constrictive.

Edit: SgtWoodsy

 

[Cody2G]

So I've been thinking: why exactly do we continue to play Hearthstone?

Have we all just sunk too much time or money (or both) or are there other reasons?

I assume everyone will have different answers to the question you posed but, I reckon that if you don't enjoy playing a particular game, you should quit. Flat out, plain and simple, after all, games are meant for enjoyment at their core.

Hearthstone isn't the only TCG/CCG I've ever played, but it's the one that has stuck with me until now, it's got a really good sense of accomplishment as you go through the ranks and there hasn't been any extremely broken decks in my opinion (people will debate with me about decks like Patron Warrior despite it's attrocious Win %) as opposed to decks that have come about in MTG, etc.

I was playing Hearthstone since the beta and I will be playing it for the foreseeable future.

Discard Warlock might be the one time Succubus will ever see play. Turn 2 4/3 and 3/3 is stupid (although removing the downside from Soulfire and Doomguard is also very good)

Unless more support gets released in this expansion, Discard Warlock will not be seen for quite a while, and for it to work requires a amazing hand early game to get the play you said. Will only add small tempo swings if you manage to discard it via the hero power or late game Doomguard etc. Why run it when you can just play Zoo, the proven strategy?

 

[SgtWoodsy]

Hey at least Priest has its own 7/7 for 4 mana (Eerie Statue) plus 2 overload!

Hide

Hahahahah fuck off Blizzard Purify is garbage

And hey Beast Druid got a great card in Menagerie Warden.

 

[remlabmez]

I like hearthstone because I enjoy pay2win mobile games Kappa. Also Matthew you should be playing poker instead of hearthstone. You have a good line of thinking about having a good line of play instead of always being results oriented

 

[Mr.E]

Zoomed up to four stars rank 6 today. Watched genny (matthew) play briefly, went back to playing after he left. Forgot how to draw cards in a remotely competent order as all my incredibly skilled opponents were given the ability to choose their draws and have nearly fallen back down to rank 9 now.

Alas, I must work the weekend so eventually I'm going to have to stop here and accept the bullshit. Oh wait nope, just lost to a Priest steal deck, turns out a four-mana 5/8 (without overload) is pretty good. On, nope, just hit Rank 9 after all because I lost to Argent Squire double Cold Blood skill Rogue as I draw literally no removal the entire game (even though I had T2 Growth and double Innervate, sadly I had only big guys and not token-makers and literally no removal).

Maybe Discardlock is a thing but I doubt it will ever be that good without being able to choose. The cards aren't good enough to deal with the RNG. Succubus has never been good because, while strong for a two-drop, it trades down too easily. Silverware Golem is bad if you don't discard it. Soulfire is still okay but Librarian and Tiny Knight are effectively vanilla. It'll be inconsistently good and I just don't think on average it's gonna be better than using cards that are good all the time.

Edit: Just Zooed my way back to Rank 6 in the span of 30 minutes before forcing myself to go to bed and get five hours of sleep before my three days of 12-hour shifts. Skill game indeed.

Edit 2: I lied, Druid god drew me and I didn't win that game. But I guess I'm close enough. Wait, no, had to lose to the same garbshit warrior thrice in a row because man I wish when I played Dragon Warrior months ago I just chose my draws every game.

How do my opponents just keep having the fucking nuts every single game? How the fuck can *I* have Turn 1-2 Wild Growth absolutely fucking 100% of the time? How can I curve perfectly so consistently in the face of all reasonable statistics?

 

[Omega-Xis]

Zoomed up to four stars rank 6 today. Watched genny (matthew) play briefly, went back to playing after he left. Forgot how to draw cards in a remotely competent order as all my incredibly skilled opponents were given the ability to choose their draws and have nearly fallen back down to rank 9 now.

Alas, I must work the weekend so eventually I'm going to have to stop here and accept the bullshit. Oh wait nope, just lost to a Priest steal deck, turns out a four-mana 5/8 (without overload) is pretty good. On, nope, just hit Rank 9 after all because I lost to Argent Squire double Cold Blood skill Rogue as I draw literally no removal the entire game (even though I had T2 Growth and double Innervate, sadly I had only big guys and not token-makers and literally no removal).

Maybe Discardlock is a thing but I doubt it will ever be that good without being able to choose. The cards aren't good enough to deal with the RNG. Succubus has never been good because, while strong for a two-drop, it trades down too easily. Silverware Golem is bad if you don't discard it. Soulfire is still okay but Librarian and Tiny Knight are effectively vanilla. It'll be inconsistently good and I just don't think on average it's gonna be better than using cards that are good all the time.

Edit: Just Zooed my way back to Rank 6 in the span of 30 minutes before forcing myself to go to bed and get five hours of sleep before my three days of 12-hour shifts. Skill game indeed.

Edit 2: I lied, Druid god drew me and I didn't win that game. But I guess I'm close enough. Wait, no, had to lose to the same garbshit warrior thrice in a row because man I wish when I played Dragon Warrior months ago I just chose my draws every game.

How do my opponents just keep having the fucking nuts every single game? How the fuck can *I* have Turn 1-2 Wild Growth absolutely fucking 100% of the time? How can I curve perfectly so consistently in the face of all reasonable statistics?

All of the italics was basically my rant to people the other day. I was almost Rank 7, then consistently drew like shit, managed to (almost) work my way back to Rank 9, and then every time I would run into Zoo or Face Shaman, generally the last two things I want to face as Ramp.

Took Innervate off of Raven Idol since it was the best spell I was offered.

^That was against Aggro Rogue. Managed to get damn good topdecks EVERY turn but would've easily lost without that. Don't understand why the mulls always tend to be shit but they do for me for some reason. I feel the pain, Mr. E :(

 

[Ranger Mike]

Whoever decided Purify should be a card definitely never played any hearthstone, screw him. Blizzard not giving any fuck about priest balance really remind me about WoW arena balance where it was obvious you were considered a second zone citizen compared to PvE or even battlegrounds, even though they kept saying it wasn't the case. Only a few changes would help, but they still don't even want to bother. Well I don't care, I play mainly constructed now, but still, blizzard never changes. Kappa memes aside like priest has quite a bit of potential with cards like resurrect and the interesting cars they have in their inventory like don't get me wrong it's probably still the worst class if not be a considerable margin but has potential I feel.

 

[Matthew]

Overall I'm very impressed with this Adventure's caliber of cards. Team 5 might finally understand what it takes to create interesting cards that require you to build a deck around them. While Shaman didn't get anything new to it, and Priest might have gotten less which is hilarious, cards like Moat Lurker and Barnes have me really pumped for another take at DR Paladin (maybe with some dragons thrown in)

 

[Ary]

With Purify we wanted to make a build-around card you know? A card that would make players look at their collections in a whole new way, to inspire them to try to make something new and exciting!

 

[Mr.E]

I try to save ranting when I still have actual useful things to post at least (though I've been unsuccessful at that once or twice before). But I'm preeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty goooooooooood suuuuuuuuure if I started actively keeping stats it would look a lot like my League of Legend stats, where I can safely say roughly 2/3 of the time a disconnect/AFK/ragequit forces a free loss on someone it's usually on my team. (Statistically it should be 50/50, or actually 44% discounting myself.)

Dragon Paladin gonna be legit though with Muster for Dragons plus Book Wyrm. Dragon Consort has always been nuts, it just needed a little extra support.

 

[astroboy]

new druid 6 drop looks fucking stupid. turn 5 stranglethorn into warden, copy the tiger. you basically just played a ten drop on turn 6 with virtually no counterplay. fun and competitive

e: cloaked huntress and piloted grandmother seem like pretty powerful cards, seem like they could be huge players in midrange. looking forward to testing them in a hybrid-hunter deck ive been thinking about

 

[Matthew]

Hey actually decided to stream for tonight come say hi

twitch.tv/boygenny

edit:

Steam is over four hours climbed from rank 7 to rank 3 then capped at rank three and stopped due to drinking thanks

https://www.twitch.tv/boygenny/v/82362352
edit 2:

I might mention it's rank 7 to 3 with zero losses until I have had too many beers to play objectively!

edit 3:

yes I think I missed lethal about two (three?) times.

 

[Mr.E]

I try to save ranting when I still have actual useful things to post at least

Playing Zoo, two straight games with no one-drop in a deck where half the deck is one-drops. Lose to Firebat on stream in the first game, while he also had opening have Skill Axe + Brawl.

Switch to Tempo Mage, vs Druid. Turn 2 Wild Growth (literally 100% of the time) into Turn 3 Ancient of War. Still T4 Violet Teacher into T5 Teacher + Living Roots (on my Sorcerer's Apprentice), T6 Raven Idol lethal. Me? Oh I just had no one-drop. I had no two-drop. I had to Arcane Intellect on Turns 3 and 4. I had nothing.

I wish I could play games with argent horserider, huge toad, argent commander druid and win games by casting mark of yshaarj on my argent horserider and killing nova doomsayer with one card in hand and it's living roots + topdeck raven idol for starfire

oh look just lost again because that garbage heal shaman shit oh I'm playing freeze I autolose to it np

hey look I'm back to druid hey look no turn ramp opener again turn 1 draw yogg, hey look my opponent is camel hunter with a perfect 1-2-3 curve, damn shoulda learned to play turn 2 wild growth 100% of the time like every other druid on the planet

hey look I'm every warrior playing five tribes in my deck watch me have a perfect curve and tribal synergy for every card every game

DON'T MIND ME JUST BACK TO RANK 9 AS YOGG DRAWS MY OPPONENTS TWO CARDS TO MY ZERO CARDS AND FAILS TO KILL MY OPPONENT'S LARGEST MINION AND ALSO KILLING ITSELF AS PER USUAL LOL

don't mind me just baiting the AoE oh wait they had both copies of their aoe on turn fucking 6 every fucking game

game of skill LUL holy fuck I am BEYOND sick of this game lately, if you think this game takes a shred of fucking skill to be successful you're literally more retarded than whoever designed Purify

 

[Matthew]

I-I'm still certain this game takes skill

 

[ryan]

Purify is garbage but everyone winning about it is silly. Priest literally needs broken cards to be good with their classic and basic cards. Until Blizzard revisits those, Priest will always be either complete garbage or great. All it was during GvG era was playable garbage.

 

[Matthew]

Purify is garbage but everyone winning about it is silly. Priest literally needs broken cards to be good with their classic and basic cards. Until Blizzard revisits those, Priest will always be either complete garbage or great. All it was during GvG era was playable garbage.

Why does everyone actually forget Priest was one of the most popular decks in the LOE era? It beat Riddlerdin, it beat Control Warrior, it beat a ton of shit. It lost to Druid but so did everything when it hit the magic 14 (or 22-24) damage combo. It actually did WELL against Freeze Mage unless it was an experienced Freeze who just Emp'd his burn for an OTK instead of relying on Alex.

Priest has shined, it wasn't the flashiest of decks, it wasn't razzle-fucking-dazzle let me show me cards off. It was patient and it paid off. For people to say Priest got shafted they are correct, 100%, but don't tell me that Priest is the shunned class. I can remember three metagames where as a Paladin and Shaman player my cards were 100% worse than everything else that was being played.

 

[ryan]

but even in those days, somehow priest saw very little play in tournaments. priest hasn't been a serious contender since 8 mana mind control.

like don't get me wrong, purify is garbage and should never have been printed in any class. but when priest is doing well, everyone bitches about 600 turn games, constant board wipes, getting their shit stolen, etc. like i really wish they'd just fix the core cards. wouldn't be too shocked if it happened at next rotation; everyone is bitching and there's no way that blizzard doesn't see both that and the root cause.