Hearthstone [IRC Channel #Skillstone]

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
It's here guys.

Welcome to Heroic Tavern Brawl, where Standard gets the Arena treatment and may the best regular competitive player win. AKA Beta Tournament Mode with a one thousand golderino buy-in

For my own reference as much as anyone else's, expected rewards:

35% win rate: 23.5% chance for 3+ wins (step up in rewards), 5.6% chance for 5+ wins (break-even), .2% chance for 9+ wins (big boy rewards).
40% win rate: 31.7% chance for 3+ wins, 9.6% chance for 5+ wins, .6% chance for 9+ wins.
45% win rate: 40.7% chance for 3+ wins, 15.3% chance for 5+ wins, 1.5% chance for 9+ wins.
50% win rate: 50.0% chance for 3+ wins, 22.7% chance for 5+ wins, 3.3% chance for 9+ wins.
55% win rate: 59.3% chance for 3+ wins, 31.6% chance for 5+ wins, 6.5% chance for 9+ wins.
60% win rate: 68.3% chance for 3+ wins, 42.0% chance for 5+ wins, 11.9% chance for 9+ wins.
*approximate win rate needed for even odds at beating the house: 63.5884%
65% win rate: 76.5% chance for 3+ wins, 53.2% chance for 5+ wins, 20.0% chance for 9+ wins.
70% win rate: 83.7% chance for 3+ wins, 64.7% chance for 5+ wins, 31.3% chance for 9+ wins.

<35% win rate: lol
>70% win rate: stop your fuckin lyin

One 9-win run will pay for roughly 2.4 runs. One 10-win will pay for four. One 11-win run will pay for 5.76 runs. One 12-win run is wurf it if you can do it once out of twelve tries. (Some digging on reddit found me an official comment that says the current limit is five attempts max.)

According to more reddit digging because it's math I don't care about, the average run will net a player ~700 dust (gold), which means an average run roughly breaks even on value if paying the entry fee in $$$real money$$$ but loses ~300g in gold.

Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
So far it seems like the first couple wins are gimmes against scrub decks/players, and with three wins to "okayness" and a bit over four to break-even, I might do my full allotment of five tries after all. Get in on the action quick before the newbies stop queueing, yo.

Phoenix just went 12-1 with face secret hunter (grats nignog). Queued into a fucking Rogue at 11 wins that rolled over so hard she demeaning-comment-here. Never seen a more free win in my life.

I just went 2-3 with essentially the same deck because two tempo mages and a shaman drew and RNGed literally 100% perfect against me three straight games. Hearthstone is a skill-based game.

And with that I am finished: 3, 4, 5 (from 5-0 to 5-3 too, nice RNG), 4, 2 wins. Exciting stuff, wasted my entire night on breaking even. Could've just bought some damn packs with my gold and not wasted my time. :/ At least it was easier to make value than expected or I would've just trusted the stats and only played one Brawl for amusement's sake. But, you know, fish wanting to buy in too. oh nice didn't pull a single legendary even...
 
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TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
I did one went 3-3, won 4 packs and 180 gold. Should've trusted myself a while ago when I first heard of it saying I'm not good enough to make it worth lol.

Played my current favorite control warrior variant with Harrison Jones, Baron Geddon, Fool's Bane, and Soggoth the Slitherer to fk over shamans. The deck was solid but I found two maly druids and lost a 50-50 brawl that would have won me the game against one and got dumpstered by the other. Then finally got brought down by the nastiest deathrattle hunter ever. Used the forlorn stalker turn 3 into infested wolf and two huge toads the next turn. Just didn't have the removal to deal with it.

I know I made a bunch of misplays too in those losses which stings a bit more but oh well. Not entirely true I played the first Druid game about as well as I could. I outplayed him into being able to win, had bad luck finding removal early but was able to punish an early maly and was about to completely stabilize and win through fatigue when he had only 3 cards left. Just needed to brawl away his spell damage on board to avoid swipe moonfire hero power minion attack lethal. I was at 9 he had the living roots tokens bloodmage thalnos azure drake with swipe moonfire and nourish in hand with no cards left in deck. Ugh. Hurts to think about ;_; no justice.
 
So far it seems like the first couple wins are gimmes against scrub decks/players, and with three wins to "okayness" and a bit over four to break-even, I might do my full allotment of five tries after all. Get in on the action quick before the newbies stop queueing, yo.

Phoenix just went 12-1 with face secret hunter. Queued into a fucking Rogue at 11 wins that rolled over so hard she demeaning-comment-here. Never seen a more free win in my life.

I just went 2-3 with essentially the same deck because two tempo mages and a shaman drew and RNGed literally 100% perfect against me three straight games. Hearthstone is a skill-based game.

And with that I am finished: 3, 4, 5 (from 5-0 to 5-3 too, nice RNG), 4, 2 wins. Exciting stuff, wasted my entire night on breaking even. Could've just bought some damn packs with my gold and not wasted my time. :/ At least it was easier to make value than expected or I would've just trusted the stats and only played one Brawl for amusement's sake. But, you know, fish wanting to buy in too. oh nice didn't pull a single legendary even...
☑ “This guy's deck is CRAZY!” ☑ “My deck can't win against a deck like that” ☑ "He NEEDED precisely those two cards to win" ☑ “He topdecked the only card that could beat me” ☑ "He had the perfect cards" ☑ “There was nothing I could do” ☑ “I played that perfectly"
 

Matthew

I love weather; Sun for days
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
It's early in the season (oh no, really?) and I like where this meta is headed but we'll see if it's going to continue that route. Decklists are unrefined and aggro always dominates during the start of a season. Pirate Warrior gained the most insane opening in the game (First Mate into Patches coin Small Time) but aside from that it's still a deck that will run out of steam as soon as it loses board or trades awkwardly into a Taunt. Jade Druid is a bad deck and will go away much like C'thun Druid did back during WotOG. It's only good against control and, hint, this isn't going to be a control meta.

Dragon Priest is solid and there are some cool Paladin lists running around but my main loves so far are Jade Rogue and Shaman. Shaman has been climbing better for me since it's still fucking Shaman, nothing has gotten worse in the list and a few cool tweaks have been crushing the ladder for me.



It basically is the old Shaman list with Jade thrown in, but it gives a secondary win-condition that isn't based around holding and maintain board. With the additions of Jade Claws over Spirit Claws means that Tunnel Trogg can actually find its way back into the deck, and to counter aggro we get our Wolves back over Horseriders. It hurt to cut the Fire Elemental but there is actually no room for it hilariously.

I feel like everyone has Jade in their eyes since it's the flashiest but I think the Goons might become king of the meta, except Hunter because Hunter is in a bad spot with all the cards it was given.
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.
I've been playing control shaman and that's a fun deck. I just beat a control dragon pally with it. Feels good man.
 
two decks that i've been liking recently + decklists



Came up with this list while talking to ary about an hour ago and modified it some after testing. Really a big fan of it, as the buccaneer/swashburglar + patches opening can actually contest the board of a pirate warrior and counterfeit coin enables the 3 drops, si:7 and edwin, to consistently make an impact even while going first. This list is obviously very all-in from the start and you need to be flexible on your game plan, which can vary wildly based on your hand. The deck has a bunch of 1-ofs, including conceal, but I feel with counterfeit coin in the deck I wanted to avoid the classic "miracle rogue hand" of double prep cold blood conceal or similar completely reactive hands. patches thinning your deck is also relevant because you're more likely to hit these 1 ofs!!!!!




Similar to the last deck, I'm trying to take a more ""aggressive"" spin on the classic slow archetypes. I packed in as much high-impact early game as possible (northshire hasn't really been cutting it) and skimped a bit on the late game in the hopes that Operative and Historian can give me gas vs control decks as I try to tempo them out. 1 Dragonfire potion looks weird but honestly it's too slow in the pirate warrior matchup and too low impact/anti tempo in the others, and considering this is a very polarized meta, it seems correct. Had Ysera earlier but Ary talked me out of it, Rag is an immediate high impact minion that fits with the general theme of this deck.
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.


This deck has been really fun so far. Probably will be removing Lotus Agents for Elise Starseeker or Azure Drake (not sure which one atm, but leaning towards Elise for the late game), and maybe swapping Ooze for Harrison Jones.

The goal of the deck is to stall out for lategame where you can begin to sweep with Al'Akir and Charged Hammer taps. Finders Keepers an awesome card which helps a lot because sometimes you get lucky and discover Dr. 4 in the lategame or you can get discover another board clear vs aggro. I may drop a Lightning Bolt for another minion (such as one of the ones mentioned above or Rag) so that I have more versatility in controlling the board, but I really like what this deck has to offer in terms of anti-aggro control, so far.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Turn 1 Kabal Lackey into secret, Turn 2 Medivh's Valet. Firelands Portal on curve. Topdeck Dr. Boom. Get a literally useless spell from Babbling Book. Opponent misses 6 damage, has me at single-digit HP, doesn't matter all my large minions were exactly on the bottom of my deck and when I had board the one card my opponent was holding was obviously Flamestrike.

Mulligan entire hand, still only manage to play my first minion on Turn 7 because the only other thing I could play was Wolfrider against a Mage who didn't play a two-drop and played Scarlet Crusader T3. T2 ping, T3 ping, T4 ping, T5 ping. My curve was not even poor. The T7 minion was, of course, immediately removed.

T1 Babbling Book gives me another literally unplayable card, opponent leads Mana Wyrm on The Coin. Curves Dark Iron Dwarf on Dragon Egg, because Dragon Egg is a good card that people should consistently draft in arena. Firelands Portal on curve. Blood Knight into my Force-Tank MAX, removed by Frostbolt Ice Lance followed up by Raging Worgen for perfect mana efficiency.

(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿) This is the 0-3 Police, You're coming with us Mr.E. (▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)

Remember kids, Hearthstone is a skill-based game.
Spent my last 150 gold on a pack.
 
been playing almost nothing but renolock and reno mage for the past day and a half or so. toyed with some jade druid and rogue for a bit, a lil bit of fibonacci's warrior which was cool (here is his list), and a couple games of other random shit that i won't even queue in ranked anymore. reno decks are really strong and so fun to play. i streaked from 13 to 8 without dropping a game with renolock. chilling between high 8 and low 7 atm because i haven't played much and i lost a few.

mage list:


i'd grab the warlock list but dude on my friend's list wouldn't leave me alone and i don't want to log back on. i'll grab it later or qsns can post mine/his if he wants. he plays leeroy combo, i don't.

my experience has been that both decks are really strong with a tip in favor to mage vs pirate decks and warlock vs priests. haven't dropped a single game in the warlock priest matchup, only lost a few mage vs pirates. my winrate with lock vs pirates has been good too but less so because there are so fewer good early game options, but generally mistress of mixtures on 1 has led to wins in both decks.

both decks vs non-aggro have been very fight from behind until you find the opportunity to swing ahead on one turn. when that never happens, you lose, but it usually happens because of the massive amount of strong aoe in both decks with all of kazakus potions, blizzard, flamestrike, flamewaker, volcanic potion, hellfire, shadowflame, felfire potion, and abyssal enforcer. inkmaster helps with the big swing turns (inkmaster into firelands portal, aoe, or a 10 mana kazakus potion is fucking nuts), but because the mage list is much more spell-heavy, renolock usually fights better on board and relies a little less on the swing turns.

yogg has been crazy good. haven't played him much but almost every time i have he has won me the game. he also hasn't lost me any games yet. most of the time i've ripped some kind of spawn minion spell and then cleared or frozen their side. there's actually a lot of good minion summoning things with animal companion, call of the wild, force of nature, kara kazhan, stand against darkness, feral spirit, ball of spiders, etc.

idk i feel like this is the most consistent reno decks have ever been. like even with 30 separate cards, each card in both lists feels relevant. there's no card in either deck that i'm sad to be running. also solia and kazakus are bonkers. reno priest looks weaker than these two but i don't have any dragonfire potions or the legendary and don't feel like crafting them until control priest lists are more fleshed-out.
 
two decks that i've been liking recently + decklists



Came up with this list while talking to ary about an hour ago and modified it some after testing. Really a big fan of it, as the buccaneer/swashburglar + patches opening can actually contest the board of a pirate warrior and counterfeit coin enables the 3 drops, si:7 and edwin, to consistently make an impact even while going first. This list is obviously very all-in from the start and you need to be flexible on your game plan, which can vary wildly based on your hand. The deck has a bunch of 1-ofs, including conceal, but I feel with counterfeit coin in the deck I wanted to avoid the classic "miracle rogue hand" of double prep cold blood conceal or similar completely reactive hands. patches thinning your deck is also relevant because you're more likely to hit these 1 ofs!!!!!




Similar to the last deck, I'm trying to take a more ""aggressive"" spin on the classic slow archetypes. I packed in as much high-impact early game as possible (northshire hasn't really been cutting it) and skimped a bit on the late game in the hopes that Operative and Historian can give me gas vs control decks as I try to tempo them out. 1 Dragonfire potion looks weird but honestly it's too slow in the pirate warrior matchup and too low impact/anti tempo in the others, and considering this is a very polarized meta, it seems correct. Had Ysera earlier but Ary talked me out of it, Rag is an immediate high impact minion that fits with the general theme of this deck.
Currently at Rank 4 with our Questing list, there's definitely something to be said about running patches in rogue for early game.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Shot up to rank 7 easily with K'thun Druid two days ago. Today I quested Priest, quested Paladin, went roughly 1-16 to complete those quests and then lost three more ranks playing perfectly legitimate decks (including the aforementioned deck I JUST PILOTED TO RANK 7) because Hearthstone is a skill-based game. Oh, and I should've went to bed an hour ago but instead I chose to keep getting buttfucked by skill*.

Patches is good in Rogue just cuz it's literally free deck-thinning and early board when you play pirates and have a built-in weapon anyway. also I have heard positive things about RED MANA WYRM even though it looks slow to me personally

I would like to play more archetypes but I pulled jack shit in 80 packs with all my gold so I have limited dust to craft everything. :( Compare to WOTOG where my first two legends were Fandral and Yogg... feelsbadman.
 
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TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
I saw red mana wyrm in a miracle rogue deck. imagine the auctioneer turn set up where you're about to dig deep into your deck (conceal counterfeit coin regular coin fan of knives prep evis etc) but instead of auctioneer it just Red mana wyrm so you get like 4 billion attack to swing. Play it conceal it go ham on the spells and go boom.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
I peaked at Rank 3 five stars, now I've lost 18 stars and am the same rank as a shitlord who doesn't swing with Patches on Turn 1 and blows up his weapon before swinging Southsea Deckhand.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Back to Rank 7 now, just lost six straight games to Renolock (and one Dragon Priest) because my opponent had the nuts literally every single game and I drew like shit literally every single game. I don't know how they manage to curve out with their one-of Twilight Drake and one-of Mountain Giant literally every fucking game. Meanwhile I continue to lose games not drawing, like, one copy of four different cards or whatever.


Except the one game where they had, like, on-curve Mountain Giant into nothing for five straight turns, but I had to blow three cards in hand to kill it (protecting Thaurissan) and drew 17 cards deep without ever finding Nourish or an Auctioneer, so I lost anyway.

I even lost to a freeze Mage because I drew 19 cards deep before finding Nourish or Auctioneer (it was Nourish, which drew into Auctioneer next card), by which time he topdecked Alex the turn before and killed me.



My Miracle Jade Druid list is legitimately good, but you have to draw somewhat statistically normally to not constantly lose easy matchups I guess.



Thalnos/Doomsayer currently kinda flex spots, Thalnos is alright but I haven't been satisfied with the 30th card no matter what I put there really. Mulch was okay but honestly it's not very useful if you're not constantly facing Renolock who plays on-curve Drake/Giant all day because it turns out it's statistically not actually very likely for that to happen constantly...

Rank 8 now! Just got outskilled by two more skill-based Warrior decks because Fandral Idol can't pull a taunt or a heal! And Frothing Skillserker is a fair and balanced card! I love spending four hours losing 15 games! Wow, this game really takes a lot of skill!
 
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are you sure you're losing because you're unlucky or because your deck is bad??? the reason jade druid wins against renolock (the matchup is more even than you think, maybe 60% favored) is because you're dropping idiots with huge stats ahead of curve constantly, it's not because you have infinite threats waiting at the bottom of your deck. they do the whole inevitability thing better with a more consistent life tap and either leeroy combo or lord j, you need to pressure them out of the game. similarly, against aggro, the only time you're going to race them or even stabilize by trading is after you've drawn your entire deck, which given the current metagame, isn't very likely. the current lists of jade druid have 3 taunts and more jade golem cards as threats, which allow you to trade and not use shitty cards like claw to 1 for 1 every single time they play something mildly threatening. at least having arcane giants or the jade behemoths would help you somewhat.

and if you want to talk statistically likely, the renolock hard mulligans for a 4 drop and is able to life tap twice in this matchup, putting them at pretty high odds to draw one of the big ones, or at least a vendor. this sounds like you not willing to tech for the metagame more than anything (mulch is still fine in aggro matchups, killing stuff like 4 mana 7/7 and ""frothing skillserker""). I also cannot fathom how you talk about poor draws and not hitting your draw cards when you literally run less cycle than the midrange lists because you cut the azure drakes and instead put extremely low value, low impact cards like moonfire in your deck. most of your deck is poor draws.

like jesus christ I'm fine with a healthy dose of salt but it really doesn't sound like you're enjoying the game at all. take a break
 

Matthew

I love weather; Sun for days
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Also Jade Druid is bad and probably the slowest deck hearthstone has ever seen. unless you nut draw your jades are going to be understated liabilities until you can just get 8/9/10 out of them.

Freeze also loves Jade Druid for that same reason, plus Freeze cycles way faster and can burn harder than Druid can heal.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
fyi like half the time I literally hit "fatigue" before my opponent even has ten mana, in the slower matches I mean where I don't have to use all my cheap removal as actual early removal

are you sure you're losing because you're unlucky or because your deck is bad??? the reason jade druid wins against renolock (the matchup is more even than you think, maybe 60% favored) is because you're dropping idiots with huge stats ahead of curve constantly, it's not because you have infinite threats waiting at the bottom of your deck. they do the whole inevitability thing better with a more consistent life tap and either leeroy combo or lord j, you need to pressure them out of the game. similarly, against aggro, the only time you're going to race them or even stabilize by trading is after you've drawn your entire deck, which given the current metagame, isn't very likely. the current lists of jade druid have 3 taunts and more jade golem cards as threats, which allow you to trade and not use shitty cards like claw to 1 for 1 every single time they play something mildly threatening. at least having arcane giants or the jade behemoths would help you somewhat.

and if you want to talk statistically likely, the renolock hard mulligans for a 4 drop and is able to life tap twice in this matchup, putting them at pretty high odds to draw one of the big ones, or at least a vendor. this sounds like you not willing to tech for the metagame more than anything (mulch is still fine in aggro matchups, killing stuff like 4 mana 7/7 and ""frothing skillserker""). I also cannot fathom how you talk about poor draws and not hitting your draw cards when you literally run less cycle than the midrange lists because you cut the azure drakes and instead put extremely low value, low impact cards like moonfire in your deck. most of your deck is poor draws.

like jesus christ I'm fine with a healthy dose of salt but it really doesn't sound like you're enjoying the game at all. take a break
I mean, you don't go from five stars Rank 3 to fucking Rank 8 over two consecutive days because you or your deck just suddenly became bad when it was good.

Claw is a good anti-aggro card, and it fucking cycles with Auctioneer do you understand the entire point of playing decks with Auctioneer in them honestly? That's one of the dumbest things you could be criticizing. And shit, still has more draw than a typical Rogue deck because Nourish is a card that exists and Wrath is a staple where Shiv isn't in every or even most Rogue lists (or they cut Fan for them, same difference). As for the stats, well generally at best for a two-of (let's count Drake + Giant as a typical two-copy card) you've got about a 50-60% shot at having one copy if you hard mulligan for exactly that card. Having both copies 90% of the time is beyond a statistical anomaly.*

It's true I am not remotely enjoying the game though, something about games being decided by 100% pure fucking RNG every single fucking time doesn't sit well with me who knew!

*I mean, it's probably not that often but before I stopped taking Wild Growth stats in Druid mirrors they were surprisingly not far off statistically: opposing Druids did not draw Wild Growth at an abnormally high rate versus me. (I had to stop when Beast Druid became popular, which rarely ran WG.) That said, I can't imagine literally every Druid hard mulligans for exactly Wild Growth versus me and almost every single time they didn't have it, they instead had some ridiculous Innervate-based opener instead. There's really no denying that I am beyond unlucky in HS as I am in Pokémon or god damn anything else in life really. I would not be surprised if it was close to 90%.
 
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yea i get the point of the deck but you don't see rogues running betrayal because it's a "good" anti aggro card and cycles with auctioneer. the reason the deck is bad is because it has literally 0 good proactive plays until the singleton fandral staghelm on turn 4 possibly comes down. this is not a concept that works in hearthstone's current metagame (see: the disappearance of freeze mage and non armorsmith/cruel task control warriors). rogues, while still retaining the miracle aspect, have minion pressure and turn 1-5 on curve plays (minus two). it's too slow and the way you imply that you've been playing perfectly with a great deck and THE ONLY reason you lose is that your opponent gets too lucky is frankly ridiculous and probably fallacious. i get having an unlucky streak for a few days, but you're not pavel, you're not at the worlds stage.
 

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