Shadow word death works any time the number displayed is large enough. So, yes it should work on a 6/6 warlord, regardless of how the warlord got that way.
It sounds like the spellstopper situation was the case: if the spellstopper was protecting the warlord, there would be no valid targets (warlord is immune and spellstopper is too weak).
I’ve had a couple of 1 and 0 win arena runs. That’s the RNG for ya.
Spock
2644
I spent a couple days watching streamers play Shaman, but I still managed to misplay two games badly in my run, which ended with just 3 wins. I did play a couple of games well, using lots of totems and finishing with Bloodlust.
But the mistakes were awful. In one game, against a Hunter, I tried to Rockbiter my hero twice; I took so long with the turn, I’d forgotten what I’d done at turn start. That was part of a larger, complicated play that was horridly inefficient. I deserved the loss I got.
The other misplay, against a Warlock, was even worse. I was ahead on the board on turn 4, and I had Wild Pyromancer on the board along with a 3-1 and a totem. You can guess what I did, can’t you? I played a spell and killed my own 3-1. It was downhill from there. My only defense is that I’ve rarely played Wild Pyro; in fact, I almost didn’t draft it, but it was turn 30 and I was short on 2-drops. I picked it over two cards of higher value simply because of curve. That might’ve been the right draft pick, but it helps to know how to play the freaking card.
I’ve had worse runs, but few misplays as bad as these. I mean, sometimes we make errors of judgment – face or trade, summon this or that – but these were more basic errors of mechanics. Just need to shake it off and move on, I guess.
Happens to everyone. In my case I often play Wild Pyro, even having used it in some of my favorite constructed decks. I average about 6 wins/arena. I still occasionally forget about it and kill off my own 1 health minion.
On at least 2 occasions I’ve cast back to back spells quickly and killed off the Pyro itself since I’d queued the 2nd spell before the pyro effect went off for the first one to remind me not to be too stupid. Oddly enough, when I make a mistake that silly I have no problem shaking it off; small mistakes like minion positioning or trading in the wrong order for example annoy me far worse.
Especially Betrayal. If I haven’t ranted about that before here, I never ever ever remember to play around Betrayal. I even got hit by it twice for full effect both times in one game because being hit by it the first time wasn’t enough to remind me to play around it.
Spock
2646
Heh, that makes me feel a bit better, Outlandish. In my case, many of my errors are related to time pressure. I know there’s one Legendary that cuts move time down to 15 seconds – I played it during the first Tavern Brawl. I could use a Legendary that gives me an extra 30 seconds!
Speaking of legendaries, there was a silver lining to that disappointing 3-win arena: as a reward, I pulled a Legendary (Foe Reaper 4000), a Jeeves, and a gold common card. Maybe the HS gods took pity on me.
Once again I tumble from rank 10 to rank 14 at the end of the season, which is when it’s supposed to be ‘easier’ to ladder.
I don’t know why people think Patron Warrior is so unbeatable. Sure, it feels great to get off a big combo, but it’s fucking hard to get all your ducks in a row, and there are a thousand ways to die in the meantime.
The only other deck I have any luck with is Face Hunter, which is dull as ditchwater to play.
I recently got Malygos in a pack last week and have built a dragonlock deck with it. Having tons of fun with it. Literally spent about 6 hours straight the other day playing ranked. I think I took down I think every Patron Warrior I faced, also. I do need to tweak it abit so that is not so weak against rush decks.
Spock
2649
Well, I thought I’d regained part of my Arena mojo, as I went 4-wins with a below-average Mage deck: no fireballs, no frostbolts, mediocre minions, but a Flamestrike that bailed me out once or twice.
But then I did a Warlock run, and I drafted the worst deck I’ve ever used in Arena (well, since my first newb 0-3 run, where I’m sure I was playing every suboptimal card possible). I had 27 minions and only 3 spells: Hellfire, Shadow Bolt, Power Overwhelming. Part of the reason for this distribution is that I was trying out Heartharena, which is an interesting site, but I followed its advice against my own judgment too many times. Should’ve just played my own game, although in fairness, I wasn’t offered many other spells – two more Shadow Bolts (against Spectral Knight and Ogre Brute), one Sense Demons, and a Drain Life. I suppose good players can win with only 3 spells, but I found the deck way too slow: I couldn’t respond to anything. The result, sadly, was a 0-3 massacre – my first zero-win run in the 30 arenas I’ve run this year, as far as I can tell from my records. It dropped my win average down to 4.1 per run.
Not one game was close, even though I drew reasonable starting hands and felt like I was trading efficiently in the early game. The experience made me realize how important quick removal can be. Pretty demoralizing. I guess I should climb back on the horse, but I think I’m going to do something else tonight.
Sometimes the cards you get are just bad, and it sounds like that was the case for your Warlock run. Good time to take a break, and hope the RNG is kinder next time!
This week’s brawl is decent, though it’s another one with no control over what’s in the deck. You get a bunch of Unstable Portal, and a few of your class spells. Based on the 9 games I played, I’d say probably 2/3 of the games will be decided by who gets the better random minions, but that last 1/3 can hinge on playing the spells properly. I had a win-5-as-rogue-or-warrior daily, so I played 2 with rogue and 2 with warrior at first to get a feel for things, and it seemed like the warrior had a big advantage in the spells. Rogue has stinkers like Sprint (only useful if the game goes way long, often not the case with big cheap guys from all the portals) and Sinister Strike, while warrior has things like Brawl and Commanding Shout that can give you a nice advantage or save your bacon from a bad position. Ended up playing all the rest as warrior and got my 5 wins eventually. I enjoyed it, especially when I got an Elite Tauren Chieftain. Love that animation! :)
This week’s brawl? I tried it and got Rag vs. Nef again. But that was before the downloader did an update. Was it a bug?
Yeah, there was something about that on the news when I loaded up the updater. Try again, it’ll probably give you another patch.
Spock
2654
Yep, the Brawl involves lots of Unstable Portals. I thought it was kind of fun; sort of like the Webspinner brawl. Not my favorite, but an improvement over last week’s, in my opinion.
Thanks, Bob! I did take a short break, then did a Shaman run today. It was a respectable go, with 4 wins – two against mages, heh. In fact, I faced 5 mages, 1 priest, and 1 shaman. For once I didn’t feel like I made any mistakes that warranted /facepalm. I played pretty well. My draft wasn’t the greatest, but at least this time I followed my own judgment in picking cards. My curve was just a bit odd; lots of early game, but too many 2s and not enough 3s. Was never offered Hex, Bloodlust or fancier removal like Lightning Storm, but at least I did pick up a couple Flametongues, a couple axes (maybe one too many?), a Doomhammer (after already drafting the two axes, but the alternatives were bad) and three, count 'em 3, Fire Elementals. You’d think 3 might be too many, but nope. Those things won me a couple games, and they never sat in my hand dead. There was almost a direct correlation between wins and number of Fire Ellies I summoned.
The final game, against Priest, was maybe the most interesting, even though it wasn’t all that close. He got out a Dark Cultist on turn 3, as I predicted he would, and I had no way to remove it on my turn, as I predicted I wouldn’t. It was all downhill from there, as he summoned other, stronger minions next to it. Occasionally I had the oomph to kill the Cultist but not its neighbor, which of course means buffing the neighbor. I have to think more about having 4 attack ready for action after a Priest’s turn 3. Of course, if his turn 3 is not a Cultist, it may well be Velen’s, which may buff his 3-health 2-drop up to 7 health, which is pretty hard to remove on turn 3/4 without something like Hex.
unic
2655
How does one get friends (which one does not get otherwise pestered by, and can mostly ignore) for the Watch and Learn quests? I’ve been discarding those quests so far, but that seems daft given that they reward an entire pack…
What I did is just run a string of games in play mode and invite everyone I ran into. About half accepted the invite, and now I generally find that someone is online if I need to watch a game. Figure I’ll repeat that any time I can’t find a person to watch. Means I have people I don’t actually know on my friends list, but I don’t actually use the Battle.Net friends list, so who cares? Can always delete someone if they actually bother me, but so far, that hasn’t been an issue.
Quaro
2657
Just spam invites, if they ask what’s up, just say you added them so you can observe a game. Half the time someone adds you it’s to trash talk to I don’t think anyone would mind.
Squee
2658
Yep, I’ve had that happen to me before. I usually accept all invites, then if the person starts spectating me I’ll leave 'em on there until I win one so they’ll get their quest and then boot 'em. I’d do the same but I’ve got one friend that still regularly plays Hearthstone (More regularly than I do) so I usually just wait until I can watch him.
Crispus
2659
My wife has an account that she rarely plays these days. So, when I get that quest, I log into her account on one PC and have it start a match against the innkeeper, then I spectate her from my account on a different PC, and then I play as her, win, and get my pack on my account. So, if worst came to worst, you could always create a second account solely for that purpose.
JoshL
2660
How often do these “watch and learn” quests come up? I’ve never gotten one.
Crispus
2661
They’re about as common as the ‘Total Domination’ quests that give 100 gold…so, not particularly common. I think I’ve gotten about 1 per region since they came out in…April, was it?
Tip: Never play Millhouse Manastorm while your opponent has Archmage Antonidas on the board. My TB opponent found out the (very) hard way. Playing unlimited Fireball Spells is fun!
