Squee
3063
Unfortunately this kinda crept up on me. Haven’t been playing Hearthstone in ages and only had enough gold on-hand for this first wing, it’ll be a close call for the second and the third and fourth I’ll probably have to wait on. Was already starting to feel down on the game and then TGT by and large ran me off.
I’ve been messing around with the new Summoning Stone in my Lock and Load Hunter deck and it has been just been facepalms all around. Twice already it has spawned a Wild Pyromancer for me, which gets insta-activated by the spell I was casting and wrecks my board. I just now played it into a mage with Mirror Entity up, and he proceeded to wreck me with a barrage of spells to fill his board and clear mine. I’m not winning, but it’s a fun deck to mess around with anyway.
Got my first-wing purchase to go through a few hours after my initial attempt hung up. I agree with you guys that the adventure is a lot of fun to play through. I particularly like the dark elf lady’s comments. And that last battle against the collapsing temple was a great twist on the usual gameplay experience. Haven’t really spent any time looking at the new cards yet, figure I’ll mostly pay attention to them as I run across them in arena runs.
Got through the regular mode easily, as per usual, and then started on the heroic mode. Beat my head against the first boss with various decks for a bit before I finally just decided to go freeze mage, and won on my second try. Full-on freeze with no attempt to deal damage, just wear him out and clear his board a couple of times, eventually letting fatigue kill him. That approach has worked on pretty much all the heroic bosses that have any kind of card and/or mana advantage. Figure I’ll work on the other two heroic bosses later this week.
geewhiz
3066
I have not played this game in a long time - I see some of my decks with a big red X on them for the Blackrock Mountain Adventure - does that mean they are breaking some type of rule in some of the added solo content? I am thinking I have some cards in those decks that are not allowed in a different solo adventure?
I don’t know of any rules against using cards for adventures. I usually see the red X when my deck has less than 30 cards in it. Did you check the deck lists to see if anything is missing?
delirium
3068
I’m actually having some reasonable success at ranks 12-13 with my Lock and Load/Summoning Stone deck. I think I’m something like 4-2 with it so far. The Summoning Stone is something that your opponent has to deal with immediately, and this deck contains enough early board control that they may have to use up some valuable resources to do so. If it does happen to last a turn on the board, you can generate some serious tempo on the following turn while also filling your hand back up with cards via Lock and Load plus spells. It’s a lot of fun to play. Credit to Andres on the Hearthaholics podcast for coming up with the original LNL deck list, which I just tweaked a bit and put in SS and Explorer’s Hat from the new set.
2x Hunter’s Mark
2x Arcane Shot
1x Tracking
1x Explorer’s Hat
1x Explosive Trap
1x Freezing Trap
2x Lock and Load
2x Quick Shot
2x Mad Scientist
1x Wild Pyromancer
2x Eaglehorn Bow
1x Deadly Shot
1x Unleash the Hounds
2x Acolyte of Pain
1x Dreadscale
1x Refreshment Vendor
2x Sludge Belcher
1x Summoning Stone
2x Savannah Highmane
1x Dr Boom
1x Ragnaros
prolix
3069
I really like the discovery mechanic. Cards like Spellslinger and Nefarian are cool, but super-RNG-swingy. Discovery refines this, so you still don’t know what you’ll get, but you almost always get something you can put to good use.
What I am really looking for now is a control deck to put Reno Jackson in. I guess freeze mage or control warrior are the best bets. Or maybe shaman with two healing waves! Unkillable!
geewhiz
3070
I did some further research and appparently this is much more common than I thought. The fix appears to be take out some cards from the deck than add them back (or delete the deck and recreate it). I took two cards out added them back and the red X disappeared.
Oh thats a good idea. I ran a secret mage with Reno last night, it was good but didnt have the “now reset the board” which I think its needed for an effective reno deck. Still working on it. I do like that card though, any one which encourages a brand new style of deck has to be a good thing.
prolix
3072
By the way, here’s an interesting breakdown on Reddit for how many duplicates you can risk running in a Reno deck.
I watched a few of the reviews/unveiling of all the cards, and have looked over all the stats etc. I have to say, I think just about all of this expansion is too slow to deal with the current meta. All of those discovery cards are too slow to play in constructed, although they may find some use in arena. Stuff like the hat…a 2 mana card that gives 1/1. Considering you can play a variety of good 1 mana cards, much less 2 mana cards, I don’t see how this is worth putting in your deck over just a good solid 2 drop. There are plenty of 2 drops that will not only give you +1 to something or some utility, but also put a decent minion in play. I find a lot of this expansions cards to be the same problem, just bad value.
I really don’t see anything in this release that is going to upset secret palie, wallet warrior, or any of the numerous face decks. I’ve finished the first wing, and put together a few different reno decks. To me this is one of those ‘prolong your loss’ cards/decks. The card is useless if you’re winning, and is pretty bad stat wise, and the only thing it really does if you don’t already have board control, is delay your death a few turns. Interesting idea, but so many RNG variables into making it actually worth not running multiples of other really strong immediate cards. I don’t think a reno deck will see much actual play at high level, but who knows. Someone smarter than me might be able to figure out a deck it works in. Maybe you draw it late, when you don’t have duplicates, as a hail mary, but I hate giving up deck spots for too much RNG, I’d rather just have a good solid card that performs well in most situations.
Ugh, I just literally played against 5 Face Hunters in a row. So fucking boring.
You know the solution. Stay out of ranked play.
Taking my own advice, I played some arena runs over the last few days, in addition to messing around with the new adventure. Was fortunate with a 7-win Paladin and 8-win Druid run. I didn’t see many of the new cards, which I presume is because they’re not mixing in higher percentages of the new stuff this time. The card pool is getting fairly large. By far the best new card I used in either run was the Jeweled Scarab. Dropping that out and picking up a free three-cost card was almost always useful. Once I even got a Mind Control Tech out of it when my opponent had four creatures. (It stole the crappiest of the four, of course, but still, it was cool.)
Brakara
3076
I rather play 5 face hunters in a row than against one control warrior. And it’s faster too, though I tend to just concede when the warrior brings out justicar, because who the fuck have the time for that shit.
I went to casual mode to finish my Warrior quests (ugh, warrior quests) and my very first opponent was a face hunter.
I don’t love playing against control warriors either, but at least some degree of intelligence has to be used to play it.
Finished off the other two heroic bosses in the first wing. The freeze mage worked fine against the heroic version of the collapsing temple, just had to try a couple of times until I got the right draw. “Right” meaning enough copies of Blizzard/Cone of Cold/Frost Nova, and Sludge Belcher/Deathlord to drop when there were only two enemies out. If they’d added more turns to the clock, this one could have been difficult, but it was pretty much just bigger minions.
Heroic Phaerix was a little more complicated. Fooled around with the freeze mage and a couple of other options before settling on a ramp druid. Freeze Mage wasn’t helping because his non-minion damage (those 5-damage-deathrattle hoplites, weapons, fireballs) got me even if I managed to freeze/kill most of the minions. With the druid, having a bunch of taunts kept the overall damage down and ate up some of those weapon attacks. Naturalize was useful, too. Silencing the Rod is important in the heroic fight, since it grants immunity only to Phaerix (not you) and he can take it back easily if you just kill it without the silence. Once silenced, it’s basically just another 5 armor. Took me 4 tries before I eventually won with a draw that had a good taunt curve, plus silences at the right time to neuter the Rod and those hoplites. Ended up beating him in the face with an Ironbark Protector for the win.
Today was a good day in Hearthstone-land for me. Went 10 wins in my arena run and my pack reward contained Justicar Truehart. The new Anubisath Sentinal card performed much better than I thought it would. 5 Mana for a 4/4 is not good for playing on curve, but if you can drop it at the right time, a small lead on the board can quickly turn into a big lead. It helped push me over the top at least twice in that run. Jeweled Scarab was fun too. Drawing Iron Sensei to play on a board with mechs was exciting.
The thing about the first boss on Heroic is that he gives you a free zero mana spell every turn, so you need minions that benefit from playing spells. Violet Teacher is one of the best because of her 5 health, but Mana Wyrm, Flamewaker and Archmage Antonidas are also possibilities. In my case the second heroic boss went down to my bog standard zoo deck, but I suppose I got lucky by being able to summon Mal’Gannis on turn 5 via a Voidcaller :). As every one says a variant of Freeze Mage makes easy work of the third, although you can drop your finishers for 2 Annoy-o-trons, two Sludge Belchees, two BGHs and a couple of duplicates, which you can hopefully get to trigger on a Sludge Belcher.
Brakara
3081
I used tempo mage, silence priest and freeze mage to beat the first wing on heroic (in that order).
Brakara
3082
The winner of SeatStory Cup IV this weekend won 5-0 in the final with a Reno freeze mage deck. Seems legit. Also, RenoLock is pretty damn good.
