Standard will probably be pretty exciting for at least a few weeks. These changes are unprecedented for Hearthstone and it should take some time for the top players to figure out how to abuse stupid bullshit, and they’ve only had a few days so far since all the cards were announced to really get their theorycrafting going.
kerzain
3244
The majority of my playtime comes from Brawl, except for those few days where I want to keep from overflowing my quests when the Brawl is down. then I’ll run a few rank matches, at least enough to get to 15 or so for end-of-month rewards. But I don’t play it much more than that at the moment, so utterly sick of GvG and Naxx cards in vanilla constructed decks. I expect this to change after tomorrow. I’ll be much more inclined to play constructed over Tavern Brawl when so many of my most hated cards are put to pasture.
I don’t remember if Brawls will adhere to Standard or Wild, but either one is typically fine with me, since the crazy rules each week do enough to keep things unpredictable and fresh enough for me. But I’ve been chomping at the bit for this expansion and Standard since the day they announced it.
I would be willing to bet that they’ll do Brawls of both types, at various times. I can see some of the Brawl formats playing differently depending on which card pool is used. Maybe they’ll even do some that restrict it further, like only basic+one other set.
JFrazer
3246
Woke up early so that I could open my cards before heading in to work. Didn’t realize the fact that the packs can’t be opened until the 9:30 - 10:30 PST maintenance. On the bright side, I had time for a could of HoTS games before coming in to the office :)
I’m hoping the big patch the other day took care of all the new files I need to download for the expansion. I’d like to get some time to play on my lunch break today.
Standard right now, unsurprisingly, appears to be a bunch of poorly played C’thun decks (with incomplete card sets), so if you have an old standby that works with standard you can probably pick up your quest packs in short order.
Pulled my old Survivadin back out and am doing pretty well. At this point, if you have removal to deal with C’thun himself and some pocket healing to soak the damage (I.e. don’t play Warlock), just plain efficiency seems like enough to trade with his various followers and get ahead.
I’d really like to tweak that deck with some of the new Paladin Divine Shield cards, but got bupkis in my gift packs. I got a golden Malorkok, but never play Warrior at all, so <fart noise>.
I haven’t gotten any legendaries in about 25 packs (and lord knows how long it’s been before that), but I did open quite a few epics, including this ridiculousness. That’s 3 epics, 2 of which are golden, and a rare.
I’ve been completely unable to connect and gave up trying since Hex also launched its new set today and is working fine.
Squee
3251
Played a few hours of Hearthstone today. Notes:
#1: Still have terrible luck with packs. 55 boosters opened (Was originally just going to do 37 + the 13 free but I dumped 500 more gold in. Only got 3 arena runs in the bank now), got 1 legendary and 10 epics. Of those 10 epics, 3 were a single epic, 2 were another epic, rest were singletons. Still missing some commons I’d like, like that goddamn 3 mana 3/4 Cthun buffer of which I have 0.
#2: If you want to get wins, just play face shaman. After a lot of experimenting with decks I threw together a face shaman (Didn’t netdeck, didn’t use leper gnomes or jugglers since I dusted them, only had a single doomhammer, 0 Old Gods cards) and started winstreaking like crazy.
#3: Game’s all kinds of weird at the moment. Cthun decks seem to eat control and midrange fairly handily. Control will just get blasted by Cthun, midrange will struggle against Cthun’s reasonably costed buffers and then get blown out late game.
#4: Cthun/Reno hybrid warlock is fun. Not particularly amazing, but fun.
#5: I’ve never once been able to use the “Deathspeaker” or whatever it’s called to put another Cthun in my deck. Every time I’ve played Cthun it gets hexed/polymorphed/entombed. If any of that happens to Cthun it doesn’t count as “Dead” so deathspeaker doesn’t put a new one in your deck, even though all your other Cthun minions will keep buffing it.
Overall seems like face is still king if you want to win games, and Cthun VS Cthun matchups largely boils down to who draws Cthun first and/or has an answer. Also seems like a bunch of people are crafting that emperor whatever card. 4/6 with taunt that spawns another 4/6 with taunt if your Cthun is over 10/10. Ran in to a whole bunch of those.
The game client seems super buggy right now all the sudden. Have gotten stuck in the deck builder several times and all kinds of weird things going on with the interface.
JFrazer
3253
58 packs (bought the 50-pack pre-order, plus the 8 from the 3 freebies and the first quest), got 3 Legendary (the monkey, the shaman legendary and the mage legendary), and a surprising number of gold cards. Ended up with 755 dust from copies + 1600 from dusting a gold molten giant + 1050 from dusting some golds. With the dust I already had, I’m close to 4k. Going to finish the 7-win quest and open those before I start thinking about what to create with some of the dust.
Made a pretty decent priest deck that I’ve won a few games with. What I really want to try is a shaman deck, but struggling to figure out how to make it competitive. :)
Been saving gold since before Christmas and that let me buy 101 packs plus the 8 I have so far earned in standard. I got 6 legendries and 18 epics so about average I think. So far my deck building is terrible but this is the time I enjoy the most. All different types of decks before netdecking takes over.
JFrazer
3255
Yeah, for some reason I can only edit the deck on the top of my selection list. Anything else I happen to select just sits there not bringing the deck or the construction options up. Luckily I deleted all my old decks and only have 3 I’ve been playing around with.
Squee
3256
Another noteworthy card interaction that I didn’t expect,Steward of Darkshire (The 3 for 3/3 paladin card that gives bubbles to 1 health minions) actually triggers on all 1 health minions that enter on your side. Your hero power counts, the 2/1 dude from Heroic Sacrifice secret counts, that goofy 5 mana summon 5 silverhand recruits card counts, etc.
Haven’t played with it enough to see if you can build a reliable deck with it (The fear being if you put too many 1 health minions in your deck you’ll topple unless you get a perfect steward) but since I initially thought it would only work on cards you play from your hand it’s better than I was expecting.
And another quick note, Sylvanas holds back Cthun pretty well. Stealing your opponent’s 20/20 Cthun after it kills your Sylvanas is pretty great. If nothing else it may be worth keeping Sylvanas in your hand as a Cthun deterrent, depending on your deck and situation.
I retro-fitted two decks for Standard: Dragon Priest and Aggro Shaman. I also created a beast Druid. The priest doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. Losing the Dark Cultist is a blow, though. I like the beast druid, especially the new Mark of Y’Shaarj with its card draw, but I doubt it can win in the higher ranks. Just not enough power there, at least with the cards I have. Aggro Shaman, as Squee said, is still good. I didn’t win every game, but they were all close and I won enough to finish off the pack quests.
And now, with the pack quests done, I can go back to Brawl and Arena.
JFrazer
3258
I’ve been out of the game so long, I don’t know what the current meta was prior to the expansion. I’ve been trying to create my own decks without any kind of netdecking. So far, I’ve been able to throw together a solid priest deck (as mentioned by ineffablebob, priest hasn’t really changed much) and a strange “evolution” based shaman deck. The evo-deck works much better than I expected, mainly because your totems all evolve in to random 3-cost minions. It’s a dice-roll each time, but so far the dice have been coming up in my favor. I’m also running the 7/7 4-cost, overload(2) minion and 2 of the 4-cost 1/1 - copy the attack/health of any friendly minion epic. Mid-late game, which used to be my weak-point playing shaman, has gotten a lot stronger.
Played an arena game last night where I made kind of a strange mistake with my paladin draft. I picked up 2 of the 1-cost 1/3 murlocs that change your hero power to summon “silver hand murloc”. Then I proceeded to draft 2 of the fellas that give your silver hands +2/+2 and 2 of the +1 attack for silver hands cards. In my first game, I drew the murloc maker…and quickly realized that I just negated the bonus from 4 of my other drafted cards since the siler hand murlocs aren’t considered "silver hand recruit"s. Oops. Still won the game thanks to the “inspire: summon a random murloc” triggering a Old Murky Eye. I’m sorely tempted to try out a Paladin Murloc deck now.
I played Paladin Murloc last night with the new Murloc Hero Power, Steward of Darkness and Anyfin Can Happen and that deck is bananas.
I tried to throw together an Evolution deck myself but I wasn’t super pleased with the results. I was doing it more with the totem synergy Shaman cards, but when it came time to Evolve I would either not be able to keep them all on the board or my totems would be buffed from the synergistic things, and it wasn’t worth it anymore to evolve into random non-totems. I don’t yet have the cards that you used, but I would be interested to hear if you continue to have success with it.
prolix
3261
I have been trying to get a rogue deck going with one of the two legendaries I got: Y’Shaarj (at the end of your turn, put a random minion from your deck into the battlefield). Comboing this with Gang Up and Shadowcaster is pretty hilarious, but like all gimmick combo decks, it’s horribly inconsistent.
30 expansion packs and no legendaries. And probably at least 2 months since I’ve opened one, playing arena every day. Woe is me.
Fortunately I have almost 10k dust to drop once I decide how to spend it.
