Hearthstone - Blizzard's F2P Digital Card Game

My very first free pack had Yogg-Saron in it.

I haven’t played in six months or so, and had forgotten that my first attempt at a Paladin deck was horrible. After losing four in a row, I won two in a row when I switched to my mage deck.

I would just like to say that with Whispers on the brain I found my Facebook feed amusing this evening.

Can someone tell me if my Murloc Shaman deck will get any nice new cards in the expansion? If so, I may check the game out again.

You’ll lose Murk-eye (And I think puddlestomper, the 3/2 for 2. I think that was GvG) if you’re playing in standard, but you gain a decent 2/1 murloc for 2 that summons a 1/1 slime with taunt. You might think that’s bad since it isn’t a murloc, but having taunt means it protects murlocs. There’s also a neutral 6 mana 2/3 murloc that deals 2 damage to all non-murlocs when played, which seems kinda bad to me.

Yeah, I don’t think that 6 mana “murloc-wrath” card is any good for shaman. Maybe for some kind of control paladin murloc deck that’s intended to be slower, using that new hero power murloc summoner?

It did work out alright for me in arena though, almost each time I drew it I was able to set up a fairly advantageous board clear and the times I couldn’t I had the board anyway.

So last night I finished my 7 standard-win quest to get the last little extra set of packs. They turned out to be the best 5 packs I have ever opened. 3 legendaries, 1 epic and 1 gold epic. Two were the warrior-specific legendary (+10 armor if Cthun has 10 or more attack power) and some kind of dark nat Pagel (opponent has 50% chance to draw an additional card). Not really sure I’d use any of them, but still fun to get 'em. Epic was Blood Warriors, golden epic was the 4-cost shaman card with taunt that takes on the attack/health of a friendly minion of your choosing. Considering dusting the golden epic since I already have 2 of the standard one and can always use more dust.

The +10 armor card is rare card not legendary. The warrior legendary is Malkorok which equips a random weapon, and seems pretty cool.

I finally got a WOTOG legendary last night - the Warlock card Cho’gall. Not sure if it’s actually playable, but I will certainly try.

Wow, you’re right. Why did I have it in my head that it was a legendary? I think maybe her shield had me associating the Legendary border. OK, so that means my draw went from “amazing” to just OK. Still, 2 epics and 1 legendary from 5 packs isn’t anything to sneeze at.

As for Cho’gall, yeah, I’m not sure how good he’ll be. Warlocks have such a health problem as it is, it makes Cho’Gall feel like just a big minion that has an extremely situational battlecry.

I’ll probably mess around with him at Reno-lock but I don’t have high hopes. There are other more consistently good big minions to play. It’s unfortunate that good staple Warlock spells like Darkbomb and Imp-losion are gone, too. The Old Gods replacement spells don’t even compare.

Haha, got a Boogeymonster. He’s terrible, right? I guess in theory he’s a Paladin/token counter?

Also, I really want to build a Renounce the Darkness deck.

Boogeymonster is pretty horrible. I don’t know what Blizzard was thinking with that. It’s far worse than Gruul but costs the same. Hell, it’s not even as good as Kvaldir Raider.

But is it worse than Hemet Nesingwary (the only legendary I’ve ever dusted)? Tough call.

Let me know how that Renounce Darkness deck goes! Crazy card.

Haha, wow, Boogeymonster really is godawful. That’s…that’s really bad.

I suspect one of the reasons the Boogeymonster got printed was to introduce a minion that was bad for the mana cost at 8. I remember in the previews of the forbidden card and recombobulator people were saying 8 mana was the best slot to use them on with few if any truly bad cards.

With things like the evolve mechanic and the forbidden summoning spell I think there needs to be enough bad minions at each mana cost so that it’s not virtually guaranteed you’re getting something awesome at a given mana slot.

Boogeymonster could have been just as bad as a rare or epic . It sucks to open a bad legendary.

I decided to craft Xaril and Yogg Saron for a Rogue Miracle type deck after browsing a few lists. Yogg Saron is terrifying to play, especially when you are low on cards (as this deck often is), but it sure is fun and exciting. Xaril seems ridiculously good, especially in a deck with Auctioneers.

Been some rough Arena runs since the Old Gods release: 1, 2, 5, and 2 wins. One of those was just a lot of really crappy cards offered in the deck building, but the rest all felt like decent decks. I just kept running into opponents with all the right answers, and/or got terrible draws. Like the Paladin run where I was comfortably ahead on life, traded to clear the board, then dropped Tirion…and then my Shaman opponent promptly copied him with Faceless Manipulator and Hexed my guy. My other two losses with that Paladin were a Shaman with Lightning Storm turn 3 followed by Feral Spirit next turn (never got tempo back) and a Priest with several early delay minions then back-to-back Holy Novas on turns 5/6 to reduce me to top-decking. And my favorite, playing Mage against a Shaman who played a Unbound Elemental turn 3, which my Flamecannon missed because it hit a totem instead, followed by overload minions/spells/weapons on the next 5 turns straight to kill me. The one I just finished was a Druid with plenty of delay and kill stuff leading into some big finishers, but got hammered twice by aggressive decks when none of the defense cards showed up in the first 5-6 turns. Ah well, law of averages has to be on my side eventually…

Been playing my renounce Darkness deck. Completely random, very ineffective, SOOO much fun :)

Arena has been doing well for me since the expansion. 7 wins with a paladin (strong draft with lots of Silver Hand booster cards and 2 “summon 5 silver hand” epics), 6 wins as a shaman, and just finished another 7 wins with another paladin deck. I’m a mediocre player, honestly, so I’m happy any time I can get more than 3 wins. My second paladin run came with 185 gold at the end. I started with 405 gold and, thanks to a quest in the mix, now have 485.

I know things will cool down for me. Just enjoying the ride while it lasts :)

Got my wife back in to playing last night. She revived her old Priest deck, swapping out a few cards from the handful of Whispers packs she got for free + bought with gold. She proceeded to go on an 11 win tear in ranked. Priest really seems to be surviving the move over to Standard very well.

How is a Shaman’s 4-mana 7/7 with Overload 2 a balanced card? And a Common card at that!

It isn’t, especially when paired with the 4 cost shaman card that clones the attack/health of any friendly minion you have on the field, has taunt and no overload. At least the taunting clone card is epic, but still, holy cow if makes for a hell of a bruiser shaman deck.

My evolution deck has been divided in two, a bruiser version deck and an evolution deck. The evolution cards were turning out to be not-so-great when teamed with the 4-cost cards. I tended to just sit there with the Evolve and Evolver cards in my hand because I really didn’t want to nuke a 7/7 to get a random 5-cost card. So I removed the 4 evolution cards from that deck and replaced them with a few higher cost cards to help my late game flow. Then created a true evolution deck, focused more on board control and early game blitz. Hit while i can with the little critters, then evo them when I hit critical mass, or my opponent starts to out-build me.

I figured I should build a deck to use the Golden Legendary I pulled, so I put together a pirate Warrior deck that seems like it’s doing pretty well, I guess just by being on the right side of the control-heavy C’thun meta.

But, the two new Warrior pirates seem to pretty explicitly make Warrior pirate viable.

For an aggro style, I never felt there was a valid opening sequence for pirates, you had to hope you got coin->fiery waraxe-> , t2 bloodsail raider. But now, The nzoths first mate gives a viable t1 and gives a guaranteed weapon that can be used to buff the raider, or trigger the southsea deckhand. Which means the new bloodsail cultist has a good chance of triggering on turn 3, which is great value.

There’s a lot of taunt out there, so hard removal is pretty important, but luckily a opened a black Knight a little while ago, and execute/heroic strike do the job otherwise.

It’s not quite as pirate theme-y as I would like, but there’s definitely pirates at the core, and it’s an effective enough deck.

Malorkok is pretty mediocre though. I mean, a free weapon is great value wise, since you’re getting pretty much guaranteed 2+ mana value, but the weapons themselves haven’t been super dramatic. I keep getting tentacles for arms, so I suspect the RNG is skewed for the new cards.