Be Excellent To Each Other

Apparently not, they are doing a phased release this time.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/for ... 3594760064

Americas: Tuesday, July 29th at 11:59 PM PDT
Europe: Tuesday, July 29th at 11:59 PM CEST
Asia: (Korea) Wednesday , July 30th at 12:59 AM KST / (Taiwan) Tuesday, July 29th 11:59 PM CST
China: Tuesday, July 29th at 11:59 PM CST

Mildly weird decision, I wonder if their login servers are the same for all areas, and it only splits out into regional servers after that? This might be a reasonable mitigation strategy if that is the case.

After doing the daily quest (warlock wins) figured I'd have a last hurrah with miracle rogue before the evil legendary arrives with the new Naxx wing tomorrow.

Nice way to go out though, Rank 13 game, against a druid and I managed to get all the cards I needed in my hand for THE MEGA FINISH with some ten or so left in my deck.

The finisher still took a bit of setting up though (the magic number of course, being 26, plus with him being a druid he can always add armour onto that) - chipped away to get him down to 25 and had a fair amount of work to do on the board, including using my Auctioneer to help take a big taunt out, and both saps, as well as taking damage to my own face in the process.

Managed to get a clear board with trading and the final sap (also played a Drake), knowing full well he'd play the Ironbark again next turn, which he did.

Backstab > Drake > Dagger (+ deadly poison previously applied) killed the Ironbark (taking my health down into single figures). Then it was the dream setup of Leeroy > Cold Blood > Cold blood, Shadowstep > Leeroy, Shadowstep > Leeroy for 26 damage to the face.

Pretty obscene really, to take out an Ironbark and do 26 face damage in one turn for 10 mana. Also I needed all 10 mana for the finisher, so the task in hand was to kill an Ironbark using zero mana, to save all 10 mana for the finisher. (Hence using the Backstab first as that's 0 mana but only works against an undamaged minion.)

I'm glad I took the time to learn and play the deck, otherwise I'd have been cussing it up from now until the end of time as a cheap and nasty pile of crap - when it's possibly one of the most interesting decks I've played in the game thus far.

Still lost against EBG with it the other day though I was one turn off lethal but he managed to put a 14 damage finisher into me to scupper that one. Bastard. It was an interesting game too as I had to go somewhat off-piste (the 26 damage finisher with the deck is actually pretty damn rare) and combo up other stuff, no Leeroy played at all.

The only mistake I arguably made was using a Farseer to get heal on myself and then shadowstepping it, which meant my two minions on the board could be cleaved and double executed, but I was betting on him not having all three cards in hand......

Twas a good game. Not easy and felt well earned. That's the biggest compliment I can give you!

Heh, it really does feel like one mistake in a game against you and it's done and dusted!

I'd love to be able to do an action-replay of that game to see if there was anything I'd have done differently, but apart from Shadowstepping that Farseer (which with the benefit of hindsight didn't gain me anything), I think I was mostly spot on.

Then again that's usually the case when two good players square off against each other, many times I've had an opponent make a mistake against me and think to myself 'That's probably cost you the game', and equally so when I've made a mistake and thought, 'Bollocks, if he makes the most of that I'm knackered'.

It's going to be very interesting to see how the sands of the game shift as the new cards come on-stream, just the Nerubian Eggs with buffs/taunts can mix things up quite substantially against a surprising number of decks already (I've replaced a couple of low value cards in my pally and warlock decks with them, and swapped others around so I can taunt/buff them).

In fact it may even be the common cards that upset the applecart more than the legendaries.....

To be honest, you'd hope so in an F2P game

Plague Quarter is out on EU.

Such crippling lag that I can't even put through the purchase to unlock it. Huzzah! I'm watching Trump's stream and he has the same problem, haha.

Those of us that have already bought using real monies can get in fine. In your face, or something...

First boss down on turn 6!

Just been playing regular arena.

Close game against a Warlock until he plays three Sea Giants and a Frostlord Whatever in the same turn, which pretty much ends things.

Second boss down Time for bed though.

All three on Normal went down first attempt to my Warrior deck. Loatheb is quite funny when you see he has 75 Health.

I believe I said aloud 'WHAT THE FUUUUUUUU'.

And yet he died. Spores man.

Class challenges tomorrow, and then Heroic nonsense to entertain me the rest of the week. Cheap for 700 gold!

Scratch that, final boss down.

These were a lot easier than last week, and those were pretty easy.

Yeah almost laughably easy, I don't feel like I even needed a particular deck there. Perhaps the Heroics will be super-insane.

Did the class challenges this lunchtime, 1st go on both. They were really good fun though

Heroics were disappointingly easier than last weeks in my opinion. Won't share the decks I used yet as I am guessing you guys want to work out your own (same as me).

The only fight that gave me some problems was the mage class fight, but nailed that 2nd time around. The Hunter one was most ace

Hmmm yes Heroics done. Not as hard as last week but still a mild pain to crack. I was determined to make my Priest win against The Unclean dude and he did eventually.

Warrior for Noth. I think I managed to not lose a minion until the penultimate turn.

Good puzzles. Class challenges really easy but hilarious.

Heh, I'm having much more of an issue with these heroics than last week! I know what I need to do, but i'm just not getting the card draw for them.

Finally got the first one down! I'll give the other two a go tomorrow

Yeah, the one where they start with a Fen Creeper... if I didn't draw a Shadow: Pain for turn 2 I pretty much gave up. At the end of Turn 2 you can be on 17 health!

went for a warrior with execute being the main draw to start, also the Armour Smith made that fight incredibly easy.

All done

I have to be honest and say I was having some trouble with the heroics last night. (Normals and class challenges were no problem.)

I can see what I need to do, but haven't quite been able to pull the strategy off.

i.e.

NOTH - I guess needs to be a spell heavy control deck so his hero power triggers as little as possible.

HEIGAN - Get something on the left that either benefits from the hero power or is effectively immune to it (that new Naxx card that heals itself every turn, for example).

LOATHEB - Obviously that minion he starts with needs to go down pretty much immediately, but it's still a hard fight. I did get very close on this one last night.

I'll come back to them with a fresh pair of eyes another day!

I went, Mage, Priest, Priest, if that helps you

I don't mind admitting it took me several attempts for each of them. My strategy was (LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW).

I think Noth was the most annoying - finding a deck where you can stay alive and control the board without playing any minions or having them die. For that I went warrior, slamming those bitches down with weapons and otherwise armouring up as much as possible, until I could drop Alex turn 9 to put him at 15. As before, the AI mostly goes for face, so Alex lives and a warrior can find 7 damage to finish him off pretty easily.

Heigan - actually lightwells pretty much won this for me. I had two out on the board and they either healed me or healed each other to help negate the hero power. If you can double up the health of the left-most one with a Shield or Spirit, that'll keep it alive for plenty long enough. I managed to drop an inner fire on one when it was a 12/12, so I smacked down most of his minions, buying time to find answers for everything else.

Loatheb: Shadow pain turn 2, and very often Mind Visioning on Turn 1 just for fun. Largely the same Priest deck. Lightwells again doing a fine job especially when fired up.

For each though, the draw had to be right, and I re-rolled on the last one several times.

New season underway!

I'm going to try a load of my own bespoke decks out in Ranked and see if I can make some headway with the Naxx cards.

The Eggs are great if you can get them out early game but by crikey they're disappointing when drawn later on. I guess a warlock would be a good match for them with the extra card draw.

I think I might try to build some 'quick' decks that are by no means aggro decks, and may even toss the odd miracle rogue game into the mix to see what happens....

Trump has a very good F2P rogue deck on the go on YouTube, very effective deck and not an Auctioneer in sight!

Bad news there I'm afraid (YT is quite behind). That deck stalled out around Rank 4 and he started losing ground. In an effort to get up to Legend on Asia, he decided to switch to a F2P Zoo deck

Oh dear, that's rather disappointing - I guess he wants to get the legendary ranking but it's a shame he felt the need to debase himself like that.

Then again I have no expectation of ever getting close to legendary, if I can ever manage Rank 10 again I'll be happy, anything above that would be a mega-bonus - as such no need for zoo!

I suppose the meta won't settle down until all the Naxx wings are completed, all the new neutral cards are out there, all the new class cards are out there, and everything's had some time to bed in - so in the meantime it's sort of anything goes

I didn't catch his stream yesterday so I'm not sure if he made it. He was high rank 3 when I last checked and as you say, it rolled over today.

I only hit 15ish this month, but I've never really tried to climb seriously. Really must do that at some point.

Had an arena run started the other day, but lost my first match and left it a few days.

had another go this morning and have gone from 0-1 to 7-1. Skillz.

Shaman, BTW.

Needless to say, I lost the next two after posting that, but 7-3 is good, and netted me 180 gold and the obligatory 20 dust and a crappy rare card from the pack.

Hooraaay!



I checked my stats and it only says 928 wins, but then I realised this says 'any mode' so I guess thats 72 practice wins too.

This unexpected cashback puts me 35 gold short of 2100 - the rest I need for free Naxx. After I complete the current quests it's all pack and Arena money from then on

After a good arena run and some daily quests, I find myself at just over 400 gold. Now I'm tempted to do Naxx F2P...

Assuming you have til next Tuesday/Wedneday... you might get close to 700 before then.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Q3aqM4 ... wanalytics

Mildly interesting reddit survey on Hearthstone.

16-30, predominantly single males. That's a shock.

33% rocking the F2P though, not bad. The last question demonstrates why surveys on the internet shouldn't allow open-ended responses.

New Wing is open.

Haven't done the heroics yet but the mechanics of the 4 horseman fight is going to be a total bitch with them suped up from norm

The heroic card you get for normal will be in most people decks, a 4 cost that causes death rattles to proc twice, he also has a fair bit of health, that ability paired with the eggs or even harvest golums/leper gnomes is going to be awesome.

The Warlock class challenge is awesome, shaman not so much (will do it again, maybe I just lucked out and got the perfect cards to make it a cake walk).

I didn't get a chance to give it a go last night. I'll try and get a few plays in this lunchtime

Spectral Knight is a monster of a card, it's going to be in every deck too, I suspect.

Some of the new cards are pretty good. That one that is exactly the same as the Shieldmasta but with a death rattle to bring out another taunt is already a favourite of mine. Or most hated when someone else gets it.

Of course, I have none in my actual decks as I don't have that wing.

Blatant Pay To Win, Blizzard!!!

Didn't get to it yesterday, and probably won't have time tonight either. I got a little excited and bought a few more packs with gold so I'll still need to earn about 600 before the last wing is out.

Managed to open a Harrison Jones though, so that's at least one legend crossed off the list.

I have had 3 Capt Greenskins now

I'd take one of those, if only because it means I could get the 'Every pirate' quest unlock.

Wish we could trade, they just got dusted. Am on 2.5k dust now, and undecided on what to make.

Normal wing and challenges done this lunchtime, my TauntLegendary Priest deck destroyed the normal bosses. I suspect it will have a chance on the heroics too...

My regular priest deck completed the normal challenges for the last wing , I had time for 1 single game at lunchtime today on the new wing and failed (but not by much) on the first boss so will be planning to try those again tonight.

I liked the Hunters challenge from the last wing - I hope they can do similar things like that in the future.

The thing that fucks me off with the Naxx stuff is you still only get the same nine deck slots, considering each level in each wing basically needs its own deck (at least on heroic), it's almost inevitable you end up overwriting decks you use in Constructed, or just constantly have to overwrite the same couple of slots for the Naxx solo campaign. (I know you can 'dispose' of each deck once you've downed a heroic boss but it's still sub-optimal IMO.)

And then on top of that you really could do with extra slots to start to work on new Constructed decks too.

I realise there has to be a limit as it's all stored server-side, but nine slots is well tight.

Don't you normally just play the same few decks though? I find nine restrictive as I use all classes about the same amount, but if you're concentrating on one class you should have a bit of wiggle room.

When I'm focusing on climbing in Ranked then yes I do tend to zone down to two or three decks, but even then I'll often try other stuff when the mood takes me, and generally in the early stages of a season (such as now) I like to mix and match a bit. (Plus I like to maintain a broad base of decks for all the various daily quests.) And then when I make a decision to properly get into something new (like miracle rogue) I don't want to have to nuke a previous favourite deck to make room for it.

So with the solo stuff needing unique decks, and all the new cards feeding into Constructed and needing trying out, and wanting to maintain my favourite decks as well - nine slots is really restrictive.

Well my regular priest deck cleared out the normal bosses (and i even stole one of the powered up four horsemen in the last boss fight)

Completed the two class challenges as well (2 goes for the warlock but fairly easy the 2nd time)

Jesus, I can't get close to any of the heroics this time!

Finally got Gothik down, but I had to look online for some tactics...