Be Excellent To Each Other

BRM Week 2 done, just the Heroics to do tomorrow.

Was made a little easier by a fortuitous combo...

And done for me , 2 attempts at the 2nd boss due to a poor card draw and 2 attempts at the 3rd because

That was pretty simple, I went priest, control warrior, face hunter.

Heroics will have to wait, as i'm away this weekend.

Priest / Priest / Warlock

I enjoyed the warriors challenge which once you get the Grim's out becomes pretty crazy :-)

The thing that bugs me about these is you have to fuck up one of your deck slots, I find it hard enough to bin one off to try a new deck out for proper games, so having to fanny around with one simply to put together gimmick decks to beat one-off challenges is quite annoying.

I generally try and beat them with existing decks from my slots first.

I think for the non heroic you can get away with your normal decks (which is what I did) - but agree for Heroic you really need to dump an existing deck and create a custom one for that specific challenge.

I need 100 more gold before I can unlock this one...

Did my Mage daily 5 wins yesterday. Tried some Mech Mage decks from the Internet and I didn't really like them. If you don't get a couple of specific cards to start then the entire deck fails. When it comes off it's awesome, but way too unreliable for me.

Changed over to a classic Mage deck mixing up some secrets and some frost stuff and won every time. Yay.

I used Priest for the first guy. Circle of healing, mind control tech, cabal shadow priest to steal the little guys and minimise the damage when they died. Divine Spirit/Inner fire combo on a stolen 0/5 ends up being pretty good.

I'll probably do the same for Heroic. The only difference I can see is that it's 3 damage to face for each little guy that died that turn. Same tactics *should* win it.

I've started using DeckTracker to store my decks in, as you can export them out of the game and import them back in.

I just save a jpeg out from the Snipping Tool of decks I like and might want to return to, if I need to replace them with something else.

I also now play with a snip of the deck I'm currently playing with off to the left of my Hearthstone window, makes the mulligan easier and also tracking what I've played and not played. (A bit like the sidebar Trump has on his videos but it doesn't track what cards have been played.)

Got Molten Core done on normal, ended up Midrange Hunter, Trump Legend 1 Pally and Midrange Hunter, just as they were decks I was already running with.

The single player challenges I could do without completely TBH, I just want the cards. The class challenges however with the custom decks I find to be really good fun.

Heroic Geddon is fucking bollocks, 100 health, powerful minions, grotesquely overpowered cards, 10 face damage if you can't spend all your mana with a zero cost hero power.

The deck that finally beat the cheaty bastard:

Ok all Heroics done. Raggles was quite the bastard too. Modified handlock to down that piece of shit.

As an AI I don't think he'll be taking the insult personally

There isn't as much comedy in the second wing I thought (or at least not so far), cartoon Kel'Thuzad was very funny I thought.

Seriously, play the Heroic a couple of times just to see what I'm talking about. Geddon really is bonkers. That clock thing he throws on your powerful minions deals 10 damage to all your stuff on heroic and he has about 6 of them in his deck. That's why mine was full of all the silence you can possibly get.

Haven't done the heroic ones, but I sailed through the regular with Warlock, and every time he played that I used Power Overwhelming

iPhone version is out, Android version is out "real soon now"

Android phone version is out now.

That was soon.

Very impressive!

Runs peachy on my Nexus5, probably about the same sort of performance as on Mrs Hearthly's iPad Air, give or take.

The way they've rejigged the UI for the smaller screen is subtle but very clever, and works really well. (Well, it was fine for a Midrange Hunter deck where I never had more than 5 cards in hard, not sure how it'll play out for decks that routinely hold 8-10 cards in hand, but I shall give it a try.)

My preference for platform would be PC > iPad > Phone, but overall I'd say the phone experience doesn't compromise the game in any way.

Also, you get a free pack of classic cards for playing a game on Android!

Played a game on both Iphone and Android - it works although a little slow in places

For both you get a 'original' card pack for completing the game (win or lose)

Also runs perfectly on the Nexus 4 but as I have a 7 inch windows 8.1 tablet that runs the full version I will most likely play that version on my travels.

I am trying out different decks every day now which I am enjoying a lot more than sticking to one deck for sustained periods. I don't take it as seriously which keeps my frustration levels low and has got me back to a place where I am enjoying playing again.

Week 3 is out and they have mixed it up a bit

Beat the first deck with a normal one - had a custom deck (which was fun) for the 2nd and I'm just building a custom for the 3rd

And done - i got the 'perfect' draw for the priest challenge (Alex in hand) which finished on the 3rd turn :-)

First two Heroics down. Last tomorrow. Second one is a fucker. Everything else a piece of piss.

Last Heroic done, a bit fiddly but I found a way.

I did see one way posted was to have 29 spells and the legendary who changes your hero to Rag - wait for them to play the card which 'plays opponents minion' - kill it and then kill rag to win

Quite a novel idea. I battled through with a scrappy Priest after trying a few different options, including mill Rogue.

Blasted through them all on normal, as ever no interest in heroics. Lost against the '1 card 1 mana' boss first time so had to bin off one my regular decks to make a deck with all the heaviest cards in the game. And finally some of the dragon cards seem to be coming through! Plus there was some comedy this time too, which I like.

On a wider note got my daily quest done (5 wins with Paladin or Priest) at work on my lunch break on my phone, perfect way to get the quest done. I don't see the quest as a 'chore' exactly, but I do sometimes see it as something that maybe needs to be done before I play a deck I really want to. (I've no great love for pally or priest at the moment, so they wouldn't be my first choice. However I pulled out the Trump Legend 1 pally deck and blasted through five wins in succession in Casual - job done!)

I really do recommend this game as a mobile experience, it works far better than I'd ever have thought possible.

I find playing on my Android phone to be a lot easier than on the tablet actually. Tablet is too bloody fiddly and even though mine's a 2nd Gen Nexus 7 it's still pretty chuggy even just on the menu screens.

The only real issue i can see with the mobile version is that it does not let you 'queue' up moves so when on the desktop i'll drag the characters to who they are going to kill - hit end move and watch the animations all play out i need to wait and attack each character separately (that was on a 3g connection so that may be part of it)

I'm L57 with my mage and want to get to 60, but I also don't want to play a mech mage deck.
Slow going

What type of Mage you playing then?

There's Tempo Mage which is fast without being Aggro or Mech.

I'm still enjoying playing Fatigue and Freeze Mage, there's something very satisfying when you manage to pull the deck off, especially with Fatigue since you're expecting to have to counter all 30 cards in your opponent's deck and then win. (Unlike Gang Up Rogue where you're looking for opportunities to burn as many of their cards as possible.)

The mobile version of the game is fab, usually manage to get my daily quest done on my lunch break Although a mate has the game on his HTC M8 and I have to say it runs a lot nicer than it does on my Nexus 5.

My own version of a mage, it's not doing too bad.

Well, that was a fun 30 minutes...

The fights are interesting in the new wing, but I one-shotted everything without making any new decks.

Sounds perfect. I just want the cards, preferably without having to nuke any of my deck slots in the process.

One more wing and we'll have all the dragons going on, which should spice the meta up a bit.

I put together a deck for the Mill dragon. Basically entirely 1-cost minions so that I always had a hilariously full board.

But yeah, all done as well as challenges. Heroic might be a bit more interesting but I've no time for that yet.

I've only got about 100g now so I'll be pushing it to have enough to buy the last wing on time.

Heroics done. Combination of bullshit and RNG but the bastards still went down.

The world is a safer place.

Totes. Quite a lot of people saying this time though is that while you can build a deck to beat them, you need the right draw and they need a reasonably average one to have a chance. Think it was probably my 5th roll that beat the last one, and in some matches I was nowhere near.

Also they're confirmed as bugged if you have a taunt and Kelthuzad down. The AI won't attack. Unless the taunt is removed by some AOE the AI will just play minions and never attack with them. People have also said if the AI wasn't so fucking stupid the Heroic matches would be impossible. Probably true.

Just opened the new wing and did the first battle.

I wonder what would have hatched had I not killed all the eggs immediately?

I think in Normal they're 5/4s, and 7/7s in Heroic.

Won the 4 normals first pop each time. Was fun though.

So there's this Warrior at 29 health and 24 armour, for an effective life total of 53.

He gets OTK-ed, no, really.....

(And this is a Legend ranked game, so it's not some daft confection between a couple of mates to break game mechanics.)

That was pretty amazing, but would have been slightly better if he'd played out the cards slower.

Nice!

Last wing of BRM tonight. I'll *just* scrape enough gold together to get it for free.

Final wing done minus Heroics. Meeeh. The last fight was slightly more interesting but not by much. The class challenge looked like it had interesting cards but the AI was dead too quickly. The design of them this time has been terrible.

Do you feel this expansion has been poor value for money?

Yeah kind of, 700g for 5 cards and always < 45 mins of entertainment defeating the bosses.