Be Excellent To Each Other

Got to level 12 this morning - a long losing streak put me back to 16 and i'm back down at 13 now.

You can get a real feeling for the random number love when you fire an implosion off at a minion

On a good game you target something with a 4 health and kill it
On a bad game you target something with a 3 health and its still alive :-)

I also did not realize the character picture in your quest log tells you your ranking against the rest of the players for the month

Latest news is some alternative Hero characters but they look to all just be re-skins of the existing ones

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... 05766.aspx

TEN FUCKING DOLLARS for a character skin?

Yeah, that's what Hearthstone really needs now, shit paid content like that.

Maybe they'll charge us ten dollars for more deck slots next. Ha!

Wow, initially I thought it was $10 for all of them and I thought that was bullshit for a pure cosmetic, and then I discover it's $10 each? Fuck that. If it doesn't affect the game, I'm not bothered. Give me something new, real, tangible that actually changes the game and I'll think about it.

The worst thing about it is they'll sell fucking loads of them, it's the same in WoW, any old cosmetic shit for ridiculous prices, people lap it up. £17 for a single mount, that sort of crap.

If the money were going back into the game in any sort of meaningful manner it'd be OK, but you know it's just lining shareholders' already very full pockets.

(In fact, and rather worryingly, WoW has gone into full scale MONEY GRABBING BASTARD mode recently, I really hope Hearthstone doesn't go the same way. I'd have cancelled my WoW sub months ago but for the fact Mrs Hearthly and Hearthly Jnr are both playing it and they like me to help them out with stuff.)

THANK GOD THE PICTURES ARE HERE.

£6.99 per picture. LOL.

People are also criticising the fact that specific interactions between heros and cards (Cairne with Garrosh, Ilidan with Malfurion) are the same. They haven't been turned off or changed for the new heroes. Lazy and pants.

Game wise my current deck of choice is 'Echo Mage', deck list is as follows, and it can be amazingly good fun to play.

I've had games where I've played 5-6 Sludge Belchers, or Healbots, or multiple Alexstraszas, etc.

Not my deck of course, and it's been around for a while so there are quite a few variations of it out there, but this one works for me as it has a decent match-up against aggro, especially Face Hunter. (I teched in a Kezan Mystic and Frostbolt, because, fuck Hunters.)

These screenshots show the DRAMA FINISH of multiple Moltens and/or Alexstraszas, (note I have two Alexs on the board and one in hand in one of these games), but quite often getting a simple Sludge Belcher and Healbot duplicated/Echoed multiple times can do the job.

The amusement factor of having several Kezan Mystics against a Hunter can be LOL-tastic too

Finally, most people assume they're playing against Freeze Mage, and it has similarities with Fatigue Mage too - so the surprise factor of the deck is very high when you 'reveal your hand' as it were.

Loads of different win conditions, from outright MOLTEN FRENZY to fatiguing out an opponent with near endless Sludgies and Healbots - and lots of stuff inbetween.

Obviously one of the 'fiddlier' decks to play with lots of stuff to learn, but that's where the fun for me in this game is now, trying out different decks on a regular basis. It also helped that I'd got pretty competent with both Freeze and Fatigue Mage, and there are many similar plays with deck, so I could get my head around this one without too much trouble.

Oh yeah, Patron Warrior eh? When is that shit getting nerfed?......

TAVERN BRAWL mode is live - it's ace!

Pack of cards up for grabs for your first win.

It's OK. Way easier as Nefarian and there's no reason to win more than once.

I'll put you in the 'half empty' column then....

It's a fun new mode and it seems to offer decent rewards, a welcome addition to the game IMO.

Even if you only do it once per week it's a nice change of pace.

Yeah it's something as opposed to nothing. I did it twice.

Getting a bit fed up with Patron Warrior now, even when you play around absolutely everything you know they're capable of, their ability to generate a burst of biblical proportions out of nowhere is fucking ridiculous. On top of that they have superb early game, epic card draw, brilliant board control abilities, and multiple win conditions.

It's not the easiest deck to play I grant you that, but even when played sub-optimally it can be epically annoying.

I know people say 'Play Handlock then' but (a) It should be possible to put together a decent counter with more than one class and a specific build on top of that and (b) That's not very helpful when your daily quest doesn't include wins with Warlock.

http://bmkgaming.com/on-patron-warrior- ... t-of-here/

I've won twice so far and both as Raggy - one was a very close run game - the other was a massacre when they played the dragon that reduced spells by 3 points and I spammed lots of spell cards against him (including 2 of the hound cards that respawn each round).

I like the 'new' cards that are different to play with (and against) and that you have the other tactical changes (60 health vs 30+30 armour - one person starting with 4 mana vs 1)

Chatting with Hearthy about current decks and this is the one that i'm enjoying playing with right now





Almost dont care for the mulligan at the start but the main thing here is doing nothing until you hit round 4 (or round 3 with the coin) - you really want to have shadowflame as its basically your clearup card but by round 4 or 5 you'll have 10 cards anyway

Turn 2 and 3 are probably tap for more cards , possibly drop a minion out if absolutely needed to block but turn 4 is one of :

Hobgoblin + Voidwalker
Implosion (if they only have a single minion to hit or some low power stuff)
Hellfire (typically 3 is enough to kill stuff at that stage)
Nullifier (cant be targetted by magic and 5 points health is normally enough to buy a round)
Twilight drake (i will have 9 or 10 cards here)

Turn 5 / 6 - similar to the above or hob + annoy / ghoul , if they have a big minion at this point then soul syphon or dropping the sheep + a hellfire knocks *5* off everything on the board - at this point they should have nothing left on the board

6 is also a good time normally to get thaurison out - again you'll have 8 or 9 cards in your hand so even just having him for 1 round gains you 8 or 9 points of mana that you dont need to spend in the future

At any point if you are down to 15 health (happens quickly some time) your best clearup move is moten giant and Shadowflame to destroy their board - if they dont have stuff down then getting your moltens out with a starfury / defender to get taunt on them both and then healbot to get your health back up out of the danger zone

Sea Giant is good if you do get an implosion to stick and it works against people who fill the board with junk :-)

Chromaggus only goes out if i can tap at the same time (tapping gets you double cards)
Mal'ganus shields you and boosts imps and the mistress of pain - and no-one seems to get that if they leave you with a few imps on the board then you play Mal then they are 3/3's and do a lot more damage
Kel is very useful if your burning your characters (for shadowflame / hellfire / ghoul / sheep) so you can re-gain them but he's the one I may swap out

Jaxx with 8 points (after Thaurassun) means you can either drop a 6/6 out or tap for a card then play Jaxx to jump back up to 15 health (although he breaks the MoltenGiant stuff)

I do well against almost everything apart from Facehunters as long as i dont get a bad draw :-) or some Druid decks

Facehunter just knocks me down too quickly , and druids seem to have too many 4 health cards / or stuff that silences out my taunts

Here are two quick games using this (no sound) - won both although a fair bit of luck , the second game worked better for me but a win is a win :-)

The main issue I'd have with that deck is the one you identify yourself zaphod, that Face Hunter knocks you down too quickly.

There are so many of them out there that any deck I play has to have a chance against them, yesterday I got four on the trot..... Looks like a fun and interesting deck though, and like I said when we were chatting, having something bespoke rather than net-decked can be a big advantage just in itself. (Won't give a Face Hunter pause for thought though, since they generally don't interact with anything you do whatsoever, unless they have to silence a taunt.)

What are you using for your video capture there BTW?

Against a hunter i will drop the 1 and 2 point taunt cards (voidwalker / annoy a tron / ghoul) and the sheep without the hobgoblin just to get something to block but at turn 3/4 I need to have a hellfire to clear the board and turn 5 pretty much needs to be a healbot

I can win against them however i need to get the right cards just to survive - if i can make it to a later round my big cards clear things out and Mal' being able to give me invincibility / Jaxx bumping me back up to 15 health is perfect - I just lose to them more often than I win



I'm on a Mac and i'm using something called snagit - its a slightly older version (came as part of a software bundle) and it only captures sound via the speaker (so you can get some echo-y FX or just turn it off)

Another game against a priest who never really got anything going (unusual starting strategy for them to get a card draw)

New tavern brawl live - make up your deck (nothing seems to be blocked) and every time you lose a minion you gain a banana

Banana types I've seem so far :

Rotten banana - deal 1 point of damage
Banana - give minion +1/+1
Big banana - give minion +2/+2
Displacement banana - swap health and attack

I managed to win this on my first try with a really shitty Druid deck, don't even know how. Plenty of synergy to be had though, I think a mage deck would work very well for this.

But I'm barely playing lately, missed a couple of quests because I haven't even got around to cashing them in.

I want to try with the druid deck that overloads your opponent to get them to burn cards - last night I managed to get my opponent to burn stuff just by doing things like dropping a molten giant / shadowflame which gave them multiple bananas :-)

I one-shotted it with a very basic Zoo/Demon style Warlock deck, wasn't even close really - seemed like the obvious choice to make sure my hand didn't get too full and wanting minions to die as well.

I think that's the main downside. You can play a standard deck and the bananas thrown in just as a bit more variance for certain scenarios. My opponent was a patron warrior I think. So for best use you'd need something that is spell activated - so a mage with Flamewaker/apprentice would be pretty decent.

New expansion being teased, announcement on the 22nd July apparently, talk is that it'll be another Goblins vs Gnomes style - i.e. Just a mass release of new cards rather than an adventure mode.

Rumours abound of it being Argent Tournament themed.

I'll cheerfully chuck £48 at it straight out of the doors for 60 packs, get myself vaulted right into the action like I did for GvG.

Still playing the game every single day and enjoying it muchly.

Thinking on about the next expansion I'm wondering if I should go a bit EBG and gold it out.

Current situation is that my card collection is nearly complete, I have every card I want, any card I need for a deck I'll just craft (currently sat on 6300 dust with nothing I want to craft). However of the cards I'm missing they're basically all (1) Shit (2) You'd only ever run one of anyway.

(I have 1019 out of 1065 cards and 6300 dust, I also got a gold Hemet Nesingwray the other week (generally regarded as being the worst legendary in the game) so that's another 1600 dust on tap should I need it.)

I'm always getting to Sunday afternoons with over 500 gold, often over 600 gold, and occasionally over 700 gold - so that's 5-7 packs per week (plus the Tavern Brawl pack, but I don't have the option not to 'buy' that.)

If I start saving gold now I'll get to the 22nd July with around 2400 gold, and the 22nd July is just the announcement of the next expansion, not the actual release, so by the time it's released I'll have a wedge more than that.

Thing is though, I have no objection to buying 60 packs when the next expansion launches, it's not a money thing, and I do enjoy my Sunday afternoon ritual of opening packs. But there is a slight sense now that opening packs at the moment just won't really get me anything apart from potentially filling the dwindling pool of blanks I have in my current collection and creating more dust that I don't need, so why not save the gold on for the next expansion to either augment or replace what I buy when it launches?

On a wider note I think the meta is in a fairly good place at the moment, with the possible exception of Patron Warrior there's no obvious deck or card that needs a nerf, and even with Patron Warrior the skill cap to play it properly is so high that scrubs like me who tend not to get past Rank 10 don't have to worry about it too much. (Most months I play mainly Casual anyway.)

So I had a quick look around my crafting mode view and its amazing how many non legendary cards i was missing

I crafted everything that wasnt a rare (which still took a while) and ignoring that I still only have one of a number of others looked at what else I'm short :

I have no :

Lay on hands
Shadowform
Preperation
Doomhammer
Pitlord
Bane of Doom
Twisting Nether
Shield Slam
Brawl
Gorehowl
Hungry Crab
Doomsayer
Big Game Hunter

so for at least one of each thats 12x400 (4800)

And then I'm missing 23 Ledgendary cards so that's 23 x 1600 = 36800 so i need about 40,000 dust to get one of each card :-)

Blimey that's some pretty significant cards you're missing there.

The lack of Preparation basically makes most Rogue decks non-viable (and you need two of them).

Shield Slam is a must-have (usually two) for any midrange/control Warrior.

You'd generally want a Brawl as well.

Doomsayer (two) is 100% essential for any sort of Freeze/Fatigue/Echo Mage deck.

And how do you get by without a BGH? He's a staple in most decks at the moment!

The others are neither here nor there though, or have viable replacements in the deck slot they'd occupy. (Lay On Hands is a great card for a midrange/control Pally though, you only need one. Bane of Doom is excellent in a demony-themed Warlock deck.)

This is my complete list of missing cards at the moment, as you can see it's almost all (bad) Legendaries with a few (mostly bad) Epics and a couple of (bad) Rares.

Certainly there's nothing out of there I'd want to craft for any of my decks (hence me being sat on so much dust).

DRUID - One Starfall, one Ancient of War, one Tree of Life, Malorne

HUNTER - One Feign Death, one Snake Trap, Gahz'rilla

MAGE - One Spellbender, Flame Leviathan, one Pyroblast

PALADIN - One Coghammer, Bolvar Fordragon, one Lay on Hands

PRIEST - one Shadowform, Prophet Velen

ROGUE - One Patient Assassin, one Headcrack, Trade Prince Gallywix

SHAMAN - Two Far Sight, one Ancestor's Call

WARLOCK - One Anima Golem

WARRIOR - One Bouncing Blade, Iron Juggernaut

NEUTRAL - Lorewalker Cho, Millhhouse Manastorm, one Recombobulator, one Southsea Captain, two Enhance-o-Mechano, two Mini-Mage, Elite Tauren Chieftain, Leeroy Jenkins (I dusted him when he got nerfed), Mimiron's Head, Illidan Stormrage, The Beast, Baron Geddon, Foe Reaper 4000, Gruul, Sneed's Old Shredder, Onyxia, Ysera, one Sea Giant, one Clockwork Giant

I tried to play your Echo deck without the Doomsayers and the Molten Giants.

Doesn't work so well!



On the plus side, the game where I beat a handlock by chaining four Exploding Sheep together to kill his two Molten Giants was good!

Unfortunately I have no dust to craft these cards as I spent them on the Echo ones instead. Doh!

The Doomsayers and the Moltens are great cards to have in your collection. The Doomsayers are integral to all the more technical Mage decks, which I really enjoy playing.

The Moltens go into Echo Mage and of course Hand Lock, which are both interesting and technical decks to play.

When I first played Freeze Mage I had no Doomsayers so I had to drop 800 dust on them. I think I needed to do the same for the Moltens when I tried Hand Lock for the first time, but then of course I had them for Echo Mage as well when I wanted to try that.

This is what I'm paying for at the end of the day, the game isn't Pay To Win, but having a mostly complete card collection and a backstop of dust means I can always just have a go with any deck I fancy the look of - Pay To Play, if you will. (IIRC I'm at around £150 spent, but then again I have been playing the game solid for nearly 18 months.)

(And indeed Patron Warrior is arguably the deck more than any other which demolishes the Pay To Win arguments, all you need to win with that deck is bucketloads of raw skill.)

There's a great guide for Echo Mage here BTW - http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/const ... iants-mage

There were quite a few other smaller things missing but i just crafted them - i have about 1800 dust remaining so could craft 4 rare or 1 legendary



I've never played Rouge or Warrior , I'm at level 60 for Mage / Priest / Warlock / Hunter but have not really played Warrior / Rouge / Shamen / Druid / Paladin



I suppose thats the other thing , i may lift one or two things from a deck that someone posts (a lot of my current Warlock deck came out of looking at what Gnomes did with his) but I dont 'copy' a deck or use a pre made one



A *lot* of my Warlock deck is either tant stuff or clearance , if something big is out then i have a 'kill' card (siphon soul) otherwise they tend not to have more than 8 health so a giant + shadowflame

When Echo Mage works out

It's actually a consistent enough deck to be entirely viable on the ladder and indeed some folks (who are far better than me!) are very competitive with it at legend rank.

As you can see here, the only constraining factor for my board was the limit of seven minions on the board, I could have played several more Moltens

Even if he managed to buff up his weapon and do a mega-Blade Flurry to clear the board and try to kill me I had Ice Block up, and only needed to ping him for one damage the turn after.

It's a tricky fucker of a deck to play though, and you really need to walk a very fine line between life and death some games. Definitely one I'd recommend giving a try if you have the cards for it, and since it's really rather rare, most people assume they're playing against Freeze Mage until the madness starts....

EDIT - I've teched in a second Sunfury Protector from the previous decklist, replacing Thuarrisan. You need to be able to dependably taunt up in my experience, far more than the discounts from Thaurrisan matter.

Interesting twist for the Tavern Brawl this week - each time you cast a spell you get a minion of the same cost

Won my first two games with a basic "all spells plus an apprentice and 2 flamewalkers" then lost the next to a druid who just flooded the board (he got a auctioneer out and then played zero and 1 point cards with more and more coming back into his hand)

Sea giants work well in this since the board does get filled quickly - have won with a mage / hunter / warlock , playing a priest deck now

Is there any benefit to winning more than once, or is it just for jollies?

One win is the card pack the others are just for jollies (although it does count twards your missions so if its win 7 games or win X games with class Y then the brawl counts)

This weeks was fun as hell. Really nice and simple design but totally mad. First one I've really enjoyed.

Yes another upvote for the Tavern Brawl this week

Just a really fun mechanic that it's cool to play around with.

I decided Priest was the way to go and really thought I had it on my first attempt (my entire deck was 30 Priest spells) but my bastard opponent also a Priest managed to wrest it away from me, although he was at fatigue by the end thanks to him ending up with two Mana Tide Totems and Lightwells that were (a) Blocking his board and (b) Overdrawing him

Lost again as Priest against Priest, then got a Mage who I managed to smack down.

At the very least I think Tavern Brawl is a nice alternative to the main game modes that gets you a pack of cards per week too, and in the case of this week's Brawl, they've really come up with a fun game mode too.

I won my first match easily as a Mage. Hand full of spells, plus a couple of Mana Wyrms and the guy who dishes out damage whenever you cast a spell.

He quit just before I was about to throw a Flamestrike! Boo!

And this weeks challenge is crap - pick a hero and get a random deck of their cards

Played with a hunter , won , and i have no desire to play it again

It's... not very inventive, but still interesting I guess. 'Here's a random deck, can you win?'.

The answer for me so far has been yes, twice, lost once. It makes filling the quests slightly more interesting.

I thought it was pretty entertaining, having NO IDEA WHATSOEVER is coming up next means the game can swing way or another at any stage, and you get to use cards together in inventive ways that would never normally happen.

I even got a Hemet Nesingwray but unfortunately didn't get a chance to play him, just like in Constructed lolz.

Plus as EBG says, they count towards the quests so it's a different way to go about them too.

Can't fault Blizz really, bonus game mode that they didn't have to do, and gets an extra pack of cards into everyone's hands every week.

(Incidentally I've saved 1500 gold already, in anticipation of the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.)

I think the problem is i *loved* the previous challenge , and was running it for every quest , at the end of the running time i had something like 14 or 15 wins in there , but I tried this one - did not really get anything interesting in hand and that was it.

The last one was awesome, true.

As usual I've only just started saving and have about 600g, so I hope whatever is announced isn't too expensive. I actually get the impression they're going to break with the whole F2P for some things, with the pay-only hero skins being the soft acclimatization to introducing that. I also get the impression they were mulling about charging to unlock the Brawl mode, but decided against it.

'Expensive'

Whisht your moaning! I work hard to grind stuff out for free

That's my Pally at L60 now. As usual I will now ignore the class and focus on the others.

Priest: 60
Warlock: 60
Paladin: 60
Warrior: 54
Mage: 50
Hunter: 48
Rogue: 46
Shaman: 36
Druid: 33

Eventually I'm going to have to become a serious Shaman/Druid grind master.

Mine with the number of wins - i'm going to get those last 40 to have a golden warlock

Warlock: 60 - 458 wins
Priest: 60 - 334 wins
Hunter : 60 - 323 wins
Mage : 60 - 320 wins

Druid : 32 - 42 wins
Shamen : 25 - 26 wins
Rouge : 25 - 15 wins
Paladin : 34 - 13 wins
Warrior : 17 - 4 wins

This weeks Tavern Brawl is start the game with 10 mana

I have played twice and won , for the first game their first move was Sea Giant
Mine was faceless (giant) , coin and sylvanas :-)

A first move Raggy is also pretty powerful

Yeah not a magnificent Brawl this week, almost seems to be down to the luck of the draw rather than putting together a decent deck.

Still, another free pack and it was two Rares, an Epic and two Commons for me (all dupes), so a decent little wedge of dust. (Currently running at around 6500 dust and 2150 gold IIRC.)

Oh and more importantly the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT was last night, new expansion launching 'August', 132 new cards, including lots of interaction with hero powers apparently. Theme is the Grand Tournament.

Obviously 'August' could mean a week from now or five weeks from now, but I should be rocking a decent chunk of gold by then in any event, might even be able to 'EBG' the expansion. (With a combination of free packs and crafting whatever key gaps are left thereafter. In fact I may have even hit critical mass now, whereby I can play the game for free from now on.)

In fact we should make that a new verb, 'Oh yeah I totally EBG-ed that bastard'

EBG - To freeload

The link for the announcement

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blo ... -7-22-2015

Having cards activate or do stuff on Hero power is interesting but its going to be very keyed to heros - drop the 'hero power only costs 1' and 'hero power can be used as many times as you like' and a Warlock on round 10 can do 20 points of self damage !