Be Excellent To Each Other

Gah fuck this can't even move around the deck creation screens and suchlike without it lagging to fuck.

I think I'll leave actually playing it until tomorrow.

Another masterful launch from Blizzard.

Can't even get in to open packs.

Opened 39 packs before I picked up a Legendary but ended up with 3 in the last 10

Eadric The Pure
DreadScale
Sky'cap'n'Krag

New cards :

6 Druid
10 Hunter
6 Mage
7 Paladin
10 Priest
7 Rouge
9 Shamen
6 Warlock
6 Warrior
34 Neutral

6 Dupe Rares (120 dust)
84 Dupe commons (420 dust)

I have gold for another 23 or so packs but its too slow to do anything with right now

I got a legendary who takes damage instead of your hero.

That initially seems of limited value, but I suppose it's almost a heal + body out there.

Yeah I've given up for the day at least until Blizzard gets their act together.

pfff...couldn't play even a single day today due to traffic, which made me even more eager to play.

I'm annoyed.

Looks like they've given up for now.

By 'emergency maintenance' what they actually mean is 'We'll just turn it off for a day whilst the initial surge of demand settles down a bit'.

In future when I turn a server off I'll say I'm performing emergency maintenance on it.


'But all you've done is turn it off!'

'Emergency maintenance, if you please.'


EDIT - And it's not a fucking emergency anyway, as an emergency is something unexpected. That'd be like saying 50,000* people turning up to watch the Cup Final at Wembley is an emergency, as if no one could have predicted it.


* I have no idea whatsoever how many people go to Wembley to watch the cup final so I just pulled a number out of my arse.

Beat another face Hunter after healing for no less than 37 during the game with my Shaman. FUCK YOU HUNTER.

What Shaman deck are you running? I'm still tweaking mine with variable results. (Just put one together myself with the new cards, rather than netdecking.)

Somewhat annoyingly, I haven't faced a Hunter yet!

It's a random mish-mash I'm trying with pretty much every new card I got. I actually think ancestral knowledge is a good card, you just don't play it on turn 2. Turn 10 you topdeck it for two cards, and who the fuck cards about overload 2? Two in my deck. Fuck what the streamers say.

Another fucking face hunter beaten. It helped that he was an idiot (as are all face hunters), played two healbots and got both returned with freezing traps for 32 healing, and won a healing wave for a total of 46. I wonder how long it'll take for these thick twats playing this cheapass deck to fuck off.

Bugs, bugs, and more bugs:

I think describing them as 'niche' would be overstating the likelihood of them affecting many games..... The guy has obviously gone out of his way there to try all sorts of weird interactions.

Certainly some things to be sorted out though.

It's right twatty of Blizzard to introduce these 'WIN THREE GAMES AS CLASS X' quests without increasing the number of deck slots. It was hard enough to maintain a full spectrum of decks to be able to complete any quests when it was 'WIN TWO/FIVE GAMES AS CLASS X OR Y', but it was at least possible to have more than one deck for a couple of classes and still have all the possibilities covered.

Now there are nine possible deck requirements to complete a quest and, erm, only nine deck slots.

WHY IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD FOR BLIZZARD TO SORT OUT? MORE DECK SLOTS. BASTARDS.

I just keep one of each deck, like most people.

If you desperately need a second deck from one class then it is surely the work of a few seconds to set it up.

I agree that more would be nice, but I've personally never felt particularly restricted.

Open your chests!

For Rank 11 I got two golden cards (a common and a rare), 40 dust, and the season card back.

I decided to have a little crack at Ranked today and was motoring along, one game off Rank 10 and then hit the most appalling losing streak down to Rank 12 and was one more loss off Rank 13 Decided Rank 11 was as good as it'd get for the month at that point

The chest isn't earth-shattering stuff but it's another little goody that's been added to the game, the golden cards aren't soulbound either so you can just dust them if you want.

I was on 14, but hadn't really played much in Ranked. Will see what that gets me tomorrow.

14 got me :

Gold Frigid snobold (common)
Gold Eaglehorn Bow (rare)
10 dust
and the card back

Let's see, rank 10 got me two gold commons (Silence, Tinkers), a gold rare (Powermace), card back and 5 dust.

Since my objective is not a gold collection, just a complete one, this might as well just be all dust.

This weeks Tavern Brawl - make your own deck and the mana goes up from 1 , 3 , 5 , 7, 9 , 10 for each turn

Chum of mine is getting salty about Control Warrior.

This is the guy who quit the game three times in a long weekend last year on his annual visit (after I introduced him to the game) - he's played it every day since.

At one point he actually chucked his shiny new iPad Air on the floor.

(He is quite rich though so he could easily afford another one, but even so.)

This is coming from the guy that used to spit venom every time Priest was mentioned because they were so underhanded and stealy

I still hate them. You play a Sludge Belcher and it gets Shrinkmeistered and Cabal Shadow Priested and I'm like RAAAAAAGGGGEEEEE.

That chum there is very funny though, he got remarkably cross the first time he had a Sylvanas played against him, I think that was when he chucked his iPad on the floor and 'quit the game' (for the second time in two days), he quit it again once more before leaving and even ceremonially uninstalled it off his iPad before he left.

Next day I saw him online in Battle Net

That Paladin card that plays all their secrets at the same time must be up for a nerf

Yeah, unless you've got a Polymorph/Hex right there (or massive board control), it's practically an immediate game winner.

My experience of that deck has been rather different TBH, I've lost against it once (twice?) but I've beaten it many more times than that.

(I assume we're talking about the 'Mysterious Challenger' card.)

The main point is, of course, that Paladin secrets are mostly shit, and they're easy to play around. If the card existed for Mage or Hunter it'd be off the scale ridiculous, as those classes have strong secrets.

The 6/6 body on the board isn't ridiculous, and as long as you pick off the secrets in a logical order it seems almost trivial to me to get rid of them all and maintain advantage. (And keeping count of what's already gone, as there can only be two of each secret in the deck.)

There's a nice guide to playing around Paladin secrets on this page, but it's mostly common sense. You can also do trickery like make sure the Mysterious Challenger gets the Avenge secret buff, and then BGH him.

http://www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/paladin-secrets

I actually haven't seen it in the wild, but apparently it is massively popular at high ranks. If you can play it into a board without much in it then you're getting a 10/9 body that takes a sacrifice before you can even hit it, for not much mana. If you don't have a BGH to hand or Poly/Hex then you're in all sorts of trouble.

It's possible I'm just coming across the deck being played wrong I suppose, slumming it around at low ranks and in Casual

Rather like the comical mess that Patron Warrior can become when piloted badly

Hopefully it'll turn up on Trump's channel, it'll be interesting to see what he makes of it.

It's like any other card. If its use becomes prevalent you start including things to counter it. Kezan Mystics to snag some of the secrets, Flares if you're playing hunter. BGH, Poly, Hex, all of the usual suspects.

It's annoying to be sure, but no more than any other card. As Hearthly said most of the pally secrets are shit. Unless you're mad you never play Redemption or Eye for an eye and if you've got the tools you can selectively activate the rest to your advantage.

You can, but you'll almost always lose out on mana/card equivalence. It doesn't break the game, but it's arguably the best value card in the game.

6 mana 6/6 that might play 5 secrets, two minimum of which are shit. Meh. I'm inclined to think a mad scientist in mage is actually better value.

Even if it just plays avenge, the tourney one and noble sacrifice it's 6 mana for a 10/9 where the first attack on it always misses.

Not many 10/9 cards for 6 mana.

Admittedly, given how shit some legendaries are, it could easily be a legendary card. There are plenty of epics that are far more usable than legendaries.

Like that 3/4 bird that gives divine shield when you target her with a spell. So niche as to be pointless in all but a couple of classes, and even then not very powerful.

Hearthhead sees a problem with the card.

http://www.hearthhead.com/news=249061/m ... xamination

I came across the deck a couple of times last night where the pally was able to aggressively control the early game and get the Mysterious Challenger onto an empty board, at which point you are, in all fairness, in a world of pain.

Do you know what sucks in the current 'Double Deathrattle' Tavern Brawl?

Having total board control, lethal next turn, and four decent sized minions out, all with deathrattle, two with taunt.

Opponent drops Sylvanas and then hits 'feign death' twice. He steals all four minions.

Trump's doing another F2P run at the moment which I'm finding quite interesting. Same rules as the original one he did, except this time of course we're four expansions down the line. (His original F2P run to Legend was during Classic, when Chillwind Yeti was a perfectly fine card for a lot of decks.....)

He's currently in the mid-teen ranks and using a Priest deck, the videos are appearing on his YouTube channel on a regular basis.

If he can get to Legend again with an F2P deck that'll be a remarkable achievement, although I'm not sure it's even possible now.

He is allowed to craft cards with dust, get as many packs as possible through quests/brawls/etc, do Arena runs and so on - he just can't spend any real cash. (So he could get Naxx/Blackrock wings with gold too I guess, can you still buy them for gold or are they cash only now?)

Either way the videos are a nice change of pace, watching someone try to think their way around meta-mainstays such as Mech Mage and Patron Warrior with a somewhat basic Priest deck.

Aye I've been watching them. The YT videos are quite lagged to his current progress. The one up today shows the 1,3,5 mana brawl which was over a week ago. I think he's at about rank 10 now and will really face a difficult struggle as he reaches the low ranks.

Still, he's plucky and it's his full time job and he's doing the best he could possibly do, so it's pretty interesting.

Opened my first Legendary card in ages last night (Malygos which i've thought about crafting a few times)

From PC gamer on a 14 year old who's playing it still without paying and has hit rank 1 in the US

http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-the-14-year ... ng-a-cent/

I see he agrees with me on Mysterious Challenger

It should definitely be a 7-mana card. Calling it 'Dr. Six' is accurate.

Case in point.

I get a 40 gold quest which of course I mulligan, but instead of getting another 40, or a 60 or the 100, it now has the 50s to choose from.

It gives me 'three wins with Priest'.

I fucking hate Priest. I have no Priest decks. It's ages since I even played as a Priest.

So I either have to do three wins with Priest to complete the quest, or wait a day to mulligan it again. (Which would then use my mulligan for the day which I may want to use on another 40.)

So instead I do three wins with Priest and hate every minute of it, after having deleted one of the decks I actually enjoy playing with, just to get the fucking quest out of the way.

That's bad design right there.

Tavern Brawl is messed up again this week - the main page says 'too many portals' (again) - however your deck has no portals and instead has dozens of webspinner cards

And now fixed so its a 'get lots of portals' deck although both decks break a lot of the new cards since the first one the only minion that you could draw for a joust was a webspinner (so no one won) and the new deck has no minions so any joust cards 'fail'

It's a fun brawl but not one you can really take seriously since it's so stupendously random.

To add insult to injury following on from my forced 'THREE WINS WITH PRIEST' quest I then got 'WIN FIVE TAVERN BRAWLS' which is a 60 gold quest so of course I'm not going to mulligan it, but it's rather a hateful tavern brawl. Grrrr.

It'll be nice to get back to, y'know, actually playing something in the game that I want to. (I'm forcing myself to maximise gold collection as my TGT card collection still has a lot of holes in it so I want to buy as many packs as possible with gold. I'm sat on enough dust to craft anything I want, but I can't bring myself to. So it's kind of my own fault, really.)

Thats what I got yesterday which is why i was playing so much Brawl - although since Brawl is 'offline' for a few days each week I wonder if the random quest generator will spit out a 'win 5 brawl matches' when you cant actually play any ?

Most of the brawl matches I played were pretty one sided and it did feel like there was not really much skill involved - if you got the good cards you won , if your opponent got good cards they won.
There did not seem to be any game where both sides got a good set.

However one positive is that i drew one of the new cards i'd never seen before and now I want to craft it





So in this game it was just what i had in hand but for a 6 mana card something that buff's *everything* both in your hand and in your deck it was great - its a pity its just a Shamen card rather than a neutral one (but I'm thinking playing a Shamen Murlock deck with that in there)

I also had Icehowl



which was an interesting card for 6 mana but i dont see it as very good with its normal 9

I'm currently losing this brawl to fucking pricks that keep portalling five legendaries over the course of the game. And even then they only *just* win. Cunts.

I find it infuriating. I don't mind getting one win at it for the classic pack of cards, but five wins is really pushing it.

It doesn't matter how well you're doing or what you set up, the insanely random nature of it means it's always possible to lose to just about anything at any time.

On a wider note I think there's too much RNG in the game anyway, this brawl just magnifies it to the max.

(In the normal game for example, what pops out of a Piloted Shredder can swing a game one way or the other, it's daft.)

I've slowed down quite a lot with Hearthstone recently, I'm doing my daily quest, and maybe a few games beyond that, but nothing like at the rate I have in the past.

Hahahaha, man. Some cunt in Tavern Brawl was spamming 'Well Played' when I was on 9HP after he dropped a Deathwing.

I responded by playing 3 portals, which got me a frostwolf grunt, shade of naxx, and... a Van Cleef which drops as a 12/12.

Deathwing has to hit the 2/2 taunt, my Cleef takes it out, and then I build up an almighty board that he can't recover from, and I fucking win. Fuck you BM twat.

First thing I do every match is hit squelch which has improved my win rate and my enjoyment of the game.

Only 130 more wins for golden priest. I was hoping for a more control based meta after TGT but yesterday I faced 12 face decks in a row.

I have noticed that my friends list has been sparsely populated of late, I think a lot of people have become frustrated with the current state of the meta.

Yeah me too, why wait to found out they're a BM twat or not when a pre-emptive strike gets the job done

I think the meta is 'OK' at the moment, Face Hunter is still exactly the same as it was pre-TGT, and it's still basically a roll of the dice if you beat it or not with most decks, even those that are well capable of beating it.

My play rate is definitely well down or where it was, but it's still a fun game.