Be Excellent To Each Other

The game does fire up on the US servers - (I just did it now and got into the tutorial, as I've never played in any region other than EU before) - but it's incredibly laggy.

Doubtless it'll totally keel over there too as they move through the afternoon into the evening.

Heh. Finally got in to the game again to take on the second boss. Still using my slow Paladin deck. Well, that's not gonna beat that boss no matter what card draw I get! 2 mana for 5-6 damage per turn? Yikes!

Yeah that gives you a very clear direction as to what sort of deck will beat that boss.

HINT - ZOO.

Would be interesting to see if it'd be such a pushover with a zoo deck on heroic.

Well it let me in this morning - i played out the first boss with my standard priest deck and won - i think a good card against him would be

http://www.hearthhead.com/card=1014/wild-pyromancer

(its what helped me clear things down) - drop him , cast a spell , heal him and do it again to clear out most of his junk - i really dont like the look of the shade character as its stealthed and if you dont get the right cards to deal with him he'll just keep on growing and growing (he played 2 against me - i took the first out with a pyromancer and the second he used to take one of my guys out when it was a 4 / 4)

Consecrate worked a beauty on him, but I might have been lucky to have it when he first played the thing

Sheesh, the best I can do on the first Heroic is get him down to 15 health. It's so damn hard dealing with a 4/4 every turn. You can either control and use up all your cards, and then you run out of steam, or you go face and can't kill him before the army of 4/4s kill you.

I'm not at that stage but I've seen the powers listed and wonder if a variation of the ice mage deck might work - using cone of cold / blizzard etc to freeze the enemies and just let the 4/4's sit on the board while you hit them in the face and have 2 of the 'your character cant die this round' secrets to keep you going for a few extra rounds at the end.

YES! Got the first one, with my hunter deck of all things.

The Heroic favours the face and rarely trades up the board. A buzzard/hound combo for 4 draw, with a timberwolf, and then to his face. He traded up a little, but then dropped an Abomination.

He then went face and traded against the buzzard and timber, leaving me only four hounds. Perfect! I dropped explosive trap and killed the Ab, which dealt 2 to all of those fucking 4/4s. Then explosive trap cleared off the board on his turn.

This gave me the opening to drop my Stranglethorn tiger, houndmaster it, and then a huffer, kill command, Tundra rhino and steady shotting to the face over the next couple of turns to score the win.

A taunt heavy druid deck using Wild Growths to get them out early apparently works well too.

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/76051-he ... -and-white

I didn't realise last night that there were only three bosses, (I thought the treasure chest at the end of the quarter was a boss, not the class challenges, and the game stopped working for the evening before I could see different), so all I have left to do are the class challenges and then the heroics.

I did manage to get back in last night around midnight but it was still running like shit so didn't bother past one game, but I noticed that I already have Maexxna.

Will try again after work today, hopefully the game will stay up for the evening....

Second Heroic down - took a Druid deck. Wild Growth and Nourish for mana crystal instead of cards, keeping no more than one in my hand. Slowly gained the board control with just enough momentum to pop it. Cenarius for the taunts to slow him down helped.

Getting close on the third - deck just needs a little refinement.

Finally, got the bitch.

Eventually I decided Alexstraza was absolutely key to winning, both for heals to me and knocking the bastard down in range. So I've just gone on *quite* the disenchanting spree to get Alex, but bugger me it worked.

Rogue in the end. The key was to pair down the board until you're only facing minions with 1 attack, and then heal up with Earthen Ring Farseers and Voodoo Doctors to mitigate most of the damage while waiting for Alex.

But fuck me, Alex only appeared when I had 6 cards left, and I was dancing at 1 Health for 3 or 4 turns, managing to heal and control for *just* enough to not die.

Once Alex was out, I was back to 15, and then I could tank on the next turn to use Alex on her to put her to 15. Then it was a question of using a charge (Argent Commander) and Weapon + Deadly poison on alternating turns to get it to zero. One turn of attacking, one turn of Alex to get me back to tanking range.

Pretty damn pleased to have cracked it. It's quite the puzzler.

First heroic down, Druid with lots of taunts and removal, and a deathwing to finish off

Second heroic down first try to my zoo-like lock. Once you have all your cards played and you are top decking, it was easy.

Last one will be tricky though, as I don't have Alex, nor enough dust to craft it.

Well I've done the normal challenges and the two class ones - then tried the heroic one and failed miserably with my standard deck - i'll have a go at constructing something tomorrow i think

I found the second the easiest - as you say, just get your cards out and the hero power is useless.

I think the third one would be absolutely impossible if it intelligently used the hero power, instead of trigging it by default at the start of every turn.

Basically it only needs to spend a turn to kill your healing minions so you can't replay them, and you're fucked.

I found this whole process of playing against the bosses to unlock cards extremely boring. I don't know even if i'll be bothered to unlocked them all.

It would have been better if they released this cards as a regular expansion because Arena really needs new cards.

The meta is already on its head with these new cards, and they're not all in play yet. The nerubian eggs seem to be a new favourite thrown into the mix.

I've really liked the boss fights. Difficult, and frustrating. Built in such a way that all of the traditional decks making the rounds are almost all terrible against it. It's nice, just the kind of spice I was hoping for.

I'm enjoying it, and have cheerfully spent the £13.99 for the next four wings.

It's a nice way to get new cards into the game, gives the game a bit of a single player 'beef' as it were, the heroic challenges are appropriately challenging, and Blizzard have neatly side-stepped any accusations that the new cards added into the game are in any way 'pay to win', since they're quite easily available to everyone, irrespective of budget, and on the same timescale.

Also the 'drip-drip' approach with new cards means that the meta won't be tipped on its head overnight, and players will have some time to digest the effect of each batch of new cards, before the next one comes along.

Pretty good show from Blizzard IMO.

Suuuuuuuucka!

But you're right, it's a nice implementation - not too many cards to get your head around at once. But having looked at the full card list, I don't think Priest is suddenly going to become competitive. I tried Priest against a few of these challenges and it was nowhere close. Admittedly I didn't try very hard to refine, but I also thought that it wouldn't have paid off had I tried. Poor priest.

...and done

Final heroic boss taken down with this deck, which i'm pretty pleased with! All common apart from 4 rares and one epic.

Good going, but I'm almost surprised that deck did it? How did the match go? I found it nigh on impossible to establish a board, even when I tried out a total zoo deck. Anything that wasn't sucked back into my account got punched to death by the minions she had out!

Kudos though

Every single deck I have played against tonight, without fail, has had two nubian eggs.

I found the 2/4 minion adding 3 to her attack every time was a pain. She played them on turns 3,4,5,6. I couldn't kill them fast enough

The key is to not try and establish a board of your own. Get her to fill her board with eggs and spiders, then leave them alone. She'll then do 7 damage to you maximum per round, which you can heal 6 of using the twin earthen, and have 4 mana left over to fireball/frostbolt her every so often when they get drawn, or ping her with your power otherwise. Once she is down to 10, it's all over.

Thinking about it last night, I'm pretty sure I can win it with a druid deck that is all common.

I had a similar deck ( deleted it now, needed the space) but went more for the board control. Even though I had Alextrazza in my deck it didn't drop until the last but one card, so didn't use her.

With all the healing from the Voodoo docs and Farseers along with some Elven archers, and the shooty doorfs I slowly mopped up the spiders board, kept myself topped up. The polys were used for the sea giant and the 5/5 ambusher. Ended up killing the spider with a fireball but fatigue would have gotten her the next turn anyway

Fun fight

So Wing One was easier than I was hoping for tbh....well the normal versions anyway

*Big pat on back* Happy that I beat all the heroics with my own made decks. Think I will be prodding them again to try out some other strats.

Oh and while doing the class challenge I find it amusing that the anti-miracle-rogue card is in your deck when your playing as the rogue

Indeed, this was my tactic too. Actually I concentrated on popping the initial spiders to spawn two more 1/1s quickly, just to get that board filled up. It's the annoying Shade of Nax and other more powerful cards you need to knock down.

Better with a Mage than Rogue come to think of it. Direct damage to the face is more straightforward and you can ping the face even if taunts are in the way.

Interesting way to 'steal' the stealthed minion (yes he's a priest but the card used can be used by any class)

I find Amaz's way of speaking very hard to understand, and not very pleasant to watch.

Nice plays there though, pretty funny.

I'd make a really bad Jedi, I have totally turned to the dark side. I felt the hate flowing through me and decided it was sort of OK.

Had a little bit of spawn on a card pack before when I got a second Net Pagle, the DE on that plus other crap put me over the top for a Leeroy and the second Prep.

I know miracle rogue is getting shagged next week with the new legendary, but in the meantime I'll have some fun with it.

The Nerubian Egg is slightly problematic and that's turning up in a fair few games, but it's fairly easy to deal with as it's a 0/2 until you 'activate it', or the enemy decides to buff it (seen a couple of shammies put down an early Flametongue for it which isn't a good idea).

Holding my own at Rank 14 but hopefully I'll start to climb once I get used to the extra burst that the Leeroy and second Prep add over my budget issue Arcane Golem and Sinister Strike. (I can go much more aggressive now.)

Also not sure that Van Cleef makes much sense in the deck (I've had him for ages so am overly attached to trying to get some use out of him), but when he goes big, he goes really big.

The best win of the evening was against a priest (what else) who was stealing my shit every chance he got, but of course outside of a rogue deck it doesn't work that well at all - the results were quite comical.

Technically speaking I still need a Bloodmage Thalanos in here, but as it stands it'll do, the Loot Hoarder is competent.

CHEAPSPLOSION.

I hope you get beaten by a succession of priests that steal all your best cards

The thing that strikes me most about the deck is how many games can be won without Leeroy (and indeed before I had Leeroy, without the Arcane Golem).

The Auctioneers however are 100% non-negotiable, depending on the match-up it's possible to survive reasonably well for an amount of time without one (the deck's early game can be surprisingly strong just using normal cards in normal sorts of ways with the combos), but from about 10 cards onwards without an Auctioneer it begins to get fairly flaky. (I've survived into the second half of my deck without one but it's pretty much all over by then.)

Once an Auctioneer's in play however the deck becomes really rather silly, and I'm more than happy to use Cold Blood(s) on an Auctioneer if I can either conceal him or I'm confident an opponent can't remove him. (As he can end up doing more damage than a Cold Blooded Leeroy.)

That said, Leeroy with two Cold Bloods and two Shadowsteps is 26 damage for 10 mana (less than that with a Prep or two), but even without that perfect set up the deck has many other ways of dealing damage to the enemy's face, making finishers in the high 20s entirely achievable using a wide selection of cards.

It's a fun deck to play, no doubt it, lots of decisions to make, even just the mulligan depending on the opponent you're facing can be of critical importance.

Oh yes and I've taken Edwin out, as Cold Blooded Auctioneers can reliably provide the same sort of punch more reliably and with more utility, he's been replaced by a second Blade Flurry. (Blade Flurry can be hugely powerful, stick a couple of Deadly Poisons on a Perdition's Blade and Blade Flurry the result, and it's like a Flamestrike on steroids (six damage to EVERYTHING on the other side, including the face.))

The Nerubian Eggs and that spider things that spawn two more on their death can be irritating, but can also be played around.

A very interesting deck to play, I'd recommend giving it a try.

Two Auctioneers are a must, two Preps or at least one (replace with Sinister Strike if you don't have two), and an Arcane Golem instead of a Leeroy will do you fine.

Errr, thanks for that, but I've been playing miracle for some time so I know the principle of the deck

The only thing I don't have are the preps and leeroy, but yes, it's passable even without those. Very often you don't need any rush finisher.

I'm still just collecting on the quests until the next Naxx is out, and will do that until the 5th week. Cha-ching.

Sorry it wasn't intended to come over as patronising or some sort of tutorial, just my own observations now I've put some time into the deck - it's delivered a few surprises for me (I tended to think the deck was all about the Leeroy finisher, when there's a hell of a lot more to it than that. When the cards fall nicely though, it's ridiculously powerful.)



The Preps are great, I did OK with one but the second really does make a difference, especially if you're fishing for cards that just don't seem to want to make an appearance



I've gone off Arena a bit so am just buying a pack every time I get 100 gold. The £13.99 for all of Naxx seemed entirely reasonable to me TBH, so I'm not fussed about trying to get together the 700 gold to buy a wing with every week.

I go through phases. Sometimes I can't be arsed with the faff of trying to profit from arena.

Currently have 2105 gold, the rest has been spunked on packs. So technically I don't have enough for every wing, but figure I will by the 5th week

Worst case, 40 gold a day, 20 days... yeah that'll do. Anything left will be spunked on further packs.

I'm still playing Arena with my gold. Naxx seems a bit limited in terms of stuff to do, but I suppose that's because of the delayed release aspect. On the whole it seems more like a way to release cards and charge for it, but I'll still probably pay (more out of convenience and 'loyalty' to the game than out of desire for the brief boss fights).

They've got to get the new cards out there one way or another, and TBH I'm surprised they've made it as easy for the F2P brigade as they have. 700 gold per week is just the daily quests and a reasonable number of games on top of that, very easily achievable. (And that's if you weren't already hoarding gold ahead of time once they confirmed Naxx could be bought with gold.)

I wouldn't have been critical of Blizz if they'd just said 'Right motherfuckers, F2P is over, you've had a few months out of us, if you want the new content and the new cards you can stump up some cash, especially EBG over at BEEX'.

In other news, I beat all the bosses on heroic, aren't I supposed to get a new card back?

Of the three I'd say Anub was actually the hardest, Faerlina was a walkover, and Maexxna was easy once the 'fill her side with 1/1 spiders' tactic slotted into place. In the end I used Deathwing for Anub.

You haven't beaten all the bosses yet, only the ones in the first wing

There should be one card back per wing! Cheapass bastards!

Mmmm, free to play, it's so bargainous *rubs face with fivers*

700 gold is the quests per week? On average it's 50 per day if you play every day and complete every day. Which is two weeks per 700, and then only if you complete every quest every day. The extra 10 gold per 3 wins is basically immaterial unless you're playing dozens of games per day, which basically turns it more into a job than a hobby or game.

And then even if you don't want to play the real (arena) game, which is surely the F2P favourite.

They could have charged more, they could have charged less. I will never have enough gold to buy it, so if I want to get the new cards I have to pay. That's fine, but not particularly F2P friendly. I have no issue with it, but it's not close to F2P.

Well, you may not have the gold to buy it as soon as it is released, but you could buy it when you have enough gold, it isn't going anywhere

That's absolutely and completely not what I said.

'700 gold per week is just the daily quests and a reasonable number of games on top of that'



I'm pretty much managing a pack per day just from the daily quest and extra games on top of that, (not every day, but most days), so that's around 100 gold per day. I'm playing the game as much as I want to, no more and no less - but obviously different people will have different feelings about how much they want to play.

With the basic 40 gold quest you need to win 18 games to get another 60 gold, on a 50/50 win rate that's 36 games, which isn't a massive amount IMO.



EBG's situation would suggest otherwise IIRC he's already got nearly enough gold stashed away to buy the whole of Naxx and he hasn't spent a penny (and even then he's only a bit short because he bought a chunk of packs).

I think this game is AMAZINGLY F2P friendly, I'm honestly hard pushed to think of any game, ever, that offers such a complete experience to players who never want to spend a penny.

700 gold per week isn't a big ask if someone isn't prepared to spend a few quid, and Blizz do need to get folks to spend some cash somewhere along the line.....

True, and on any F2P you can grind out the necessary. I don't think this is any different from most F2P games; if anything it is worse than the others I play.

36 games per day? Isn't a lot?

Are you on crack?

At a conservative 10 minutes a game, that's 6 hours a day straight playing, minimum.

As I said, that's more time than I spend doing work for a living.

That's assuming worst case scenario, the 40 gold quest and a 50/50 win rate. With a 60 gold quest and a 70/30 win rate, that number goes down a lot.



Ex-WoW player, Hearthstone is like a gentle walk in the park compared to a full-on WoW obsession



Many games are a lot quicker than that, especially as miracle rogue. The number of games that are over before Turn 10 is borderline embarrassing.

And do remember I said most days I'm hitting 100 gold, not every day. (And some days I might make more than 100 gold, some days less, it's just tending to average out to about 100 gold per day.) The overarching point was that 700 gold per week isn't a lot for Blizzard to ask for the first major expansion to the game, when they could have easily firewalled it completely behind real cash.



That's completely irrelevant, as long as the activity is enjoyable In fact, surely the whole idea is that we work however many hours per week we do, so that we have more time to do other stuff in our spare time!

'I spent more time doing stuff I enjoy than I did at work this week!' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.....

Case in point against aggro pally, I have to say that one of my favourite things about the miracle rogue is the way it can well and truly fuck up cheap aggro decks.

Yes I used the Leeroy as a single 6 damage finisher here, but I didn't see an Auctioneer at all so there was no real 'miracle' play involved, this was all about destroying his board and making sure I was burning through my cards quicker than him so he couldn't make a Divine Favour play.

The mulligan and play style for this match-up is massively different to other miracle rogue match ups, (for example you don't want a Prep in your starting hand against just about anything except aggro pally), and that's what I'm enjoying about the deck, the versatility and variety of it.

But yeah, point being, this wasn't no ten minute game

Apologies for being a bit strong in my stance before, I was just annoyed about something else and transferred it over here.

I still think 10 minutes for most games is a decent standby. Any time I'm in a rush they take 15 minutes minimum, even if I spend ten seconds per turn. Even a 7 turn game can take 10 minutes easily (and often way longer).

I think my point is that I am happy to pay the 14 quid or whatever, but to be honest I think the expansion so far has been utterly meh (three easy boss battles to win the cards, and then two easy challenges... and we're done), and I'm paying for the main game and what it has given me rather than for the expansion. Yes, they could have not allowed gold purchases, but they could also have charged (a lot) less.

As a comparison, it's a lot more expensive than a typical online MtG expansion.