Be Excellent To Each Other

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.

In more prosaic fashion, got down to 6 health against a Hunter. He had 25 health but no cards. I had about 6 cards and 5 minions. He top decked a secret and hit his hero power to take me down to 4.

Luckily only one of my minions was health 2 or below, as it was obviously an explosive trap.

I attacked, it hit, then I threw several overloads to power up my elemental, and in one turn hit him for 24 health between the lot of minions. I ended up with a handful of cards, 4 taunting minions on the board along with 4 others, and he hits his hero power to win.

GAH! So close!

Breaking records for worst arena deck here.

Druid.

Legendary - 0
Epic - 1 Faceless
Rares - 1 Alarm-o-Bot (other options, Murloc Tidecaller or Angry Chicken), 1 Knife Juggler

All the rest are commons, with most from the poor or terrible sections. The choices I got were laughable. I got one Druid and one Ironbark. The rest... ugh.

As a game I'm delighted with it. I rarely play games really, very few of them can maintain my interest for any length of time. I've consistently played this for more than 6 months, and I've probably only missed daily quests when I've been physically unable to get to my PC for long enough to complete them.

I repeat that I'd have happily spent the money on it, if money was required. I spunked probably about £50 into Skyrim which on a cost vs. hours of entertainment ratio was bargainously high. It compensated for the fact that I spent £35 on shitty Dark Souls and never kept with it

Next wing will land Wednesday morning at 7am, apparently.

Well the meta does seem to have caught up a bit with miracle rogue. Used properly those Nerubian Eggs are somewhat horrible (Argus them up or otherwise make them 'active' in their pre-Nerubian state), and the Haunted Creepers can be troublesome too.

Oh well at least I had something of a blast with it!

Also, seen warlocks pulling some clever shit with the Creepers and then sticking a Void Terror between them, the Creeper blows up, the Void Terror absorbs their health and attack, and they still get the two 1/1s. I think this works with the eggs as well. Not sure if it's intended design or not but it is rather annoying!

Gah, the new cards appear to be giving zoo lock a bit of a boost.

'Cause that's what the game was missing.

Current stats since running track-o-bot.

Those Nerubian Eggs are pretty awesome if you think about it, effectively a 4/4 for 2 mana once they're hatched, and that's before you even manage to buff them with something else.

I've reworked my pally deck around incorporating a couple of them, which has meant more cards that can synergise with them (give them taunts and/or buffs).

Not entirely convinced on the other cards out of the first wing, but the Eggs are pretty much a no-brainer TBH, and can be worked into most decks with a bit of tweaking I think.

I'd love to see these numbers for my own account, Blizzard really should have built that stuff in TBH.

Maybe they'll incorporate it into the game in due course like they did with all the best WoW add-ons (Quest Helper, anyone?......)

Hopefully they will. Track-o-bot is really good though, it just runs invisibly in the background and you don't have to do anything to it. It does mean you have to play all your games on the same machine though, so doesn't pick up my ipad games.

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.