Be Excellent To Each Other

I did that, there's a picture of a deck with a big arrow, I click on it, then there's a swirly blue thing in the middle, and nothing happens...

Drag the deck to the swirly blue thing in the middle. The deck should EXPLODE WITH CARDS (five of them!), then just click on the cards to see what you have.

I really do despair of Arena sometimes.

A mage with a Turn 1 coin > Amani so he got 10 damage out of that for a nasty start, then played two Flamestrikes, and even when I'd fought through that to get myself into what could well have been a winning position, he did a Faceless > Poly combo on my Ironbark.

Shammy who played THREE Feral Spirits in about the first ten turns of the game (must have just about been dodging overloads to play them and had all of them in his hand!).

2:1 down at the moment and it's thoroughly depressing.

Thank fuck for that, a ruthlessly tough game against a rogue who got me down to 2 health but ran out of puff in the process and I just about sneaked in a life saving Stanbingo and then a Druid of the Claw, pulled it back from there for a win.

A slightly more routine win against a pally and I'm now 3:2, that's fine, that's my comfort zone, as long as I go at least 3:3 (which is worse case scenario now) I'm happy with an Arena run.

Good god it's tough out there now though, ain't no such thing as an easy game

I am entering the arena as a druid. I have three Hexes, three Fire Elementals, Ysera, and a load of mismatched nonsense.

That's a pretty strange selection of cards for a druid, are you sure you're not a shaman?

EDIT - My run finished at 4:3 which is good but not great, very irritating last game against a secret loaded hunter. Grrrr.

Haha. Yes. Shaman.

Won the first one on 1 health, with an Abomination out, and him also on 1 health (if he dies I take 2 damage)! That's a close one, especially against a Hunter!

Gah. Dominating a Priest. I had cards and a minion, he had neither. I play Ysera, and then he top-decks a mind control followed by an Inner Fire. Suddenly he has a 12/12 and I'm dead.

Lucky bastard. He'd fired off four Holy Novae already too!

Nice pluralisation of 'nova' there, I'd have given you the win just for that.

(Although technically speaking 'novas' is acceptable these days, dumb internet generation and all that.)

Oh yeah and fuck priests! Stealy bastards! Even when they've got no cards in hand there's always the chance they'll top deck an MC, which may as well just say GAME OVER in certain situations. (Unlike my Jaraxxus which takes three turns to really do anything , and yes I know Arena and Constructed aren't the same thing )

I am playing terribly. Won one while getting away with a really dumb move that allowed them two free cards (kill a Savannah Lion Thing before the Buzzard).

Yeah that's one of the things with hunters, the kill order can be terribly important because of all the incestuous beast buffs they've got going on, and that's before you even start on their secrets!

I always do a double-take on any complex move against a hunter to try and make extra sure I haven't missed something that'll fuck something else up......

I normally do, but rum punch.

6-3 Arena. If I lose, I lose to absolutely ridiculous bullshit decks that I never stood a chance against. I was 5-1 :/

I've been in the same position myself, (definitely had a 6:1 before going down 6:3), a deck that just seems to be unstoppable and solid, and then all of a sudden you get two nonsense matchups that could have been plucked straight from the devil's arsehole and you crash out.

Off the top of my head my best result in Arena remains 7:3.

In other news, anyone watching Trump cause quite unimaginable carnage with his Miracle Rogue deck? I'm minded to have a crack with one of these myself, unlike zoo lock or other mindless aggro decks, these are very skilful decks to play right even though they do burn through an awful lot of cards very fast - I'd like to see if I'm up to the task, which I probably won't be

Pah, I'm missing:

1 x Preparation
Bloodmage Thalanos
Leeroy Jenkins
Coldlight Oracle

The Prep and the Oracle aren't a problem (1 x epic, 1 x rare), but I ain't got no 3200 dust to craft two legendaries! I guess the Bloodmage could be replaced but the deck basically wins from an insane Leerory burst with Shadowsteps so I couldn't even attempt it without him.

I do actually have eight (and more!) legendaries I don't run in any decks and can never see myself doing so either, if I DE-ed the lot of them I'd have 3200 dust but that'd really set my teeth on edge.

It does look like a crackers fun deck to play though.

You can do a slightly less effective finisher with the Reckless Rocketeer, should you wish.

I only have one auctioneer and no dust, so no attempt for me at it yet.

Leeroy seems to be a key legendary to craft these days, and i'm almost at 1600 dust. I was going to go for rag, but he is too slow for the meta at the moment, and I can't see that changing with the deathrattle naxx cards coming up, if anything those will make the meta even faster.

Sort of, ish. The Rocketeer is a six mana card and Leeroy is only four, I think that'd make a big difference. (Plus the Rocketeer comes up one short on damage.)

Stormwind Knight is the only neutral four mana card with charge and he only does two damage

I really wish I hadn't crafted that fucking Cenarius, what a shit legendary that turned out to be, no spot for it in my druid deck at all

Yeah I'm seeing him turn up in all sorts of decks, not just aggro decks. For a quick burst of damage or finisher for not much mana, he ticks quite a lot of boxes.

I hope Naxx doesn't speed up the meta across the board, because it's nice to really get your teeth into a proper control game sometimes.

I don't see how it can't speed it up, deathrattles are only useful if your card dies, so getting them out and played and killed quickly will be the order of the day.
I could be wrong though I usually am

I watched that trump video you posted last night, as I couldn't sleep, and I found it quite difficult to follow their train of thought at points, i'm never going to be that good I don't think I just play the cards I get, with some small thought as to what the consequences could be and a mild plan as to what i'm working towards...

Thought I was doing alright against a druid in ranked, card and board advantage and he'd already used Force of Nature. Plenty of good cards in my hand, getting ready to start planning the takedown.....

Then he plays another Force of Nature and two Savage Roars, 22 damage finisher. Ouch. I was thinking he'd expended rather a lot of effort and damage clearing down my taunts.....

Turn four loss against zoo lock, totally unbeatable by any deck if they get the right draw.

They're such bullshit decks, they really are.

I would have thought combinations of Arcane Missiles / Arcane explosions could take down Zoo locks even if they do get the 'perfect' draw ?

What is the worst case scenario against a zoolock ?

I would have thought going 2nd as a mage with hero power / arcane missiles and arcane explosions would be enough - whats the play using the standard cards that gets around it ?

Them going second and giving them the coin to get more out and potentially buffed is an issue but i still cant see a 'no win' scenario with them ?

Yeah I guess there are counters, a shammy's lightning storm can do major damage as well, but even there (and with your mage examples) they can fill the board up again so quickly that you need two or more of the early clearance spells.

Zoo lock doesn't need perfect draw to win with tedious regularity, whereas even decks specifically designed to counter aggro (such as Trumps F2P shaman) needs really nice draw to succeed, and be played very well.

ZOO LOCK PLAY GUIDE:

Ooohhh look a card, I'll play it!

Ooohhh look a card, I'll play it!

Life tap, ooohhh look a card, I'll play it!

Or the classic Mage bullshit opening of Mana Wyrm, Coin, Arcane Missiles.

At the moment I would love to play a Zoo Lock. It's almost all Freeze Mages at the moment.

"Oh, you have several minions out and lethal next turn while I have nothing? Well, I shall freeze them all for the next five turns, so you can't do anything".

Yip I can see that - and thats the 'counter' to that type of class - after round 2 the mage can take out one of those minions every time with their power (even if they get a blocker out) and then you can use your own minions with silence to get rid of the buffs



I think I was just reacting to the 'theres no counter / no class can get around this' which I dont think is accurate :-)



To which the answer is

Either coin and power or something like Elf archer to do a single point and kill it
Hero power to kill it
Hero power to kill it and play something else yourself (or at this point coin and a 4 point Yeti / Shieldmaster)

I dont really have problems with Zoo against my mage but I do struggle with them against the Priest as I dont have many low point clear up cards - instead i'm getting stuff on the board to buff or i'm just healing the small amounts of damage I'm taking - the issue with the zoo playstyle is you do need to either keep on top of it or have those clearup spells and not everyone has easy access to them - and if you let them get some of the buff cards out and leave them then their next batch comes out with 2/2 or 3/2 and cant be cleared out as easily.

I haven't really seen one but i guess we're all at different levels again (I'm at 15 and switching between Mage and Priest)

And remember you can 'silence' a frozen character and get them back (silence card for the priest or any minion with silence for another character)

Just destroyed a Zoolock with my Priest.

Every time he started to look threatening I hit a Holy Nova and cleared his board.

Naxx News!

"ust wanted to give everyone a head's up that we are currently targeting to release Curse of Naxxramas during the month of July. Unfortunately, we still have a lot of implementing and bug fixing to get through, so please stay tuned!

With that said, we are also targeting to reveal pricing details regarding Curse of Naxxramas next week on July 1st, so please keep an eye out for that."

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/for ... 1477080#13

Yes, that is an announcement of an announcement.

Rogue just killed me on turn 4.

coin - Equip weapon.
Southsea deckhand, combo add four attack to have a 6/1 charge for 2 mana.
Repeat, with added minion removal on my side via deadly poison and weapon.
Leroy.

Doh! I thought frozen things couldn't activate their powers. A bit shit that they do, tbh. They're supposed to be frozen!

Knowing the prices on the 1st July will be of interest to me.

I've used a Shadowflame on a frozen Yeti/Boulderfist with 1 or 2 health left before now - they don't like that

Come on 10,000 gold!

The issue with that is the more low cost/low damage weapons you put in a deck to counter aggro, the less you've got to deal with anything else. That was the beauty of Trump's shaman deck in that it could 'convert' into massive damage and burst through Flametongue/Totem Shuffling/Argent etc, plus spells like Earthshock can fuck up big stuff as much as it can cheap crap too.

Mage is a unique case with that awesome hero ability which can ping anything for 1 damage or remove a divine shield every turn for 2 mana.

My warlock deck can beat zoo lock and has done so, but I need a pretty divine selection of cards from my deck to do so, and even then it's usually very, very close.

Are there any bots playing this game?

Just had a match against an aggro druid with a weird Russian name, ('cause you know, all the hackers are Russian innit), and I'd swear to god it wasn't a human being.

Every single turn seemed to take the exact same length of time. Didn't matter if it was really complicated or really simple, it was the same 5 seconds for every single turn. There was one turn where we had a proper tangle in the middle of the board with taunts and buffs on both sides, I needed nearly my full turn timer to work out my best play. He took...... 5 seconds.

Even when he was top-decking it was 5 seconds to play the card. And he wasn't playing well either, he wasn't doing anything wrong as such but he'd sit there for 5 seconds, then make a solid but unexciting play.

Got myself into a position where I 100% had guaranteed lethal on my next turn, he top-decked a Shieldbearer, which he played after 5 seconds. Now most players would just concede there (if indeed they'd bother to play the Shieldbearer at all) because the Shielbearer, despite his taunt, didn't prevent lethal.

At this point I was convinced I was playing a bot, so I sat there for about 30 seconds and did nothing. No emotes from him or anything. Then I took out the Shieldbearer with my Drake and waited a bit longer, I've got lethal to his face (over the top by about 5 damage) from my other three minions. Nothing. Then I played Jaraxxus, I have no need to play Jaraxxus, I've already got lethal, Jaraxxus is a pointless play - if anything's going to get a concede or an emote at least out of a human being, it's that.

So then I sit there for a bit longer, no response from him at all, with the end turn countdown underway, I wait and wait and then do lethal at the last moment. No response at all.

I honestly think I was playing a robot.

Druid with FIVE Druid of the Claws in Arena, he used every single one as a taunt.

Shaman top-decks Onyxia and 1 in 4s a taunt totem to save him from lethal.

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO ANNOY YOU OH LORD?

Hurrah, 3005 gold.

The problem I have is that these pay to win players who have copies of the high-ranked decks/legendaries, and I don't have the cards to build against them.

The amount of time you've played the game for you must easily have enough dust to craft a couple of legendaries of choice, plus you've got enough gold to buy 30 packs of cards outright which will most likely get you a legendary or two (undesirable ones can be DE-ed), and/or enough DE-able cards to get the dust to craft them.

Or you could do an Arena run or two every day which guarantees both cards and dust - it's entirely your own personal choice that you want to freeload your way into Naxx (where you'll probably moan about play-to-win players again ), and as such may be having a hard time against players who are loaded with legendaries in the meantime.

They may not have even 'paid to win' either, as a dedicated F2P player you're sat on enough gold to basically guarantee you a few legendaries if you want them, maybe these 'pay to win' players have just invested their gold back into their decks instead of hoarding it for a freebie on the expansion?

I've beaten down decks with five and six legendaries in them, from decks where I'm just running one or two, and then you have players like Trump who can take F2P decks to Legend status so it's clearly achievable if you're good enough at the game.

In other words, you're in the situation you're in through choice, so stop moaning!

Yeah, or zaphod's abbreviated version!

Inspired by EBJ's skinflintery, I have put together a PAY TO WIN deck containing all 9 of my neutral legendaries and the warlock class legendary!

LET THE CARNAGE BEGIN!

Holy shit I won with it.

That's two for two, opponents are all like, 'It's an aggro lock!', and respond accordingly, then it's like, 'Dafuq, Nat Pagle?... Tinkmaster Overspark? Hogger?..... Ragnaros?....'

If I'm honest it's the aggro lock start to the game that's really getting me the wins, which tells you a lot about aggro lock since putting the deck together literally took about 90 seconds. I simply dropped all my legendaries into and then fleshed out the rest with all the cheapest warlock cards and cheap neutral card draw/taunt cards.

Now admittedly I'm in Casual at the moment, but I'm sorely tempted to take it out into Ranked for the lulz.

Legendaries in game winning shocker

I might do the same with my mage, as they will be expecting a freeze mage

Hmmm I just came spectacularly unstuck against a hunter. Like, comically badly

It's a good laugh though!

Captain Greenskin in a warlock deck lolz