Board 8 > Hearthstone Topic #4: Where Illidan and Millhouse are top tier.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's been pointed out to me that there are other classes that discover from a small card pool.

Twisted Knowledge in warlock discovers two warlock cards and can discover itself. If you can manage to stay alive while chaining twisted knowledges, you can out-value everything eventually. It discovers warlock minions too though, so I'm not sure how reliable it is. But still, the dream of endless Nether Breaths is out there.

Mage has only 8 spells, and two different cards that discover spells: Arcane Breath, and Etherial Conjurer. And some pretty good spells to discover such as Firelands Portal and Forgotten Torch (and Arcane Breath of course).

Paladin has Ivory Knight, but all the paladin spells are total garbage lol. (I'm not joking, they have 6 1-2 cost spells, and their only spells that cost more than 2 are Silvermoon Portal, Solemn Vigil, and Anyfin can Happen. And no, there aren't enough murlocs for Anyfin--there are only three murlocs available to Paladin in the format--murloc tinyfin, Sir Finley, and Tastey Flyfish).

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Wow I just opened 4 legendaries in 20 packs. Best luck I've ever had opening packs

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Just played a game of Battleground where I lasted 11 turns and only ever faced 4 of my 7 opponents at any point during the entire run. Seems like that shouldn't happen.

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Also, EU just went to the next month for me after the last game of battlegrounds, and even though I never played on ladder I still have six bonus stars? Do you always keep your highest star total each month or something?

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I think it's based on MMR, not rank

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The vast majority of the games I play on EU/Asia I just get down to <15 and concede to finish quests, as I mainly use those regions for Arena/Battlegrounds, yet I have more bonus stars on EU than I do on NA. I don't play ladder too frequently in NA, but it's more often than the other regions and I do actually attempt to win games there. So five stars makes sense to me there, as I imagine I have a relatively high W/L ratio but with a low sample size and probably not the highest quality of opponents. I'm just not sure how the game decided I deserved six on EU.

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MMR might have a long memory, because I came back to the game having been away for a year and I had 9 stars in Wild (whatever gets you to Diamond 10 and enough Standard stars (which I had been playing much less frequently) to get to Gold 10. That's my only guess

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MMR has a long memory, but it does slowly decay if you don't play for a while.

Also, if you make a new account, and stomp newbies, this puts your MMR fairly high (like after going through new player ranks, people who know what they're doing often end up with like 8 bonus stars).

Getting bonus stars from purely MMR is hard to control, though. The only surefire way to get a lot of bonus stars is just to get a high finish.

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So apparently Warrior has the best winrates in top 1000 legend:

https://twitter.com/TiagoTaparelli/status/1256212117516156930

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It makes sense, it feels so techable and you gain armor so easily against demon hunter.

I honestly feel like Egg/Tempo is similar to Patron Warrior of old right now in that theres almost no weakness for the deck if piloted correctly. Like even Priest doesnt have the AOE for tall warmauls and will get destroyed by combo.


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Ehh, no it definitely has counters. Like HSReplay is showing it as having sub-30% winrates against Res Priest and Big Druid.

Risky Skipper turns deal a maximum of 3 AoE Damage. Which is great at killing a demon hunter board, but not great at clearing a board of druid minions. And the deck has a bit of Unleash the Hounds style effect where it's weaker the fewer minions are played against it early. Flood the board early and you'll face a 0 mana Bloodboil Brute. Don't play minions and Bloodboil Brute can't be played till turn 6 or so.

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Back to the tavern brawl, people are figuring out interesting tricks with the dragon that adds two 1-cost spells to your hand thanks to the small cardpool.

Guaranteed to add Boom Squad for Warrior (the discover a lackey, dragon or mech card).

Guaranteed to add Storm's Wrath for Shaman (not sure if this is useful, but decent card).

Rogue has Dragon's Hoard and Praise Galakrond, although I think there might be some rule where invoke cards don't get generated as some people are reporting managing to produce pure Dragon's Hoard out of it.

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metroid composite posted...

Back to the tavern brawl, people are figuring out interesting tricks with the dragon that adds two 1-cost spells to your hand thanks to the small cardpool.

Guaranteed to add Boom Squad for Warrior (the discover a lackey, dragon or mech card).

Guaranteed to add Storm's Wrath for Shaman (not sure if this is useful, but decent card).

Rogue has Dragon's Hoard and Praise Galakrond, although I think there might be some rule where invoke cards don't get generated as some people are reporting managing to produce pure Dragon's Hoard out of it.

i used the 1-cost spell generating one and got a grand total of zero spells from it, whoops

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So the format in GM this week involves every player bringing a deck for all 10 classes, and then 6 classes getting banned, with only four classes not getting banned. Turns out most people are not banning Druid, and Druid actually has a losing record overall despite not being banned:

https://twitter.com/LorindaGames/status/1256322615339188224

Makes sense I guess, Druid isn't good against Totem Shaman or Murloc Paladin, which almost everyone is bringing.

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I'm being very dumb and playing a deck of my own concoction to start the month: Almost Highlander Hyper-Draw Chef Nomi/Nethrandamus Demon Hunter.

### Name's Too Long
# Class: Demon Hunter
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Phoenix
#
# 1x (0) Twin Slice
# 1x (1) Consume Magic
# 1x (1) Crimson Sigil Runner
# 1x (2) Blade Dance
# 1x (2) Bloodmage Thalnos
# 1x (2) Chaos Strike
# 1x (2) Furious Felfin
# 1x (2) Loot Hoarder
# 1x (2) Netherwalker
# 1x (2) Spectral Sight
# 1x (2) Umberwing
# 1x (2) Zephrys the Great
# 1x (3) Aldrachi Warblades
# 1x (3) Eye Beam
# 1x (3) Satyr Overseer
# 1x (3) Soul Cleave
# 1x (3) Vulpera Scoundrel
# 1x (4) Ashtongue Battlelord
# 1x (4) Illidari Felblade
# 1x (5) Big Ol' Whelp
# 1x (5) Glaivebound Adept
# 1x (5) Metamorphosis
# 1x (6) Imprisoned Antaen
# 1x (6) Khartut Defender
# 2x (6) Skull of Gul'dan
# 1x (7) Chef Nomi
# 1x (7) Priestess of Fury
# 1x (9) Dragonqueen Alexstrasza
# 1x (9) Nethrandamus

AAECAea5Axz7Ae0F0pkDoaEDpaED/KMD57ADkbEDh7oDi7oDyboD17sDnLwDw7w D4LwDmb0DhMMDusYDvMYDx8YD1MgD1cgD18gD+cgD/MgD/sgD/8gDnMkDAdnGAwA=

The idea being you do your very best Ladder Demon Hunter impression for like 14 turns; you play all your busted card draw (including 2 Skulls of Gul'Dan), and then after your opponent's been forced to deal with like 5 super-threatening boards already and used all their board clears and are like "phew they only have 4 cards in hand left, I think I got this", you bust out Chef Nomi. And then SOMEhow, SOME way, they manage to deal with that, too, and think that's surely all you got, you drop that minimum-double-7-drop Nethrandamus and they concede to the sheer power.

Granted, none of my games thus far have made it past the Nomi, but it's a stupid fun deck to pilot.

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I mean Rogue, DH, Warrior, Mage, Priest are obvious bans. I guess you ban Hunter for the 6th slot so that only leaves Paladin, Shaman, and Druid.

The rest of the format is kinda important though, do you need to win with each of your 3 decks or something? In that case people could just build counter decks to target 1 class.

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MrSmartGuy posted...

I'm being very dumb and playing a deck of my own concoction to start the month: Almost Highlander Hyper-Draw Chef Nomi/Nethrandamus Demon Hunter.

https://youtu.be/aIIPmXmSYhw

Similar concept.

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Yeah, so I watched that video this morning and noticed that he spent a looooooot of the midgame doing nothing, so why not do regular ol' Demon Hunter things in the meantime instead, but I like the Zephrys/Dragonqueen plan still, so we'll keep that in there.

Just a heads-up that I played 5 games with my deck I posted and went 0-5, then switched over to Reno Mage for a palette cleanse to end my Hearthstone session and went 4-0. So don't play my deck it's bad

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Reno mage is my favorite deck but I've been getting wrecked lately. It seems like every other popular deck right now is aggro so it's a little hard to keep up. I might switch back to highlander mage and see if that fares any better.

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Granted, one of my games was pulled completely out of my ass with a Puzzle Box. Turns out Deep Freeze into Nagrand Slam into Shadowflame into Skull of Gul'Dan into Pyroblast opponent's face is preeeetty good. It was a better Puzzle Box than I'd ever seen a streamer get; it was absurd.

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metroid composite posted...

Ehh, no it definitely has counters. Like HSReplay is showing it as having sub-30% winrates against Res Priest and Big Druid.

Risky Skipper turns deal a maximum of 3 AoE Damage. Which is great at killing a demon hunter board, but not great at clearing a board of druid minions. And the deck has a bit of Unleash the Hounds style effect where it's weaker the fewer minions are played against it early. Flood the board early and you'll face a 0 mana Bloodboil Brute. Don't play minions and Bloodboil Brute can't be played till turn 6 or so.

I really don't see either one at all though! Also I think Big Druid loses if they whiff ramp and/or you get egg into gorefiend. Res Priest is kinda bad but I'm glad that the Rogue matchup is probably even worse (And that's more common right now).

There's other ways to play with the skipper too, you can use titanic lackey to boost it or even rampage, but those matchups you generally use the skipper to draw cards with battle rage or create bombs with wrangler

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UltimaterializerX posted...

The people who complain about this deck are basically insufferable idiots. It can only win through highroll draws and highroll RNG.

You might prefer the stealth package instead of the secret package. The secret package is really good, but if you have bad draw luck you'll draw your secrets without your blackjack stunners/shadowjewler or vice versa. Whereas a 3/1 stealth for 1 is just a solid card--basically a 1 mana 3 damage removal.

Rogue Galakrond is still an RNG clown fiesta, though, and Rogue is basically a terrible class right now without its Galakrond package.

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I mean, you can just run the Spymistresses, my package is cutting one maniac (Your invokes are good enough) and one corruptor (two feels clunky) and running two of them to balance the demon hunter matchup (Since it trades with their early game) I'm also a four secret guy.

Almost legend already, almost diamond 2, climbed to 5 with warrior and have been playing around with priest. It's slow but it... wins. Lazul's kinda nutty with the discounted cards, I didn't know it did that.


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It took me a good minute and a half to realize you were talking about Envoy of Lazul, not Madame Lazul (I think?). At least it seems obvious to me that you'll get a discounted card with Madame. Meanwhile, I never really thought about Envoy being insane with Dragonqueen generators and Incanter's Flow/Skull of Gul'Dan discounts making it super obvious what the right pick is.

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...I actually was talking about Madame Lazul (mainly cause I never used her) >_>

But Envoy has occasionally given me a coin and there was that one time I took a wand. I dont run it so its whenever I go Disciple into Envoy.

Imagine if Curious Glimmeroot was around still

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I would try Shadoweaver (4/3 freezer) over ooze

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After losing 2 hours of games with my custom Libram Paladin deck I broke down and created OTK Demon Hunter. Feeling no shame about it

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MrSmartGuy posted...

I'm being very dumb and playing a deck of my own concoction to start the month: Almost Highlander Hyper-Draw Chef Nomi/Nethrandamus Demon Hunter.

AAECAea5Axz7Ae0F0pkDoaEDpaED/KMD57ADkbEDh7oDi7oDyboD17sDnLwDw7w D4LwDmb0DhMMDusYDvMYDx8YD1MgD1cgD18gD+cgD/MgD/sgD/8gDnMkDAdnGAwA=

The idea being you do your very best Ladder Demon Hunter impression for like 14 turns; you play all your busted card draw (including 2 Skulls of Gul'Dan), and then after your opponent's been forced to deal with like 5 super-threatening boards already and used all their board clears and are like "phew they only have 4 cards in hand left, I think I got this", you bust out Chef Nomi. And then SOMEhow, SOME way, they manage to deal with that, too, and think that's surely all you got, you drop that minimum-double-7-drop Nethrandamus and they concede to the sheer power.

Granted, none of my games thus far have made it past the Nomi, but it's a stupid fun deck to pilot.

I tried the deck and in my first game, I went to mutual fatigue with a Draw Warlock. But he left my imprisoned antaen to awaken on the turn I would have fatigued to death with no minions on the board at exactly 10HP. The Antaen awoke and killed him before my draw fatigued me and I won lmao

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In more interesting Tavern Brawl synergies: apparently there's so few paladin cards that Lightforged Crusader often generates itself.

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azuarc posted...

People still play battlegrounds?

I only play Battlegrounds >_>

metroid composite posted...

Just took a look at where Millhouse landed post-nerf.

Looks like solidly tier 2 now (slightly above the winrate of Sir Finley, slightly below the winrate of Yogg).

Down to tier 3 now it seems. 2 cost rolling in the endgame used to be mitigated by the fact you could hit tier 5/6 before everyone. Now that Millhouse can't do that his endgame is rough.

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ESY16 posted...

azuarc posted... People still play battlegrounds?
I only play Battlegrounds >_>

That was a commentary on how the battle pass has completely killed my interest to play the format. I actually played two bands last night for the first time in forever. Came 1st and 2nd against what felt like relatively easy opposition, oddly enough. (This is at 6500 rating.)

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I think the one time I played him post nerf I went second and with a beast comp of all things (thats probably the worst comp to be with Millhouse but I kept getting Goldrinns so)

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LiquidOshawott posted...

I think the one time I played him post nerf I went second and with a beast comp of all things (thats probably the worst comp to be with Millhouse but I kept getting Goldrinns so)

I actually won my last game because I hit tier six with a mostly meh board of okay-on-their-own minions and no synergy worth building towards, and over the span of two turns I sold my entire board and had Goldrinn, Goldrinn, Hydra, Hydra, Ghastcoiler, Highmane, Rivendare. I'm not sure I've ever had a build just come together out of absolutely nowhere so fast before.

That was my first win in quite a while. Feels like my last 10+ games have been nothing but 2nd/7th.

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azuarc posted...

That was a commentary on how the battle pass has completely killed my interest to play the format. I actually played two bands last night for the first time in forever. Came 1st and 2nd against what felt like relatively easy opposition, oddly enough. (This is at 6500 rating.)

True. Battle Pass felt like a scummy decision for sure.

LiquidOshawott posted...

I think the one time I played him post nerf I went second and with a beast comp of all things (thats probably the worst comp to be with Millhouse but I kept getting Goldrinns so)

I got my first top 1 with Beasts (out of 22ish wins) a couple days ago. Couldn't seem to put that comp fully together or would max out at top 4.


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I think beasts as a comp got a little bit worse since dragons came out.

Used to be that if you had no obvious direction on tier 3 (no floating watcher/cobalt) and tiered up to 5, there were only two comps that got a power spike on 5/6 (beasts and murlocs) and beast transitions are way, way easier than murloc transitions. (Also the other two tribes, demons and mechs, didn't have much on 5 at the time).

Now there's also dragons which get a big power spike on 5/6, and dragons are better than beasts overall, and also fairly easy to transition to. (And also you might like have a dragon comp from tier 2-4, whereas beast comps are way rarer).


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metroid composite posted...

I think beasts as a comp got a little bit worse since dragons came out.

Used to be that if you had no obvious direction on tier 3 (no floating watcher/cobalt) and tiered up to 5, there were only two comps that got a power spike on 5/6 (beasts and murlocs) and beast transitions are way, way easier than murloc transitions. (Also the other two tribes, demons and mechs, didn't have much on 5 at the time).

Now there's also dragons which get a big power spike on 5/6, and dragons are better than beasts overall, and also fairly easy to transition to. (And also you might like have a dragon comp from tier 2-4, whereas beast comps are way rarer).

Agreed. It seems like Beasts only have 1 go mode card for an endgame build and it's a tier 6 (Mama Bear) - whereas Divine Shield and Demon (either stat or juggler) comps start fleshing out at 3/4 with Menagerie and Murlocs at 5. Dragons, as you say, can be strong at any point of the game, have a good tier 5, and 2 different tier 6 cards that charge an endgame build. Also, it feels to me (maybe an uniformed ~6800 opinion) that hyrda doesn't have quite as much value lately until it gets huge. Too many stats or divine shields to deal with. It's good, but a few months ago it was an almost instant buy if you found it early enough.

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https://i.imgur.com/D8WH9et.png

It's too bad I had a 0% chance to win that next round.

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Dragons scale slower but bigger, Beasts do a bit better against divine shields because of cleave and tokens and most are good units individually, so if you miss or find something different comp defining you can transition to something else easier

Also I think if I had no clear cut direction and had to pick Mama Bear or Kalecgos I think I would pick Mama


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