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

(+) Yeah! (+)

The thing about beasts is that if you want to play beasts, the first 10 turns don't even matter because you throw away your whole board. Once Mama Bear is in play, you want the stat bump from Mama, so even if you had a hydra, you'd probably want to replace it with a new hydra. Sometimes you keep the old one and upgrade via triple, but usually you just end up rewriting your whole board. And then once you play those minions, that's basically it. That's your board, and it doesn't really improve.

So it's a very spiky shot-in-the-arm sort of build, most of the time.

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I mean, there's also a very popular beast build that doesn't even use Mama.

Deathrattle Goldrinn.

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Yeah my gut says that Deathrattle Goldrinn is more consistent than Mama Bear builds but I don't know the stats. With Goldrinn/Baron you can spend the early game actually buffing your beasts but with Mama Bear you basically have to start over once you get her. Getting a Mama Bear really early is obviously better but that's pretty tough to do with how aggressive games are now.

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You don't take a late mama, obviously. Early mama is great. Late mama...by that point you're probably a Goldrinn comp and won't get much out of her.

If I tier up to 5 with no clear direction and see Goldrinn, even with no beasts I will consider transitioning to beasts, granted. I wouldn't be as happy as I would be finding Brann or Baron on 5, but at least it's a direction.

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So...the last three days in a row my daily quest was play 3 games of Druid--I don't really have a standard druid deck, or a wild druid deck, but I know the tavern brawl deck is pretty good. So...9 more games of Tavern Brawl druid. Pretty high winrate against priests and other druids. I did lose to the one Dragon Hunter I faced. (Funny story too, I only own a single copy of Embiggen, and wasn't crafting an extra one just for this brawl, so the deck could be better).

Modifications I made--I put in Escaped Manasaber as an additional target for Menagerie Warden. And then I cut Menagerie Warden--people too often would just kill Winged Guardians before I could play warden, and warden would just sit in my hand. Wasn't great off of strength in numbers either. (Swapped in Evasive Draconid--this deck seems to win the lategame pretty consistently against everything common, so it just needs some more reliable taunt/survivability). Possibly I should cut escaped manasaber now that I don't have menagerie warden in there, but *shrug* it's ramp, it's a playable card on turn 4 when the thing I'm worried about dying to is early beatdown, probably not the worst card to be running. Also, I think if I could I would probably run Ysera Unleashed (another card I have no intention of crafting, but I nearly always picked it off of discover a dragon effects).

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So I was playing discard zoo warlock in wild, good deck I thought, what I used to climb last season.

Couldn't beat demon hunters. Like...even the lost and confused demon hunters that seemed like they wandered into wild with a standard deck. (Couldn't beat the legit wild Demon Hunters either, but the losses to the all standard card DHs were particularly insulting).

So...I joined them. Didn't craft any cards for it mind you. No metamorphosis. No Patches the Pirate. Only 1 copy of the epic weapon. Running off-meta stuff like Firefly and Blackwald Pixie. First thing that happened was I forgot to put Baku into my deck and then beat a control warlock anyway XD. But just in general the deck did really quite well. Eventually saw some other DH running stuff like Beaming Sidekick and Leeroy, so I copied them and cut the really janky stuff like Fire Fly/Blackwald. (Although maybe Fire Fly is better than Blazing Battlemage? Might need to think more about that one. I think there's arguments for Dire Mole and Glacial Shard as well; although maybe Frozen Shadoweaver is better than glacial shard?)

The one deck I faced more than once that I just couldn't seem to beat was the new value-oriented pirate warrior (the one that gets an Ancharr off of a Corsair Cache and gives it +5 durability by running every upgrade effect in the game so that they draw their whole deck). I could run weapon removal for that deck, but that might be too specific; maybe running some of those freeze minions (Glacial Shard or Frozen Shadoweaver) is the right call.

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Feeling pretty unsure what to climb with in standard. I'm running egg warrior, which should be fine in theory (I have a couple substitutions) but I'm going pretty 50-50. Been mostly playing against Galakrond Rogue, which...supposedly their worst matchup is face hunter, so maybe that? I'd really rather not sink dust into Toxic Reinforcements, though....

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metroid composite posted...

So I was playing discard zoo warlock in wild, good deck I thought, what I used to climb last season.

Couldn't beat demon hunters. Like...even the lost and confused demon hunters that seemed like they wandered into wild with a standard deck. (Couldn't beat the legit wild Demon Hunters either, but the losses to the all standard card DHs were particularly insulting).

So...I joined them. Didn't craft any cards for it mind you. No metamorphosis. No Patches the Pirate. Only 1 copy of the epic weapon. Running off-meta stuff like Firefly and Blackwald Pixie. First thing that happened was I forgot to put Baku into my deck and then beat a control warlock anyway XD. But just in general the deck did really quite well. Eventually saw some other DH running stuff like Beaming Sidekick and Leeroy, so I copied them and cut the really janky stuff like Fire Fly/Blackwald. (Although maybe Fire Fly is better than Blazing Battlemage? Might need to think more about that one. I think there's arguments for Dire Mole and Glacial Shard as well; although maybe Frozen Shadoweaver is better than glacial shard?)

The one deck I faced more than once that I just couldn't seem to beat was the new value-oriented pirate warrior (the one that gets an Ancharr off of a Corsair Cache and gives it +5 durability by running every upgrade effect in the game so that they draw their whole deck). I could run weapon removal for that deck, but that might be too specific; maybe running some of those freeze minions (Glacial Shard or Frozen Shadoweaver) is the right call.

Makes sense most of the DH in wild would be heavy on standard cards there are 0 class cards in DH that are outside of Standard. I could see a few neutrals potentially in a DH list but even in wild most of the deck would be standard. In a few years we might see more variance in the DH class especially in formats like wild but not now.

Tried playing battlegrounds.

Went 7th, 8th, 7th.

I think I'll stop playing at 2 am from now on. The competition is always fiercer that time of the night. (Only one of those three can I blame myself for, and that was simply because I roped on an important turn.)

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Got 7000+ on Battlegrounds after getting a Nadina +dragons +poison mackerel board for 1st place. Not sure I can climb much more than this as I feel I still make a ton of mistakes, but hitting 7K (top 1%) has been my goal so I'm pleased with myself.

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I believe 7000+ is roughly the wall where above that MMR you still get matched with the same people (7000-13000). Your MMR only rises from there if you place higher than 4.5 on average. (People at 11000 MMR lose points for 4th and barely gain points for 3rd).

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I'm around 8300 currently, I'm thriving in the post-millhouse meta.
10961 is the cutoff currently to appear on the top 200 leaderboard, so I'm still a long ways from that, but maybe if I were able to play a bit more :/

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I hover around 7000 and I think I identified one of my major weaknesses today. I'm okay at transitioning but my biggest problem is transitioning OUT of a strong early game. If I get a good murloc start then I'll spend an entire turn rolling for murlocs instead of just improving my board and I fall so far behind.

Is there some general rule like roll 3 or 4 times but still try to buy 2 units every turn? Replacing a 2/3 murloc with a 4/3 shredder seems like a bad play even though it's technically better stats and effect. How do you grapple between playing for this turn and playing a win?

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My major weakness is transitioning out of a strong mid-game into a strong late-game. i get way too attached to my 6/8 Divine Shield Security Rover and feel like mech and divine shield builds are my only options for how to end a game. I end up re-rolling for exactly those units, instead of letting my first 5* appearances to dictate what I should be doing. It turns into a loooot of 3rd through 6th place finishes.

I don't really know how to help you with your problem, because I spend a good chunk of my games hyper-leveling and letting the 3* or 4* units take the wheel.

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Honestly in situations where you have a good start, but then you whiff a couple rolls my go-to move is often an early level up if I think my HP can sustain the hit. ESPECIALLY if I'm facing down a character that is less likely to deal a big hit, someone like Deryl or Post-Nerf Millhouse. Yeah their board is going to beat my board, but they are less likely to have stuck multiple 4-star minions so hopefully I can walk away with less than 10 damage.

Like let's say you are doing the typical timing.

Play a card on 3
Level on 4
Sell/Buy2 on 5
Buy2 on 6
Level+Buy1 on 7

If you get offered GARBAGE on 8 then by all means level up after your 1 whiffed reroll.

But most likely you will be able to improve 2 or 3 spots on 8 with 3-star minions so 8 is usually not a big offender.

So you level/buy on 9 (or level/roll/sell/buy if you are on 7 minions)
And 10 is another GREAT turn to consider pushing the level rather than just whiffing on the "okay" comp that you have a decent opener for.
If you kept pace and levelled on 9 then it'll cost 8 mana to level again on 10 so that gives you the opening window and 2 rerolls to suck it up and level.

There are a lot of factors that will make this impossible such as just having crappy matchups. Maybe you ran into millhouse on 2 so you got bopped for 4-5 and then you ran into AFKay on 3 and got bopped again, and then you hit pyramad just before his hp scaling stops being so relevant.

But I guess the point i'm making is if you aren't sure if you want to commit to your opener or improve the board then it's going to come down to whether or not you can afford to level. If you can afford to level (maybe you are still at 35 hp) then push the level. If your hp is too low that you can't even consider pushing the level then you have your answer. Toss the crap murloc and take whatever gives you even a tiny bit more stats for the round.

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Incidentally turn 8 is my favorite "Sell Steward of Time, Buy 3 things" turn. You will almost never get more than 1/1 value from steward at any point in the game, but on turn 8 you will usually have empty spots on board, and you will hopefully be offered multiple 3-star units.

In a non-token start you should be at 5 minions on board anyways so the math will often work out perfectly on this turn if you get offered a good window. And if you do have a couple tokens in play then it gives you the flexibility to sell Steward for 2 buffs that you keep and reroll+token sell for a 3rd minion if your window simply did not have 3 keepers in it.

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My favorite move of late is 4-gold level up into 5-gold sell/level up. It's a really smart move in three scenarios that tend to happen a lot:

1. You're about to face Yogg or Curator, or some hero that's probably going to beat you in the early game anyway.
2. The units in the shop aren't worth going crazy over (aka no Rat Pack, Spawn of N'zoth, or Kaboom Bot, and nothing that fits your first buy two turns ago).
3. Not a good enough reason on its own, but getting a token-generator on turn 1 (cats or Tidehunter) really helps to at least have 3 units after Turn 4 buying.

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When you say turn 4 buying you mean on 6 gold?

And I like the early 3 in theory but often I feel like it can take enough rounds to get to 7 minions and to stop losing that I would end up having to play defensively so I wouldn't go to tavern 4 until the regular timing anyways.

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I'm at 8.6k right now, 2nd and 3rd with Ysera and Deryl, both losses were to highrolling Alexs. >_<

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I don't really like the design of Alex.

Like if it was "when you level up to tier 5, discover two tier 5 minions" -- ok that's would be cool, you get a bit of a power spike on 5.

But discover two dragons--man...the variance on that is kinda gross. Dragons vary from tier 1 to tier 6. And you're kind of encouraged to build dragons when you know you'll get two dragons. And it turns out the two dragons with the highest synergy with other dragons happen to be tier 5 and tier 6.

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I played an hour of HS. 2 Priest Mirror games that went to fatigue >_>

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Buy Alleycat on 3
Freeze Alleycat on 4
Buy 2nd Alleycat, Sell a Token, Buy Hyena on 5

BUT WAIT IT FREAKING DISCONNECTS ME CONSTANTLY SO ALL IT DID WAS SELL THE TOKEN AND BUY NOTHING AND FLOAT 3 GOLD COMPLETELY RUINING MY 5 GOLD PLAY.

:(

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AND THEN I WAS RECOVERING IN THE MID GAME BUT IT HAPPENED AGAIN ON TURN 10 AND 11 WHEN I WAS MAKING MULTIPLE BUYS AND SELLS.

That was a completely UNDESERVED 8th place.

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LiquidOshawott posted...

I played an hour of HS. 2 Priest Mirror games that went to fatigue >_>

Just played a glorious 45 minute Highlander priest (me, and very unoptimized since I don't feel like paying dust for things like soul mirror even though I know they are real good) vs Highlander mage game.

I won because derp Reno finally cast sprint while he was in fatigue, but I would have won regardless. I still had 11 cards in my deck and four of them were reliquary primes.

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Forceful_Dragon posted...

Buy Alleycat on 3
Freeze Alleycat on 4
Buy 2nd Alleycat, Sell a Token, Buy Hyena on 5

BUT WAIT IT FREAKING DISCONNECTS ME CONSTANTLY SO ALL IT DID WAS SELL THE TOKEN AND BUY NOTHING AND FLOAT 3 GOLD COMPLETELY RUINING MY 5 GOLD PLAY.

:(

My game doesn't DC, but it freezes constantly and has costed me games. I've reinstalled, repaired, and done everything else I can find on forums to no avail.

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So I just kinda realized since I started this convo that I end up in a Beast comp a ton in Battlegrounds lately

It doesnt help that I sometimes get offered Pack Leader and Rat Pack early and then get Mama Bear and Hydra, but hey

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I've just reinstalled again and have not played in probably 2 years. I don't think I have any cards in the current rotation.

It's prompting me to select a free deck. Is there one that is going to be better than the rest?

EDIT: Seems like the common google answer is pick the Mage deck?

I think Mage or Rogue was the general consensus when we talked about this before.

Edit: Yeah, you get both Zephrys and Alex 2.0. Getting two great legendary cards that are both neutral and can later be plugged into other decks has to be the best bet. Also, I assume the Galakrond hero cards are still being given away for free.

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Mage gives you 3 Highlander legendaries if thats your thing

Rogue gives you Cleef if you dont have him, Heistbaron, and Kronx, plus a Galakrond package that is good

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Seems I also have 11k dust on hand (and presumably a ton of dustable stuff since everything I owned is now wild).

EDIT: And my first match is against a class I have never even seen. Well then, this may take some learning again

welcome back!


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Look on the bright side, you came back after the new class got nerfed, twice, in the span of about ten days. You just missed out on losing over and over to possibly the most broken deck Hearthstone has ever seen.

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ShatteredElysium posted...

EDIT: Seems like the common google answer is pick the Mage deck?

I'm not a huge fan of advising people who are really new/haven't played in a long time to pick the mage deck--yeah, if you have a big collection already, the two new "if your deck contains no duplicates" cards are good, but if you don't have a big collection every deck that uses them costs a ton of dust.

Rogue is fine.

Priest is fine if you really want a slow grinding control deck with hour long games.

Warrior is actually fine as well. Most of the guides that are out there came out before the set actually showed up, but Warrior is actually surprisingly solid. A lot of cards that people thought would "only be good in pirate warrior" turn out to be used in...basically all the warrior decks right now. Turns out the weapon that draws a pirate is good in control warrior when there's a pirate which is also a board clear.

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Well I played like 6 matches and went 50-50

Then I played Battlegrounds and came 8th, 5th, 6th, 1st. Think I've grasped how it works now and what to do but I think my win was largely due to being AFKay who seemed significantly better than the previous three I played as (Jaraxxus, Toki and Finley)

Mmm...not feeling good about Egg Warrior for climbing standard, at least not the list I have now. Obviously my focus has been wild this month, but I had another play 3 games of warrior so...I did. 1-2 record, losing a mirror (they went first and got a bunch of face damage in, I didn't draw armoursmiths). Beating a Highlander mage, though that's not supposed to be a favoured matchup, just got a rampage+bloodsworn combo off. Losing to a highlander hunter, and not feeling like I had a good way to answer just...a big ol' whelp or a divine shield winfury Siamat.

This is mirroring previous experiences I had with the deck which felt slightly sub 50%. I find the deck fun, but maybe I'll play it in casual or something cause I'm not really getting results out of it right now.

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Yeah Jaraxxus is basically a joke character because his hero power is so bad. Toki is okay but probably tough for a beginner because you don't know what cards you're looking for in each tier. Finley is basically just a mulligan if your other hero choices aren't great.

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So I went to put a twitch stream on as background noise, and the first thing I see before I even switch away from the tab is the Malygos hero power being used on one of his own minions.

I had no idea this was possible, I just assumed it was only used for tavern minions. The more you know.

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Came 2nd in my next Battlegrounds with Pyramad. Looked like it was a tossup on the last turn decided by RNG.

Seems like battlegrounds matches take forever. That took 30 mins

Battlegrounds matches that you win or come 2nd tend to be pretty long, yeah.

Battlegrounds matches that you lose early can be pretty fast >_>

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Man, now that all the decks are super refined, playing Priest just feels like a boss fight no matter what meta deck you're going up against. It can outvalue Galakrond Rogue, but if they get a Togwaggle's Scheme randomly generated and shuffle in a few Kronx or Togwaggles, you're completely screwed. It can really limit Demon Hunters in the early game and stay at like 15 health toward the end, but if they get a really good Altruis or Warglaives turn, it just doesn't matter. Spell Druid is basically an instant loss because now they know they can't just Glowfly Swarm on turn 4 and hope it sticks. They wait two more turns and make sure they're buffed, and there's nothing you can do to a board of 3/3's on Turn 6.

I feel like I'm not getting to play Hearthstone anymore.

..... so I decided to not let my opponents play Hearthstone anymore and picked up Zalae and Purple's Highlander Druid deck, though I made my own modifications.

# Turn 5 Dragonqueens
# Class: Druid
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Phoenix

# 1x (0) Innervate
# 1x (1) Blazing Battlemage
# 1x (1) Treenforcements
# 1x (1) Worthy Expedition
# 1x (2) Breath of Dreams
# 1x (2) Dreamway Guardians
# 1x (2) Ironbark
# 1x (2) Rising Winds
# 1x (2) Wrath
# 1x (2) Zephrys the Great
# 1x (3) BEEEES!!!
# 1x (3) Bogbeam
# 1x (3) Imprisoned Satyr
# 1x (3) Wild Growth
# 1x (4) Germination
# 1x (4) Overgrowth
# 1x (4) Swipe
# 1x (5) Big Ol' Whelp
# 1x (5) Elise the Enlightened
# 1x (5) Starfall
# 1x (6) Emerald Explorer
# 1x (6) Evasive Wyrm
# 1x (6) Khartut Defender
# 1x (7) Evasive Drakonid
# 1x (7) Marsh Hydra
# 1x (7) Overflow
# 1x (7) Winged Guardian
# 1x (8) Twin Tyrant
# 1x (9) Alexstrasza
# 1x (9) Dragonqueen Alexstrasza

AAECAbSKAx5AVv4BxQTEBuQIypwDoaEDr6ID3KID9KID/KMD26UDl60DsK0D/a0D/60DjK4D+ a4D57ADhbEDkbED+bUD/7UD5LoD5roD6LoD7LoD7boD7roDAAA=

The idea here being that you do ramp shenanigans (Zephrys can help with that, too), play Imprisoned Satyr and try to isolate 2 or 3 high-cost minions in your hand, and then no matter what it hits, you just play something stupid the turn it wakes up, whether that be a 2-mana Marsh Hydra, or 1-mana Emerald Explorer, or THE DREAM 4-mana Dragonqueen Alexstrasza and steamroll the game from there.

If they are able to draw the game out to when they get to 10-mana, or if you draw no ramp or something, you still have a lot of crazy value win conditions with all the bulk in the deck. Maybe save your 0-mana dragons and Marsh Hydra and Emerald Explorer for an Elise turn later in the game and really go nuts.

Obviously since this is Highlander, feel free to swap any number of cards in that you want, or if you don't have these cards, definitely don't feel like you have to craft them for this stupid deck.

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I mean, you can deal with 3/3s if you tech in Pyro or Mosh'og Artificer or whatever his name is. I run the latter. The former's better with Apothesis, the latter with Penance.

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What is the 'average' rating for Battlegrounds? Where I will start matching against the average player? And what is the rating I start meeting decent players?

Above question likely doesn't matter. Apparently I'm terrible at it. I found the answer of what people are what rating and 4000 is awful when I just hovering in the 3800-4100 range. I either come 5th to 8th or I win it seems.

Seems somewhere in the 5000-5500 range is average?

EDIT: Actually I think it's more accurate to say I usually finish 5th which sucks as it's usually when I have a big play lined up next turn. I think I need to learn what is in each tier better and which synergies to chase. Seems sometimes I commit to a synergy and it just runs out of steam but it's too late to change strategy.

ShatteredElysium posted...

What is the 'average' rating for Battlegrounds?

Strictly speaking 4000, because that's where everyone starts, and when one person gains points during a match, another person loses just as many points.

That said, there's a whole lot of new players who play a few games, feed MMR to people who know what they are doing, and then quit.

Average among people who actually play on a daily basis is probably 5500ish yeah.

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Only thing I've been able to get to work is like dragons or murlocs. Anytime I try anything else it ends badly

Interesting video on the iterations they went through with DH design:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMfsmG057UU

Some of the stuff I'm glad they dialed back on. Like...Fel Summoner used to be recruit, not pull from hand, and used to be a 4/6 taunt. Raging Felscreamer used to reduce the cost of a demon in your hand by 5. Glad they decided to nerf the cheating out demons cards and just make the demons worth playing at full cost.

ShatteredElysium posted...

Only thing I've been able to get to work is like dragons or murlocs. Anytime I try anything else it ends badly

There's a few viable comps in battlegrounds.

Mechs you usually want to buff a big Deflect-o-bot and add a bunch of ways to reset the divine shield. You can also often just use divine shield synergy like Bolvar, Holy Mackarel etc because a lot of mechs have divine shield, and those that don't can get divine shield from magnetic.

Don't go mechs unless you see a Deflect-o-bot on tier 3.

Demons are mostly juggler comps, so Soul Juggler + Void Lord kind of things. Don't go demons unless you pick up Soul Juggler on tier 3.

(There is another demon comp which is built around Floating Watcher + Wrath Weaver, and then just buying and selling a bunch of demons to make 100/100 units. Used to be meta dominating, not very popular right now, but sometimes it still works. Again, you'd want to be offered the right minions, though).

Beasts are kind of just a worse plan than Dragons most of the time. You either get an early Mama Bear and make your beasts huge, or you get Goldrinn the Great Wolf, taunt it, buy a Baron Rivendare and make your beasts huge that way. There are some early beast combos (pack leader + Rat Pack) but you end up replacing those with endgame stuff anyway, so you can buy them early to be strong for a few turns, but that's not really a commitment to beasts.

Deathrattle comps are a thing. These will try to get a Baron Rivendare, and some golden deathrattles. Various variations on these.

I've heard Menagerie is back now (one of each minion type) but I haven't had much success with it myself.

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Menagerie works if you have early Brann/Lightfang and a wide range of units (Like a cleave, the 2/1 divine shield dragon, a murloc, a strong deathrattle beast/mech, and a battlemaster are generally the ideal types)

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