Board 8 > Hearthstone Topic: Back to School Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

I didn't think it would.

Warlock chaos gazed my Kel on 6, so I had to play it. He flooded the board and didn't kill him so I had to use Mirror for science.

Everything on both sides that died came back and my opponent insta-conceded.

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Honestly this expansion is pretty cool and makes a bunch of neat strategies playable. Only downside is it's expensive.

The Potion of Illusion Mage deck is one that particularly looks entertaining. It runs Nightblade.... and Depth Charge!

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I thought they learned their lesson when they nerfed OG intervate.

Except it's worse now, because of things like Kael and Overgrowth completely eliminating the downside.

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I haven't even lost to Druid yet and I'm already tired of it.

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azuarc posted...

87 packs. 3 legendaries.

WTF.

Make that 93 packs, 3 legendaries now that I've completed the quests. Is that even possible? Aren't you supposed to get one in your first 5, and then the pity timer goes off at 40?

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First pity timer is 10, then 40. So assuming the worst case scenario, you could open 129 packs and get only three legendaries.

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oh, I'm thinking of it wrong. My brain is off by one. Yeah, technically 90 is the minimum to guarantee a third, and I have that already.

Still, it sucks. I have dust, sure, but that's only because I never ever use my dust. I've already blown a good chunk of it.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Tombs of Terror being a failure doesn't mean the idea needs to be scrapped, because it was a good idea.

Yeah, agreed. Tombs of Terror would have been ok if it just didn't have evolve (and maybe not N'Zoth either).

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Just played against Druid for the first time.

Holy shit that deck needs to get deleted out of Hearthstone

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THERE'S AN OTK SPELL MAGE DECK?!

I've been watching a lot of Hearthstone streams how have I missed this shit? I would have crafted this day one

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skullbone posted...

THERE'S AN OTK SPELL MAGE DECK?!

I've been watching a lot of Hearthstone streams how have I missed this shit? I would have crafted this day one

Probably because, at least for now, it's not particularly good. And there's actually two versions, the usual Antonidas version and a spell damage version that revolves around Mozaki.

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I assume he meant the Mozaki version. The Antonidas deck is a pretty standard sorcerer's apprentice combo.

There's also a new mage deck floating that uses Polkelt to grab Tortollan Pilgrim and then get it to chain cast Potion of Illusions with your favorite battlecry. Most versions are using Nightblade as their win condition. It's not OTK, but I would definitely describe it as combo since it's singularly depending on a specific combination of cards to win.

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Yeah that deck's what I was talking about earlier.

It's like freeze mage and shudderwock shaman put together. Fun stuff.

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Yeah the one I played against specifically was Mozaki. I was playing Priest and I had like 13 cards left, mage was down to 2 so I figured I had a pretty good lock on the game. Wasn't expecting 0 mana frost bolts for 13 damage.

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azuarc posted...

There's also a new mage deck floating that uses Polkelt to grab Tortollan Pilgrim and then get it to chain cast Potion of Illusions with your favorite battlecry. Most versions are using Nightblade as their win condition. It's not OTK, but I would definitely describe it as combo since it's singularly depending on a specific combination of cards to win.

Yeah, just read about that deck.

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/i7dndq/outrageous_infinite_tortollan_mage/

Haven't tried it, but it's the first deck I've seen that is actually a departure from the day 1/day 2 metagame, that might actually shake things up.

Bonus it can be built to be relatively resillient to Illucia disruption, since if potion is your only spell they can't get rid of the Tortollan Pilgrims in your hand.

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I'm now 5-0 against Druid as Priest and I'm not sure if it's possible for me to lose the matchup unless they get the turn 1-2 absolute bullshit level of nuts, which thankfully none of them have done so far. The last three got good-to-great draws but those games still weren't all that competitive.

I still hate playing against the deck but at the very least it's not like Quest Rogue where I hated it and also constantly lost to it.

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Camden posted...

I'm now 5-0 against Druid as Priest and I'm not sure if it's possible for me to lose the matchup unless they get the turn 1-2 absolute bulls*** level of nuts

Huh, I am a little surprised hearing that, since HSReplay makes most of the Druid vs Priest matchups look pretty 50-50.

Usual caveats about HSReplay apply, though--I only get free data, so I only see bronze-gold. And higher skill level probably helps priest more than it helps druid (even a bronze level druid can figure out how to play Overgrowth at 4 mana and guardian animals at 7 mana).

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metroid composite posted...

Huh, I am a little surprised hearing that, since HSReplay makes most of the Druid vs Priest matchups look pretty 50-50.

Usual caveats about HSReplay apply, though--I only get free data, so I only see bronze-gold. And higher skill level probably helps priest more than it helps druid (even a bronze level druid can figure out how to play Overgrowth at 4 mana and guardian animals at 7 mana).

I only play in bronze-gold so that's the perfect range for me, and I wouldn't consider myself as having a high level of skill as I feel like I'm a pretty average player for the most part. I'd be willing to bet one of the major reasons is I run more removal than the large majority of Priest lists, which sounds strange because how do you run more removal than Priest already traditionally runs. I'm honestly not sure my non-Reno version has a win condition in the deck outside of waiting until my opponent gets tired and concedes.

On the other hand, this deck feels like an auto-loss to that 2-and-under Rogue going around.


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I'm 3-0 against Druid as Priest since the expansion.

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I just got first place because in battlegrounds because in the final three, two different people with dragon builds that both previously beat me the last go around tried to pivot to murlocs and whiffed, allowing me to kill both of them. They even did it on separate turns so the second player knew it was just the two of us and then dropped his dragons in favor of a single roll of Megasaur.

I know Megasaur is busted but that first place finish was a complete gift.

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Playing quest hunter right now. Feels pretty good. Can be fast enough to combat aggression, and the quest element gives it enough of a push later on to contend with control decks that it can't outrace.

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Thoughtstole Kael and Crystal Power. Lazul'd SotF. Get wrecked Druid. It is Priest that is the Fittest now.

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Im not even sure if Druid is the third best class.

but everything is good this expansion except for Shaman.

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LiquidOshawott posted...

but everything is good this expansion except for Shaman.

I think there's a bit of a question mark above mage potentially too.

Yeah, they have the best combo decks right now, but most of the time combo decks in hearthstone are a ticket to tier 3 status. (Either that or absolutely busted tier 1, but...usually tier 3).

And they didn't really pick up much of anything for their one stable archetype last expansion (highlander runs like...three new cards, two of which are removal spells).

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Ulti is god

Win rates arent the best example for showing the strength of combo decks though because of their higher skill cap and somewhat tricky to pilot.

Quest Rogue is a good example. I think everyone agrees that the deck was unhealthy for the game, but it had a bad winrate because the meta was warped to beat it.

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I'm not thinking of winrates, I'm thinking of tier lists.

Like...let's look at tempo storm for a moment--they don't use winrates, they use how prevalent they expect a deck to be in tournaments, and let's look at the time when combo decks were basically at their height, so two years ago today:

https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/meta-snapshot/standard/2018-08-12

There's a couple of combo druid decks at the top of tier 1, which was mostly due to Druid decks being the best anti-aggro decks at the time (spreading plague, and the ability to gain 30-50 armour). But most of the combo decks are tier 3 or bottom of tier 2 (mech'a'thun decks in three different classes, shudderwock shaman, apm priest).

Both of the mage combo decks (potion of illusion+tortollan and Mozaki+sorcapprentice) seem likely to have bad matchups against aggro. And also bad matchups against control priest because of Illucia. So...this doesn't leave them very many good matchups; control warrior I guess?

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I think the potion of illusion deck has the potential to have good matchups against Druid/Paladin just because near infinite freezes should work well against them. Just needs refining.

The Mozaki deck... I honestly just think isn't good. I think just cutting Mozaki and whatever weird gimmicky card draw and just building it like a tempo mage (The other 5 drops are exceptional for it, Firebrand's really good, Chenvaala can put Paladin and Druid in a weird spot since it's hard for them to deal 5 damage to a minion. Mana Giant's easier to proc with the new 1 drop) can lead to good results.

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Yeah I've played about 10 games of the Mozaki deck and freeze mage it is not. I don't understand how you're supposed to live long enough to draw your entire deck without using all of the cards you need for the combo.

Pretty much the only deck slow enough to lose to Mozaki is Priest and they can just disrupt your combo anyway.

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Apparently Secret passage has an interesting interaction with Valeera the hollow

The shadow card gets shuffled, and then you end up with two shadow cards in your hand later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA9lqbzcJ4o&feature=youtu.be

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I was at the Diamond 5 floor, so I made a Pure Paladin deck without the strictly Pure Paladin cards and threw a few neutral 1 and 2 drops in there, along with some Living Dragonbreaths, just to dunk on a mage. Hit one my first queue, and did indeed dunk on them with a Turn 9 Living Dragonbreath topdeck. Sometimes this game just feels right.

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From the Data Reaper Report:

Firstly, the combo Fireworks Mage centered around Mozaki looks very weak and is unlikely to stand the test of time. The deck wins in a very flashy way, but doesnt seem to do it often. In addition, its performance is atrocious at all levels of play, and there is no indication its better than terrible at the hands of the best players. Wed stay away from this one.

Yeah I really should not have crafted Mozaki but at least she fits in other decks.

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You're acting like everyone didn't think discover should work that way. I've always said that discover should never discover itself and I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue it against me

Pretty excited to not have to deal with 4 turns of discovered primordial explorers now

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Every Reddit thread I've ever made on it gets 30% upvotes.

I mean, most reddit threads I've made get 30% upvotes. Doesn't matter what the subject is. Unless I take the same information and put it into an image form (especially if I can make it a meme). Then it gets 90% upvotes.

Style over substance. It's the reddit way. Upvotes don't care about your facts.

But also, some topics just get downvoted because they've been suggested a lot, and people get tired of hearing the same thing suggested every day. Changing discover so discover cards can't self discover...yeah, there were like 2-5 topics per day made suggesting that after the Alextraza change (each and every one of them assuming they were some unique special snowflake suggesting an idea that nobody else had thought of).

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My thoughts on discover chains are its fine if you pay mana, not so much if you dont

Like, Stonehills fine, Flunky is fine. Glyph is probably not fine, Nature Studies probably not fine, Magic Trick is iffy thanks to Apprentice and Cyclone, Renew is iffy since its cheap and gives you heal.

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Apparently there's a bug where Messenger Raven wasn't affected by the discover change (can still discover itself).

I mean, not a very relevant card, so meh, doesn't matter much.

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I need to actually get some packs from the new expansion. I've only gotten a few free ones.

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