Hearthstone

Fawe_sl said:

I gotta believe he meant to say Pirate warrior... idk though, makes no sense otherwise

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Yeah, it has to be pirate warrior. Mech warrior wasn't even a thing back when all the mechs were in.

And pirate warrior is surprising in how viable it is (which could totally be due to the overall state of ladder play). Most joked about it when the new warrior class pirate was shown, but I don't think many (I certainly didn't at least) thought it would be good.

Pawel recentlypostedthat he got a fresh account with no adventures to legend in 3 days (of lots of playing of course) complete with youtube/twitch archive.

Pirate warrior isn't very different from the aggro warrior that reynad popularized back during vanilla. It's dangerous but it generally runs out of steam very easily. The main advantage pirate warrior has today is that you could be facing like 5-6 different warrior variants and it's kind of unrealistic to mulligan for pirate warrior.

Yeah, it's pretty much just the old aggro "weapon" warrior. I think there's 8-10 pirates (N'Zoth's mate, bloodsail raider, dread corsair, the new pirate cultist and maybe deckhands, I haven't looked at the popular lists really).

Is it just me or has HS kind of waned since the expack? I don't see anywhere near as many people on bnet playing generally.

I actually had a pretty good run with mech warrior. I think I stole it off a Reynad stream back in the day and had a lot of success with it.

Twilight Sparkle_sl said:

Pirate warrior isn't very different from the aggro warrior that reynad popularized back during vanilla. It's dangerous but it generally runs out of steam very easily. The main advantage pirate warrior has today is that you could be facing like 5-6 different warrior variants and it's kind of unrealistic to mulligan for pirate warrior.

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When I play against Warrior with midrange Shaman, I watch their mulligan. If they don't mulligan their entire hand, I ditch early drops like trogg and flame juggler. This is because control/tempo Warrior always throw away any hand without waraxe, so any partial mulligan indicates they have one. Against pirate Warrior, this is fatal, but I still do it because pirate Warrior is rare and how good this strategy is against control.

Yeah Overwatch had definitely hurt Hearthstone traffic. Most of my friends are playing that right now.

Lol, I must've made some people salty yesterday. So that otk priest deck I mentioned yesterday is something I theorized about before the expansion hit and wanted to play it, but never got around to it until just yesterday. I have literally never seen anyone play that deck or similar since wotg launched. But just now I came across someone playing otk priest, lol. He also had the full combo in hand turn 10, but I had ice block up and he had no way of doing the remaining 7 damage the following turn. Playing freeze mage for the first time really to try and finish golden mage and honestly in my limited experience otk priest seems more consistent than freeze mage.

I watched a decent amount of freeze mage in the spring championship over the weekend so I have an ok understanding how to play the deck, but maybe that still just makes me bad because I don't understand things like why today's "standard" freeze mage runs pyroblast and not antonidas. I understand more now that mana usage is important so I guess when you break it down pyroblast is 10 damage for 10 mana and Antonidas assuming you always play him with at least one spell (which there is no reason not to) in the deck is 6 damage for 11 mana. But the upside just seems so worth it, you get a 5/7 with soft taunt and sometimes you get multiple extra fireballs. I have beaten a couple of control warriors just due to the extra fireballs I've gotten from antonidas.

Also just started experimenting with earthen ring farseers in place if ice barrier because, without mad scientists, ice barrier is just a 3 mana heal 8, whereas of course earthen ring is 3 mana heal 3 + 3/3 body, it'll more than likely eat another 3 damage and it'll have likely removed a minion or caused your opponent to use an extra card.

I've played against it 3 times the past 2 days, so you are not the only special snowflake. Not sure who popularized it though.

I think I just used all my pack opening luck for the rest of the year, opened 22 packs and got Princess Huhu, Fandral, Cenarius and two Hoggers.

Of course it was on the Americas region where I hadn't played since January and have hardly any cards...

Twilight Sparkle_sl said:

Uh, I care plenty. It was months before I got my first 12 win run and arena drafting was a lot simpler during vanilla. Very impressive.

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Deathwing_sl said:

12 wins is indeed impressive that quickly or at all.

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Oh, thanks guys! I guess I've just been watching too many streamers that make it look so easy, figured most half decent people get a 12 win run every so often.

Since that day, I've had some 1-3 win runs, and then the occasional 7-9 win. It got me thinking, I think I'm playing most decks as if they are attrition/control decks, and when I actually get a good version of that style is when I do well. But, when I get an aggro, tempo or midrange deck and play it that way, something inevitably goes wrong.

Also, I had the most ridiculous match against a priest. He goes turn 2 acidic swamp ooze. I drop a 3/2 of some kind (didn't have any relevant abilities). He then buffs it with velen's chosen and kills my dude. I coin out a 4/4, planning to drop a senjin the next turn which should kill the ooze since he can only bring it up to 3 health (I have no removal in hand). He drops a shadowboxer, heals his ooze, and kills my 4/4 with it (now at 5/1).

I play a sen'jin. He plays a darkshire alchemist to heal the ooze up to 5/6 and kills my senjin with it.

Obviously, if I had a removal spell of some kind it would have helped a lot, but I'm really surprised how poorly priest does overall in the arena when it can out-attrition everyone and really wrecks mages. Velen's chosen is a common class card, so you should see it pretty often and the tempo it gives you early on is so ridiculous. There was literally nothing I could do against that opening he had unless I thought coining out my 2 drop on turn 1 with no other 2 drop in hand, as a shaman, was somehow better then going 2/4/4.

Maybe it's just that I either play against priest early on, and the player is terrible anyway, or after 5+ wins and the priest has a good version of what a priest deck normally is. I've just seen some ridiculously powerful things that priests have done against me and am not sure if I've just been super unlucky or priests aren't that bad and most people just play them wrong.

Krag_sl said:

I think I just used all my pack opening luck for the rest of the year, opened 22 packs and got Princess Huhu, Fandral, Cenarius and two Hoggers.

Of course it was on the Americas region where I hadn't played since January and have hardly any cards...

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I got the watch another player get a free pack mission today. My pack was a rare, epic, and legendary pack. I had all the cards but 500+ dust is very nice.

Deathwing_sl said:

After 7-8 wins, luck is going to dominate how well you do. You're better off looking at your overall win average than how often you go 12 wins.

My guess is that since you come from MTG, you prefer control style decks.

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Not exactly, no, but a tempo/midrange deck in MTG has more options then a control deck in hearthstone and that's the one thing that's been frustrating me about the game. Yes, they eliminate mana screw/flood, but by having such a smaller hand size you reduce your overall options too. There's too many situations that seem like neither player had a hand in deciding the outcome. I've had just as ridiculous an opener as that priest example above, even moreso sometimes, and even though I won I didn't feel like *I* did anything to earn it, just my deck did.
Overall, I think hearthstone is a better, more polished game in general. But, specifically on a strategy level, it feels a lot more random then I'd like. I'm hoping it's just a case of 'I don't know what I don't know, yet', but we will see.

Many streamers have shown though that arena strategy is a very, very real thing, it's just that it seems terribly counterintuitive to many people and myself included. I played MtG, although only in the early years and am generally quite good at strategic card games. Still, I've got I think 4 or 5 12-wins ever over beta through to now and I used to play a LOT of arena, preferentially over other formats even.

It's got an RNG element of course but it really is dominated by those that don't focus on their own hands but on the potential answers of the other hand. Value and tempo are key but always tempered by *what your opponent might play*.

(As an aside, pirate war variant 10-1 so far digging out of the trenches. Luck is as luck is of course but when the cards work it is a disgustingly good deck.)