Hearthstone

My intention was to spam quest rogue to get golden this month but ended up playing murloc paladin to rank 3... been hovering at 3 for a couple days, gave the new secret mage a try last night and went 6-0 to end at rank 2. Not sure if it's really that good or i just got lucky on matchups though. Ive played against and beaten secret mage a lot as paladin.

Mures said:

Yeah, discover burn mage is really strong, been playing it a lot lately.

Tempo rogue seems pretty good against the current meta if you ever get back to rogue ravishing.

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Different from Miracle? I played miracle for like 5 games and went like 1-4 or some crap so quickly abandoned that. I just suck with Miracle. Auctioneers always at the bottom or I just use resources inefficiently. Seems like they always have the answer when I'm vs them though... I think because I typically play control. However, with the more aggressive styles I've been adopting, it's been much more favorable for me.

I was trying to find the deck list I was using but seems like it's not actually posted. I originally got it off Dog's stream and he named it "omegazero", but no evidence of the deck anywhere else. I've re-created the list on Hearthpwn:

Dog's Secret Mage - Hearthstone Decks

Dog's Secret Mage

• 1 x Babbling Book
• 2 x Mana Wyrm
• 2 x Arcanologist
• 2 x Frostbolt
• 2 x Medivh's Valet
• 2 x Primordial Glyph
• 2 x Sorcerer's Apprentice
• 2 x Arcane Intellect
• 1 x Counterspell
• 1 x Ice Block
• 2 x Kirin Tor Mage
• 1 x Mirror Entity
• 1 x Spellbender
• 2 x Fireball
• 1 x Cabalist's Tome
• 2 x Kabal Crystal Runner
• 1 x Firelands Portal
  
  
• 2 x Kabal Courier
• 1 x Medivh, the Guardian

6-0, 100% win rate so far and Rank 2.

What I like about it is it's a combination of Discover Mage but has a lot more minions to contest board, and the secrets, even though only 1 copy, really do a great job of ruining the day for your opponent. Counterspell/Spellbender screw up so many things in the meta right now. I've yet to Spellbender a Spikeridge Steed, but that would be the dream.

I counterspelled a shadow step against Quest Rogue which shut down his quest completion as it left minion on board (I had a 2nd Counterspell in hand for the actual quest too!).

I didn't play very much token/aggro so no idea how it'll hold up. It has no AoE outside of discovers/RNG, but it's very low curve, so can hopefully keep up.

logged a few games after work for 30 mins. 4-1...
11-1 since last night

Just hit Rank 1.

Only loss was to an aggro druid that rolled high and I didn't have the answers or board for his living mana on 5.

Yea I can't believe I've hit 0 paladins in 12 games, meta is weird. I have beaten some other cancers like token druid, pirate warrior and hunter... maybe I just drew well, but with 21 cards in the 1 to 3 mana range it's often not hard. I usually mulligan everything over 2 mana, and I'll mull for 1s if I already see an Arco

Mures said:

Yeah, glyphs and shadow vision are stronger than I think most people anticipated.

Played that secret deck just once yesterday and lost to pirate warrior, it was pretty close and I may have pulled it off if one of the secrets, spell bender, wasn't totally fucking useless in that matchup. For that reason I dropped it for a second mirror entity for the next time I run it. Spell bender is pretty good in arena now because of all the paladins w/ bok, spikeridged, and dinosize, but I'm not so sure about it on ladder. As already mentioned its completely dead in one of the most popular matchups, and its not much better against another cancer matchup in aggro druid, you can hope to steal a +2/+2.

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Spellbender is insane against most classes tbh, pirate warrior is the lone exception. I had Spellbender fuck over quest rogue more than once, funny thing is, spellbendering a shadow step puts the 1/3 minion in YOUR hand, not the Rogue's... that was funny. This deck counters Rogue so hard, especially if you land some Potion of Polymorphs too.. I will pick the Polymorph from glyph in that match, have turned their bounce'd minion into a sheep a couple times now.

That all said, I've hit SO MANY token druids that I went back to paladin for now. With literally 0 AoE clears it's very very difficult match, you rely on random chance to get the AoEs.

Against other cancers it's very good simply because this deck is pretty much cancer itself and can easily deal with a couple minions at a time, but Druids go wide way too fast to keep up and Living Mana is always a concern.

Mures said:

If potion of polymorph fucks with the rogue quest why not just run that instead? I've run into about 20 pirate warriors/aggro druids the past two days and 1 questing rogue. Or run a second counterspell, which would also help with living mana. Its not just pirate warrior, its pretty poor against aggro druid and those two decks are what you run into 40% of the time.

I actually thought about swapping in potion of polymorph, but it kinda stinks running in a secret deck because someone is always going to check for mirror entity first with a shitty minion when they can, the two cards have anti-synergy.

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Well I didn't make the deck and just had surprising success with it randomly so idk .

I think the main point is Paladin are supposedly everywhere and the secrets in this deck do a great job of countering paladin things.
I still think Paladins & Quest Rogues are much more prevalent at certain points of the ladder, but like Brand mentions, the meta changes depending what rank you are. Around rank 5 seems to be tons of Rogue/Paladins.

If you look at the VS Reports and HSReplay stats, Paladin are supposedly a huge chunk of the meta right now.
Class/Archetype Distribution - Data Reaper Report | Vicious Syndicate (vS)

Ranks 5 to 1 top represented are:
Warrior
Paladin
Hunter
Rogue
Mage
---
Druid is 7th of 9


At Legend top represented are:
Druid
Warrior
Rogue
Paladin
Mage

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So Druid being the class that counters hardest, I experienced the transition at about Rank 1 which is why I went to Paladin whom has around a 59% win rate against Druid.

Honestly, Pirate Warrior shouldn't be a terrible match against this mage deck if you curve out well. Warriors suck with wide boards and this deck can go wide in a hurry, as well as having removals for all their shit. Warriors seldom play more than 2 minions a turn. I played only 2-3 pirate warriors but haven't lost yet. ymmv