have a low-mana drop, though I could see being tempted by War Golem. ;)
I wondered a little about Pick #16 also, but frankly, Shrinkmeister isn't worth that much unless you have synergy with low-target removal cards such as Shadow Word: Pain, which you don't have anyway, so going for Holy Nova should be OK.
For one, he did have a Shadow Word: Pain already. But I cannot stress enough how good Shrinkmeister is in Arena. To think of him as a mere combo tool for Priest abilities is so wrong. You should rather think of him as a Yeti with the DID's Battelcry: optimal body for its mana cost and huge upside on top of that. That's how good he is.
Truluste:
I must be blind. Seqenere does indeed have a Shadow Word: Pain, making the Shrinkmeister a great choice. My bad. :(
Match 1: A warrior with lots of weapons, Played incredibly slowly and emoted quite a lot. Ended up getting to top decking despite his early advantage and he was sitting there with three cards in hand, but with nothing to play apparently. Hard to imagine what they might have been. In the end I won.
Match 2: Priest. He had a decent deck and almost had me, but in the end I was probably saved by my Piloted Shredder dropping Nat Pagle early in the game. The additional card draw (my opponent never bothered to kill him) allowed me to pull back from the brink.
Match 3: Another Priest with quite a lot of removal and some decent minions. He had answers to pretty much everything I played and I was never really in with a shout, despite having a great starting hand.
Match 4: Warlock. I got off to a pretty much perfect start and by the time he could get some serious minions on the board I had lethal. Healing, Dark Cultists and Temple Enforcers were crucial in allowing me to clear his board with minimal losses.
Match 5: Mage. A frustrating match in the end. He had Cairne Bloodhoof and Archmage Antonidas and Lorewalker Cho (an odd choice of Legendary, wonder what the other choices were). I thought I'd just about saved it when he pulled out a Drakonid Crusher which got buffed to 9/9, since I was on ten health. I couldn't clear it on that turn and had no taunts, so I died. Looking back, I think Cho may have come from a shredder, so only a two legendary deck :P
Match 6: Shaman. Got off to a decent start again and despite some premium drops like Fire Elemental and Fireguard Destroyer He couldn't get on the board. He ended up conceding on about 15 health on round 9.
Match 7: Rogue. A match with a couple of nervy moments but, in the end, I managed to gain control of the board and forced him to concede.
Thats all for tonight. With luck I'll be able to finish this off tomorrow evening.
Match 8: Rogue. A bit of a nothingy match. We traded minions for a bit but I slowly gained control of the board. He must have run out of steam because he conceded before I had lethal. The most important play was probably my Bomb Lobber killing his Volcanic Drake with its battlecry.
Match 9: A mage that simply had a much better deck than me, including the always irritating Mana Wyrm on turn one and Mekgineer Thermaplugg. I occasionally looked like I was going to get back into the game, but Fireballs, Frostbolts and Water Elementals said "no".
So a decent run, if not amazing. It was a really nice deck to play and, I suspect, a horrible deck to play against. With a bit more luck I could, perhaps have managed another win or two.
I was impressed by the deck's ability to come back from seemingly hopeless situations in match 1 and 2, thanks to all the buffs from Temple Enforcer and Dark Cultist.
Refreshed from my break over the weekend it's time to get back to the arena and, once again, I've picked Paladin.
My feeling is that deck seems decent, but I would have preferred one or two more two drops and 4 x Blessing of Kings is probably overkill. No Equality or Consecration and, once again, no legendaries, but two Truesilver Champions is nice.
If I could go back and edit my choices I probably would have picked Mechwarper over my third Blessing of Kings.
As always, any feedback, advice or predictions are very welcome.
The Quartermaster as the first pick seems kinda risky to me. Without a muster it's just too hard to get a good group of silverhand recruits out and he's 2/5 for 5 which is horrible on the stats. I'd have gone Fel Reaver on the first pick. I know the side effect is scary but when was the last time you had an arena run go into fatigue. You also didn't end up with a single taunt and only single heal. IMO you are going to need to keep control of the board to limit damage and will have a hard time if you get behind. You also seem to be light on late game and will have to rely on smaller minions + kings to make something big but that takes two cards which puts you at a disadvantage when you get into top decking vs your opponent.
I think it will be a long time before I'm brave enough to pick a felreaver. Quartermaster did feel a little risky, but at that stage I felt there was a reasonable chance of getting a muster and is not to difficult to make sure that there's at least one recruit for him to buff on the board. That would make 4/7 for 5, which seems acceptable.
Thinking back, I'm not sure I was offered a single decent taunt.
If you haven't played felreaver one thing to note is he won't kill you by trying to discard 3 cards on empty deck and doing 3 cards worth of fatigue damage. It's not a draw mechanic so it doesn't trigger fatigue. He's still scary and no doubt is it a big drawback but it's 8/8 for 5 so what do you expect.
Match 1: Anincredibly annoying mage with 2 x Frost Nova, Blizzard and a Water Elemental behind Mirror Image. I had a far better start, but he managed to keep my minions immobilized for several turns. Sadly for him he had nothing to follow up with and I battered him into submission once the freeze barrage ran out.
Match 2: A rather odd match against a warlock. He seemed to have a decent deck with 2 x Floating Watcher, Bane of Doom (which, unfortunately for him, summoned a Blood Imp) and Voidcaller, but I manage to draw the cards to deal with them all and he ended up conceding before I'd even damaged him. Strange, but I won't complain.
Match 3: Horrible match against a druid. An innervated Ironfur Grizzly on turn one, buffed with Mark of the Wild and followed closely by two Swipes meant that I got off to a dreadful start. He had an answer to everything I could throw at him.
Match 4: A warrior with a pretty poor deck. A fairly easy win.
First, this is a great thread. You're doing exactly the right thing as far as getting better at the arena goes. I'll try to add my advice. I average about 5 wins in Arena which I think is pretty good but I'm not one of these "infinite" arena players so take my advice with a grain of salt.
This paladin deck you're working on now:
Pick #1: I would also have taken the quartermaster (as you did). Fel Reaver is very succeptable to hard removals and the cost is just too high unless you know you've got an aggro deck, which - obviously - you don't know on pick 1. From your earlier posts you seem to favor control, and fel reaver is not the card for that. It will crush people whose decks don't have good removal, but then again, anyone with a deck that doesn't have good removal probably isn't going to pose much of a threat to you anyway.
Pick #2: I would have taken the dire wolf over the zombie chow. Dire wolf is effectively a 4/2 in terms of value, and you can consider 2/0 of that to have charge. Plus it has zero downside. I know lots of people have hard-ons for the zombie chow's 2/3 for 1 mana value, but I dislike it in arena where the enemy is likely to have lots of 3/2s and you're not likely to have many good combo cards.
Pick #4: I'd have taken the spectral knight. It's very hard to remove and is almost always worth two enemy minions because it can't be removed easily via spells. It forces the enemy to run at it with their minions. Drakonid crusher, while no slouch, is succeptable to a single fireball or other hard removal spell, and it comes out a turn later than the spectral knight. Lastly, if you've got the enemy in position where you're playing the drakonid to get the bonus 3/3, you likely don't need the drakonid anyway.
Pick #7: I like the drakonid sorcerer here. You already have 1 blessing of Kings at this point, and you know paladins are able to get blessing of wisdom or hand of protection as well. It's decent value for the cost at 3/5 for 4 and it just gets better when you target it with spells. Loot Hoarder, on the other hand, is essentially 2 mana for 1 card draw. The 2/1 body is poor, and since you're a paladin you can always get a 1/1 for 2 mana and keep the card, which is essentially the same thing as the loot hoarder. I almost never take loot hoarders as a paladin.
Pick #8: I'd take the river croc here. Solemn vigil is meh to me.
Pick #9: I'd take the faerie dragon here, because (if you saw my other picks so far), I'd be low on early drop minions.
Pick #13: This pick really hurts. You do not want two solemn vigils. In fact, I'd probably have taken the Gnomergon infantry regardless and hoped for a turn 3 infantry / turn 4 Blessing of kings combo. Taunt is great and charge is okay, too. Nothing ideal in this choice though, :(
Pick #23: I'd take the jungle panther here. It's an incredibly useful minion. I get the pick of the farseer because of windfury and hoping for a blessing of kings combo, but you don't have the taunts to protect it when it comes down and you're basically going to be getting a 2/3 for 3 mana, which is below curve. I mean, everyone who sees that card come out is going to assume you have the blessing of kings in your hand. Keep in mind that blessing of kings can almost always be applied to a stealth minion the turn after you summon it, like the panther, but there's no guarantee a non-stealth minion will still be on the board.
Pick #29: I'd take the gilbin stalker here. With so many blessings of kings (all the right picks given your limited options), the stealth body is really strong as it guarantees you a target for your BoK.
Overall this is a rough deck that's going to depend a lot on strong play from you. You were offerend 3 meh choices several times, and lack strong 2 for 1 type minions. Try hard not to get stuck in a position where you have 3 blessings of kings in your hand and no minions on the board, but also be aware that your cards are going to be very weak against silences.
Thanks for the feed back, both of you. My thinking on a couple of the points you've raised:
Volcanic Drake - I'm not totally sold on this card, given it's puny health, but I'm hoping to be able to get a decent discount on its mana cost most of the time, thanks to tokens and my weapons. Faerie Dragon would certainly have been nice, given my relatively low number of one and two drops.
Zombie Chow - I do like to have one of these in my deck, since it's nasty to face as a one drop. True it has already been a dead card in one of the games, where I drew it late on, but I'd probably make the same choice if I did the draft again.
Solemn Vigil - These have proved useful so far and can be really cheap card draw, something that my deck is otherwise lacking. I would certainly have preferred to have a Cult Master in place of one of them, though.
Nerubian Egg - This was probably a bit of a gamble, but only a third of the way through the draft I felt there was plenty of opportunity to draft more activators. I also like it as a bit of an AoE discourager. Grim Patron seemed a little tricky to activate as a paladin, although I could see him being pretty potent with a Blessing of Kings on him.
I should be continuing the run shortly. I'm hoping that I'll be meeting slightly less hardcore opponents in the middle of the day than I see late at night. Fingers crossed for a few people sneaking some games at work and being distracted regularly.
Match 5: F***ing Face-hunter. I didn't get off to the best of starts, but he just kept chucking stuff at my face and managed to have enough board presence to stop any of my minions sticking. Irritating. A good taunt or two might have helped.
Match 6: Mage. The mage got off to a decent start, but I made a couple of silly mistakes and really didn't have a chance from a couple of turns in. Really crappy way to lose my last match. I did end up with the hand that punished me for my drafting choices - two [card]solemn vigil[card]s in my starting hand and 2 [card]Blessing of Kings[card] with no board presence.
Straight back on the horse, since I have a bit of free time. I had the choice of Hunter, Warlock or Druid and decided to give the old tree-hugger another go.
I think there are plenty of debatable picks in this draft and I've ended up with a lot of really good late game cards, an okay early game and not much in the middle. I'm going to crack on with it, but I'd welcome any feedback or advice and will be popping back regularly to update on my progress (or lack thereof).
Match 1: An actual mill rogue, with two copies of Gang Up and Coldlight Oracle. I got off to a pretty poor start with two Ironbark Protectors in my opening hand and very little early game. Fortunately my opponent got carried away with the thought of milling me to death rather than just pressing home the advantage. The hefty card draw ended up being just what I needed and I stabilised behind an Ancient of War before dropping such gems as powered up Druid of the Fang and Drakonid Crusher.
Match 2: A mage with insane luck with their cards. He had good start, including a Piloted Shredder dropping a Shielded Minibot, then dropped a Deathlord to protect his Water Elemental. I drop an Ironbark Protector and he silences his deathlord with a Spellbreaker and then uses Reversing Switch on it to clear my taunt. I follow it up with my own Deathlord and he drops a Stampeding Kodo. There wasn't much else I could do from then on as I had a hand full of poop and he was miles ahead on the board.
Match 3: A hunterwith a fondness for face. Fortunately he didn't get great cards and I managed to gain control of the board. Once I got to the point where I could start dropping my big stuff things swung in my favour, but it still ended up being quite close.
Match 4: Paladin. I got a decent enough start, partly thanks to Mechwarper combined with Micro Machine and Harvest Golem. I kept control long enough to start dropping my big taunts and then top-decked into Stormwind Champion to give me lethal a turn earlier than I'd expected. I went a bit alll-in towards the end and could have been wrecked by Equality > Consecration.
Match 5: A mage with a whole lot of Frostbolts, which proved irritating in the early game. Once again I managed to keep things under control long enough to get to my big drops and wore him down from there. I was glad that he didn't seem to have any Flamestrikes or Fireballs
Match 6: Another mage with a decent deck and who played really well. He managed to get insane value out of a Cult Master, with lots of little minions and a taunt that I couldn't clear to get at it. He must have drawn about eight cards from that thing and I didn't draw into any of the big cards that could have helped me to stabilise things.
Match 7: A Paladin. It was another case of hanging on until the big stuff could be played. I managed to get some value out of my Cult Master this time and wore him down with my wall of big taunts.
Match 8: A warrior with a Fiery War Axe early on and an Arcane Nullifier X-21 to stop me from killing his Raging Worgen, which went on to cause me all sort of trouble. One Ancient of War gave me a brief stay of execution, but I didn't draw into any of my other taunts in time to stop the face-beating.
Rewards
Fairly good, but the pack didn't hold anything exciting.
As you can see, the mid game did pose a problem, as did drawing big stuff in my starting hand on occasions. When I could get to about round seven or eight I could usually stabilise and pull ahead, although even then it depended on my four big taunts being drawn.
I think the number of conditional cards was a bit of a downside at times. They were often sitting in my hand, either with no way to activate or, in the case of hungry dragon, a bit too risky to play.
Yeah I'd agree. Your picks seem pretty good overall. The draft really just didn't give you many good 4 drop options. Looking back you could have picked the Ogre Magi on pick 12 over the micro machine. 4/4 for 4 is not horrible even if the +1 spell power isn't likely to be useful. You did have the cult master as your only 4 drop at that point but it might have been a little too early to see the need for that pick.
I as going comment on not particularly liking the Novice Engineer but it really was the best pick there.
It sounds like the deck played pretty much the way I would have expected it to. If you got a good start and your early minions were enough to carry you through the mid-game your late game was pretty sizable. Double Ancient of War, Sunwalker and double Ironbark Protector is a heck of a lot to get through late in the game.
My first crack at a shaman arena since I started this thread. I've always liked Shaman as a class, but haven't got a huge amount of experience. I finally got a legendary pick, and a pretty decent one at that. The rest of the deck seems pretty average: quite a lot of spells and overload, a few quality minions, but a lot of poor to vaverage ones.
I haven't got particularly high hopes for this one, but I'd be grateful for feedback, as always.
on a quick look, it seems like you did pretty well with what you had to work with. What jumps out is the Reincarnate pick at #17. You don't have enough deathrattle minions to really make it worthwhile, so it will likely be a dead card. Pray for your Piloted Shredder or use it to "heal" a wounded minion. Good luck!
I actually really like this shaman deck of yours. KT is amazeballs in arena. I agree that Reincarnate is likely a dead card for most of the game, but it's best use (hands down) is to play it on KT, which will cause you to get two KTs. And then you faceless manipulate one. The pick I question most is forked lightning over earthshock. Silence is one of the most powerful effects in the game, and it only gets stronger with each expansion. Manage your early turns well and try to survive into the late game where you can drop KT and run away with it. Even though you don't have much card draw in this deck, your minions are big enough that you should be okay dropping one minion and using the hero power on most turns. You also have very strong early minions with the fireguard destroyer and the yeti, which should both come out asap to cause problems for the other guy. Don't slow play this deck. Get a minion out and then keep it alive with your spells and weapons while you bide your time. Play for full control and I can see you going 6 wins +
I admit that I probably let greed sway my pick of Reincarnate, but as soon as I got Kel'Thuzad as my first pick I knew that I wanted one. Having already passed up on one at pick #8 I felt that #17 was probably my best chance, since the other two options were mediocre.
I suspect I'll be lucky if I can ever pull off the KT > Reincarnate in a match, but I live in hope. Obviously the dream is KT > Reincarnate > Faceless Manipulator > opponent cries.
I am a bit guilty of undervaluing silence, so I'll need to keep that in mind in future.
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Truluste:
I must be blind. Seqenere does indeed have a Shadow Word: Pain, making the Shrinkmeister a great choice. My bad. :(
-mjsottawa (TACStrike#1833 on Battle.Net)
Match 1: A warrior with lots of weapons, Played incredibly slowly and emoted quite a lot. Ended up getting to top decking despite his early advantage and he was sitting there with three cards in hand, but with nothing to play apparently. Hard to imagine what they might have been. In the end I won.
Match 2: Priest. He had a decent deck and almost had me, but in the end I was probably saved by my Piloted Shredder dropping Nat Pagle early in the game. The additional card draw (my opponent never bothered to kill him) allowed me to pull back from the brink.
Match 3: Another Priest with quite a lot of removal and some decent minions. He had answers to pretty much everything I played and I was never really in with a shout, despite having a great starting hand.
Match 4: Warlock. I got off to a pretty much perfect start and by the time he could get some serious minions on the board I had lethal. Healing, Dark Cultists and Temple Enforcers were crucial in allowing me to clear his board with minimal losses.
Match 5: Mage. A frustrating match in the end. He had Cairne Bloodhoof and Archmage Antonidas and Lorewalker Cho (an odd choice of Legendary, wonder what the other choices were). I thought I'd just about saved it when he pulled out a Drakonid Crusher which got buffed to 9/9, since I was on ten health. I couldn't clear it on that turn and had no taunts, so I died. Looking back, I think Cho may have come from a shredder, so only a two legendary deck :P
Match 6: Shaman. Got off to a decent start again and despite some premium drops like Fire Elemental and Fireguard Destroyer He couldn't get on the board. He ended up conceding on about 15 health on round 9.
Match 7: Rogue. A match with a couple of nervy moments but, in the end, I managed to gain control of the board and forced him to concede.
Thats all for tonight. With luck I'll be able to finish this off tomorrow evening.
I'm back to finish off this run.
Match 8: Rogue. A bit of a nothingy match. We traded minions for a bit but I slowly gained control of the board. He must have run out of steam because he conceded before I had lethal. The most important play was probably my Bomb Lobber killing his Volcanic Drake with its battlecry.
Match 9: A mage that simply had a much better deck than me, including the always irritating Mana Wyrm on turn one and Mekgineer Thermaplugg. I occasionally looked like I was going to get back into the game, but Fireballs, Frostbolts and Water Elementals said "no".
So a decent run, if not amazing. It was a really nice deck to play and, I suspect, a horrible deck to play against. With a bit more luck I could, perhaps have managed another win or two.
I was impressed by the deck's ability to come back from seemingly hopeless situations in match 1 and 2, thanks to all the buffs from Temple Enforcer and Dark Cultist.
Rewards
So 6-3 in the end and almost paid for itself with 140g. I really need to do something like this on my next Arena run.
Arena 4 - Paladin
http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/4ru40z
Refreshed from my break over the weekend it's time to get back to the arena and, once again, I've picked Paladin.
My feeling is that deck seems decent, but I would have preferred one or two more two drops and 4 x Blessing of Kings is probably overkill. No Equality or Consecration and, once again, no legendaries, but two Truesilver Champions is nice.
If I could go back and edit my choices I probably would have picked Mechwarper over my third Blessing of Kings.
As always, any feedback, advice or predictions are very welcome.
The Quartermaster as the first pick seems kinda risky to me. Without a muster it's just too hard to get a good group of silverhand recruits out and he's 2/5 for 5 which is horrible on the stats. I'd have gone Fel Reaver on the first pick. I know the side effect is scary but when was the last time you had an arena run go into fatigue. You also didn't end up with a single taunt and only single heal. IMO you are going to need to keep control of the board to limit damage and will have a hard time if you get behind. You also seem to be light on late game and will have to rely on smaller minions + kings to make something big but that takes two cards which puts you at a disadvantage when you get into top decking vs your opponent.
I think it will be a long time before I'm brave enough to pick a felreaver. Quartermaster did feel a little risky, but at that stage I felt there was a reasonable chance of getting a muster and is not to difficult to make sure that there's at least one recruit for him to buff on the board. That would make 4/7 for 5, which seems acceptable.
Thinking back, I'm not sure I was offered a single decent taunt.
If you haven't played felreaver one thing to note is he won't kill you by trying to discard 3 cards on empty deck and doing 3 cards worth of fatigue damage. It's not a draw mechanic so it doesn't trigger fatigue. He's still scary and no doubt is it a big drawback but it's 8/8 for 5 so what do you expect.
Match 1: An incredibly annoying mage with 2 x Frost Nova, Blizzard and a Water Elemental behind Mirror Image. I had a far better start, but he managed to keep my minions immobilized for several turns. Sadly for him he had nothing to follow up with and I battered him into submission once the freeze barrage ran out.
Match 2: A rather odd match against a warlock. He seemed to have a decent deck with 2 x Floating Watcher, Bane of Doom (which, unfortunately for him, summoned a Blood Imp) and Voidcaller, but I manage to draw the cards to deal with them all and he ended up conceding before I'd even damaged him. Strange, but I won't complain.
Match 3: Horrible match against a druid. An innervated Ironfur Grizzly on turn one, buffed with Mark of the Wild and followed closely by two Swipes meant that I got off to a dreadful start. He had an answer to everything I could throw at him.
Match 4: A warrior with a pretty poor deck. A fairly easy win.
First, this is a great thread. You're doing exactly the right thing as far as getting better at the arena goes. I'll try to add my advice. I average about 5 wins in Arena which I think is pretty good but I'm not one of these "infinite" arena players so take my advice with a grain of salt.
This paladin deck you're working on now:
Pick #1: I would also have taken the quartermaster (as you did). Fel Reaver is very succeptable to hard removals and the cost is just too high unless you know you've got an aggro deck, which - obviously - you don't know on pick 1. From your earlier posts you seem to favor control, and fel reaver is not the card for that. It will crush people whose decks don't have good removal, but then again, anyone with a deck that doesn't have good removal probably isn't going to pose much of a threat to you anyway.
Pick #2: I would have taken the dire wolf over the zombie chow. Dire wolf is effectively a 4/2 in terms of value, and you can consider 2/0 of that to have charge. Plus it has zero downside. I know lots of people have hard-ons for the zombie chow's 2/3 for 1 mana value, but I dislike it in arena where the enemy is likely to have lots of 3/2s and you're not likely to have many good combo cards.
Pick #4: I'd have taken the spectral knight. It's very hard to remove and is almost always worth two enemy minions because it can't be removed easily via spells. It forces the enemy to run at it with their minions. Drakonid crusher, while no slouch, is succeptable to a single fireball or other hard removal spell, and it comes out a turn later than the spectral knight. Lastly, if you've got the enemy in position where you're playing the drakonid to get the bonus 3/3, you likely don't need the drakonid anyway.
Pick #7: I like the drakonid sorcerer here. You already have 1 blessing of Kings at this point, and you know paladins are able to get blessing of wisdom or hand of protection as well. It's decent value for the cost at 3/5 for 4 and it just gets better when you target it with spells. Loot Hoarder, on the other hand, is essentially 2 mana for 1 card draw. The 2/1 body is poor, and since you're a paladin you can always get a 1/1 for 2 mana and keep the card, which is essentially the same thing as the loot hoarder. I almost never take loot hoarders as a paladin.
Pick #8: I'd take the river croc here. Solemn vigil is meh to me.
Pick #9: I'd take the faerie dragon here, because (if you saw my other picks so far), I'd be low on early drop minions.
Pick #13: This pick really hurts. You do not want two solemn vigils. In fact, I'd probably have taken the Gnomergon infantry regardless and hoped for a turn 3 infantry / turn 4 Blessing of kings combo. Taunt is great and charge is okay, too. Nothing ideal in this choice though, :(
Pick #23: I'd take the jungle panther here. It's an incredibly useful minion. I get the pick of the farseer because of windfury and hoping for a blessing of kings combo, but you don't have the taunts to protect it when it comes down and you're basically going to be getting a 2/3 for 3 mana, which is below curve. I mean, everyone who sees that card come out is going to assume you have the blessing of kings in your hand. Keep in mind that blessing of kings can almost always be applied to a stealth minion the turn after you summon it, like the panther, but there's no guarantee a non-stealth minion will still be on the board.
Pick #29: I'd take the gilbin stalker here. With so many blessings of kings (all the right picks given your limited options), the stealth body is really strong as it guarantees you a target for your BoK.
Overall this is a rough deck that's going to depend a lot on strong play from you. You were offerend 3 meh choices several times, and lack strong 2 for 1 type minions. Try hard not to get stuck in a position where you have 3 blessings of kings in your hand and no minions on the board, but also be aware that your cards are going to be very weak against silences.
Good luck!
Thanks for the feed back, both of you. My thinking on a couple of the points you've raised:
Volcanic Drake - I'm not totally sold on this card, given it's puny health, but I'm hoping to be able to get a decent discount on its mana cost most of the time, thanks to tokens and my weapons. Faerie Dragon would certainly have been nice, given my relatively low number of one and two drops.
Zombie Chow - I do like to have one of these in my deck, since it's nasty to face as a one drop. True it has already been a dead card in one of the games, where I drew it late on, but I'd probably make the same choice if I did the draft again.
Solemn Vigil - These have proved useful so far and can be really cheap card draw, something that my deck is otherwise lacking. I would certainly have preferred to have a Cult Master in place of one of them, though.
Nerubian Egg - This was probably a bit of a gamble, but only a third of the way through the draft I felt there was plenty of opportunity to draft more activators. I also like it as a bit of an AoE discourager. Grim Patron seemed a little tricky to activate as a paladin, although I could see him being pretty potent with a Blessing of Kings on him.
I should be continuing the run shortly. I'm hoping that I'll be meeting slightly less hardcore opponents in the middle of the day than I see late at night. Fingers crossed for a few people sneaking some games at work and being distracted regularly.
Match 5: F***ing Face-hunter. I didn't get off to the best of starts, but he just kept chucking stuff at my face and managed to have enough board presence to stop any of my minions sticking. Irritating. A good taunt or two might have helped.
Match 6: Mage. The mage got off to a decent start, but I made a couple of silly mistakes and really didn't have a chance from a couple of turns in. Really crappy way to lose my last match. I did end up with the hand that punished me for my drafting choices - two [card]solemn vigil[card]s in my starting hand and 2 [card]Blessing of Kings[card] with no board presence.
Rewards:
A little hint of a silver lining.
Arena 5 - Druid
http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/k08927
Straight back on the horse, since I have a bit of free time. I had the choice of Hunter, Warlock or Druid and decided to give the old tree-hugger another go.
I think there are plenty of debatable picks in this draft and I've ended up with a lot of really good late game cards, an okay early game and not much in the middle. I'm going to crack on with it, but I'd welcome any feedback or advice and will be popping back regularly to update on my progress (or lack thereof).
Match 1: An actual mill rogue, with two copies of Gang Up and Coldlight Oracle. I got off to a pretty poor start with two Ironbark Protectors in my opening hand and very little early game. Fortunately my opponent got carried away with the thought of milling me to death rather than just pressing home the advantage. The hefty card draw ended up being just what I needed and I stabilised behind an Ancient of War before dropping such gems as powered up Druid of the Fang and Drakonid Crusher.
Match 2: A mage with insane luck with their cards. He had good start, including a Piloted Shredder dropping a Shielded Minibot, then dropped a Deathlord to protect his Water Elemental. I drop an Ironbark Protector and he silences his deathlord with a Spellbreaker and then uses Reversing Switch on it to clear my taunt. I follow it up with my own Deathlord and he drops a Stampeding Kodo. There wasn't much else I could do from then on as I had a hand full of poop and he was miles ahead on the board.
Match 3: A hunterwith a fondness for face. Fortunately he didn't get great cards and I managed to gain control of the board. Once I got to the point where I could start dropping my big stuff things swung in my favour, but it still ended up being quite close.
Match 4: Paladin. I got a decent enough start, partly thanks to Mechwarper combined with Micro Machine and Harvest Golem. I kept control long enough to start dropping my big taunts and then top-decked into Stormwind Champion to give me lethal a turn earlier than I'd expected. I went a bit alll-in towards the end and could have been wrecked by Equality > Consecration.
Match 5: A mage with a whole lot of Frostbolts, which proved irritating in the early game. Once again I managed to keep things under control long enough to get to my big drops and wore him down from there. I was glad that he didn't seem to have any Flamestrikes or Fireballs
Match 6: Another mage with a decent deck and who played really well. He managed to get insane value out of a Cult Master, with lots of little minions and a taunt that I couldn't clear to get at it. He must have drawn about eight cards from that thing and I didn't draw into any of the big cards that could have helped me to stabilise things.
Match 7: A Paladin. It was another case of hanging on until the big stuff could be played. I managed to get some value out of my Cult Master this time and wore him down with my wall of big taunts.
Match 8: A warrior with a Fiery War Axe early on and an Arcane Nullifier X-21 to stop me from killing his Raging Worgen, which went on to cause me all sort of trouble. One Ancient of War gave me a brief stay of execution, but I didn't draw into any of my other taunts in time to stop the face-beating.
Rewards
Fairly good, but the pack didn't hold anything exciting.
As you can see, the mid game did pose a problem, as did drawing big stuff in my starting hand on occasions. When I could get to about round seven or eight I could usually stabilise and pull ahead, although even then it depended on my four big taunts being drawn.
I think the number of conditional cards was a bit of a downside at times. They were often sitting in my hand, either with no way to activate or, in the case of hungry dragon, a bit too risky to play.
Yeah I'd agree. Your picks seem pretty good overall. The draft really just didn't give you many good 4 drop options. Looking back you could have picked the Ogre Magi on pick 12 over the micro machine. 4/4 for 4 is not horrible even if the +1 spell power isn't likely to be useful. You did have the cult master as your only 4 drop at that point but it might have been a little too early to see the need for that pick.
I as going comment on not particularly liking the Novice Engineer but it really was the best pick there.
It sounds like the deck played pretty much the way I would have expected it to. If you got a good start and your early minions were enough to carry you through the mid-game your late game was pretty sizable. Double Ancient of War, Sunwalker and double Ironbark Protector is a heck of a lot to get through late in the game.
Arena 6 - Shaman
http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/90kq7c
My first crack at a shaman arena since I started this thread. I've always liked Shaman as a class, but haven't got a huge amount of experience. I finally got a legendary pick, and a pretty decent one at that. The rest of the deck seems pretty average: quite a lot of spells and overload, a few quality minions, but a lot of poor to vaverage ones.
I haven't got particularly high hopes for this one, but I'd be grateful for feedback, as always.
on a quick look, it seems like you did pretty well with what you had to work with. What jumps out is the Reincarnate pick at #17. You don't have enough deathrattle minions to really make it worthwhile, so it will likely be a dead card. Pray for your Piloted Shredder or use it to "heal" a wounded minion. Good luck!
I actually really like this shaman deck of yours. KT is amazeballs in arena. I agree that Reincarnate is likely a dead card for most of the game, but it's best use (hands down) is to play it on KT, which will cause you to get two KTs. And then you faceless manipulate one. The pick I question most is forked lightning over earthshock. Silence is one of the most powerful effects in the game, and it only gets stronger with each expansion. Manage your early turns well and try to survive into the late game where you can drop KT and run away with it. Even though you don't have much card draw in this deck, your minions are big enough that you should be okay dropping one minion and using the hero power on most turns. You also have very strong early minions with the fireguard destroyer and the yeti, which should both come out asap to cause problems for the other guy. Don't slow play this deck. Get a minion out and then keep it alive with your spells and weapons while you bide your time. Play for full control and I can see you going 6 wins +
I admit that I probably let greed sway my pick of Reincarnate, but as soon as I got Kel'Thuzad as my first pick I knew that I wanted one. Having already passed up on one at pick #8 I felt that #17 was probably my best chance, since the other two options were mediocre.
I suspect I'll be lucky if I can ever pull off the KT > Reincarnate in a match, but I live in hope. Obviously the dream is KT > Reincarnate > Faceless Manipulator > opponent cries.
I am a bit guilty of undervaluing silence, so I'll need to keep that in mind in future.