Hearthpwn

On November 9th, 2013 MLG had its third Hearthstone tournament. It officially began at 2PM EST and there were 108 eagerly waiting for some Hearthstone. In the end it came down to LuigeZZ and Luthol. LuigeZZ was declared the winner after beating Luthol 3-1. 

After the dust had settled Thechiv had a chance to sit down and discuss a few Hearthstone topics with LuigeZZ and why he felt his deck went to the top!

Name: Stephen Williams
Age: 18
Location: Kingston, New York

LuigeZZ NA 11/09/13 Unknown Deck by Auhdit - Dec 7, 2013 View Deck String Export to BBCode Export to Cockatrice Export to MarkDown Export to Html Clone this deck
Minion (25) 1x Sylvanas Windrunner 2x Argent Commander 2x Defender of Argus 2x Knife Juggler 2x Blood Imp 1x Venture Co. Mercenary 2x Argent Squire 2x Dark Iron Dwarf 2x Elven Archer 1x Faerie Dragon 2x Flame Imp 2x Voidwalker 2x Novice Engineer 2x Shattered Sun Cleric	Ability (5) 2x Demonfire 1x Power Overwhelming 2x Soulfire
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To see the remaining top decks for the 11/09/13 tournament click here.

You did really well in this tournament. What other competitive games have you played?

I played League of Legends and Call of Duty.

We have a lot of League of Legends veterans coming over to Hearthstone and many think Hearthstone is going to be that new competitive scene. Do you believe Hearthstone has that potential?

Yeah, I think it does have the potential to be an E-sport.

What made you decide to take part in this tournament?

I had been doing a lot of playing in the ladder, and I think it’s a lot of fun to play in tournaments. It is better practice over playing a scrimmage against random people. You get to see some of the top decks and people with more of the better cards to play with.

Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. Sometimes you get to play against people who come up with something you have not seen before and it hits you out of nowhere. We saw this last week in the European tournament.

 I was expecting more Shaman decks but didn’t get to play against one.

 It seems like Shaman is one of those classes that has fallen out of favor in the competitive scene.

 They are still good, but I think they are outclassed by other classes like Mage who can get a lot of free advantage. But, I think Shaman does better against Warlock.

What was the best part of the tournament for you?

Wow, there were a lot of things I enjoyed about the tournament. I guess it would have to be playing against all those decks and seeing new builds and strategies.

A lot of players normally just say they enjoyed winning. Bravo on that, sir. In the Semi’s you faced off against DrakonicRage and you said it was tough, would you say this was your toughest match?

Yeah game one he used Ice Block and Ice Barrier on me. Most people don’t use that many of them in game one because against control decks they are not nearly as good.

 Did that slow down your aggro or stall you out?

It didn’t slow me down but it did get to the point where I had him sitting at five life and he was able to get another turn out of it.

We saw similar in the Hearthstone invitational held at BlizzCon today. Were you watching that stream while playing in this tournament?

In between matches yeah I was watching.

Did you get a chance to look over the bracket in our tournament and see any names of opponents you were kind of worried about playing?

No, I didn’t really look at who was playing, I knew two people who were on my friends list. But, no, I just went in and did it. The first few matches were easy 2-0 wins but the Semi’s and the Finals were really competitive.

Will you be coming back for another tournament and did you enjoy the format?

Yes I will be coming back. I feel the format is fair, I mean best of three with a sideboard lets me know what they are going to do. It allows my sideboard to contain things like Faerie Dragon and what not.

Were you excited when you won?

Yeah I was like, “OH MY GOD!” This was funny because my dog had been waiting for 30 minutes and jumped up when I said it. I was so happy.

Your deck did really good but was there any class or archetype you were feeling you might have been weak against, and if so how did you sideboard for it?

 I think Shamans would have been my biggest threat because they have the cheapest AoE in the game and that would have caused a lot of problems for my deck. Mages would have been less than a threat as their AoE comes by turn five, and Paladins have a weak one on turn four. Shamans also have Feral Spirit which destroys my deck.

How did you sideboards against some of the classes?

For Mages I brought in a second Faerie Dragon.

Good choice for early aggro because Mages have no reliable way to single target Faerie Dragon.

They don’t have much of an answer for it and it’s good against Priest and removal spells. Against Warriors and Paladins I brought in Acidic Swamp Ooze. I also took out my Venture Co. Mercenary and added aSunwalker because after turn six they took control back so instead of them attacking your opponent has to spend resources on the Sunwalker. After turn six I found they had less than 10 life and I could pull out two Soulfire to win.

What are your top three favorite neutral cards?

Argent Commander is number one, Faerie Dragon, Azure Drake, and Defender of Argus .

 That’s 4.

I know but it’s so hard to pick. Harvest Golem would be in there as well. It’s in every one of my decks!

Harvest Golem has been the top pick every time amongst most people, it’s just such a brilliant card because you get a lot of value from it and it just won’t die. Last week we saw a rise in Rogues. Both NA and EU had Rogues in the Final Rounds as well as in the Semi-Finals. Do you think this the beginning of a meta shift?

I think the Rogue is a very strong class. It was my second choice if I wasn’t going to play this. I enjoy a very aggressive early game and Rogues seem to excel at that. I didn’t have anEdwin so I did not run it.

Edwin is one of those cards I can see the value in it, but just don’t feel it’s worth the time for me to craft or include in a deck.

Rogue decks don’t need Edwin to win, but it helps, especially with the Defias Ringleadercombo and going second. I feel Rogues really excel going second, but they do fine going first. It’s a huge advantage going second for them.

 What do you think are some basic things that make a good hearthstone player?

I think you need to know the game mechanics, how to gain the advantage, when to attack the hero and when to trade. You need to think turns ahead. When I play I always look at what turn it is and how much mana my opponent has. If its turn three and I am facing a mage I can keep spamming out minions because it’s not turn five. You need to know the meta, and you need to know what each deck or class has and the cards everyone is currently playing with those heroes. If you play against someone and they completely surprise you it is not good. You should know what options your opponent has.

Yeah, knowledge of what is being used and what plays your opponent can dish out can really provide an edge in being able to counter play to gain the advantage and possibly the win.

Having a good deck list is another thing. A good list can minimize the amount of bad draws and bad opening hands you will have. There is luck involved, but since I filled my deck with a lot of one and two cost minions it’s highly unlikely I will have a dead hand.

Very nice. Now when it comes to preparations for a tournament what do you do?

I watched some streams like Trump and some others and I spam play my deck. I ended up going 32 to 5.

Wow, that is an amazing win percentage for deck testing.

Yeah, I was playing with my friend and he threw a lot of different classes at me.

Testing a deck pre-tourney is pretty much a requirement. Every deck seems to have a card that just shines the brightest in tournament play. What was your MVP during this tournament?

Knife Juggler.

Knife Juggler????

Well, Knife Juggler and Elven Archer is a devastating combo.

That’s right you used Elven Archer in this deck. That was kind of amazing. He is considered to be a horrible minion and almost never taken. Why did you?

In arena it is pretty much a useless card as well in most constructed decks. You don’t want to waste the attack with your minions and want to attack them in their face. Elven Archer allowed me to ping divine shields from Paladins. Many games they would summon in a Faerie Dragon and I would summon in an Elven Archer and target theFaerie Dragon and then Knife Juggler would finish it off with the knife effect.

Let say you’re talking to someone who is coming has never played the game and is joining up. What advice would you give them? 

I would say don’t get frustrated. Don’t blame luck or the cards. It’s good to watch streams and pick up on the mechanics and how things work. You have to play over and over to learn and adapt. When I played League of Legends some people never adapted to the meta and were stuck in ELO hell. But mainly learn from your mistakes and learn why something happened. 

You seem to know the Meta pretty well in Hearthstone. Where do you see the meta right now? What are the top three classes?

There are a lot of strong decks but, I think early game aggro decks and Mages are the best kind of decks. Top three is really hard to say. I think Mages are extremely strong right now. Priests are strong with Mind Control but that’s going to get nerfed. Warlock and Rouges are the best for early aggro decks.

 Now you brought up a nerf coming up, that they announced at BlizzCon. What are your thoughts on these three card nerfs they listed?

I wasn’t expecting Mind Control to be 10 mana. I don’t think many people will be running it anymore. It is still a great card but the fear with mind control was as soon as you hit turn eight they were going to steal something. I was expecting that it would have been like CHANGE OF HEART from Yu-Gi-Oh where at the end of the turn you got the card back. I don’t think the change for Starving Buzzard will affect the combo. If they wanted to affect it that much turn it into a 1/2.

You know they were saying they wanted it to be killed by Hero Powers, which is kind of horrible when you think about it as Hunters have really no sustainable card draw mechanic or large burst draw mechanic like other class. So, this kind of hurts them a lot when you think about it. As it stands now its main use is late game mass draw for a combo play and this pretty much keeps it being just that. Why no change for Northshire Cleric?

Yeah, that is an annoying card. Most 1/3 for 1 mana can’t generate as much advantage as Northshire Cleric, but since they are nerfing Mind Control I don’t think it’s good to mess with another class card.

 That brings me back to the third card which is also a hunter card and a topic of endless threads of hate and anger: Unleash the Hounds. They have not told us what they are going to do, yet.

I think it depends on what they do to it. If they take away the charge or the +1 attack or raise the cost it will affect hunters a lot. I don’t think OTK is healthy for the meta. People complain about the Hunter OTK because it’s more consistent and cheaper to play then some of the other OTK’s out there. They have a lot of ways of stalling, removing and powering to the combo.

Yeah, their cheap cost is what I think is the issue. Other OTKs have a legendary or a few epics and generally are turn 10 win conditions. Where Hunter is cheaper and faster. Do you think these changes to Hunters will send hunters to the bottom of the heap? As it stands Hunters are pigeon holed to one effective archetype.

I think if they nerf Unleash the Hounds they are going to have to buff up other cards in the hunter deck or give them another card.

It seems like Hunters are highly reliant on beast which are some of the weakest minions in this game, with a few exceptions, one of which is what you get from Animal Companion.

Yeah but that’s RNG and you don’t want to depend on it.

Speaking of RNG, do you feel it plays a huge role in this game?

Well every card game has RNG involved in it, but I wouldn’t say ruins the game. It all depends on what the best outcome of the results is and what the worst results is. You can minimize the results of RNG. For me there are times when playing two Soulfire can win me the match so I try to play the minions I need to attack and then have a decent size hand to let me get both of them off without possibly losing one from the RNG. 90% of the time I use it as a finisher, unless I have to use it for control early on.

Would you say Warlock is your favorite class to play? You seem to know a lot about the ins and outs of them.

Yeah, Warlocks are my favorite, they are fast and fun.

A lot of people seem to favor aggro style decks. Do you think the changes they made in the wipe geared the meta towards Aggro?

Well, I have only been playing for 2 weeks so I didn’t know what the meta was before. I learned all my things super quick. When I played League I went from silver to diamond in two months.

 That’s impressive. Two weeks in and you won a tournament against some veterans of the game.

Yeah well I have TCG experience before this with Yu-Gi-Oh and I went to Nationals with that. I never got competitive with Magic: The Gathering. I played it locally but never got big into it.

You said you got the chance to watch the Invitational in between matches. You saw what they were playing deck wise. Do you think you could have beaten them? 

Currently? Probably not, they have a lot more experience. But I think I can get to that level.

Well we are going to wrap this up here. On behalf of myself and ManaGrind I would like to congratulate you on a well fought win and hope to see you back here next week!