Hearthpwn

I played a bunch at low ranks with a deck similar to this - kolento's version - and it's just silly. Goblin Blastmage is so strong. One time I wiped 3 implosion tokens. Another time I kill a scarlet crusader. I can't even imagine how an opponent can come back from losing his 3-mana play for absolutely nothing while you still get a 5/4 on the board. What a sick card.

I would imagine that the wins won't be as easy as I go up in the ranks, but this is definitely a good deck to use for grinding out quests quickly.

I'd like to start grinding away for gvg packs, and a lot of my quests are for paladin right now. What is a good deck to use assuming basically no gvg cards?

I almost never roll the spell the spell power totem or am allowed to keep it when mana is tight though. Against a good player, it's no where guaranteed. If you have a legitimate 4-drop to play, why risk the spell power totem, which has a 25% chance of failure, when you have a 100% chance of making an decent play in just playing the 4-drop. I don't feel comfortable at all using Crackle as reliable removal. The better you play, the more likely you are to get burned by it.

Quote from fleeeeetwood »

The problem with unstable portal, although the effect is random, the chance for it to be better than not is significantly higher. In those cases, the card you get can simply snowball the game in your favor with ease. It's a really fun card, but I think it could be tweaked.

Yeah, it's worse than Animal Companion, which has a similar swingy effect. 33% of the time you probably win with Animal Companion, 33% of the time you probably lose, and 33% of the time it doesn't matter. I don't like cards that offer such huge swings. I hoped they would have learned their lesson with Ragnaros the Firelord and Animal Companion and others, but the variance on Unstable Portal is just as wide, but I think the odds of 'hitting' a win are better than hitting a loser, which makes it far worse compared to Animal Companion. The range of power is wider too. Savannah Highmane and Ancient of Lore and all manner of cards seem to come off Unstable Portal quite frequently... grrr.

I think that's what happened actually. I mean, Reynad was devasted as all of the threats were burned away. We don't know what happened from his opponent's side, but if it were me, I certainly would have been very aggressive.

I am not a fan of the card personally. I do get the argument that you burn away bad cards or cards you wouldn't draw anyway. I guess the emotional impact on losing because of the card is very high for me. I've seen many games where if the Fel Reaver was something else - like another big minion that was just slightly worse - the game would have gone better.

I suppose it's all about the amount of variance you want to accept with your deck. I really do try to play low variance and consistent decks, but I also see the merit of going big at the risk of losing more games.

I understand those arguments. But if your deck only has 15% threats, and if you randomly burn away those threats, especially the top ones, and all you have left is stuff that won't win you the game... and on top of this, it puts a clock on you to lose the game... then the card is the reason you lost.

The card has some merits, but it seems to be a very big gamble that doesn't pan out all of the time. Why take on such a liability for? If you're zoo, then fine, but if you're not zoo, then your deck is less redundant and you shouldn't run this card.

I don't like Crackle actually. No matter what happens, someone is pissed off. It's just a poorly designed card. It works well to kill 3-toughness minions, but I'd rather play Lightning Bolt. There's just so many times where I play Crackle, trying to do 4-7 damage and it rolls a 3, forcing me to waste an Earth Shock to finish off the minion. With so many 5-toughness creatures now as well, even with a spell-power totem, you run the risk of not killing that minion 25% of the time. You can basically win or lose a game based on RNG, which is just terrible. I don't like the card.

Quote from CarlTelama »

You can't just say x is bad because it can be countered. The whole point of cards like these is to thin the opponent's deck of removal. Every card can be answered.

The problem with this card is that you spent 9 mana and did nothing while your opponent spends 3 mana, puts a 4/2 in play, negates your last turn and then spends 6-7 mana developing their board. It is such a big tempo play that you actually can't design your deck to be so weak to this play. You're going to lose if you play Mal'Ganis as a way to bait out removal. You were better off playing Kel'Thuzad, which many top level players also say is a bad card because it requires that you have minions on the board and doesn't help you come back from a losing game.

Yes, every card can be answered, but there's a big difference if your card got some value before it was answered or not. A Ragnaros the Firelord that dies to BGH still did 8 points of damage to something or someone's face. Mal'Ganis does absolutely nothing unless you have demons in play, to which you were better off with Kel'Thuzad in that scenario. On top of this, Kel'Thuzad doesn't die to BGH, so they may have to spend at least 1 card to remove him, and you've likely already got some value worth at least 1 card off him already. See why this is a better value and tempo play compared to Mal'Ganis?

If you're going to spend your entire turn playing a card, that card has to have an impact on the board. In most scenarios, without Voidcaller, this card is a do-nothing and is super weak for a 9-drop. I have seen nobody play this card and win if they weren't winning anyway, and I've definitely seen it have no impact or be the reason why a Warlock lost during many more games than that.

Quote from MarcoTomb »

Haven't seen many Feign Death, Ancient Watcher and Iron Juggernaut so I can't tell. They look powerful but balanced, although I haven't seen those in action.

Feign Death with 2 Nerubian Eggs or Sylvannas and other deathrattles is really broken for 2 mana, especially in a control strategy. Granted the egg draws are rare, since you need the coin and you need to draw both eggs, but it's basically an unbeatable draw.

Opponent's turn 9: Big Game Hunter

Turn 10: Sad Warlock who wish he had put something else in his deck

I don't understand the downvotes. Lots of pros today have come out and said they'd prefer to play Sludge Belcher over this. I know it looks good, but it is what it is.

As a card in isolation, this should have cost 3.5 mana, going either way. But since Hunter is powerful, it's understandable that during development, the mana cost must have been changed.

Quote from BelgianRofls »

How could whirling zap not have overload?

I don't like this card. It basically reads, "Your opponent has to have a 2 damage spell in hand, or they lose the game." That's not exactly right of course, but it's so punishing if you didn't draw your removal. Undertaker has a similar problem. Of course, any deck I make has ways to deal with it in spades - you have to have it now. Maybe that's the intent. But man it feels very punishing when you are unlucky to draw one of the many removal spells.

They both suck

Quote from Steuerrmann »

i love how you think that at rank 19 no one should play good decks. The "level 10 basic decks" youre talking about can be found at rank 25, the players at rank 19 have already made 6 ranks. Also, good cards don't always mean that there are good players behind those cards. If you were that good you could easily defeat some of the superior decks here and there. When GvG wasnt released in EU i created an NA account breezed through the ranks till 16 easily with only the basic cards and some commons i got from GvG packs. And i wouldnt claim to be a very good player, certainly not one to reach legend right now.

Conceding when you see better cards than yours just makes you sound like someone who searches for a game where he can steamroll his opponents every game. Well, that wont happen in hearthstone, ever. Even if you play on top level and have all the cards you will, depending on your rank of course, still lose roughly 1/3 of your games. Also you dont seem like the learning type, because instead of using the chance to play the described deathrattle hunter and learning how to beat them you just concede in hopes for an easier opponent.

As far as I am concerned, rank 20 *is* the lowest rank, not 25 - because you are never allowed to sink that low in the game, even if you lose 100 times after getting to rank 20. So yes, I am very surprised to see decks that I saw at blizzcon miraculously stuck at rank 20 or 19.

And, I don't know why you and others assume that I can't beat players using better cards. Of course that's possible. I have beat opponents with better cards than me frequently. In fact, every win I have today has been against opponents with better cards than me. But I've also lost games during the late game against decks that won purely because of epics and legendaries, and my basic-level cards could not keep up value-wise. This has been less and less the case as I've had the dust to augment a Shaman deck, but I am no illusions that I could have won the games before I started crafting rares.

Conceding with better cards is only half of the story. If I think I can win through it, I keep going, but if the snowball effect has occurred and I don't think there's anything in my deck to help me recover or I don't draw what I need on the turn I need it on, I just move on - why bother playing 3-5 minutes more when you know you're going to lose anyway. This happens when they play a lot of value cards of higher rarities - am I really to believe the rest of the deck is filled with basic cards? It's not likely. You either have the best card for the mana cost and for the given meta, or you don't. And when you don't, you will lose. Hearthstone is a game of snowballing, and if you don't have the right answers at the right time in the game, they will snowball you and you can't recover unless you have cards that help you recover. But again, you need those cards, and if you don't have them in your deck, it's time to move on (unless you like wasting time).

I just don't get the whole elitist thing that The Black Knight or Ragnaros or other cards don't swing games. They do. They get 2-for-1's and 3-for-1's, that unless you have your own legendaries, it's very hard to recover and fight back. It's not skill to drop rag, have it kill your 6/5 and then force you use a Hex. It's not skill to play The Black Knight into your Senjin. This is just better cards doing work, and it's really surprising that people think the person on the receiving end of this stuff is somehow playing bad.