Pretty interesting interaction with Augmented Elekk. You discard three cards from the top of your deck, look at them, choose one and then the following happens: the card suffles back into your deck, to the top of it, and then you draw this card normally. If Elekk is on the board, you shuffle the second copy of the card into your deck!
New players misjudge this card so much, it's actually one of the best hunter cards and would see play in ton of other aggro/tempo/midrange decks if it was somehow neutral. It stems from the fact that you generally don't need all 30 cards in your hunter decks to win so you're fine with discarding and the fact that they are mostly made of "non-essential" cards. Some clear examples of those are alley cat, kindly grandmother, rat pack, secrets (depending on the matchup), unleash the hounds (against control), infested wolf, golakka crawler, fiery bat, in other classes it's fire fly, n'zoth's first mate, southsea deckhand, bloodsail corsair... basically most early game and some situational cards. You usually don't want to draw those after like turn 5, you want to draw key cards like highmane, kill command, leeroy, call of the wild, tundra rhino, bonemare, hunter DK, etc.
Since the non-essential cards outnumber the essential cards in decks, it's not unlikely to have tracking give you a choice of 1 essential and 2 non-essential cards. Something like alley cat, highmane, rat pack, in which case you draw a card that you really want and discard 2 cards that are really not that useful past turn 4-5. That's pretty amazing for only 1 mana. Even if you get a choice of 2 essential cards, it's not always that big of a deal, you don't need all of them to win. Getting 3 essential cards is extremely unlikely and getting 3 non-essentials is still pretty good since you get rid of 3 bad draws.
TL;DR Discarding cards from your deck is statistically a good thing in most non-control decks. You want to get rid of your early game and increase the odds of drawing into mid/late game. The matchups almost never go into fatigue anyway.
Side-note: These statistics are exactly the reason why Gnomeferatu is fairly bad, in most matchups (that don't go into fatigue) you have a bigger chance to discard your opponent's non-essential card than an essential one so you're actually helping your opponent to draw into his bigger and more impactful stuff.
Thank you for the explanation! I have never used this before, it sounded really bad.
I feel like I understand it much better now and I will give it a fair shot. :)
New players misjudge this card so much, it's actually one of the best hunter cards and would see play in ton of other aggro/tempo/midrange decks if it was somehow neutral. It stems from the fact that you generally don't need all 30 cards in your hunter decks to win so you're fine with discarding and the fact that they are mostly made of "non-essential" cards. Some clear examples of those are alley cat, kindly grandmother, rat pack, secrets (depending on the matchup), unleash the hounds (against control), infested wolf, golakka crawler, fiery bat, in other classes it's fire fly, n'zoth's first mate, southsea deckhand, bloodsail corsair... basically most early game and some situational cards. You usually don't want to draw those after like turn 5, you want to draw key cards like highmane, kill command, leeroy, call of the wild, tundra rhino, bonemare, hunter DK, etc.
Since the non-essential cards outnumber the essential cards in decks, it's not unlikely to have tracking give you a choice of 1 essential and 2 non-essential cards. Something like alley cat, highmane, rat pack, in which case you draw a card that you really want and discard 2 cards that are really not that useful past turn 4-5. That's pretty amazing for only 1 mana. Even if you get a choice of 2 essential cards, it's not always that big of a deal, you don't need all of them to win. Getting 3 essential cards is extremely unlikely and getting 3 non-essentials is still pretty good since you get rid of 3 bad draws.
TL;DR Discarding cards from your deck is statistically a good thing in most non-control decks. You want to get rid of your early game and increase the odds of drawing into mid/late game. The matchups almost never go into fatigue anyway.
Side-note: These statistics are exactly the reason why Gnomeferatu is fairly bad, in most matchups (that don't go into fatigue) you have a bigger chance to discard your opponent's non-essential card than an essential one so you're actually helping your opponent to draw into his bigger and more impactful stuff.
At the Blizzcon championships today, I learned that if the opponent played Beneath the Grounds, you can end up discovering one of the Ambush! when playing Tracking, and it being discarded does not summon the Nerubian on the opponent's field. Interesting.
Most people seem to misunderstand, and therefore, misuse this card.. leading to gross underestimation of what it can do. Tracking is not something you play just cause you have an extra 1 mana to burn. E.g. People who play it on turn 1 are almost always making a mistake. Tracking should be used as a way to dig for an answer so you can maintain tempo/control of the board, or finish your opponent. I've used it countless times to dig for that Ironbeak Owl/Kill Command/Unleash the Hounds/Quick Shot/etc I needed to win the game before the opponent could recover. When used that way, (properly), Tracking is quite powerful and usually worth running 1 of in a deck.
This used to have a really nasty glitch associated with it until the last patch. Basically, if you were to use this with Wild Pyromancer and Acolyte of Pain on your side of the board, you could make it so that your opponent never got a turn again unless they disconnected and reconnected. Thankfully, that glitch is no more.
As for the card itself? Pretty good, I'd say. Compare with the MTG card Strategic Planning.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 9, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Pretty interesting interaction with Augmented Elekk. You discard three cards from the top of your deck, look at them, choose one and then the following happens: the card suffles back into your deck, to the top of it, and then you draw this card normally. If Elekk is on the board, you shuffle the second copy of the card into your deck!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 1, 2018 (Boomsday)Thank you for the explanation! I have never used this before, it sounded really bad.
I feel like I understand it much better now and I will give it a fair shot. :)
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Sep 14, 2017 (Frozen Throne)New players misjudge this card so much, it's actually one of the best hunter cards and would see play in ton of other aggro/tempo/midrange decks if it was somehow neutral. It stems from the fact that you generally don't need all 30 cards in your hunter decks to win so you're fine with discarding and the fact that they are mostly made of "non-essential" cards. Some clear examples of those are alley cat, kindly grandmother, rat pack, secrets (depending on the matchup), unleash the hounds (against control), infested wolf, golakka crawler, fiery bat, in other classes it's fire fly, n'zoth's first mate, southsea deckhand, bloodsail corsair... basically most early game and some situational cards. You usually don't want to draw those after like turn 5, you want to draw key cards like highmane, kill command, leeroy, call of the wild, tundra rhino, bonemare, hunter DK, etc.
Since the non-essential cards outnumber the essential cards in decks, it's not unlikely to have tracking give you a choice of 1 essential and 2 non-essential cards. Something like alley cat, highmane, rat pack, in which case you draw a card that you really want and discard 2 cards that are really not that useful past turn 4-5. That's pretty amazing for only 1 mana. Even if you get a choice of 2 essential cards, it's not always that big of a deal, you don't need all of them to win. Getting 3 essential cards is extremely unlikely and getting 3 non-essentials is still pretty good since you get rid of 3 bad draws.
TL;DR Discarding cards from your deck is statistically a good thing in most non-control decks. You want to get rid of your early game and increase the odds of drawing into mid/late game. The matchups almost never go into fatigue anyway.
Side-note: These statistics are exactly the reason why Gnomeferatu is fairly bad, in most matchups (that don't go into fatigue) you have a bigger chance to discard your opponent's non-essential card than an essential one so you're actually helping your opponent to draw into his bigger and more impactful stuff.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 11, 2017 (Frozen Throne)This card is bad. Why not put a good card into your deck and just draw that instead?
There is no space in decks for this card.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 28, 2017 (Quest Rogue Nerf)OKAY I have finally found its twin brother!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 28, 2016 (Yogg Nerf)At the Blizzcon championships today, I learned that if the opponent played Beneath the Grounds, you can end up discovering one of the Ambush! when playing Tracking, and it being discarded does not summon the Nerubian on the opponent's field. Interesting.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jun 27, 2016 (Old Gods)Discard 2 Call of the Wild and get 1 Wisp
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Mar 17, 2016 (Explorers)Tracking: Burn 2 other cards to draw 1 and possibly loose key parts of your deck!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Sep 11, 2015 (TGT Launch)Most people seem to misunderstand, and therefore, misuse this card.. leading to gross underestimation of what it can do. Tracking is not something you play just cause you have an extra 1 mana to burn. E.g. People who play it on turn 1 are almost always making a mistake. Tracking should be used as a way to dig for an answer so you can maintain tempo/control of the board, or finish your opponent. I've used it countless times to dig for that Ironbeak Owl/Kill Command/Unleash the Hounds/Quick Shot/etc I needed to win the game before the opponent could recover. When used that way, (properly), Tracking is quite powerful and usually worth running 1 of in a deck.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 1, 2014 (Live Patch 5506)This used to have a really nasty glitch associated with it until the last patch. Basically, if you were to use this with Wild Pyromancer and Acolyte of Pain on your side of the board, you could make it so that your opponent never got a turn again unless they disconnected and reconnected. Thankfully, that glitch is no more.
As for the card itself? Pretty good, I'd say. Compare with the MTG card Strategic Planning.