Hearthpwn

Hey HStoners!

This last week has been the most fun I have had playing HS since I first started 3 years ago, and that is thanks to 2 cards: Cabalist's Tome and [card]Yogg-Saron, Hope's End [/card]. These two cards take RNG to a new level, and if you know a thing or two about statistics, then you know the more attempts you make, the closer to the mean you get.

I have hit legend twice, and probably would have more if I didn't almost exclusively play Arena.

At the start of WOTOG, I took a C'Thun to Rank 5 and quickly bored, then started the Yoggfest. I wanted to try all of the new Mage cards, so I built a deck with them and bounced back to Rank 12 with a scary amount of haste. Through a painful amount of trials, I found a deck list that just started winning, alot. 

A Quick Note on RNG:

We have all seen really silly things happen with RNG: bomber madness, random doomsayer appearances, etc., The reason we feel so surprised by these things is because they seem to defy logical expectations, though they do not actually. When you play a Mad Bomber by himself, the chances of all three bombs hitting you in the face is 1/9. It seems unfair, but it is not that unlikely. With the introduction of some massive RNG cards, we can apply the notion of logical expectations to expect certain things, C'Thun will almost always hit each character the same number of times (barring them dying first,) and Yogg will deliver, trust me.

The Truth About Yogg: 

Yogg is amazing. By far the most impossible card to counter, namely, because he can do anything. There are a lot of skeptics that want to be able to control the cards they use, and fine if you believe you can predict anything this early in the meta, keep thinking that.

Countless card tables and statistics have shown that, in general, you are going to benefit from a random spell you cast, than suffer by it. I can attest to this. I mean, sure, there were games that I was losing heavily and I winmored for my opponent, but, in those cases I had pretty much already lost. But for the most part, Yogg has turned a slight to heavy disadvantage into a scarily good position for me. The 3 main reasons are secrets, card draw, and card language. What I mean by that is cards that text prohibit them from affecting my opponents cards or my cards: words like 'enemy' and 'friendly' appear on a large percentage of cards.

When you play Yogg after having played 10+ spells, expect a board clear, card draw, and secrets. You cannot beat that value, and I will reiterate that Yogg will rarely kill you, it isa pretty tough thing to do.

Having said that, I will caution a little bit. Do not play Yogg when you have other means of winning the game in your hand. Do not play him in an advantaged situation, unless he is one of the last or only card left in your hand and your opponent is gearing up to take the game.

The Main Idea:

This deck is a pretty standard tempo deck with one fundamental difference: IT DOES NOT RUN OUT OF STEAM. With Cabalist's Tome, Arcane Intellect, and Ethereal Conjurer, there is rarely a scenario where you do not have something in your hand. Many games finish by just running up the board with powerful minions early on and steamrolling your opponent. Play like a Tempo Mage, you can easily turn and burn face for an early to mid game win.

Mulligan:

2 and 1 drops all day, and Flamewaker.

Card Choices:

I will not go in to detail on cards that are in all Tempo Mages or Yogg, again.

[card]Emperor Thaurissan[/card] is a game winner is this deck. If your hand has 5+ cards in it, you can almost always dump them all to get significant board advantage the next turn.

Cult Sorcerer. A new card, and a very likeable one at that, 3/2's are always a solid threat and spell damage is so valuable with Arcane Blast. Also, this card ups the amount of early game options your deck has without sacrificing spell synergy.

[card]Cabalist's Tome[/card]. My new favorite card, it relieves you of having to put in secrets and board clears and allows you to burn through your hand without worrying about card advantage.The last thing is, much like discover, it allows you to run more than 2 copies of your favorite cards in a deck. I've had games where I have played 3 Flamestrikes, without having any in the deck, and Cabalist's Tome into Cabalist's Tome, just saying.

Spellslinger is a great card. One place this deck is lacking is what to do with an empty board. Short of pinging and passing, it is nice to have bodies on the board, so slinger is a fine add, and since this deck revolves around spell synergy, it tends to give you the advantage, but then again, it might not.

Card Replacements:

This all depends on the Meta.

[card]Brann Bronzebeard[/card] into Yogg, the dream, not so much. Brann is great with more Discover cards like scarab or Faceless. If the Meta is more controlly, you can shift in this direction, but it takes a little too much time to get the value.

[card]Faceless Summoner [/card] is a fun, high-value card. I was running it, but the meta was too aggressive not to focus solely on board control early on.

[card]Archmage Antonidas[/card] made for a few good wins, I would reconsider putting this in for my Fireball or an Arcane Missiles.

[card]Servant of Yogg-Saron[/card] is fun, but too unpredictable. When only one spell is being cast, you cannot count on this card, and he lays too much within the crucial mana curve of a Tempo Mage not to be dependable.

I really hope you give this deck a shot, and please leave your comments for me to poop on.

BMQueen