Let me start by congratulating you on your win today, not to mention rocking the Paladin to victory. That’s really impressive.
Thank you very much.
Ok, let’s jump right into this. What other games do you play?
I play all the games from Blizzard and all sorts of console and PC games.
Now in those games were you competitive in any way?
None!
Really!That’skind of amazing. Most winners tend to have a very competitive background or played a lot of Magic the Gathering.
I played some Chinese card games, but that’s it. The other games are very different from this game.
So what made you come out and play in the MLG/ManaGrind tournament?
I learned so much from ManaGrind champion decks so I decide to give it a try. Oh, and I spent tons of hours in ranked mode and cannot get legendary. I wanted to change the mood.
The new ranked system has been giving a lot of people problems when trying to get to Legendary.
Oh yeah!
Now you were playing a Paladin, what made you choose that class for the tournament?
I play Paladin in ranked games. I created this deck in order to shut those “all in your face” decks down. I think it is unique, fun, and risky. I hate coin flip decks, especially Warlock aggro.
Yeah, Warlock has been pretty relevant in the meta for a few months now. What was your favorite part about the tournament itself?
I met many interesting players and decks and I think I learned a lot from it.
Who was your toughest opponent?
I’d say Realz, the Mage in the semi-finals. I thought my Paladin would face roll any Mage, but it was just so unexpectedly close. In the second game my hand was too full and I wanted to avoid burning cards. So I didn’t use Lay on Hands and I was nuked for about 20 health points. That totally caught me off guard. The last game was really dangerous as well; if he drew his last Ice Lance he would have had lethal.
Were there any competitors you were glad you did not have to go up against?
I don’t really know anyone.
Now in the finals you faced off against a player who was using the Molten Giant OTK combo. This is a deck that has gotten some Epic level hate in the community. How did you counter it?
Taunts and more taunts. I think he had both Raging Worgen and the Molten Giant one turn kill combos. In the third game I saw the Raging Worgen and thought he was out of the combos. Then I got destroyed by Molten Giant. If I could have set up enough taunts I thought I would have been safe, after he played his two Brawl. Then I could have continued to attack his hero.
That seems to be one of the only ways to counter that deck which means most aggro decks will just fall apart to it. Now will you be joining any more of our tournaments in the future?
I am not sure yet. I might get busy in January so I have no idea.
What went through your mind when you won?
I really did it! This was the first tournament I competed in.
Now your deck seemed really strong. Was there an archetype you were afraid to play against or that would have given you some trouble?
Warlock aggro, it all depends on who gets The Coin. I am lucky that I didn’t meet any. Flipping a coin is not fun at all. I want to enjoy the game so I decided to put an all-defensive Paladin deck.
So let’s get into your sideboard choices.
Coldlight Oracle in the finals, the Warrior wants to draw his combo so I decided to help him. *Laughs* I put a lot of taunt minions in the final game as well and I used Acidic Swamp Ooze. against Paladins. Maybe I should have used them in the final as well, but I decided to put more taunts and play it safe.
My best decision is perhaps to keep my Tinkmaster Overspark in the semi-finals. It may sound useless against a Mage. But I used it to tinker a Doomsayer and saved my whole board.
Do you have any advice for people who are just getting into the game and want to improve?
Don’t just copy decks, try to make one on your own but consider why those decks work.
That’s some really good advice. A lot of people say to net deck to win, but the truly great players think beyond what is being played and create some rather great decks.
Yeah
Let’s talk about the new rank system. I know you have had some issues with it?
It is frustrating! The old ranked mode was boring and I almost never played it again once I hit three star masters. Now I play the new ranked mode all day long and just cannot get legendary. I was at rank 1-4 and then got smashed by Murlocs like six games in a row.
Really I’mkind of shocked Murlocs made it that far into the ranked system.Most players have a negative opinion of them.
They’re annoyingly powerful.
What features would you like to see added to Hearthstone?
I would like to see PvE or campaign mode, maybe? I am not that competitive of a player.
Thank you again for taking the time to do this interview and on behalf of ManaGrind, I wouldlike to congratulate you on your win and hope to see you back in the future with another win.
I used it a bit and I must say once you get the hang of it is really really strong. Also you can heal like 40 hp so the two Mountain Giant work very well. Lategame is hard to loose, sometimes you can loose early/mid if you don't balance the damage you can take. Or Murlocs.
Thanks for putting up such a nice article! I want to clarify that I didn't mean to say it is crucial to have the coin against warlock aggro. I just think to play against warlock aggros is like to flip a coin. It's totally random and involves little decision making if any. The guy with better draw wins.
On the other hand, in my own statistics, my win rate is 10% higher with the coin than without. I cannot explain it...
that's koyuki's deck on his twitch channel, basically the same since the last time I saw it few changes.. no wolf rider.. either way the deck list posted for the tournament winner is vastly different .. vastly..
Considering Im the one who posted it I can tell you yes they are very different. Just cause one person plays a class does not mean all others are copying them. Much in the same way just cause one streamer plays a deck, most likely means they did not build it.
Still, at one point Koyuki's deck differed two cards from that iirc, he then switched some off and added one of's, but even the latest version of his deck has what, 18~20 cards in common? If you're going to say you don't netdeck and you "think of" combinations and put on a deck? Please. Trillion people in legendary running that or close versions of.
It's like when Aishi sees a deck, says it's crap, changes 3 two of cards to a total of 6 different cards, the deck is apparently now good and worth making a thread about, and original. (Although I'm yet to see an actually original deck like buffing Angry chickens and running them into opponent with charge).
I'm not saying that changing your mind about something or following the meta is a terrible thing, but at least don't act like you discovered sliced bread when you're following the pack and "improved" two or three things about it.
I'm going to grab Miracle Rogue, remove Mana Addict, put two SI 7's in and say well, Miracle Rogue was trash but hey, this is Praying Really Hard Rogue, and it's amazing and it dominates the meta, btw, super original, mine.
Have you ever played a card game before competitively? For the most part all the originality ends about 2 months after an expansion comes out. Reason being is the meta has become stabilized to the point where its a game of what flavor you want play.
I played MTG every day with André Coimbra. Still, point being, the first two weeks the meta establishes, after that, you don't see many people saying: "I thought about this deck" when you clearly didn't, that happens once in... God knows how much time, what you did, was change a few cards in a established deck in the current meta, how is that hard to comprehend?
To this day, with about 8K different eligible cards in MTG, there's still only a dozen great establishedcompetitive decks in every format, now and then, a few original decks come by, this deck is not original by any means, it's a few changes to a established deck, what, for example, ChanmanV did in the TL Open, that was original, everyone thought Hunter was crap, not a lot of people if any, thought about that combo or played it competitively, and there you have it.
REGARDLESS, congratulations on your victory, even if you were playing a card by card established deck which you weren't, there's some originality to it, that's only half way, the other half is playing it, and from what I've heard you did it nicely, so, can't remove the merit in that.
Another name dropper...This will be easy...Your logic is flawed for many reasons...I played MTG when it was BETA...and all we had was the core set. There were tons of different decks we made from that. This game is more restrictive with the class system. However once we got Arabian Nights and ironically unlimited at the same time we saw a huge change in the decks we could make. Also again your another one of these people who likes to attribute a deck to a streamer cause you saw them play it...Guess what Hunter OTK was around long before ChanmanV was streaming HS. It was a known concept during the Cockitrice emulator days of alpha. Not to mention his deck concept was more a rip off of the Original beast galore concept but spiced up with some legendary cards. So by your own logic he is not original.That combo was played a huge amount in Managrind, Esl, and other tournaments before TL's. Please fact check yourself before making such statements in the future.
Part of learning the game is playing around with other peoples ideas and seeing if you can improve upon them and make the deck better.
And point of fact all these decks you see running around are not new. All these druid builds are damn near identical to every one that Sp0h played. Not to mention the warrior Molten giant combo was around long before its inception as of late. With a massively limited card pool and no ability to cross class a deck the amount of possible consistent combinations is not a huge amount. Oh and for the record. The last person to make and Original Deck was Archcruiser' hunter charge burn deck.
I have absolutely no proof that I put this deck card by card. Let me explain the idea behind the deck and you can judge by yourself. At least I didn't meet anyone playing in this way. and I don't know any of the names you mentioned. I don't watch those streams at all.
The basic idea is equality-giant-pyromancer-sunfury-holylight combo. Pyro can be changed into consecration and sunfury can be replaced by argus, but they cost more mana. Ideal case scenario is that this combo will clear the enemy board, set up 1/2 giants with taunt and heal myself out of the danger zone. To this end I usually give away early-mid game board control and only summon recruits until like turn 4/5. If I have the combo ready I will play riskier to bail out more creatures. If I don't draw the combo yet I will use TS champion/drake/argus and such trying to slow my opponent down. More often than not I am forced to play part of the combo when there is near-lethal damage on board. Still it is usually not that bad if I can do 2 of the three things: setting up the taunt, clear the board, and heal myself. Sometimes they sap/black knight the taunt or have things like double eviscerate to nuke face. But this is a risk I can take.
This is definitely not aggro, not OTK, and somewhat different from the traditional control deck which basically tries to clear anything on the enemy's board. You may still say it is not original and from someone else. But here is all I can say. I have no way to explain more.
Still, at one point Koyuki's deck differed two cards from that iirc, he then switched some off and added one of's, but even the latest version of his deck has what, 18~20 cards in common? If you're going to say you don't netdeck and you "think of" combinations and put on a deck? Please. Trillion people in legendary running that or close versions of.
It's like when Aishi sees a deck, says it's crap, changes 3 two of cards to a total of 6 different cards, the deck is apparently now good and worth making a thread about, and original. (Although I'm yet to see an actually original deck like buffing Angry chickens and running them into opponent with charge).
I'm not saying that changing your mind about something or following the meta is a terrible thing, but at least don't act like you discovered sliced bread when you're following the pack and "improved" two or three things about it.
I'm going to grab Miracle Rogue, remove Mana Addict, put two SI 7's in and say well, Miracle Rogue was trash but hey, this is Praying Really Hard Rogue, and it's amazing and it dominates the meta, btw, super original, mine.
It's alright to have a difference in opinions, but let's keep it respectful.
Interesting deck pkughost. Did you ever consider adding Mountain Giants as well? In place of say the Twilight Drakes? With a full hand they're similar cost, and less susceptible to silence (more susceptible to BGH of course), but generally harder to deal with. Seems like with the play-style you'd have a lot of cards in hand. Also did you find two Lay on Hands to be too much? If you had the extra giants could consider Holy Wrath as well for the wombo combo surprise burst damage if you get one of your bigs (especially the Molten Giant for 20).
Most people will say that ones deck is a copy of some other semi-popular players deck. Ignore this PKU, a lot of popular decks were built pre-beta on a simulator by a lot of unknown players and simply popularized by people with more exposure thus not rightfully making it THEIR deck though everyone always refers to the most popular people as they are clueless of the actually origins of the idea. GJ PKU, great deck!
Really like the way you used Tink + Faceless. Ran into a budget version of this deck when I was running aggro and it was so annoying to know I had done over 30 damage to him, but his health pool kept getting refreshed. Taunter + Life gain was pretty underrated, but this deck will have people catching on quick.
Thanks guys. I got quite annoyed being accused of copying decks and you guys' words make me feel much better now.
Regarding card choices. Mountain giants sounds nice but it means one turn later than twilight drake in the early game. 4 attack is high enough to get rid of early minions and getting silenced is not that bad. Most people run at most 2 silences in their deck, but there are 2 drakes, Sylvanas (likely w/ taunt) and Fording that are worth silencing in this deck. Even if the drake is silenced it is still a 4/1, which trades with something. Imho drakes are bad against shamans (too many removals/silences) but okay against other classes.
I want 2 lay on hands because I want to maximize the probability that I drew enough healing. Surely it is awkward to have 2 lay on hands in hand sometimes. But one needs to make a decision.
Holy wrath is too inconsistent to my taste. Hammer of wrath is nice. It can remove some early threats like mana wyrms and cycles. It also combos nicely with pyromancer. It is very useful in certain matchups.
You know its funny was talking with Hyroki about this situation during the Friday Night Swiss and he just kinda laughed at how silly the accusation was.
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(Interview done by TheChiv1, Edited by Homebrewed)
Name: Heng Guo
PkughostNAMLGMG#10
Unknown Deck
by TheChiv - Dec 28, 2013
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Minion (20)
- 1x Ragnaros the Firelord
- 1x Sylvanas Windrunner
- 1x The Black Knight
- 1x Tinkmaster Overspark
- 1x Tirion Fordring
- 2x Faceless Manipulator
- 2x Molten Giant
- 2x Aldor Peacekeeper
- 1x Defender of Argus
- 2x Guardian of Kings
- 2x Sunfury Protector
- 2x Twilight Drake
- 2x Wild Pyromancer
Ability (8)
- 2x Lay on Hands
- 2x Equality
- 2x Holy Light
- 2x Consecration
Weapon (2)
- 2x Truesilver Champion
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Age: 27
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
That's awesome a Paladin! can't wait to read! Thanks
This is the best paladin deck I've ever seen on paper.
I used it a bit and I must say once you get the hang of it is really really strong. Also you can heal like 40 hp so the two Mountain Giant work very well. Lategame is hard to loose, sometimes you can loose early/mid if you don't balance the damage you can take. Or Murlocs.
Thanks for putting up such a nice article! I want to clarify that I didn't mean to say it is crucial to have the coin against warlock aggro. I just think to play against warlock aggros is like to flip a coin. It's totally random and involves little decision making if any. The guy with better draw wins.
On the other hand, in my own statistics, my win rate is 10% higher with the coin than without. I cannot explain it...
I really like this deck design. Dont have black knight yet though, so Im tempted to run a silence or maybe sunwalker instead
The last Koyuki deck I saw a few weeks ago was quite a bit different than this one.
The one with the Wolfirder and what not.
http://i.imgur.com/jddkEZb.jpg
that's koyuki's deck on his twitch channel, basically the same since the last time I saw it few changes.. no wolf rider.. either way the deck list posted for the tournament winner is vastly different .. vastly..
Considering Im the one who posted it I can tell you yes they are very different. Just cause one person plays a class does not mean all others are copying them. Much in the same way just cause one streamer plays a deck, most likely means they did not build it.
Fine. I copied the deck. I didn't think of any bit of it. It is from Koyuki or Kripp or whomever you say. Are you satisfied now?
Have you ever played a card game before competitively? For the most part all the originality ends about 2 months after an expansion comes out. Reason being is the meta has become stabilized to the point where its a game of what flavor you want play.
Another name dropper...This will be easy...Your logic is flawed for many reasons...I played MTG when it was BETA...and all we had was the core set. There were tons of different decks we made from that. This game is more restrictive with the class system. However once we got Arabian Nights and ironically unlimited at the same time we saw a huge change in the decks we could make. Also again your another one of these people who likes to attribute a deck to a streamer cause you saw them play it...Guess what Hunter OTK was around long before ChanmanV was streaming HS. It was a known concept during the Cockitrice emulator days of alpha. Not to mention his deck concept was more a rip off of the Original beast galore concept but spiced up with some legendary cards. So by your own logic he is not original.That combo was played a huge amount in Managrind, Esl, and other tournaments before TL's. Please fact check yourself before making such statements in the future.
Part of learning the game is playing around with other peoples ideas and seeing if you can improve upon them and make the deck better.
And point of fact all these decks you see running around are not new. All these druid builds are damn near identical to every one that Sp0h played. Not to mention the warrior Molten giant combo was around long before its inception as of late. With a massively limited card pool and no ability to cross class a deck the amount of possible consistent combinations is not a huge amount. Oh and for the record. The last person to make and Original Deck was Archcruiser' hunter charge burn deck.
I have absolutely no proof that I put this deck card by card. Let me explain the idea behind the deck and you can judge by yourself. At least I didn't meet anyone playing in this way. and I don't know any of the names you mentioned. I don't watch those streams at all.
The basic idea is equality-giant-pyromancer-sunfury-holylight combo. Pyro can be changed into consecration and sunfury can be replaced by argus, but they cost more mana. Ideal case scenario is that this combo will clear the enemy board, set up 1/2 giants with taunt and heal myself out of the danger zone. To this end I usually give away early-mid game board control and only summon recruits until like turn 4/5. If I have the combo ready I will play riskier to bail out more creatures. If I don't draw the combo yet I will use TS champion/drake/argus and such trying to slow my opponent down. More often than not I am forced to play part of the combo when there is near-lethal damage on board. Still it is usually not that bad if I can do 2 of the three things: setting up the taunt, clear the board, and heal myself. Sometimes they sap/black knight the taunt or have things like double eviscerate to nuke face. But this is a risk I can take.
This is definitely not aggro, not OTK, and somewhat different from the traditional control deck which basically tries to clear anything on the enemy's board. You may still say it is not original and from someone else. But here is all I can say. I have no way to explain more.
It's really a good deck and a nice idea, congratulations to you man!
It's alright to have a difference in opinions, but let's keep it respectful.
Interesting deck pkughost. Did you ever consider adding Mountain Giants as well? In place of say the Twilight Drakes? With a full hand they're similar cost, and less susceptible to silence (more susceptible to BGH of course), but generally harder to deal with. Seems like with the play-style you'd have a lot of cards in hand. Also did you find two Lay on Hands to be too much? If you had the extra giants could consider Holy Wrath as well for the wombo combo surprise burst damage if you get one of your bigs (especially the Molten Giant for 20).
-puffin
Most people will say that ones deck is a copy of some other semi-popular players deck. Ignore this PKU, a lot of popular decks were built pre-beta on a simulator by a lot of unknown players and simply popularized by people with more exposure thus not rightfully making it THEIR deck though everyone always refers to the most popular people as they are clueless of the actually origins of the idea. GJ PKU, great deck!
http://www.hearthpwn.com/managrind
Really like the way you used Tink + Faceless. Ran into a budget version of this deck when I was running aggro and it was so annoying to know I had done over 30 damage to him, but his health pool kept getting refreshed. Taunter + Life gain was pretty underrated, but this deck will have people catching on quick.
Thanks guys. I got quite annoyed being accused of copying decks and you guys' words make me feel much better now.
Regarding card choices. Mountain giants sounds nice but it means one turn later than twilight drake in the early game. 4 attack is high enough to get rid of early minions and getting silenced is not that bad. Most people run at most 2 silences in their deck, but there are 2 drakes, Sylvanas (likely w/ taunt) and Fording that are worth silencing in this deck. Even if the drake is silenced it is still a 4/1, which trades with something. Imho drakes are bad against shamans (too many removals/silences) but okay against other classes.
I want 2 lay on hands because I want to maximize the probability that I drew enough healing. Surely it is awkward to have 2 lay on hands in hand sometimes. But one needs to make a decision.
Holy wrath is too inconsistent to my taste. Hammer of wrath is nice. It can remove some early threats like mana wyrms and cycles. It also combos nicely with pyromancer. It is very useful in certain matchups.
You know its funny was talking with Hyroki about this situation during the Friday Night Swiss and he just kinda laughed at how silly the accusation was.