I'm obsessed with the conception of Reno decks. The idea behind is simple, you put Reno Jackson and 29 single cards into your deck. So you can trigger Reno's battlecry unconditionally. Let me do some naive calculations. In aggro matchups, you averagely have a chance to draw 12 cards before your opponent kills you. So if you mulligan for Reno, then there's about 50% chance you can drop Reno in time. And if you drop Reno in time, then it's almost a guaranteed win versus aggro, because aggro decks are not equipped the tool to deal with the additional 20+ health. Let's assume your deck have a 30% chance against aggro without Reno, then you get 65% chance overall.
The upside of Reno deck is that, you get inherent advantage over aggro. Even if you build a deck that can hardly win over aggro without Reno, they are not unfavored matchups. So you can build greedy decks with other matchups in mind. But there're downsides, that you can't have 2 copies of the most OP cards, and your deck will have less synergy. Since if you run 2 copies of 2 cards, then there is 4 times the chance that you can trigger the 2-card combo if you only run 1 copy of them.
Then comes the question: can Reno decks afford to run 2 copies of any card? I don't think so. For every 2 copies of a card included, there's a 25% chance that both of them will sit in the bottom half of the deck, hindering your Reno from saving you. And if you run a normal deck with so many 2-ofs, then on average you can play Reno when there's about 6 cards undrawn, not much point unless you use it in fatigue to postpone your death by 2 or 3 turns.
The next question is that how much of a downside it is to put 30 single cards into the deck. Considering the strength of single cards alone, you can't run 2 Shredders and 2 Scientists, but there're substitutes like Mech-Yeti, Senjin, Kirin'Tor or Wild Pyromancer, many cards that are decent themselves but just not the 1st picks. Although they're weaker, they themselves seldom lose you the game. And Reno can help you to regain lost tempo, so that's not that bad. As for the synergies, you cannot run 2 copies of Giants and Sunfury/Argus anymore, so no point to make a Reno-Handlock imo, a Reno deck cannot be built around strategies like this. Then probably a Reno deck should be built to emphasize single card strength. Probably as a control deck, try to stall into the late game and throw out late game threats to overwhelm your opponent.
I first tried to build a Reno Hunter. Because I've been playing a L&L Hunter this month, and the deck runs many single cards. So it felt easier for me to build a single-card Hunter. But in retrospect, this may not be a good deck, maybe not a good idea to hybrid Reno with L&L synergy.
Then I tried a Reno Fatigue Priest. I like the deck better. I believe it will work and can only imagine Combo Druid and Control Paladin as its bad matchup. There are still a few cards that I want to include, but not sure which card to switch out, need to be tested.
I believe Mage also have potential for a successful Reno deck. Jaina has so many good tools. I'm just not good at Mage to make a deck. And Reno synergies with Weapon Classes, since you can get more value out of him. I really think a Reno Hunter can be viable, though not of my build. And possibly a Reno Paladin?
What do you think? Do you have any Reno deck in mind?
I like justsaiyan's freeze mage theory craft that only has 8 two of's iirc. I dont have the list on me, but you can check his vods. he showed it the same stream he did card review. I think the two of's were ice lance, frost bolt, arcane intellect, mad scientist, ice barrier, ice block, doomsayer, and frost nova but im not certain.
Then comes the question: can Reno decks afford to run 2 copies of any card? I don't think so. For every 2 copies of a card included, there's a 25% chance that both of them will sit in the bottom half of the deck, hindering your Reno from saving you.
I definitely agree with you. It's got to be a pure highlander deck, or Reno just isn't reliable—in which case the whole exercise is pointless.
Your fatigue priest looks good! The first thing I thought of was control paladin, an archetype that tends to run a crazy number of one-ofs to begin with. I threw this together quickly, but I think it actually looks semi-viable:
I think paladin (which has very little removal) and priest (which has a lot of very diverse, purpose-specific removal) are the most obvious candidates for a highlander deck. Classes that lean heavily on limited removal options are less promising. Warrior seems like the worst—there are just too many multi-card synergies that need two-ofs for reliability (Shield Slam with Shield Block and Shieldmaiden; Death's Bite or Whirlwind with Execute or Armorsmith, Acolyte of Pain, etc.).
The thing I dont like about Reno. Jackson decks is that it includes many one-offs and therefore seem very messy , I wonder what it has to do eith his WoW lore.
I too thought of this concept. I first thought of all the one off legendary cards you could add to a deck to make it strong.
I think it would be a fascinating card to include in Druid. That and Tree of Life would give you two full heals from any health level. Tree of life is a bit slow, but still strong. I think Druid has enough card variation that you could include a lot of singles and get away with it. There is also another source of silence.
Freeze Mage could be cool because of the secrets. You could essentially go from 1 back to 30 again. I was also looking into Warlock because Warlock lacks that really crazy heal that doesn't automatically leave you at the vulnerable 15 health points.
Imo, it's kind of wasted on Paladin and Priest, which are already good enough at healing themselves. It's probably not worth cutting out key duplicates for them. I would love to do it with rogue because that class could use a heal, but I don't think the class cards are strong enough to support it. Plus, it's too combo breaking.
What you really need in a highlander deck are cards which perform nearly the same function but which are different cards. To me, redundancy seems to be something which druids have in spades.
What you really need in a highlander deck are cards which perform nearly the same function but which are different cards. To me, redundancy seems to be something which druids have in spades.
What you really need in a highlander deck are cards which perform nearly the same function but which are different cards. To me, redundancy seems to be something which druids have in spades.
I never thought of that. With the influx of cards that are considered "balanced" or "not OP enough" to replace some cards, simply having 1 copy of cards with synonymous or situational effects could be interesting. Makes me more excited to try Reno out.
Actually I was thinking about running The Black Knight and some taunt activators as it used to be a potent thing in druid. However, unless the rest of the deck supports the cards you use, it will just come out feeling clunky.
I removed it for the same reason you wouldn't run Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing in a highlander priest. You just don't want to include cards which are sub-par on their own in a highlander deck unless you have ways to either draw a TON of cards consistently, or can fetch out the combo components. In Hearthstone, you can do neither. In magic... both, which is why it works there. But for the most part, I would try to avoid two card combo's in a highlander deck wherever possible, instead preferring just to run a deck which is just... mono-decent. It's the only way to obtain consistency. The deck still seems clunky to me, but I did my best to emulate the curve and removal content of midrange druid decks while still using cards which are simply good. Maybe not T1 good, but this is a highlander deck, where we are basically playing arena in constructed.
I'm almost wondering if i should abandon some of the "mono-decent" line to turn the deck into more of an outlast deck. Adding cards like Healing Touch and Antique Healbot could help the deck survive into the late game. My only qualm about that is that this highlander deck by nature will have no consistent way to close out the game other than board control. And board control is best obtained by taking it early and never giving it back. Compound this with the fact that this deck is light on recovery mechanics (on top of being a druid deck, which only compounds the problem) and I am really loathe to remove anything which might obtain me board control early in the game.
Still, I chose druid because it seems like the best class to play mono-decent with so... heck, why not.
Actually I was thinking about running The Black Knight and some taunt activators as it used to be a potent thing in druid. However, unless the rest of the deck supports the cards you use, it will just come out feeling clunky.
I removed it for the same reason you wouldn't run Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing in a highlander priest. You just don't want to include cards which are sub-par on their own in a highlander deck unless you have ways to either draw a TON of cards consistently, or can fetch out the combo components. In Hearthstone, you can do neither. In magic... both, which is why it works there. But for the most part, I would try to avoid two card combo's in a highlander deck wherever possible, instead preferring just to run a deck which is just... mono-decent. It's the only way to obtain consistency. The deck still seems clunky to me, but I did my best to emulate the curve and removal content of midrange druid decks while still using cards which are simply good. Maybe not T1 good, but this is a highlander deck, where we are basically playing arena in constructed.
I'm almost wondering if i should abandon some of the "mono-decent" line to turn the deck into more of an outlast deck. Adding cards like Healing Touch and Antique Healbot could help the deck survive into the late game. My only qualm about that is that this highlander deck by nature will have no consistent way to close out the game other than board control. And board control is best obtained by taking it early and never giving it back. Compound this with the fact that this deck is light on recovery mechanics (on top of being a druid deck, which only compounds the problem) and I am really loathe to remove anything which might obtain me board control early in the game.
Still, I chose druid because it seems like the best class to play mono-decent with so... heck, why not.
Interesting points. I've come up with some potential criticism for the deck. Make of it what you will.
First of all, I don't fully love the midrange curve for this. Reno is supposed to get you to survive into early game past aggro much of the time due to the fact you have Reno. As the OP said, this suggests you may be able to build a greedy deck with other match ups in mind. You don't seem to have any match up in particular covered, though. It's just semi-redundancy. This is good because it breeds some consistency. But I see no real strengths, either. It's like a unreliable midrange.
To me, I think the biggest problem you have is late game. You are very likely to get to late game with Reno. But the main late game threats you have are Dr. Boom (which most decks have), Cenarius, potentially (although this is debatable) Ancient of War, and the Golden Monkey from Elise Starseeker. I could be wrong, but Golden Monkey seems incredibly inconsistent and unreliable to me at first glance. If you don't get that, I find your late game somewhat lackluster. And then why survive that long if you lose the match up against other late game decks?
Your other main weak point appears to be a lack of ability to reclaim the board once it's lost. I see you did add some things to try and win board control early. But your early game is still inconsistent because it's a reno deck. The deck is designed based on a semi-unreliable upwards swing. You are still likely to survive with Reno. But if you don't get it early or if you don't keep board control early, I don't see a recovery option if you do fall behind. I also see no going back if you ever lose board control at any point in the game, early, late, or otherwise. So you can survive and even heal yourself back up. But if you ever do lose board control, it's essentially game for you. That's extremely risky.
Don't get me wrong. I love what you did here. And I think your deck helps highlight why Druid could be such a strong choice for this. But in my opinion, it's a bit too generic. It needs a purpose. I would probably take your deck and tech in some crazy things to try and solve the things I would like fixed.
Go for it. I just threw this together to support my idea that Druid would make for a good Reno class. Highlander decks need a lot of refinement, and I did not and do not expect any highlander deck to be perfect upon first iteration.
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I am The Cripple Who Is Whole, and the loving creator of Dragon Lord Velen:
I was actually wondering if there's mathematical function that can be fit to calculate the chance of Reno healing. Variables would be: [30] - constant deck size [0-14] - number of duplicates (Reno can't be duplicated so you cant have 15 dupes) [1-30] - number of cards drawn so far
I think Multivariate hypergeometric distribution portrays that correctly right?
Early returns for the highlander paladin are great! I had one of the best ranked games of Hearthstone I've played in a long, long time—control paladin vs. control priest. Sylvanas Windrunner got played three times, Ysera and Confessor Paletress both got played and both switched sides, each of us got one Tirion Fordring, and Reno healed me for 23—totally catching the priest by surprise and (eventually) securing the win for me. Amazing game, and really encouraging. Reno is 2-0 so far at rank 5 NA! (Hey, it's a start.)
Early returns for the highlander paladin are great! I had one of the best ranked games of Hearthstone I've played in a long, long time—control paladin vs. control priest. Sylvanas Windrunner got played three times, Ysera and Confessor Paletress both got played and both switched sides, each of us got one Tirion Fordring, and Reno healed me for 23—totally catching the priest by surprise and (eventually) securing the win for me. Amazing game, and really encouraging. Reno is 2-0 so far at rank 5 NA! (Hey, it's a start.)
Nice, looking forward to trying it. I don't have Ysera (I'm FTP), but I do have 1600 dusting waiting in the wings. I assume you'd rec'd crafting her?
Early returns for the highlander paladin are great! I had one of the best ranked games of Hearthstone I've played in a long, long time—control paladin vs. control priest. Sylvanas Windrunner got played three times, Ysera and Confessor Paletress both got played and both switched sides, each of us got one Tirion Fordring, and Reno healed me for 23—totally catching the priest by surprise and (eventually) securing the win for me. Amazing game, and really encouraging. Reno is 2-0 so far at rank 5 NA! (Hey, it's a start.)
Nice, looking forward to trying it. I don't have Ysera (I'm FTP), but I do have 1600 dusting waiting in the wings. I assume you'd rec'd crafting her?
If you enjoy playing control decks, definitely. She's still the best neutral, one-card win condition in the game. Outstanding in paladin, priest, and warrior, and I think she can be very strong in druid, mage, or even shaman, if you don't mind moving away from the meta's conventional wisdom.
The first thing I thought of was control paladin, an archetype that tends to run a crazy number of one-ofs to begin with. I threw this together quickly, but I think it actually looks semi-viable:
I was trying a similar Paladin deck, and I found Enter the Coliseum seldom work, so I replaced it with Avenging Wrath. I ran similar Legendaries as you do, with an addition of Eadric.
The only inferior matchup I had was against Dragon Priest, due to a lack of coming back mechanism. Seems like an easy and fun way to make go-to-5 decks.
I'm obsessed with the conception of Reno decks. The idea behind is simple, you put Reno Jackson and 29 single cards into your deck. So you can trigger Reno's battlecry unconditionally. Let me do some naive calculations. In aggro matchups, you averagely have a chance to draw 12 cards before your opponent kills you. So if you mulligan for Reno, then there's about 50% chance you can drop Reno in time. And if you drop Reno in time, then it's almost a guaranteed win versus aggro, because aggro decks are not equipped the tool to deal with the additional 20+ health. Let's assume your deck have a 30% chance against aggro without Reno, then you get 65% chance overall.
The upside of Reno deck is that, you get inherent advantage over aggro. Even if you build a deck that can hardly win over aggro without Reno, they are not unfavored matchups. So you can build greedy decks with other matchups in mind. But there're downsides, that you can't have 2 copies of the most OP cards, and your deck will have less synergy. Since if you run 2 copies of 2 cards, then there is 4 times the chance that you can trigger the 2-card combo if you only run 1 copy of them.
Then comes the question: can Reno decks afford to run 2 copies of any card? I don't think so. For every 2 copies of a card included, there's a 25% chance that both of them will sit in the bottom half of the deck, hindering your Reno from saving you. And if you run a normal deck with so many 2-ofs, then on average you can play Reno when there's about 6 cards undrawn, not much point unless you use it in fatigue to postpone your death by 2 or 3 turns.
The next question is that how much of a downside it is to put 30 single cards into the deck. Considering the strength of single cards alone, you can't run 2 Shredders and 2 Scientists, but there're substitutes like Mech-Yeti, Senjin, Kirin'Tor or Wild Pyromancer, many cards that are decent themselves but just not the 1st picks. Although they're weaker, they themselves seldom lose you the game. And Reno can help you to regain lost tempo, so that's not that bad. As for the synergies, you cannot run 2 copies of Giants and Sunfury/Argus anymore, so no point to make a Reno-Handlock imo, a Reno deck cannot be built around strategies like this. Then probably a Reno deck should be built to emphasize single card strength. Probably as a control deck, try to stall into the late game and throw out late game threats to overwhelm your opponent.
I first tried to build a Reno Hunter. Because I've been playing a L&L Hunter this month, and the deck runs many single cards. So it felt easier for me to build a single-card Hunter. But in retrospect, this may not be a good deck, maybe not a good idea to hybrid Reno with L&L synergy.
Then I tried a Reno Fatigue Priest. I like the deck better. I believe it will work and can only imagine Combo Druid and Control Paladin as its bad matchup. There are still a few cards that I want to include, but not sure which card to switch out, need to be tested.
I believe Mage also have potential for a successful Reno deck. Jaina has so many good tools. I'm just not good at Mage to make a deck. And Reno synergies with Weapon Classes, since you can get more value out of him. I really think a Reno Hunter can be viable, though not of my build. And possibly a Reno Paladin?
What do you think? Do you have any Reno deck in mind?
I like justsaiyan's freeze mage theory craft that only has 8 two of's iirc. I dont have the list on me, but you can check his vods. he showed it the same stream he did card review. I think the two of's were ice lance, frost bolt, arcane intellect, mad scientist, ice barrier, ice block, doomsayer, and frost nova but im not certain.
The thing I dont like about Reno. Jackson decks is that it includes many one-offs and therefore seem very messy , I wonder what it has to do eith his WoW lore.
How in the world did OP come to the calculation that there's a 25% chance that the last two cards in your deck will be the same? Common sense plz?
I too thought of this concept. I first thought of all the one off legendary cards you could add to a deck to make it strong.
I think it would be a fascinating card to include in Druid. That and Tree of Life would give you two full heals from any health level. Tree of life is a bit slow, but still strong. I think Druid has enough card variation that you could include a lot of singles and get away with it. There is also another source of silence.
Freeze Mage could be cool because of the secrets. You could essentially go from 1 back to 30 again. I was also looking into Warlock because Warlock lacks that really crazy heal that doesn't automatically leave you at the vulnerable 15 health points.
Imo, it's kind of wasted on Paladin and Priest, which are already good enough at healing themselves. It's probably not worth cutting out key duplicates for them. I would love to do it with rogue because that class could use a heal, but I don't think the class cards are strong enough to support it. Plus, it's too combo breaking.
Re-read the OP. 25% chance that if you run two copies of the same card in your deck, they will both be in the bottom half of it.
I am The Cripple Who Is Whole, and the loving creator of Dragon Lord Velen:
What you really need in a highlander deck are cards which perform nearly the same function but which are different cards. To me, redundancy seems to be something which druids have in spades.
Maybe something like:
I am The Cripple Who Is Whole, and the loving creator of Dragon Lord Velen:
Actually I was thinking about running The Black Knight and some taunt activators as it used to be a potent thing in druid. However, unless the rest of the deck supports the cards you use, it will just come out feeling clunky.
I removed it for the same reason you wouldn't run Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing in a highlander priest. You just don't want to include cards which are sub-par on their own in a highlander deck unless you have ways to either draw a TON of cards consistently, or can fetch out the combo components. In Hearthstone, you can do neither. In magic... both, which is why it works there. But for the most part, I would try to avoid two card combo's in a highlander deck wherever possible, instead preferring just to run a deck which is just... mono-decent. It's the only way to obtain consistency. The deck still seems clunky to me, but I did my best to emulate the curve and removal content of midrange druid decks while still using cards which are simply good. Maybe not T1 good, but this is a highlander deck, where we are basically playing arena in constructed.
I'm almost wondering if i should abandon some of the "mono-decent" line to turn the deck into more of an outlast deck. Adding cards like Healing Touch and Antique Healbot could help the deck survive into the late game. My only qualm about that is that this highlander deck by nature will have no consistent way to close out the game other than board control. And board control is best obtained by taking it early and never giving it back. Compound this with the fact that this deck is light on recovery mechanics (on top of being a druid deck, which only compounds the problem) and I am really loathe to remove anything which might obtain me board control early in the game.
Still, I chose druid because it seems like the best class to play mono-decent with so... heck, why not.
I am The Cripple Who Is Whole, and the loving creator of Dragon Lord Velen:
Go for it. I just threw this together to support my idea that Druid would make for a good Reno class. Highlander decks need a lot of refinement, and I did not and do not expect any highlander deck to be perfect upon first iteration.
I am The Cripple Who Is Whole, and the loving creator of Dragon Lord Velen:
I was actually wondering if there's mathematical function that can be fit to calculate the chance of Reno healing.
Variables would be:
[30] - constant deck size
[0-14] - number of duplicates (Reno can't be duplicated so you cant have 15 dupes)
[1-30] - number of cards drawn so far
I think Multivariate hypergeometric distribution portrays that correctly right?
Piloted Shredder, Knife Juggler, Mad Scientist, Dr. Boom
Need to be removed from this game
Early returns for the highlander paladin are great! I had one of the best ranked games of Hearthstone I've played in a long, long time—control paladin vs. control priest. Sylvanas Windrunner got played three times, Ysera and Confessor Paletress both got played and both switched sides, each of us got one Tirion Fordring, and Reno healed me for 23—totally catching the priest by surprise and (eventually) securing the win for me. Amazing game, and really encouraging. Reno is 2-0 so far at rank 5 NA! (Hey, it's a start.)