You hate Freeze Mage! You hate Pirate Warrior! In my opinion, decks with a name including "miracle" are shit. But Miracle Rogue is treated as if it was God's favorite deck. Some skills for you:
ViciousSyndicate I've been tracking the Hearthstone meta for over a year now, and gained experience on this subject, which I'm passionate about. I will say this, the perception of skill cap could be very misleading at times. What I mean to say is that the decks that are considered to be "difficult" or "easy" are not necessarily so. Aggro decks are not always easier to play than control decks. It depends on the deck, on specific matchups and on to what extent can a deck be min-maxed. I'll give you some examples that are contradictory to what perception dictated at the time: Aggro Shaman displayed a higher skill cap than Reno Warlock during MSG. It was more difficult to play Aggro Shaman correctly because of how critical decision making in the early game was for the deck. Reno Warlock was actually more straight forward because its mulligan phase was simpler and the branches in its decision making up until turn 7 or 8 was fairly low. The Pirate Warrior vs. Miracle Rogue matchup during MSG indicated that the deck with the higher skill cap in the matchup was Pirate Warrior. You could really mess up this matchup from the Warrior side if you didn't properly calculate damage and identified lethal several turns in advance, while the Rogue's game plan mostly consisted of looking for blow out VanCleef or Cold Blood turns. This showed in our metrics: Pirate Warriors at legend won this matchup more often, even though you'd assume the more difficult deck to play is Rogue, in this matchup, the min-maxing was up to the Warrior. The decks that are hard to play are ones that have more critical branches of decision making. Decks that are easy to play are ones without many of these branches, and they tend to be decks that rely on playing things on curve. Current Midrange Hunter is a great example, Dragon synergy decks (before rotation) are another. In any case, we can often see "skill caps" in our metrics. They are not invisible to us, and we do often mention decks that have patterns of either having a low or high skill cap. Freeze Mage is the stand out in the current Meta in terms of having a high skill cap that is very visible in our metrics.
As described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1] Hence, the corollary to the Dunning–Kruger effect indicates that persons of high ability tend to underestimate their relative competence, and erroneously presume that tasks that are easy for them to perform also are easy for other people to perform.
OFC the Miracle Rogue had it "easy-er" that the PW, you have a single out in that MU, a huge fucking Cleef, nothing else works, so you HAVE to go 100% on that, but play Miracle vs anything else than the king of face mashers and you will have a different story. In this MU the rogue has nothing to lose in taking risks and overextending while the PW has the whole game to lose if he makes some bad decision.
Yes, some matchups can be tricky even with decks that are simple overall.
Freeze is pretty much the only complicated deck left in standard. Ironically, it is a deck that people often don't view as complex, simply because they aren't even good enough to spot the mistakes.
I honestly respect good freeze mage players, and the deck Is probably very skill based indeed. The reason me and many others hate the deck Is because It usually plays only with cards in hand, doesnt interact much with the opponent and gives a sense of "the game result depends only on my opponents draws, and there Is nothing i Can do myself if he freezes the board and has both blocks".
It's uninteractive and not funny at all to play against, and Hearthstone shouldnt Be that way
I can see that perspective, but on the other side of the coin... freeze is about the only really fun competitive (there are plenty of fun non-competitive decks) deck I can play in standard, because the rest are just curvestone.
When it disappears (gets HOFed), I very much doubt HS will have any appeal left for me at least. Not that this need worry anyone, HS is doing very well in terms of new customers with its current design direction.
I dont get it. What is the purpose of this thread?
Can't you read? Or not able to understand?
Bad players can play the decks that the Royal Hearthstone Community adore almost as well as good players can do. The difference is higher for the decks which the Royal Hearthstone Community hate and called stupid etc.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sit and come relax, riddle off the mac. It's the patch."
People hate losing. People hate being outplayed. Both send them a negative image of themselves, and as such, as a defensive measure, people tend to blame external factors for their losses (this deck is overpowered, the matchmaking is rigged, the RNG wasn't on my side) and disregard opponent's skill, thus preserving their ego - despite losing, one likes to think of himself as the "good" player, and the opponent as a "bad" or "lucky" player.
In short, it doesn't matter how skill-intensive decks are. As long as some decks win, a huge part of the playerbase will consider them as skill-less, thus protecting their self-esteem. Actually, most high performing decks *are* skill intensive - low skill ceiling decks tend to fall out of favor quickly.
I dont get it. What is the purpose of this thread?
Can't you read? Or not able to understand?
Bad players can play the decks that the Royal Hearthstone Community adore almost as well as good players can do. The difference is higher for the decks which the Royal Hearthstone Community hate and called stupid etc.
I'm afraid that it's you who don't understand at all what the text you quoted actually is saying.
First of all, there's a difference between skill cap and skill gap. You can play a deck like pirate warrior like a complete jackass and still reach fairly good results, but if you try that with miracle rogue for instance, you're going to get destroyed. The skill cap however is not necessarily low on pirate warrior, playing it on a high level is not that simple.
Second of all, the miralce rogue vs pirate warrior matchup being more skill intensive on the warrior side doesn't mean that it's overall more skill intensive. It only means that in that particular matchup, rogue has little decision making because a big van cleef is always the correct line of play.
So why do people hate on pirate warrior and freeze mage for instance? People hate pirate warrior because of the aforementioned reason, any idiot can go face with it and actually have fairly good results. It's also uninteractive in the sense that they will almost always try to go face with everything they got, ignoring the board (not really true in aggro matchups, but still). The latter is also why people whine about freeze mage, they feel like they're playing someone that's playing solitaire.
Freeze mage might have required more skill than most of the decks, but the problem is the fact it's a super non-interactive deck. You freeze the board over and over again and there's nothing the opponent can do about it. If the freezes had conditions, for example, freeze all minions with an attack higher than 4, it would be less toxic and you'd give the enemy a chance to respond. You're basically racing to kill them before they can freeze your entire board and even if you do, they have 2 ice blocks and barriers to extend their life further. This is the reason people hate quest rogue aswell. You try to kill them before they can play the quest, because when they do, they can set up an easy OTK or TTK.
Pirate warrior required less skill in MSG because the face is the place. Unless you can make a value trade. You always set up lethal a few turns in advance because you always just went for the face if the enemy wasn't going to kill you. You speak of a miracle rogue matchup, how many times have you seen a miracle rogue burn out of cards because of a faulty auctioneer play, because of an early vancleef, ...? Miracle rogue requires and required more skill than probably any deck.
Aggro shaman requires less skill because of just how strong it's early game was. You didn't have to make decisions. You threw down a tunnel and/or a totem golem and the enemy had to deal with it or bust. Requiring decks to be build to counter a single deck. That's just plain toxic.
Intersting post! I especially like it because i feel confirmed :D While watching pirate warrior mirrors from pro players i always had the impression that this was a VERY skill intense matchup. Even more than other mirror matchups. Although your post doesn't say anything about the mirror in particular, it does show that the deck Pirate Warrior is more skill intense than people give it credit for.
The mirror being very skill intensive is actually true for most decks. Ironically not for miracle rogue though, that matchup is incredibly draw dependant.
You hate Freeze Mage! You hate Pirate Warrior! In my opinion, decks with a name including "miracle" are shit. But Miracle Rogue is treated as if it was God's favorite deck. Some skills for you:
ViciousSyndicate I've been tracking the Hearthstone meta for over a year now, and gained experience on this subject, which I'm passionate about. I will say this, the perception of skill cap could be very misleading at times. What I mean to say is that the decks that are considered to be "difficult" or "easy" are not necessarily so. Aggro decks are not always easier to play than control decks. It depends on the deck, on specific matchups and on to what extent can a deck be min-maxed. I'll give you some examples that are contradictory to what perception dictated at the time: Aggro Shaman displayed a higher skill cap than Reno Warlock during MSG. It was more difficult to play Aggro Shaman correctly because of how critical decision making in the early game was for the deck. Reno Warlock was actually more straight forward because its mulligan phase was simpler and the branches in its decision making up until turn 7 or 8 was fairly low. The Pirate Warrior vs. Miracle Rogue matchup during MSG indicated that the deck with the higher skill cap in the matchup was Pirate Warrior. You could really mess up this matchup from the Warrior side if you didn't properly calculate damage and identified lethal several turns in advance, while the Rogue's game plan mostly consisted of looking for blow out VanCleef or Cold Blood turns. This showed in our metrics: Pirate Warriors at legend won this matchup more often, even though you'd assume the more difficult deck to play is Rogue, in this matchup, the min-maxing was up to the Warrior. The decks that are hard to play are ones that have more critical branches of decision making. Decks that are easy to play are ones without many of these branches, and they tend to be decks that rely on playing things on curve. Current Midrange Hunter is a great example, Dragon synergy decks (before rotation) are another. In any case, we can often see "skill caps" in our metrics. They are not invisible to us, and we do often mention decks that have patterns of either having a low or high skill cap. Freeze Mage is the stand out in the current Meta in terms of having a high skill cap that is very visible in our metrics.
A lot of philosophical topics are coming up on Hearthpwn these days. I like it. I am glad to know that there is another person in this world besides me who knows that the word "difficult" or "easy" are comparative and this fact should be kept in mind while using them. I hate when all people say "This question was difficult in the Board exam(the main and final Nationwide exam in Indian Schools) and we need free marks for that question". Turned out I had attempted the question they were talking about correctly and I learnt the lesson "Do not put effort cause some people are going to get the same rewards without making any efforts and I won't get any recognition because of that". They need to specify another "thing" to prove the difficulty of the question. Which they didn't. The question was easy for me compared to previous year questions.
There's a lot more to miracle rogue than drawing van cleef or auctioneer. You either have to know this already or you don't know how to play miracle rogue. Miracle rogue is first and foremost about resource management and playing the odds. Being able to recognize the correct line of play based on the situation, with or without van cleef or auctioneer in hand, is what's hard. Any moron can of course fairly easily win if they draw the right cards at the right time and learn the basics of how you go about a miracle turn.
I do agree though that the deck has become more and more draw dependant, losing Azure Drake really hurt the consistency. I also agree with your point about Sherazin, Corpse Flower.
There's a lot more to miracle rogue than drawing van cleef or auctioneer. You either have to know this already or you don't know how to play miracle rogue. Miracle rogue is first and foremost about resource management and playing the odds. Being able to recognize the correct line of play based on the situation, with or without van cleef or auctioneer in hand, is what's hard. Any moron can of course fairly easily win if they draw the right cards at the right time and learn the basics of how you go about a miracle turn.
I do agree though that the deck has become more and more draw dependant, losing Azure Drake really hurt the consistency. I also agree with your point about Sherazin, Corpse Flower.
my man <3
The thread makes no sense at all, it states the obvious, but it's not a reason to not hate uninteractive decks
What i can say about this topic is that the overall difficulty of the game has gone down a lot in the last years, in my opinion vanilla hearthstone was much more difficult than curvestone. When i played a chillwind yeti on a proper board back in the days i felt like a boss, nowadays minion stats hardly matter, what matters the most is being lucky with RNG. Blizzard is making this a babygame with fancy op cards just to get a larger player base.
I have read most of the remarks here and seems to me that the point is turned around but not clearly explained.
entry skill level , the minimum skill required to win 40% of your games. It means being able to win most of games were the cards are drawn in your favor.
Pirate warrior has low entry skill level. Most of the players are able to make an ok mulligan and aim the weapon to the face.
Miracle rogue and freeze mage have a high entry skill level. You need to know by quite well the deck just to win the favorable matches
meta winrate skill level: how well must you play the deck to reach the average win rate of meta.
That point is easily reached just by practicing the deck until you know all the mulligan and how each matchup can be won.
meta win rate + 5%/+10% now we start talking. To reach that point you need to be good enough to tech against the meta and and the win most of the un favorable matchup and most of mirrors.
Now to explain what is the Skill cap. Skill cap level defines how much your decisions either during game or in teching the deck can influence your overall win rate, the aim being the maximize the winrate (win all game which can be won). For instance:
Midrange hunter is described as a low skill cap because most of it matchup winrate is determinate by which deck plays your opponent and your topdecks . The game play is mainly linear: Play your minions on curve and pray. The performance of the deck is defined by the relative power of the cards played and the meta.
Freeze mage and miracle both have high skill cap. Lot of decisions can be mahe and both have very tight ressource management and counter intuitive play can be right one. As the decks both presents a high level of draw, a one off card tech has a lot of chance to be drawn during the game and influence the outcome. Wrong or too much tech can be crippling while good tech will yield better result than for deck which only see 12 cards of its deck per game.
Now how a deck like pirate warrior can exhibit a high skill cap compared to midrange hunter ?
The gameplan is fairly clear. You have around 10 turns to win. Above that you lost because you will run out or cards to play and the opponent will be able to both heal/remove and play minion for 10 mana crystal while you will be limited to how much mana is your topdeck.
now the main difference with hunter is that your gameplay is 100% proactive. You will take most of the decisions of the matchup because most of the cards have an immediate effect. Hunter gameplay is much more reactive: I play a minion, you either remove it or play your own, next turn I play a bigger minion and the cycle start again. This kind of gameplay is much more passive.
Pirate warrior is on a clock and must decide how much damage can be sinked on clearing minions while still having enough damage in hand and in his following 3 or 4 topdeck to finish it opponens before the opponent either kill him or stabilise.
As you will be making most of decisions while your opponent decisions is limited by the question you ask : "Can you survive another turn ?" There is much more latitude for the pirate warrior to make a wrong decision and lose the game.
Freeze mage question is : can i delay my opponent long enough for me to draw enough damage from my deck to kill him ?
Piratr warrior question is: Is my deck consistence enough to be able to inflict 30 damage with only my 15 firsts cards ?
As such pirate warrior can be considered a high skill cap deck because the deck must be the one taking the decisions and one bad decision wil make you lose the game 5 turn later. While being a low skill deck for the average joe.
TL.DNR : pirate warrior is low skill deck with high skill cap. Meaning the deck is easy to play ok but very difficult to maximize.
I would love to have ever experience that happening. I have faced many, many, many Pirate Warrior, many of them making wrong decisions, which you can decipher by handtracking, and still win like all those games. The fact is, being a hyper aggressive deck, you have a lot of room for mistakes, because many of your games are free wins just due to bad draws on your opponent, or simply, slower draws that you can't context the Warrior with. Those moments are the ones that really hurt. When you are facing a hyper aggressive deck, you see them make mistakes, but you can't punish them for their mistakes. It would be so good if their wrong decisions actually lead to losses, unfortunately, most times, they don't.
By the way, I'm not going to say decks like Pirate Warrior don't benefit from skilled players. I'm just saying, due to how the deck works, that is not what decides the great majority of the games. Most games as Pirate Warrior can still be won by low skill level players making mistakes. On the other hand, when you play Freeze Mage or Miracle Rogue, good luck winning games where you make mistakes. You simply can't afford to do that, most times, any mistake you make will lead to a loss. After thousands of Freeze Mage games I can count on the fingers of one hand how many games I managed to win even after making mistakes. It's something that happens once in 2000 or more games, not every 5 games like with Pirate Warrior.
We are agreed on that. As I said Pirate warrior is a low skill deck. Meaning it is very easy and forgiving as long as you are looking for a average winrate. It should be differentiated with the skill cap which quantify how much can be learned and how much your decisions can influence the outcome. What happens when a pirate warrior is both never making missplay and can calculate what are the odds of you drawing a card giving you a solution compare to its odds of them draving a card giving them a solution ?
A pirate warrior able to do those thing is force to be reckoned with. At the same level as a pro player playing freeze mage or rogue is force to be reckoned with.
My point was that a hunter deck between the hands of a good player and a pro player will show similar results because the extra skill and knowledge of the pro player has less influence on the game
Lol, people just mad that they lose to these decks while being totally helpless to do anything about it, hence the hate. It feels horrible when you lose a game knowing that there was nothing you could do to since the loss wasn't your fault in the first place. The deal with skill and all just comes from abit of gamer's pride. "Wtf, that dude misplayed so many times. He's dumb yet he won. I wouldn't have made those mistakes. I am clearly more intelligent. How could I lose to THAT dude." To be honest, it's a card game. Luck can matter a hell lot more than your in-game knowledge and skill. Especially THIS rng-heavy card game.
I dont get it. What is the purpose of this thread?
Can't you read? Or not able to understand?
Bad players can play the decks that the Royal Hearthstone Community adore almost as well as good players can do. The difference is higher for the decks which the Royal Hearthstone Community hate and called stupid etc.
There is certainly no need to go aggro, as you didn't bother explaining why you quoted the text in your introductory post. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that you apparently misunderstood the text you quoted - there is absolutely nothing in the passage you presented which can be interpreted as "bad players can play decks as well as good players." VS is arguing quite the opposite - the poor play of many average or bad players completely obscures the skill-cap often associated with a number of decks which the community mistakenly believes to be quite simple to pilot. For example, the skill-cap associated with aggro decks becomes more obvious when attention is focussed on good players, and how they navigate match-ups against other high-skilled players.
As far as your contempt for the "Royal Hearthstone Community" - the best advice I can provide should be obvious. Don't bother posting if you consider the rest of the community to be a bunch of assholes.
Pirate warrior is indeed a terrible deck and you should feel ashamed any time you play it.
Freeze mage is different - I play it myself sometimes and enjoy playing it, it's just I hate playing against it, more than any other control or combo deck. If the freeze mage gets the god-hand without having to draw too hard they just continually freeze you out of the game till turn 9, then down comes alex and its all over. There just aren't enough realistic counters to board wide freezes and ice block, and that is Blizzard's fault.
The answer cards in general need a total overhaul in this game. They need to be more flexible and more powerful. Buffs please.
You hate Freeze Mage! You hate Pirate Warrior! In my opinion, decks with a name including "miracle" are shit. But Miracle Rogue is treated as if it was God's favorite deck. Some skills for you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/6iufiq/vs_data_reaper_report_53/dj97hk5/?st=j4feotxt&sh=27017288
"Sit and come relax, riddle off the mac. It's the patch."
I dont get it. What is the purpose of this thread?
eh??
Dunning–Kruger effect
As described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1] Hence, the corollary to the Dunning–Kruger effect indicates that persons of high ability tend to underestimate their relative competence, and erroneously presume that tasks that are easy for them to perform also are easy for other people to perform.
OFC the Miracle Rogue had it "easy-er" that the PW, you have a single out in that MU, a huge fucking Cleef, nothing else works, so you HAVE to go 100% on that, but play Miracle vs anything else than the king of face mashers and you will have a different story. In this MU the rogue has nothing to lose in taking risks and overextending while the PW has the whole game to lose if he makes some bad decision.
The 1st step towards a better game is firing Mike Donais! We had enough of his "skillful" balances!
#FireMikeDonais
Yes, some matchups can be tricky even with decks that are simple overall.
Freeze is pretty much the only complicated deck left in standard. Ironically, it is a deck that people often don't view as complex, simply because they aren't even good enough to spot the mistakes.
"Sit and come relax, riddle off the mac. It's the patch."
People hate losing. People hate being outplayed. Both send them a negative image of themselves, and as such, as a defensive measure, people tend to blame external factors for their losses (this deck is overpowered, the matchmaking is rigged, the RNG wasn't on my side) and disregard opponent's skill, thus preserving their ego - despite losing, one likes to think of himself as the "good" player, and the opponent as a "bad" or "lucky" player.
In short, it doesn't matter how skill-intensive decks are. As long as some decks win, a huge part of the playerbase will consider them as skill-less, thus protecting their self-esteem. Actually, most high performing decks *are* skill intensive - low skill ceiling decks tend to fall out of favor quickly.
Freeze mage might have required more skill than most of the decks, but the problem is the fact it's a super non-interactive deck. You freeze the board over and over again and there's nothing the opponent can do about it. If the freezes had conditions, for example, freeze all minions with an attack higher than 4, it would be less toxic and you'd give the enemy a chance to respond. You're basically racing to kill them before they can freeze your entire board and even if you do, they have 2 ice blocks and barriers to extend their life further. This is the reason people hate quest rogue aswell. You try to kill them before they can play the quest, because when they do, they can set up an easy OTK or TTK.
Pirate warrior required less skill in MSG because the face is the place. Unless you can make a value trade. You always set up lethal a few turns in advance because you always just went for the face if the enemy wasn't going to kill you. You speak of a miracle rogue matchup, how many times have you seen a miracle rogue burn out of cards because of a faulty auctioneer play, because of an early vancleef, ...? Miracle rogue requires and required more skill than probably any deck.
Aggro shaman requires less skill because of just how strong it's early game was. You didn't have to make decisions. You threw down a tunnel and/or a totem golem and the enemy had to deal with it or bust. Requiring decks to be build to counter a single deck. That's just plain toxic.
A lot of philosophical topics are coming up on Hearthpwn these days. I like it. I am glad to know that there is another person in this world besides me who knows that the word "difficult" or "easy" are comparative and this fact should be kept in mind while using them. I hate when all people say "This question was difficult in the Board exam(the main and final Nationwide exam in Indian Schools) and we need free marks for that question". Turned out I had attempted the question they were talking about correctly and I learnt the lesson "Do not put effort cause some people are going to get the same rewards without making any efforts and I won't get any recognition because of that". They need to specify another "thing" to prove the difficulty of the question. Which they didn't. The question was easy for me compared to previous year questions.
Check out my entry for this week's Card Design Competition. Vote for it if you like it.
@boethion
There's a lot more to miracle rogue than drawing van cleef or auctioneer. You either have to know this already or you don't know how to play miracle rogue. Miracle rogue is first and foremost about resource management and playing the odds. Being able to recognize the correct line of play based on the situation, with or without van cleef or auctioneer in hand, is what's hard. Any moron can of course fairly easily win if they draw the right cards at the right time and learn the basics of how you go about a miracle turn.
I do agree though that the deck has become more and more draw dependant, losing Azure Drake really hurt the consistency. I also agree with your point about Sherazin, Corpse Flower.
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I have read most of the remarks here and seems to me that the point is turned around but not clearly explained.
entry skill level , the minimum skill required to win 40% of your games. It means being able to win most of games were the cards are drawn in your favor.
meta winrate skill level: how well must you play the deck to reach the average win rate of meta.
meta win rate + 5%/+10% now we start talking. To reach that point you need to be good enough to tech against the meta and and the win most of the un favorable matchup and most of mirrors.
Now to explain what is the Skill cap. Skill cap level defines how much your decisions either during game or in teching the deck can influence your overall win rate, the aim being the maximize the winrate (win all game which can be won). For instance:
Now how a deck like pirate warrior can exhibit a high skill cap compared to midrange hunter ?
Freeze mage question is : can i delay my opponent long enough for me to draw enough damage from my deck to kill him ?
Piratr warrior question is: Is my deck consistence enough to be able to inflict 30 damage with only my 15 firsts cards ?
As such pirate warrior can be considered a high skill cap deck because the deck must be the one taking the decisions and one bad decision wil make you lose the game 5 turn later. While being a low skill deck for the average joe.
TL.DNR : pirate warrior is low skill deck with high skill cap. Meaning the deck is easy to play ok but very difficult to maximize.
Lol, people just mad that they lose to these decks while being totally helpless to do anything about it, hence the hate. It feels horrible when you lose a game knowing that there was nothing you could do to since the loss wasn't your fault in the first place. The deal with skill and all just comes from abit of gamer's pride. "Wtf, that dude misplayed so many times. He's dumb yet he won. I wouldn't have made those mistakes. I am clearly more intelligent. How could I lose to THAT dude." To be honest, it's a card game. Luck can matter a hell lot more than your in-game knowledge and skill. Especially THIS rng-heavy card game.
Pirate warrior is indeed a terrible deck and you should feel ashamed any time you play it.
Freeze mage is different - I play it myself sometimes and enjoy playing it, it's just I hate playing against it, more than any other control or combo deck. If the freeze mage gets the god-hand without having to draw too hard they just continually freeze you out of the game till turn 9, then down comes alex and its all over. There just aren't enough realistic counters to board wide freezes and ice block, and that is Blizzard's fault.
The answer cards in general need a total overhaul in this game. They need to be more flexible and more powerful. Buffs please.