Although the Rumble Run game mode got a lot of critisism, I myself am having a blast with it. I love that the difficulty of this mode is finally high enough in a single player mode to make it a real and lasting challenge if you desire to do so and that you can make the most outrageous decks with it.
I took it upon myself to clear the Rumble Run with every shrine at least once. I have been keeping track and I came as far a clearing 8 out of 27 unique shrines. Hereby I invite you all to take upon this challenge as well and share your most outrageous deck strategies here.
Since I don't want this to go off-topic from what I have in mind I ask you all to follow strict rules to your posts: You start out your post with the amount of unique shrines cleared (in my case right now, it would be "8/27"), then under that you post a crazy deck strategy. You don't need to post the whole deck (since I don't know how to do it, nor do I really care about the nitty-gritty of every card picked). Also I don't need proof or whatever on your clears, I just hope people will be honest and only tell the ones they KNOW they cleared instead of just guessing. Other posts are not welcome, so hopefully this doesn't get polluted. I will start of the thread with one of these posts to give an example.
I am looking forward to find out how you all are faring in the game mode and what deck strategies you have brewed up!
I'd love to do this but not getting any other achievement but "well you know yourself you did it" doesn't motivate lol. I think Blizz shouldn't have gone so easy on us and make it so you only needed to win once with any shrine.
The last shrine I cleared was Krag'wa's Grace. I had a deck with Kel'Thuzad, Reincarnate, triple Krag'wa, the Frog and double Spirit Echo. The strategy was to put spirit echo on Krag'wa the same turn as playing it, then make it die the next turn and return the spirit echo back to my hand by playing Krag'wa again the next turn. This created a sometimes infinite loop being able to take full advantage of the shrine, since it made it possible to cast a crazy amount of spells every turn. I could often ensure killing Krag'wa the next turn on board or with the spells he generated. Then Kel'thuzad cemented my board in the late-game, while casting reincarnate on him made him resummon himself which then 'slowly' filled the board with 7 Kel'thuzads in the end after a couple of turns. It was freaking amazing!
Had an easy run with Jan'alai's Progeny. Simply picked every freeze effect and every minion with spell damage and got lucky on the teammate: twice the Fireslinger. Was only able to play Malygos once (on the 3rd boss), since the accumulated spell power strength of the smaller minions was far superior. My shrine upgrade was Everlasting Devotion, making it possible to spam Frostfire like crazy. It seems to me Malygos is more of a trap card just like Archmage Antonidas (which I didn't pick this run btw), as long as you can get a couple of spell power minions. Fireslinger was super-valuable.
@ Blink391: This is great news! I wish you all the best on your endeavors and I look forward on your posts! Also, I highly appreciate your sense of sportmanship, starting from zero.
I started with the same ambition with the launch of Rumble Run. I cleared 12/21 shrines. But now I am on a break of 10 days or so. I got a bit tired and bored on the process. Maybe in the future I will restart playing this mode.
Just cleared with Akali's Champion. I had a very easy run. Everlasting Devotion was the key to the run. This along with two Rallying Quilboar created two respawning 8 health, X Attack taunts. What helps you to build up huge amounts of armour? Taunts do!
Rallying Quilboar also gives you an extra card in hand at the start as well as guaranteeing a strong turn 1 play (and turn two play if you have two!). Killing the computer's shrine early seems so important to prevent snowball, and they made it quite easy.
That was really it. The rest of the deck was an assortment of armour gain and dragons. Geosculptor Yip was the only other card that particularly stood out. By placing him immediately left of a Rallying Quilboar, the minion he spawns gets taunt. With 8+ armour (which was super easy to have because of all the other armour gain cards) you essentially get even more huge "respawning" taunts.
This essentially made total board domination super easy and victory followed shortly after. The only tip I can think of is to try and have one of your two Akali's Champion "dead" at all times. You rarely need both up, but it really helps to always have one of them, and by keeping one on cooldown you never end up in that "3 turn wait" situation if the computer hits you with a board clear. The tempation to protect both at all costs and only use them to go face is real, but I found that since they are renewable, using one to constantly remove the computer's minions results in you completely out-valuing it and clearing up when they have no cards in hand.
On the subject of "trap cards" - Ysera and War Master Voone never got played. Despite me having two of the former. Wanting to hero power often for armour results in large hands that don't allow for these cards to be played without milling oneself.
@Blink391: well played on the rallying quilboar double shrine combo. I might try that one myself when it comes up. I enjoyed the piece you wrote about it. Also the part of trap cards is nice. Thanks for your contribution!
I played this shrine a lot before figuring out the winning strategy. The biggest problem was mage, getting the mantle shrine with Reno in the deck completely locking the board with those heavy-hitting AoE's and healing up my incremental damage, winning from me usually in fatigue. This deck is completely relying on the board. The deck usually turns out slow and generally has tempo issues. The biggest traps are being greedy in picking buckets and taking card draw. Dead Ringer drawing 3 cards is usually already a problem. Try to kill it when the shrine is done. You hand is usually large enough so you don't need/want more cards.
Weaponized Zombie, Spirit of the Dead and Spawn of N'Zoth was my way to go. The first makes you have a chance top have a good early game, spawn giving +3/+3 on you whole board is insanely strong and spirit made the fatique problem go away. Against most bosses you can play it when you trade in the spawn (or just after it) and it usually stays up for most of the game after that. The upgrade Roaring Edifice was working amazing to mitigate the tempo issue mentioned before and made it possible to actually play out my expensive hands. Coffin Crasher was a good way to partially mitigate board clears.
I had (in the end) 7 times Darius Crowley and 3 times Akali, the Rhino and a lot of early game. When I dropped Akali, the Rhino with the shrine up and used Deathspeaker on it, I could kill numerous minions and get a couple of 9/9 Crowleys. Alternatively using the Deathspeaker on a pulled 9/9 Crowley is equally devastating. My chosen upgrade was Roaring Edifice, which worked wonders since both Akali, the Rhino and Darius Crowley are kind of expensive. I used Rallying Quilboar to make sure my opponents killed the shrine in the early game, giving that sweet discount to overwhelm them quickly 3 turns later.
Tribute from the Tides and Halazzi's Hunt were not completed until after the nerf, though I did get both of them to the final round several times.
*This information is largely based on pre-nerf balance.
Overall druid/priest were the easiest classes to 3/3 due to the strength of their teammates / loas.
In general it is useful record which classes you've faced when playing some of the weaker loas. This can affect what choices you make on your loa upgrades and sometimes which buckets to choose in the later rounds.
As opponent's (Round 1/2, 3-5, 6-8):
Mage: Jan'alai's Flame can be very difficult for certain loas due to having many 1 health drops in their base decks. Jan'alai's Mantle can be somewhat challenging due to having so many board clears. Nearly all my losses to this deck are due to fatigue, the AI has a 10 card advantage along with Ice Block and Reno Jackson. Be wary of killing the opponents loa too early as a turn 4 Kazakus into resurrecting a second loa usually spells defeat. Jan'alai's Progeny is the easiest late round loa to defeat. As long as you can handle a turn 1 Snowchugger (or hope the AI whiffs) this loa should not be too challenging. Be wary of going wide as a 7 minion Frost Nova or Blizzard can give the ai enough Frostfire to kill you the following turn with a Malygos.
Priest:Bwonsamdi's Tome is pretty weak and can be largely ignored. Bwonsamdi's Covenant is not too difficult, although I tend to hold my cards until I can guarantee a loa kill or the ai burns its Circle of Healing clears. Turn 7 the ai usually stalls to summon Nightscale Matriarch and the ai tends not to top off Quartz Elemental so I usually put 1 point of damage into it and ignore it. Bwonsamdi's Sanctum was one of the most difficult late round bosses, though the deck was nerfed to include beneficial cards like Dancing Swords and Corrupted Healbot. The ai always starts with Weaponized Zombie so its important to gain board control before the loa is protected behind a taunt wall. Paladin especially has trouble against this deck due to wanting to super buff a few strong minions and this deck containing Sylvanas Windrunner and Obsidian Statue.
Tribute from the Tides and Bwon'samdi Tome were the ones I did post-nerf, but I did manage to get to the 8th boss with all shrines multiple times before the nerf. Warlock/Druid were the first classes i finished. Druid's water spirit teammate is one of the craziest in the whole mode, due to starting in your hand and letting you get multiple turns ahead of your opponent, it snowballs out of control very quickly.
I can't give much advice in terms of how to beat certain opponents since I'm not that great of a Hearthstone player and often "go for memes". I've thrown games due to wanting to pull off a certain combo, or being too greedy with a play just because it was fun. Due to this, the following might appear very obvious to many people, but here are some big things I learned to watch out for.
Shirvallah's Protection: If I notice I havent fought Thekal yet going into the 6th round, I look to see if my deck has any hard removal because The Walking Fort is an incredibly tough minion to remove, especially if he drops it after his shrines comes back up. If he buffs it with the bells or the steed, it can spell doom for your run. It should also go without saying, but I didn't think about it at first: Be very careful of using Defile in against this shrine, it turned a run that should've been in the bag into a very shameful defeat.
Halazzi's Trap: Having some early game is crucial to fight this shrine. My strategy is to generally try and control the board as much as possible and run them out of cards to play, it can be very easy to "lock them" into having 5 secrets that doesnt trigger if you dont go face (Explosive, Wandering, Misdirection, Bear), then the shrine can be easily ignored while you develop a board. If you're ready to attack a minion with unknown secrets, make sure you have an answer for an Emperor Cobra or it could take out your shrine or big minions. This deck runs very few minions, the most dangerous of them is Troll Harbinger since, if left unchecked, will give him a mountain of tools to clear your board or strengthen his. Once the early turns are taken care of, he will generally have one card per turn and not much to threaten you making it a rather smooth victory from there.
The Rumble Changes
So we don't have much information about what they have done in details, even if the changes can be felt resulting in a much less frustrating experience while playing (not that it has entirely disappeared, looking at you Turn 1 Prince Keleseth), here are some observations I've made:
The opponent deck size used to be 10, 14, 20 and then 30 cards from the 4th fight onward. This has been changed to 10, 13, 17, 28, 30 from 5th onward. This means that the 2nd and 3rd fights no longer have a card advantage over the player.
I am currently trying to piece back together the AI decks following the nerfs to learn of any undocumented deck changes similar to the Dancing Swords appearing in the deathrattle deck. Fun fact: There was ONE time that Talanji started with 3 mana and went for Dancing Sword first, making it the first time they didnt start with the zombie. There are two additions i've noticed, but I cannot be certain of the cards that were removed to make room for them:
Treasure from Below now contains Gral, the Shark. My guess is that it is replacing Raging Contender. It's possible that I just didnt run into him, but considering how much he liked to play that card previously, it wouldn't surprise me.
Hir'eek's Hunger now contains Hakkar, the Soulflayer as well as two copies of Spreading Madness. It seems to be far less aggressive too. While I liked how challenging the boss could be, it wasnt particularly fun to have lost over half your health by turn three.
Around boss 5 my deck was completely insane and I tore through the rest of the run.
Picked up double Waterspirit, so generally by turn 3 I'd just play one of my Nourish, (which are sometimes made better with Fangral Staghelm), refresh mana with hero power or Claw or one of the many other mana refreshers I got, and then use that to summon several Oondastas that would eventually summon Tyrantus. Rag came along for the party too.
... it was fun :D
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Greetings fellow gamers,
Although the Rumble Run game mode got a lot of critisism, I myself am having a blast with it. I love that the difficulty of this mode is finally high enough in a single player mode to make it a real and lasting challenge if you desire to do so and that you can make the most outrageous decks with it.
I took it upon myself to clear the Rumble Run with every shrine at least once. I have been keeping track and I came as far a clearing 8 out of 27 unique shrines. Hereby I invite you all to take upon this challenge as well and share your most outrageous deck strategies here.
Since I don't want this to go off-topic from what I have in mind I ask you all to follow strict rules to your posts:
You start out your post with the amount of unique shrines cleared (in my case right now, it would be "8/27"), then under that you post a crazy deck strategy. You don't need to post the whole deck (since I don't know how to do it, nor do I really care about the nitty-gritty of every card picked). Also I don't need proof or whatever on your clears, I just hope people will be honest and only tell the ones they KNOW they cleared instead of just guessing. Other posts are not welcome, so hopefully this doesn't get polluted. I will start of the thread with one of these posts to give an example.
I am looking forward to find out how you all are faring in the game mode and what deck strategies you have brewed up!
I'd love to do this but not getting any other achievement but "well you know yourself you did it" doesn't motivate lol. I think Blizz shouldn't have gone so easy on us and make it so you only needed to win once with any shrine.
Me? Gongaga.
8/27 shrines cleared
The last shrine I cleared was Krag'wa's Grace. I had a deck with Kel'Thuzad, Reincarnate, triple Krag'wa, the Frog and double Spirit Echo. The strategy was to put spirit echo on Krag'wa the same turn as playing it, then make it die the next turn and return the spirit echo back to my hand by playing Krag'wa again the next turn. This created a sometimes infinite loop being able to take full advantage of the shrine, since it made it possible to cast a crazy amount of spells every turn. I could often ensure killing Krag'wa the next turn on board or with the spells he generated. Then Kel'thuzad cemented my board in the late-game, while casting reincarnate on him made him resummon himself which then 'slowly' filled the board with 7 Kel'thuzads in the end after a couple of turns. It was freaking amazing!
GL people who choose to do this. I think certain shrines are probably impossible to win with.
I wiukdnt try simply because of the random shrine gimmick.
9/27 shrines cleared
Had an easy run with Jan'alai's Progeny. Simply picked every freeze effect and every minion with spell damage and got lucky on the teammate: twice the Fireslinger. Was only able to play Malygos once (on the 3rd boss), since the accumulated spell power strength of the smaller minions was far superior. My shrine upgrade was Everlasting Devotion, making it possible to spam Frostfire like crazy. It seems to me Malygos is more of a trap card just like Archmage Antonidas (which I didn't pick this run btw), as long as you can get a couple of spell power minions. Fireslinger was super-valuable.
Grimestreet I accept your challenge! I was thinking about doing this myself too.
I will report my progress here in the manner you request and hope others will also.
I have done a successful clear, but I can't remember which shrine it was with, so I am starting fresh.
0/21 Shrines cleared.
@ Blink391: This is great news! I wish you all the best on your endeavors and I look forward on your posts! Also, I highly appreciate your sense of sportmanship, starting from zero.
I started with the same ambition with the launch of Rumble Run. I cleared 12/21 shrines. But now I am on a break of 10 days or so. I got a bit tired and bored on the process. Maybe in the future I will restart playing this mode.
Good luck to you guys and have fun.
you are right :)
@Kyomugen: Haha you're right! Thanks for telling me, I will change it.
Well I feel dumb :p.
0/27 Shrines Cleared.
@Dude962: Hope to see you come back somewhere in the future, enjoy your break and thanks!
1/27 Shrines Cleared.
Just cleared with Akali's Champion. I had a very easy run. Everlasting Devotion was the key to the run. This along with two Rallying Quilboar created two respawning 8 health, X Attack taunts. What helps you to build up huge amounts of armour? Taunts do!
Rallying Quilboar also gives you an extra card in hand at the start as well as guaranteeing a strong turn 1 play (and turn two play if you have two!). Killing the computer's shrine early seems so important to prevent snowball, and they made it quite easy.
That was really it. The rest of the deck was an assortment of armour gain and dragons. Geosculptor Yip was the only other card that particularly stood out. By placing him immediately left of a Rallying Quilboar, the minion he spawns gets taunt. With 8+ armour (which was super easy to have because of all the other armour gain cards) you essentially get even more huge "respawning" taunts.
This essentially made total board domination super easy and victory followed shortly after. The only tip I can think of is to try and have one of your two Akali's Champion "dead" at all times. You rarely need both up, but it really helps to always have one of them, and by keeping one on cooldown you never end up in that "3 turn wait" situation if the computer hits you with a board clear. The tempation to protect both at all costs and only use them to go face is real, but I found that since they are renewable, using one to constantly remove the computer's minions results in you completely out-valuing it and clearing up when they have no cards in hand.
On the subject of "trap cards" - Ysera and War Master Voone never got played. Despite me having two of the former. Wanting to hero power often for armour results in large hands that don't allow for these cards to be played without milling oneself.
Onwards and upwards!
@Blink391: well played on the rallying quilboar double shrine combo. I might try that one myself when it comes up. I enjoyed the piece you wrote about it. Also the part of trap cards is nice. Thanks for your contribution!
11/27 shrines cleared
Just finished Bwonsamdi's Sanctum.
I played this shrine a lot before figuring out the winning strategy. The biggest problem was mage, getting the mantle shrine with Reno in the deck completely locking the board with those heavy-hitting AoE's and healing up my incremental damage, winning from me usually in fatigue. This deck is completely relying on the board. The deck usually turns out slow and generally has tempo issues. The biggest traps are being greedy in picking buckets and taking card draw. Dead Ringer drawing 3 cards is usually already a problem. Try to kill it when the shrine is done. You hand is usually large enough so you don't need/want more cards.
Weaponized Zombie, Spirit of the Dead and Spawn of N'Zoth was my way to go. The first makes you have a chance top have a good early game, spawn giving +3/+3 on you whole board is insanely strong and spirit made the fatique problem go away. Against most bosses you can play it when you trade in the spawn (or just after it) and it usually stays up for most of the game after that. The upgrade Roaring Edifice was working amazing to mitigate the tempo issue mentioned before and made it possible to actually play out my expensive hands. Coffin Crasher was a good way to partially mitigate board clears.
13/27 shrines cleared
Finished a great run with Akali's Horn.
I had (in the end) 7 times Darius Crowley and 3 times Akali, the Rhino and a lot of early game. When I dropped Akali, the Rhino with the shrine up and used Deathspeaker on it, I could kill numerous minions and get a couple of 9/9 Crowleys. Alternatively using the Deathspeaker on a pulled 9/9 Crowley is equally devastating. My chosen upgrade was Roaring Edifice, which worked wonders since both Akali, the Rhino and Darius Crowley are kind of expensive. I used Rallying Quilboar to make sure my opponents killed the shrine in the early game, giving that sweet discount to overwhelm them quickly 3 turns later.
27/27 completed
Tribute from the Tides and Halazzi's Hunt were not completed until after the nerf, though I did get both of them to the final round several times.
*This information is largely based on pre-nerf balance.
Overall druid/priest were the easiest classes to 3/3 due to the strength of their teammates / loas.
In general it is useful record which classes you've faced when playing some of the weaker loas. This can affect what choices you make on your loa upgrades and sometimes which buckets to choose in the later rounds.
As opponent's (Round 1/2, 3-5, 6-8):
Mage: Jan'alai's Flame can be very difficult for certain loas due to having many 1 health drops in their base decks. Jan'alai's Mantle can be somewhat challenging due to having so many board clears. Nearly all my losses to this deck are due to fatigue, the AI has a 10 card advantage along with Ice Block and Reno Jackson. Be wary of killing the opponents loa too early as a turn 4 Kazakus into resurrecting a second loa usually spells defeat. Jan'alai's Progeny is the easiest late round loa to defeat. As long as you can handle a turn 1 Snowchugger (or hope the AI whiffs) this loa should not be too challenging. Be wary of going wide as a 7 minion Frost Nova or Blizzard can give the ai enough Frostfire to kill you the following turn with a Malygos.
Priest: Bwonsamdi's Tome is pretty weak and can be largely ignored. Bwonsamdi's Covenant is not too difficult, although I tend to hold my cards until I can guarantee a loa kill or the ai burns its Circle of Healing clears. Turn 7 the ai usually stalls to summon Nightscale Matriarch and the ai tends not to top off Quartz Elemental so I usually put 1 point of damage into it and ignore it. Bwonsamdi's Sanctum was one of the most difficult late round bosses, though the deck was nerfed to include beneficial cards like Dancing Swords and Corrupted Healbot. The ai always starts with Weaponized Zombie so its important to gain board control before the loa is protected behind a taunt wall. Paladin especially has trouble against this deck due to wanting to super buff a few strong minions and this deck containing Sylvanas Windrunner and Obsidian Statue.
*Will continue to edit eventually
22/27 Shrines Completed, 20/27 pre-nerf
Tribute from the Tides and Bwon'samdi Tome were the ones I did post-nerf, but I did manage to get to the 8th boss with all shrines multiple times before the nerf. Warlock/Druid were the first classes i finished. Druid's water spirit teammate is one of the craziest in the whole mode, due to starting in your hand and letting you get multiple turns ahead of your opponent, it snowballs out of control very quickly.
I can't give much advice in terms of how to beat certain opponents since I'm not that great of a Hearthstone player and often "go for memes". I've thrown games due to wanting to pull off a certain combo, or being too greedy with a play just because it was fun. Due to this, the following might appear very obvious to many people, but here are some big things I learned to watch out for.
Shirvallah's Protection: If I notice I havent fought Thekal yet going into the 6th round, I look to see if my deck has any hard removal because The Walking Fort is an incredibly tough minion to remove, especially if he drops it after his shrines comes back up. If he buffs it with the bells or the steed, it can spell doom for your run. It should also go without saying, but I didn't think about it at first: Be very careful of using Defile in against this shrine, it turned a run that should've been in the bag into a very shameful defeat.
Halazzi's Trap: Having some early game is crucial to fight this shrine. My strategy is to generally try and control the board as much as possible and run them out of cards to play, it can be very easy to "lock them" into having 5 secrets that doesnt trigger if you dont go face (Explosive, Wandering, Misdirection, Bear), then the shrine can be easily ignored while you develop a board. If you're ready to attack a minion with unknown secrets, make sure you have an answer for an Emperor Cobra or it could take out your shrine or big minions. This deck runs very few minions, the most dangerous of them is Troll Harbinger since, if left unchecked, will give him a mountain of tools to clear your board or strengthen his. Once the early turns are taken care of, he will generally have one card per turn and not much to threaten you making it a rather smooth victory from there.
The Rumble Changes
So we don't have much information about what they have done in details, even if the changes can be felt resulting in a much less frustrating experience while playing (not that it has entirely disappeared, looking at you Turn 1 Prince Keleseth), here are some observations I've made:
The opponent deck size used to be 10, 14, 20 and then 30 cards from the 4th fight onward. This has been changed to 10, 13, 17, 28, 30 from 5th onward. This means that the 2nd and 3rd fights no longer have a card advantage over the player.
I am currently trying to piece back together the AI decks following the nerfs to learn of any undocumented deck changes similar to the Dancing Swords appearing in the deathrattle deck. Fun fact: There was ONE time that Talanji started with 3 mana and went for Dancing Sword first, making it the first time they didnt start with the zombie. There are two additions i've noticed, but I cannot be certain of the cards that were removed to make room for them:
Treasure from Below now contains Gral, the Shark. My guess is that it is replacing Raging Contender. It's possible that I just didnt run into him, but considering how much he liked to play that card previously, it wouldn't surprise me.
Hir'eek's Hunger now contains Hakkar, the Soulflayer as well as two copies of Spreading Madness. It seems to be far less aggressive too. While I liked how challenging the boss could be, it wasnt particularly fun to have lost over half your health by turn three.
4/27 completed
Just had a great run with Gonk's Armament.
Around boss 5 my deck was completely insane and I tore through the rest of the run.
Picked up double Waterspirit, so generally by turn 3 I'd just play one of my Nourish, (which are sometimes made better with Fangral Staghelm), refresh mana with hero power or Claw or one of the many other mana refreshers I got, and then use that to summon several Oondastas that would eventually summon Tyrantus. Rag came along for the party too.
... it was fun :D