Hearthpwn

Hello! I'm a 12k MMR North American player and I thought I'd write down some of my thoughts on murloc transitions in this current meta. With the addition of Amalgadon, Murlocs got a serious power boost and murlocs are winning the majority of the lobbies at my level. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing halfway through a game that there's no chance of winning the lobby with your current board and that's why you always need to consider the potential of a murloc transition.

When to look towards Murloc Transitions:

• When you’re relatively ahead, if you’re weak compared to the lobby, you need to be more concerned about not dying

• You start to find the pieces of the murloc transition in the shop (usually the first piece I find that normally triggers the idea of the transition is finding a Brann)

• Based on the lobby, you’re building a 2nd place board, for example if there’s six players alive and three of them are playing murlocs, chances are one of them will end up with the ultimate divine shield murloc board. If you’re playing something like big demons, you’re unlikely to beat them in a final 1v1 fight, so you either play for 2nd place or look for your own murloc board

Key cards for the murloc transition:

• Brann

• Murloc tidehunter (2/1 murloc)

• Primalfin Lookout

• Khadgar

• Megasaur

You don’t need all of the above to complete the transition however the more of the above that you do have, the more likely you will be successful in your transition.

When to actually pull off the transition:

• When you have enough of the above pieces to reasonably attempt a transition (if you're already holding a megasaur I'd be comfortable with fewer pieces however if you don't have one yet I'd be more hesitant)

• When you’re fighting an opponent that you don’t think you can beat with your existing board and you will likely die with your existing board, however, a board of divine shield murlocs with poison could win it for you

• When you’re fighting a really weak opponent (preferably a ghost) and even if you don’t get the perfect board, you’ll still likely win

When to be cautious of attempting a murloc transition:

• Fighting a mech board – the murloc transition generally results in a board with poisoned murlocs but relatively low health. Against mechs with divine shield resets, you could very easily lose a fight

• Fighting a demon juggler board – similarly, unless you’ve been preparing for your murloc transition for a couple turns and have stockpiled bagurgles and coldlights, your murlocs may still get destroyed by the enemy’s Soul jugglers

• Fighting a beast board – if you’re fighting an enemy with a mama bear and dirty rats, your murlocs will not be strong enough to survive hits from the enemy’s 6/6 rats that spawn unless you get very lucky and are able to snipe the mama bear. Additional, an enemy cleave from a cave hydra destroys multiple divine shields.

I put together a video showing a game where I was playing as pirates and I knew I could not win the lobby so I ended up doing a murloc transition. It's not a perfect example by any means however it's a realistic average transition for me:

https://youtu.be/WKAvR0rUPEM

Mrglwglwlg!