As you may or may not have noticed, the Spellstones' flavour text consists of poems. What I find really cool about these poems/pieces of flavour text is that when they are combined, they tell a story about Azari, the Devourer and his Spellstones!
In ages old, when Ancients broke
Azari of the Legion spoke
To tempt the mortals: gems of power
The weak succumbed, their souls devoured.
To dwarves of stone the demon called
With promises of might, enthralled
In grasping greed they found their doom
Forever bound in mithril tombs.
In ancient woods, elves fought the curse
The demon’s shadow to disperse
But hatred raged and frail souls turned
Now horned and hooved their forests burned.
The trolls of old embraced the gift
A jewel of black for daggers swift
No party lasts who finds the stone
Those wielding it soon stand alone.
A stone of blue, embraced with glee
By murloc lords beneath the sea
Soon numberless they swarmed the shore
First two, then four, then more...and more...
A purple stone Azari carved
For dark hearts, craving, power-starved.
The first to bow, the warlock Rin,
Embraced the darkness, slew her kin.
An emerald stone for Tauren hands
Who sought its strength to save their lands
Their tribes now lost, their rage released
Who’s hunting now? And who’s the beast?
A diamond, white, this stone the eighth
A precious jewel for those of faith
A whispered prayer restores the lost
But none among them know the cost.
The final stone undid its master
Spun into wards by nameless caster
Azari wailed a savage roar
Now sealed in nether, evermore.
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I've enjoyed playing this decklist (with a tweak or two since I don't actually own Spirit Echo), but I'm having a hard time actually getting value out of Grumble, Worldshaker. Either I'm already dead, or by the time that I'd set something up to get good value out of him, I can probably kill my opponent.
He looks like a legendary with super potential, but what in the hell do you do to actually realize it?
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LOL. I'll take my lumps. Yeah, I was thinking of Psychic Scream. I'll be over here.. laughing at myself nervously.
Mmh, though by the by.. I didn't find it worked terribly well. It feels pretty awful when you wipe your own board out on that 20% hit. (1x PS, 2x FFA, 2x MC.)
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Alanna is supposed to be a win condition, or at least something to severely tilt the board in your favour. You'd need another comparable big threat. The Lich King could do, but there's a couple of whammies you could hit on his resource generation. Onyxia could get you board presence, but a bunch of whelps are fairly easy to wipe out.
Or, with all those spells you're chucking, you could always pray to RNGes-.. er.. praise Yogg-Saron, Hope's End.
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Big Spell mage may not necessarily be the optimal pick, but it sure is funny. Especially if/when your opponent has been sitting on a bunch of cards and you blow out all the presents to watch them get 0-1.
Sadly my packs didn't net me anything great. But hey, free second Gnomeferatu is nice for my control Warlock deck. Now that's 400 dust that I don't have to spend!
Happy Feast of Winter Veil, or whatever real life holiday you celebrate!
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Probably because they realize that if it really is that 'cancerous', that it's going to be popular and well publicized anyway? It's a Hearthstone news site. Whether you like it or not, a deck archetype that is popular is news.
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For the exact reason that is listed in the article? I agree that on curve, it's probably too damned slow. The repay on your board presence for spending that mana is sub-par. It might be efficient, to a point, but the minion bodies are simply too small for the costs and tempo involved.
On the other hand, dropping three cheap AF minions right before your Sunkeeper Tarim is freaking amazing. With Murlocadin during JtU'G, even having one or two minions on board was really solid value. And the game feels like it's at around the same, or a slightly higher, speed now. To make that late game more viable, that's an extra 9/9 across 3 bodies.
As far as your counter suggestions? Spirit Lash will wipe them, if they're unimproved. Same goes for Shadow Word: Horror. The most substantive value there is forcing the Priest to drop their AOEs earlier and using things like Call to Arms to rebuild your board quickly and start putting down new pressure. No, you can't keep doing it. But we're talking about an 'unfavoured' match-up. Dragonfire Potion wrecks a lot of things, as does Psychic Scream. But I've never really bought that argument. It was like everybody talking about how Silence effects will kill every good new card that was revealed on the lead up to this set, and pretty much every other in recent memory. Everyone acts like 20 Silence cards in your deck leaves you viable somehow. It doesn't. Literally the only archetypes I've seen that board wipes again, and again, until your brain explodes is either Freeze Mage, or now Big Spell Mage. The others will run out, eventually. As to Wild Pyromancer, sure, again it wipes the 1/1s, not the 3/3s.
Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that all classes and builds should have a 'good' chance against the rest, there are still options. However, in all realism of how Hearthstone runs, not to mention good game design, this simply isn't so.
As far as the rest goes; Egg decks, Astral Tiger and other sticky minions say 'hi'.
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Woecleaver. :(
But given that I opened Aluneth, Rhok'Delar, Skull of the Ma'nari and Kingsbane as well as 3 other legendaries on 102 packs? I can't whine.