Hearthpwn

Very creative, thanks for sharing! Always looking for unpopular decks to reach Legend with and just did so with this one

@Thex, I am very glad to hear that you were able to win games on a consistent basis. I agree that the deck has its flaws and that it is not meta-breaking by any means but played correctly this list is definitely able to generate a decent amount of wins in an above-average fun way.

People claiming the deck is „bad“, „sub-par“, „it sucks“ or whatever probably have their own experiences to back it up but my only explanation is that they don‘t know how to pilot this particular deck (not saying that they are „bad“ players in general).

I am going to play this list again in September and it will take me to Legend again 100%. And if people are interested in playing a Secret Mage list able to compete, this one is a good option to choose

Sounds like a You-Problem. Good enough mana cheating thanks to Informant, comebacks and boards clears easily possible thanks to Apprentice, Bartender and Mordresh but you should not lose board early anyways. Win conditions through winning the board and secrets in general against aggro, Mordresh or Varden Hero Power plus several Frozen Touches in longer games. If you are not able to win with this deck, blame yourself

The deck profile is just a few days old, so everything still stands as it is. If played correctly, you can reach Legend with it in no time and it‘s lots of fun :) enjoy!

Will write it up tonight, sudden attention caught me by surprise lol

*german curses*

Any idea if Shattershambler‘s cost reduction makes it possible to draw a deathrattle minion that originally costed (5) with Sketchy Information?

Valishj has such a unique effect while refreshing your wigs for free when you play it that I‘d definitely consider it to be irreplacable for this deck, sorry man

The deck was already performing well before the patch but that buff to the Wig is the absoulte jackpot! I expect the deck to be pretty bonkers now, glad you‘re enjoying it!

Quote from Aventurier >>

Queen Azshara ? why not ? :) please write a guide, you have +5 attention 

The simple answer is that I consider Queen to be too slow. All you care about with this deck is the amount of health on your minions and committing 5 mana for 5 health is not worth it, not to mention the additional mana you need to spend to use the artifact. 

Quote from Ophion-EU >>

Instead of viewing netdecking as a problem, see it as an opportunity. The more predictable the meta, the easier it is to counter with homebrew. If everyone just played random stuff there would be no room for tech cards and it wouldn't be possible for certain decks to thrive that are built specifically to beat a predictable meta.

Having a meta game where 95% of players are net decking AND getting a clue by seeing your opponents class before the mulligan every game makes it relatively easy to predict what style of deck your opponent is going to play. Especially as there usually is only one (max. two) deck per class that is considered to be competitive. And that makes it quite boring in my eyes. I wouldn't mind it at all if "everyone just played random stuff" because that would make the game a much more interesting experience. And the choices you make during mulligan have to be made with much more scenarios in mind and become really important.

Besides that, let's be real: tech cards do not play that big of a role already. Weapon removal is used by some decks but even Smothering Starfish plays such a minor role in the meta even though a neutral board-wide silence looks absolutely busted on paper. I even think they might play a bigger role with a wider variety of used decks because there's a bigger chance that some "random" weapon strategy, deathrattle synergy or big buffed minions might catch you off guard... 

Quote from Shipmen >>

There is no doubt that the HS team, in the past, was very creative and they created a very cool game. This time is ended. HS is losing interest for years now and the only real innovative past thing was BG. 

[...]

The biggest mistake that they are doing is that they keep printing cards without a real direction. This game will not become funnier with more cards that are more or less the same, or past reprints. This game is out since 2014, and now, it is time for big changes in the whole structure of the game, otherwise, the interest in this game will always be more and more asymptotic at 0, until one day it will be 0.

I agree that a shrinking player base indicates that something is wrong with game. And it obviously is, otherwise I wouldn't have started this discussion. But I still think that even though we as the players depend on the developers to provide us with exciting content that we can build upon, it's the community that decides the fate of a game. Yes, Team5 looks to be slow when it comes to necessary balance changes. Yes, recent "innovations" like mercenaries failed to revive the game as a whole. But as others already mentioned, in terms of a digital-only card game, HS is still the market leader.

Legends of Runeterra is comparable to HS as the game that it is based on is atleast as big as WOW and even though it is much younger, it never even came close to the size of HS. Another point someone else mentioned is that a lot of the attention other big TCGs like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh receive comes from the actual TRADING part of those games that HS simply doesn't have as well as from all the offline action. And now that I think about it, there probably lies one of the main problems: there is no official tournament scene for your average, non-professional HS player.

A major part of the constant interest in Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh lies in locals, regionals and major events where everyone can chase their childhood dream of becoming a successful duelist by winning a big tournament out of nothing. I guess for a digital card it is close to impossible to set such tournaments up on a regular basis with professional standards but if there was something like that I am sure it would boost the interest in HS quite a bit.

Guide is coming tonight!

Quote from Raiden0815 >>

nice writeup! I also had amazing fun with homebrews, unfortunately they were never competitive so I was goofing around in casual and having a great time - right now it's a Naga Ignite Quest Mage where you try to OTK your opponent with Sanctum Chandler and Hot Streak :)

Still want to hit legend one day with a homebrew, so far the closest thing was a Galakrond Warlock that included Lorekeeper Polkelt and Animated Broomstick.

PS: I'd be happy to try out you Serpent Wig Priest deck!

 

I appreciate everyone who is trying out new stuff! Interesting that you played around with Sanctum Chandler, I also tried to make it work with Ignite and all the other cheap spells but so far only limited success unfortunately. Might try again next season :)

You can find my decklist for the Serpent Wig Priest here:

https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1409759-serpent-wig-priest

First of all I just wanted to say that I didn't want to sound all too negative but I understand where that impression comes from haha

You're absolutely right, the available cards to oneself play a big role, so if you're a f2p player or returning from a long break you might need most of your dust to get A deck and cannot afford to try stuff out and that's absolutely fine. My intention was to reach out to those players that have the ressources to experiment with cards and maybe give them motivation for some DIY.

My Wig Priest costs about 5k dust. I'll post a decklist below 

Hey people, I decided to open my first thread ever in any HS forum because there is something that's bothering me quite a bit. Playing HS since its release and following the discussions here and in other forums from time to time I've seen the topic of the infamous "Boring Meta" where someone complains about x amount of decks being the best and if you want to be successful you absolutely have to play those an innumerable amount of times. And obviously Team5 is responsible for that because they have to be complete morons and don't know anything about balancing their game. To those guys I just wanted to say: You're wrong.

I have always been a (T)CG enthusiast and to me one integral part of these card games is experimenting and creating decks on your own. Yeah sure, you gotta get in the winning column eventually, atleast in my books, to get the motivation to play a deck for an extended time. But contrary to what seems to be popular belief, this does not require you to go to hsreplay, hearthpwn or whatever other site you get your meta information from and search out the one meta deck that doesn't make you hate yourself while playing it until legend. Instead I'd like to challenge people to get creative again, some good old "Trial and Error" picking a unique deck idea that they came up with on their own, try to refine it and eventually have success with it. That's how I get my drive to climb to legend every season since the release of Darkmoon Faire (came back from a year-long break).

Sure, not every deck will work. If your favorite card from an expansion is trash and there is no possible way to build around it to make it work outside of the occasional super mega highroll, that's unfortunate. But there is much more to Hearthstone than the 2-3 meta decks that get all the spotlight. Take Voyage to the Sunken City: DH, Control Warrior, Quest Hunter and some Mechs, that seems to be what the game consists of right now. And as per usual, people prefer to complain about those decks being too strong, draining the fun from the game instead of taking it as a motivation to beat those decks. The problem here is Net Decking.

Okay, I understand that if you don't have the time to do a lot of trying out and refining your own deck ideas, getting some help from the online herd intelligence is nice. Also if you are not the best player, feeling the need to pick out the one deck that seems to be the absolute strongest right now is understandable. But what if I told you that I made it to legend without those preselected decks, using my own ones and it is the most fun you can have. Beating those netdeckers with your own creation feels amazing! 

Recently I have mostly been playing

• Quest Druid (with my own list, using e.g. Wickerclaw) which beats DH, all kinds of Warrior AND Quest Hunter most of the time while still having feasible matchups against everything else. It's not as rare as the other decks but it's still pretty clear to me that it doesn't get the attention it deserves strength-wise because it beats the most popular decks. Why? Because somehow it doesn't show up on hsreplay.
• Murloc Shaman which beats DH most of the time, admittedly is very bad against CW, has okay chances against Quest Hunter but beats everthing else from Mechs over Pirates to Druids. I've only seen one opponent ever playing this deck on ladder.
• Serpent Wig Priest, my absolute favorite deck of the expansion. It took me about a 3 or 4 days to refine it, making it able to beat DH, Warrior, Hunter, Druid and all the mechs but now it is probably the most fun I ever had with HS. My explanation to why it is such a strong deck but nobody even seems to know about it, is because noone ever tried to make it work on their own. I am currently on a 8-2 run with the deck and I wouldn't have gotten that experience, had I relied only on what showed up in the meta reports.

Obviously I am not the only person that's trying to create cool and unique competitive decks - content creators like Kibler for example are highlighting new successful decks on a regular basis - but I am sure that if more people followed the same idea we would reach a point of variety that's unheard of.

What I’m trying to say is: it is not (entirely) Team5's fault that the game is what it is right now and that it seems to be stale and very restricting in deck building. It's the community that makes the game what it is right now and a main part of that is Net Decking and just "stealing" ideas, making it easy for yourself. There is a lot of untapped potential within the cards that are currently available and it should be our motivation to use that to make HS a game with even more variety than it already has. I would love to hear your ideas on this topic!

tl;dr: Net Decking is the reason for a stale and boring Meta. There are more than enough options to make new AND competitive decks right now and if more people took their time to figure out beating the Meta using unique strategies, we would have a much more interesting and evolving game.