Hearthpwn

The Draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/3583qy

Pick 8:
I chose this expecting to get at least 1 weapon. How good is flesheating ghoul anyway? 

Pick 12:

Derp pick. I made this draft last night and I think I wanted a turn 3 play at the time, but sated threshadon is a solid mid-game pick. I should've spent more time on this one.

Pick 15:

I can't bring myself to like fallen sun cleric that much. Besides I wasn't sure exactly what I would buff with my current deck and I wanted something better to play on curve.

Pick 17:

I didn't pick this card last time I drafted Warrior and while yes I do also need 4's, I wanted to try this card too. I made this pick more out of curiosity than anything else.

Pick 18:

I didn't pick the 4 last turn so I picked the 4 this turn. But the ping would've also been nice.

Pick 28:

Still wanted to flesh out my 4s more than I wanted a potentially good 5.

The draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/l2b8xv

Pick 1: I'm just really bad at picking the least worst pick. I'm not sure how easy it is for a typical paladin draft to get divine shield stuff so I shied away from the weapon. It was a coin-toss between the corpsetaker and murloc. No real preference here and I couldn't really rationalize exactly why one would be preferable to the other. Literally made a random pick and it turned out HA liked it the least.

Pick 8:

Both kooky and hammer are very similar in value in my mind. It's a tough call for me since it wouldn' t necessarily be right to say always take the minion over the spell. It was early enough in the draft for me I couldn't determine what my deck needed more.

Pick 19:

picked the curve card over the utility card. Once we pass the halfway mark of the draft, I do put greater importance on lesser curve cards. It may have been the wrong choice here.

Pick 27:

I wanted something that would stick on the board over a card-draw card.

Pick 28:

Picked for the curve

Pick 29:

The past few drafts, Acherus was really highly rated. I decided to do something unreasonable and try this card over curve considerations, even though I needed the 2.

Could you give me an example or two of living mana used correctly? Doesn't have to be an actual game you played, but I just want a feel of how this card works. Often when my opponent uses this card, he simply overloads for the next turn, which is unfavorable for him near the end game.

The draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/yca4c2

Pick 2:

I didn't realize mark of yshaarj was that good. I'll try to pick it up next time.

Pick 7:

I picked up a lot of large stuff early on so I thought my deck could benefit from a little bit of ramp. Possibly not the correct choice, however.

Pick 11:

Picked for the curve

Pick 13:

I didn't realize nesting roc would be covered under the hadronox ability. I put a lot of emphasis on curve for this draft so a lot of these suboptimal choices were made with that reasoning in mind.

Pick 14:

Derp. For some reason, I had completely forgotten about my two spells, and even with no spells, backstreet leper was not the choice. So...yeah...derp.

Pick 22:

Past few drafts I've seen acherus veteran getting quite a high appraisal in my drafts. I picked the taunt, thinking it was simply a better pick.

Pick 24:

In my mind, I felt the consistent card draw from the gravedigger would be more reliable than the unreliable dragon that had a good chance of being understatted anyway.

Pick 25:

Again, fallen sun rated much higher than I expected. I picked the solid 3 and didn't take the card buff card.

Pick 27:

Forbidden ancient allows you to curve out whenever you're missing a drop, wherever you're missing a drop, but by now I felt pretty comfortable in my 2's and 3's. Having a solid 4 felt like the better move.

Pick 29:

darkspeaker wasn't something I was looking at when it came to this pick. It was either faceless shambler or skulking geist. Reflexively picked away from shambler because it felt too combo-dependent to be good. Then later I thought about it some more and realized it's still not a bad card most the times and if nothing else, it'll protect my face, so I do feel this was a mistake.

Someone recommended I pick egg next time because the current expansion offers a lot of activators as common neutrals. What do you think about it?

The Draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/qqbr9s

Pick 7:

I wasn't expecting HA to value 2's so highly so early in the draft. I realize 2's are rare, but I wanted to secure a hard removal early on.

Pick 26:

I feel like bloodlust is only good in token decks, which I didn't feel like mine was. Perhaps it's a better card than I give credit for? I wasn't sure between the skelemancer and bloodlust and I picked the card that could simply go face every turn.

I put in every card manually onto heartharena.com. I type in two of the cards into the site, make my pick in-game, then enter the last card on the site. If there was an app that automatically records my picks, publishes it online, and nothing else, I'd probably use that instead, but for now, I'm going with this janky setup, lol.

I've picked up a lot of mixed opinions on this particular draft. Almost everyone agreed shadowform was wrong and leather-clad was better. A lot also thought hired gun was the pick on 15, which would coincidentally free me to pick bone drake over imp master. The idea was that SWC was adding too much weight to the deck and wouldn't help me much in the mid-end game stages. But the card itself is good enough by itself I feel it's not my weakest pick in this draft. Not going to complain about having to play SWC onto a board with even one minion on my side.

Some thought rocketeer was a fine pick, but I think more people agreed tentacles was better synergistically to the deck I had already drafted. I originally picked the rocketeer because I wanted a direct damage option I felt I was lacking up to this point. Apparently, it is better to draft towards my win conditions instead of trying to fill holes in my deck.

I do like the radiant elemental+holy smite combo, lol. I hope the chance to use it comes up during play.

You could make arena specific cards without completely breaking the game. Duelyst has cards with the text, ' the next cards in your draft will be epic' or 'legendary'. The card itself is a vanilla body no other effects with fine stats for its curve so people could choose it for a better deck. The only problem with hearthstone is the rarity of cards almost never dictate the quality of the cards. But instead, the effect could read, 'your next cards will be class cards' which actually is favorable for drafting. 

But as others pointed out, Blizzard isn't even on step 1 towards this process that is, care more about arena than they are currently. They are so focused on making standard constructed an e-sports success, I don't know if they would ever consider arenas to be a potential field to look into for similar interests.

The draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/nov283

Pick 17:

I struggled with this pick. Tentacles is a strong buff, but in the end I really wanted the reach and potential removal for medium-sized cards. 

Pick 20:

I really wanted the bone drake, but my fear of losing the curve in exchange won out in the end.  The score here was closer than I thought it would be.

Yeah, it's more or less this 'shooting myself in the foot' experience repeatedly, but growing up, I loved playing with toys and now as a grown man, I still like playing around with new stuff. Granted, the warrior toys suck and it's more like forcing myself to play with the toys I really heavily considered donating to Goodwill, but with the release of the new expansion, I want to try every class at least a few times, and the exercise of drafting a deck of every possible class is fun for me regardless.

Regarding the draft itself, I wonder if a rule of thumb I need to adopt is snap-pick the first few weapons I see? Maybe give it an even higher priority than curve considerations? This regarding the warrior class specifically.

The undervalued card for this draft I think is commanding shout. I need to be mindful of this card in future drafts. 

Thanks for the tip on mulligans. I don't see a very good win condition for me right now, so I think more or less I will have to win by card advantage and persistently remove their board. My real secret strategy is to completely confound my opponents into quitting because it's a wariror that plays like a really janky mage, lol. Like I have all these second-rate board control cards that aren't really controlling the board that well and those expected weapons never come (because duh, mages don't wield weapons).

The draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/2t416q

Pick 16:

I don't think blood razor is bad. In fact, I'm fairly certain it is a pretty good weapon. I picked the 2 instead because of the past several drafts that were pretty dry on the 2 drop front and I wanted insurance there. My assessment is probably wrong here though because warriors, to my understanding, really needs his weapons to even stay on par with other classes.

Pick 28:

I know warriors need at least 4 weapons and by this point I had already given up one weapon. I gave up the weapon again in favor of a rather good 3 drop minion. I really need something to play on turn 3, but I wasn't sure how much I would lose in return. Since warriors are defined by their weapon inventory, I gave up playing warrior and figured I'd just play the nondescript minion class, lol. I think I'm going to regret not picking up those two weapons offered to me in this draft, but we'll see.

Pick 29:
Picked up the ping minion for the pings.

Thanks!

I really had a tough time with this draft. I didn't feel great about a good number of those choices, but the surprising pick fail was dark conviction. I really didn't see many of these from my opponents and this was the first time I saw the card in the draft. I'll have to note to value it more. Would you say it's better than equality as a removal?

I wasn't happy about picking prince malchezaar. I had heard from other better players how it worsens the quality of your deck, but it was the only card with the best body. But Harrison was a close second pick for me. The card draw was something I needed in this deck, but I'm still trying to learn the meta here and I wasn't sure how frequently I would face a weapon-user to justify the understatted body.

Pick 25 was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I saw HA's assessment. It's not the best weapon, but I think now that probably anything would've been better than forbidden healing. But I still can't bring myself to pick the turtle. The random targets will probably cause me to pick the worst card again in the not so distant future.

I'll remember to value stonehill defender more.  HA assessment was close, but it also favored it more.

The draft:

http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/03m3op

This draft was...full of mixed feelings. I picked a few cards I have never used before and also picked familiar cards that were not that great. At least a third of the picks I really struggled with. 

Pick 1:

I picked the card that I felt was easier to proc the synergy, but only now did the thought cross my mind that DW doesn't require its effect to proc to make it good. It's just a good body period. But at the time of the draft, I felt the upside n'zoth brought was easier to draft for and would proc more reliably than DW's effect.

Pick 2: 

I picked the understatted 3 over the understatted 5. I felt losing the exchange on turn 3 would be less devastating than in turn 5.

Pick 4:

The choice for me was between the tauren and murloc. Night howler looks too bad for me to consider. I picked the tauren for the taunt.

Pick 9:

The resurrect effect is nice, but the cost of the card felt too high to justify it. Not sure how significant having 2 equalities would be, but I picked it anyway.

Pick 25:

a 4-man ping sword felt ridiculous so I chose the healing spell instead. I only later realized the equality synergy. The healing spell was literally the worst possible pick, but tortollian has uncontrollable effects and I shied away from cards that do not produce reliable results.

Pick 30: 

Picked the card that would give more bulk to the deck, though I was really torn here too. I wanted the defender and hogrider both.

You're a regular customer for me now! lol, I always look forward to your analysis of my drafts. I posted this draft elsewhere for the first time today and got a response there too. The consensus between the two of you seems to be these things:

1) value silence higher, certainly higher than card draw.

2) Onyxia, even if it's costlier, is a better card and overall is a great card and hard to go wrong with. Anomolous, you can go wrong with depending on the deck archetype.

3) Mage secrets aren't great and I really need to consider what I'm giving up to choose it. It seems generally most picks should be valued more highly than a mage secret (something I wasn't aware of). It wasn't specified, but I'm assuming this other guy would have also gone with the eldritch horror.

4) Pick 22 should have been the 2 drop. While I somehow guessed the highest valued card in HA, I only picked this card for the taunt. To save time, I didn't mention any picks that were close in rating, but I did have trouble with this pick. I wanted to avoid picking a card simply because it cost 2 mana, that is I didn't want to stretch so far to fill my curve that the rest of my deck suffers for it (i.e. picking thrallmar farseer just to fill my 3 curve over a firelands portal). The example is admittedly a gross exaggeration, and clearly this pick was nothing like that, but I wasn't sure how much I would give up for a useful body. Would any 2 mana 2/2 have been preferable here or was there anything specific about the socialite that would make it the exception?