Hearthpwn

If Rock-Paper-Scissors is the perfectly balanced metagame everyone looks for, then why is it that no one is streaming that game 6-8 hours a day?  Because it's boring as hell!

So if we assume that the designers got HS "right" in having a meta where rock-paper-scissors outcomes are more common than before (with some form of control deck thrashing aggro decks but losing to combo, while combo loses to aggro), then it's pretty obvious people are going to get bored quickly regardless of whether aggro can beat control some marginal percentage more often when played by better players.  

The Vicious Syndicate report reveals one thing that has been glossed over by the so-called 'better' players in their quest to piss further than those of us who are bored with HS - the amount of interaction between players has decreased steadily over the past two years.  There are fewer skill-based 'hard' answers to the opponent's strategy - most "answers" are just Skulking Geist-type silver bullets that have the effect of nerfing certain matchups, rather than said Geist being particularly skill-intensive to play or include in a deck.  In other words - the answers to a lack of interaction is to make more cards that don't interact!

What most people appear to want is not so much a meta where they can play the best deck and win comfortably with it (though that has a certain allure for some), they want a meta where their actions are meaningful each and every game, even if these actions cause their own downfall.  I kept notes: at one point 10 consecutive Hunter opponents played Rexxar on turn 5 or 6.  I mulligan hard for Rexxar when I play Hunter, but I never get it on curve with such consistency.  Whether that even counts as a gripe is for debate, but assuming I'm playing a deck that struggles to beat Rexxar played properly, how satisfied can I be that I essentially auto-lose to a popular hero just because of one card in the deck?  Especially when the deck I play has similar efficiency against other, just as popular deck archetypes like Odd Rogue?  Who do I choose to nerf with my deck choice, and how can I control which opponents I get so that I don't have sessions where I face twice as many Hunters and go backwards?

The truth is that Blizzard's design team breaks game balance in every expansion with so many cards that balance itself has become a myth.  People might see every archetype having positive win rates as a good indicator of balance, but at what cost has this balance come?  The cost is the loss of interest among people who would prefer that the majority of their games do not come down to which random class they have drawn as an opponent.  "Actual" balance is when any class has a 50% win rate against any other specific class, in matches where skill weighs more than card power or RNG - but this is not a reality in HS.  And people somehow still think the problem is how many decks use Basic cards!

If the OP had instead played an IRL MtG tournament, and decided to pilot a deck which didn't counter the meta, after he lost no one would be complaining that there are fundamental design flaws and game balance issues with MtG - the OP chose to pilot a deck he knew wouldn't be capable of competing. It's difficult to see how HS is any different, or why anyone should have any sympathy for folks who pretend to be "angry and let down" simply because uncompetitive decks are uncompetitive.

By comparing a M:tG tournament to HS ladder play, you're comparing apples to oranges, unfortunately.

How do you get cards in M:tG?  Hard cash or tournament play (which you have to pay to enter), or TRADING.  How do you get cards in HS?  Hard cash or in game currency (gold and dust), the latter of which can come from arena (paid for with hard cash or in game currency), daily quests or the 3 wins 10g quest (up to 10 completions per day max).  So HS has an element of Free To Play built in to balance the lack of trading, as with an moderate amount of time you'll be opening 2 packs every 3 days - you can generally open a Legendary minion and craft one each month using FtP alone.

But there is a caveat.  Regardless of whether you play on ladder or in the casual room, from a certain point on you need to be playing meta-capable decks or the daily quests become a savage grind that take a lot more than a "moderate" amount of time to complete, especially those that require wins rather than x cards played or damage dealt.  For the new or FtP player, the chances of having a meta-capable deck one month after the release of each new set is practically nil.  The new/FtP player experience is extremely disenchanting (pun intended).  Not every HS player wants to be competitive (reaching rank 15, then 10, then 5 are major goals for people without the cash to invest in the game or the time to play it to legend) - and HS punishes you in every format outside friendly challenges, because you can face the deck archetypes you cannot beat a dozen times in a row, switch decks through sheer disillusionment, and promptly face something you could beat with the other deck but lose to with your deck swap.  This is not true of M:tG, where bad tournament players still get to have fun trading and chatting, even if they got crushed by top net decks in the first two rounds, because after that they played against other bad players with equally bad collections.  In HS even at rank 20 you're playing against decks that are close to optimal in the Pay To Win format simply because of the huge number of players online at any one time.  You need an equivalent collection, or a decent amount of skill and knowledge of the meta, to just get to rank 15. 

In M:tG tournaments you play best of 3 - with a SIDEBOARD of cards that can be used to change your deck.  This means you can pick a strategy, and put counters to other strategies in your sideboard for games 2 and 3.  This means you can build anti-meta decks without needing all the powerful cards, for example by picking a main deck strategy that targets the dominant meta decks, and then sideboard against the decks that target yours.  In HS you get 1 game, it's a crap-shoot as to what you face in terms of favourable or unfavourable match-ups, and you cannot respond to this 'luck' in any way.

Magic is fun even if you're bad at it or have a sub-optimal collection.  HS is not.  The experience and investment in terms of money and time are also not equivalent for the non-pro.  Blizzard's careless attitude towards game balance would see HS dead in the water as a physical card game - Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro plan and balance sets years in advance, by comparison (obviously they do make mistakes from time to time, but cards like Ultimate Infestation or Jade Idol would never see the light of day in a M:tG expansion, because they understand the golden rules of game balance - no free cards, no free minions, no free mana).

Having Rush doesn't prevent a minion going face if it could already go face (eg if it had Charge or was already in play at the start of your turn).  Also, Sneak Devil has stealth so it's harder to remove than Raid Leader.  

Either way though, I'm not convinced mech hunter has enough damage to win without a Necromechanic burst, whether via Void Ripper or some other source.  The Wargear and Fungalmancer will need to do an awful lot of work.

Haha - my bad.  Didn't check my card names.  :)

I've been thinking a bit about this archetype, and I'm wondering whether Void Ripper is actually the way to win.  Not so much because he triggers the bombs lying around (which is obviously half the reason to play it), but because Bronze Gatekeeper becomes a bona fide Kill Command.  Any Magnetic mech that is attached to a bomb also gets a +2 boost to attack post-Ripper, to help smash through taunts while pinging the face etc.

With that angle in mind, maybe even left-field mechs with higher health than attack like Meat Wagon, Demolisher, and Unpowered Steambot can work.  It strengthens the idea around Cybertech Chip, since there are several 1/3 mechs in other classes (especially Glow-Tron) and makes a case for Upgradeable Framebot.  These minions have an extra upside - they don't get wrecked by Mass Dispel.  I can definitely see people Silencing Unpowered Steambot to get at the minions it protects, when on your turn magnetizing Gatekeeper onto it + Void Ripper is 14 to the face.  What Hunter ever said 'no' to that much burst damage?

Oh, I'd probably switch the Bonemare for Leeroy Jenkins - seems a better fit if you have it, otherwise the good ol' Reckless Rocketeer is still around for a bit more smorc.

If this deck is able to flood the board to a degree - eg through Fireworks Tech triggering Mecharoo as well as the minions that come with one or more friends - then surely rather than card draw you want Cybertech Chip as your source of pseudo-card draw?  I agree that it's not a powerful card, much as Infest was never very good, but Goblin Bombs don't look like minions that opposing players will want to waste cards on, so it seems they might survive the odd end of turn.  Since Necromechanic is not a legendary you might even get a bunch of mechs out of Cybertech Chip once per game, and there are not a large number of mechs that are actually 'bad' in standard (you might get some of the better Warrior class mechs).

I also have to second the inclusion of a singleton Missile Launcher to go with Venomancer - if nothing else it will kill your useless bombs.

My fun deck right now is a Tess Greymane in Wild, using the tendency of Burgle effects to not deplete hand size to power out Mountain Giants while maintaining tempo.  But it doesn't match up to the overall power level of the meta despite the threat it carries, mainly due to the randomness of the cards illicitly obtained, and is especially weak in Standard.  So I'm very interested in the newer cards from the expansion as there appears to be some support for this style of play.

Finally the nerf to Mechwarper to not reduce the cost below 1?

Quote from butter_but8 >>

I didn't think my hate for warlock could grow any stronger... it just did.

 So you think the card is really powerful, in other words?  Otherwise you wouldn't care and would see it as 400 dust, just like every other trash legendary for a class you obviously don't play.  #amiright

If you Cube Morrigan you automatically have 3 Morrigans when the Cube Dies (eg after your Twisting Nether).

Voidlord, Rin, Lich King, Charged Devilsaur, Ysera, Dreadlord, Lackey, Doomguard ...

Looking at the curve for this deck, I'm very concerned that you might lose every single game you don't play Duskbreaker on turn 4 (and you need to have 1 Duskbreaker and 1 of the other 6 total dragons in the deck on turn 4 to achieve that, which seems a bit tight).  This deck kinda feels like it's trying to do too much - Cloning and Amara and Dragons and Benedictus etc.  I'd strongly suggest reviewing what you want the deck to do consistently every game and then work with just that idea.  This deck looks like a typical "throw all the cards together and see what fun interactions I can find" deck, and while this process is generally necessary to understand a new set (I do it every new set myself!) I suspect that you'll end up somewhere very far away from where this deck is now.

Good luck!  Hope you can find some good inspiration.

Thus far we have:

1. Warlock: Deck with Hemet where Mecha'Thun and Cataclysm are the only cards costing more than 3.  Hard part?  Needing Mecha'thun to survive a turn (Silence = gg).

2. Druid: Can kill it on turn played (Innervate + Naturalise), can tutor for it (Psychemelon) and can reduce its cost if necessary (Gnome Druid).  Hard part?  Getting rid of the library.  Hemet helps, but you'll have to survive a handful of turns before you can play the combo because you have to run Branching Paths etc to survive.

3. Rogue: Empty library?  No problem.  Tricky part?  Avoiding overdrawing Mecha-thun.  Hard part?  Everything else.

4. Warrior: Empty library?  Play fatigue.  Kill?  Execute/Brawl last card and hope for RNG.  Hard part?  Needing it to survive unsilenced for a turn, just like Warlock, but probably doesn't matter because you're Mecha-Boom and you win in Fatigue anyway - silence not useful because you have a 10/10!

5. Priest: Can die the turn played if Reckless Experimenter is in play - otherwise wait a turn holding Shadow Word: Death.  It died?  Bring it back!  Hard part?  Empty library and hand, and killing the Experimenter the turn you play Mecha-thun (it has 4 attack, after all, so using a Shadow Word with the mana you saved when playing Mecha-thun for 7 while ensuring it's demise isn't possible without further setup).  Most likely is resurrect and kill with Shadow Word: Death in same turn.

6.  Shaman: Make a copy of it with Eureka!  Opponent will panic and waste his removal.  Win with Shudderwock or Malygos.  

Winner?  Decks not playing Mecha-thun.  This is either a sleeper card that will 'come online' in a future expansion, or it's unplayble in a serious deck.

IF (and that's a big "if") this is true, Mage (with all those cards that like a decent hand size) will like this.

Ok, I see what you're saying - the spell just gets "casts twice" a second time, and therefore only casts twice.