Hearthpwn

Quote from ScaryKoolaid >>

The only way this card is playable in constructed is if Elemental tribal is a thing. Otherwise this is just a bad 2 drop, with a bad 6 drop, with a bad 10 drop. That's not that impressive and even in grindy matchups there's way better. Now I *assume* Elemental tribal will be a relevant thing and I *assume* Water Elemental will join that tribe and as such it *could* be good, but on it's face, it's an average arena Legend and that's about it.

Quote from I_Am_Awesome >>

Problem with "if your deck has no duplicates" is that you eliminate that downside, before you start the game.

And as i said, if a no-duplicate deck can have enough early game/mid game/removals/threads etc. as much as a normal deck, that is not a drawback anymore. Reno Jackson Becomes a 4/6 battlecry: fully heal your hero.

This is really cool from a design perspective and what else might be in store in the expansion, but in all honesty this is probably only a control v control card.  Playable, sure, but aggro and strong tempo decks will run you down before you can play 7 deathrattle minions.  And likely you'd be far behind on the board that 40 health doesn't matter even if you got the legendary off.  And let's not forget that the other control decks likely have a quest themselves, which will be equally powerful.

Excited for what's to come, and I do hope it'll be a strong deck, but my expectations are pretty tempered.  Wild is definitely going to be wild though.

My guess the other Adapt keywords are "Stealth", "+3 Health", "Spell Damage +1" and "Deathrattle: Draw a card".  Other possibility is a Battlecry deal 1 or 2 damage.

Regardless it's cool idea, but my guess is that there will be better Adapt cards and better cards for the 5 slot.  Stranglethorn Tiger strikes me as a better 5 mana card.  Doubtful this will see play and will be considered bad outside of arena.

This is a bad card, unless there is elemental synergy somehow (and it needs to be amazing, in which case we get another 4 months of amazing shamans). 

2 mana 2/2, 6 mana 6/6 and 10 mana 10/10 are all really bad cards.  That you get these cards "for free" doesn't really make it better.  I mean, it's almost as if the text said "2 mana 2/2, Deathrattle: Draw a bad card".  That wouldn't see play at all.  Neither will this.

Voted no.  They changed arena to Standard to keep it "fresh", but to me, arena is already fresh due to the card variety you get just by playing it.

In fact, the only "unfresh" thing about arena is the increased occurrence bonus for latest X-Pac.  I hate seeing Abyssal after Abyssal, or the same hand-buff paladin.  Personally, moving to Standard will make it less fresh run after run, and only become "new" every 4 months when the new X-Pac is released.

The skill in arena is maximizing the value of sub-optimal cards.  If anything, you are taking skill out of it by pushing the game to a matter of deck-building and who is able to draft their synergy.  To me, there's far less skill in arena in drafting than there is to playing cards.  You may get a good deck, you may get a bad deck, but that's mainly RNG, and all but 5 choices are easy ones.  And those 5 choices may buy you one win, but probably won't matter in the end.

The power level on legendaries and epics also varies drastically.  Many legendaries and epics are total garbage, but then a handful are some of the best cards in the game.  It comes down to whether your class legendary is Tirion or Bolvar, in your example.  That's not adding skill, that's adding RNG.

The skill in arena, what makes players 6+ average wins or less than 3, is how you play your cards.  The difference between a skillful drafter and one who follows the basic rules (or heartharena) is at most one win.  Futzing with the draft isn't going to make arena more skillful, if anything, it'll make it less.

I'll obviously have to wait and see, but as many said, I liked how any Wild card would appear.  Sure, it means there's less synergy, but that just makes it when you pull off the synergy that much more interesting and cool.  And it's not like going Standard is going to diversify synergy.  Mechs and Dragons are gone.  If everyone's synergy is "Jade", that's not interesting any more.

Also, they say the changes to Standard-only was to keep arena "fresh".  What made arena fresh to me was seeing a pool of 500+ cards, and always seeing different cards.  Moving to standard might change the arena meta every expansion some, but to me, I rather see a variety of cards to keep things fresh, not the same jade druid or hand-buff paladin every arena run that will change every 4 months.

The other changes are interesting, although I don't think they are better or worse.  More epics and more spells may marginalize skill.  Currently, you pretty much know which cards you need to play around, but now that we're likely to see more impactful spells like Twisting Nether, (Standard versions of) Lightbomb and Enter the Coliseum, it's more of a RNG fest of whether the player has that board-wipe spell.  I do recall a lot of complains back in Classic in arena about being way ahead and then spell X turned the board around.  People now complain that you can't do that.  One way or the other, people will complain.

More advice on Game 3 (only one I looked at).

As stated already, the 2/3 stealth on turn 2 is so much better than the glaive.  The previous post covered why well enough.

On turn 4, you played the 2/3 and hit hero power.  I would have played the 2/5 Grub.  Yes, you float a mana, but doing two damage with hero power to the opponent is pointless at this point.  If you get the 2/5 out, you can buff it with houndmaster next turn (albeit floating a mana again), or play your other 3 drop and 2 drop (to not float a mana). By playing the 2 drop, you effectively force yourself to float a mana next turn.  Here powering this early in the game should be treated as floating two mana (unless your hero power can affect the board)  Also, this should cover most 4 drops the opponent might play.  Going into turn 4, you really want 5 health minions out there if you can.  That 2/3 is most likely going to just be killed to whatever the druid might play.

In both these mistakes (turn 2 and turn 4), you're showing a lack of planning ahead.  Turn 2 you didn't plan ahead for the possible turn 3 play with glaive, and more worse, the turn 4 play didn't plan ahead for your turn 5 play and you played a very weak turns 4 and 5.  You got lucky, as weak turns 2-5 are generally what will kill you in a game.  Fortunately, the opponent played a disastrous turn 3, not only just hero powering, but also not using it to at least take out your minion.  He lost it right there.

Anyway, always plan your moves ahead, and anticipate what the opponent might play, and likely will play.  So much of arena is less your draft and instead how you play your cards.  Good luck!

Well, I've been mainly arena for the past two years and thought I'd give constructed a shot and see how far I got.  Strictly used Renolock to level and got to rank 5 with only a handful of losses.  That was cake.  But once at rank 5 I've gone 50% (now less after last session and am back to rank 6).  Struggled with it for about a week and I think I'm giving up. 

Not sure why I'm having issues as I mainly faced (pirate warrior) aggro on the climb, and now I'm losing against them.  It's not really difficult to play against PW, it's just a matter of if you got your cards to answer.  When I play mirror or control, my Kazakus or Jarraxxus is always seems to be at the bottom.  Maybe just unlucky, although I will admit a few misplays that didn't help, but that's only in control matchups.

Anyway, after a week of this it just doesn't seem worth the grind.

I'm not pissed.  However, as a FTP player, this pushes me to wild even more.  I'm not going to drop tons of gold/$$ on every x-pac, meaning I'm more reliant on the cards I already have.  If there are so few quality cards from the classic set, it means those that are continually spending $$ on the new x-pac cards have a huge upper hand, and FTP players will be incentivized to play Wild. 

I was real excited for MSG, for instance, but after opening 80 or so packs I only had 3 of the bad legendaries.  I ended up never playing standard because it didn't compare to my Wild deck and I wasn't going to drop 3K dust on a deck I might not even enjoy. Disappointing to basically miss out on an entire X-Pac, but it happens.  However, with rotating more "good" classic cards out, it's likely going to happen a lot more for future x-pacs.  Whatever, I'm not mad as I pretty much only play Wild now anyway.

The good news is that I looked at my collection and I have 5 goldens of the 3 common cards being rotated (I didn't craft them, obviously), meaning I'm pocketing a cool 2000 dust, plus the dust from my Sylvannas and 2 Azures on top of that.  Not a bad deal.

N'Zoth will get stronger over time, but you'll also see more cards being released that might counter N'Zoth as well.  Kazakus is one that was just released, they'll be more.

I played a version of this when WotOG came out in Wild, and could easily navigate to rank 8 or so with it.  It was good back then in that meta when 1. the meta wasn't so aggressive and 2. when people saw hunter they expected aggro and used their removal on the cheaper minions.  My favorite is taking out control warriors (back when they existed) as they had to assume instant win vs hunter, and then get out-controlled and out-valued in the end.

Unfortunately, the meta now is just too fast for this to be any fun.  It's weakness is AoE and removal, and so it just can't survive against the pirate warriors and shamans.  It needs the meta to slow down (like many fun decks these days)

Also, Barnes and Sylvannas are great additions to the deck.  Ysera is probably too slow and doesn't mesh with the deck.  Might want to try it in Wild when you can add Feign Death and Sludge Belcher

Hit rank 9 with Renolock wild, generally winning most my games, smooth climb.  I then play 14 games and go 5-9, facing 8 aggro warriors and 3 aggro shamans and draw reno twice in those 11 aggro games, winning only 3 (other loss was against a n'zoth deathrattle shaman, tip o' the hat t o him, other 2 wins against mages).

I used to lament losing Reno from standard, but in the greater sense it's a stupid card because the entirety of the game is whether you draw it or not.  You do, you win, you don't, you lose.  So stupid, but I cannot see any way they can counter aggro without a similar card.  Nearly a third of my deck is specifically anti-aggro, and I cannot win unless I draw Reno regardless.  It's seriously broken.

In addition to the obvious ones mentioned already, the "counter" is also the fact that someone playing Reno has a weaker deck by default, due to the conditions of activating Reno.  And that you have like a 50% chance of drawing Reno by turn 6 anyway.