Hearthpwn

So the survivel guide doesnt even talk about the shedule of the event? :P ... Whats happening today for example? A simple pre show or does the gameplay/group stages start today? Thats really basic information I would except out of a post like this.

Wrong. Its the new Keyword 'casts when drawn' which means that you draw another card after you draw the card with the keyword.

Hey CWSmith,

I'll play the role of the devil's advocate here and I hope you dont.. react pure emotionaly but can try to see my argumentation as well.

Disclaimer: I only read your first post and didnt read the rest of the thread. So I might repeat what other people have said.

So, your starting point is that you have an odd pala list and can not hit rank 15 with it, so you ask what cards/decks you should craft to hit rank 15 this season. I'd guess that many people try to answer the question by looking at your dust/cards/collection and give you advice on what you should craft.

I'm going the complete other way and I'll be 100% honest. The reason you can not hit rank 15 with odd pala is 0% the deck's fault (although you could play an outdates / unoptimised list) and 100% your own mis-piloting. I use to coach bad players and while it is perfectly fine and natural to either blame RNG / the deck, it is only the player who is at fault in almost every case. What you do is called 'shifting the blame' and it is, again, perfectly natural as a response to your losses. It just feels better to be able to blame multiple board clears, bad matchups or bad RNG for your losses. I'm not saying your just making that up, I'm sure a few games were actually unwinnable for you, that happens. This is a cardgame afterall. But in order to improve, you need to adapt your mental strategy with dealing with your losses and not try to craft another deck and imagine you will just get rank 15 gifted for free.

I will say though that pocket metas exist, where an otherwise strong deck gets outclassed. Odd pala has a few polarized match ups and if you get unlucky with your pocket meta (so a meta that only happens in a range of lets say rank 16-18), you can lose a huge amount of your games and feel helpless. Still, pocket metas change daily or even hourly. They are not to blame. In regards to your situation I have a good example of why you should rather watch your own play and misplays and dont think about the deck too hard:

I had the same thing happen when one of my 'students' crafted Spiteful druid before the nerfs. He told me the deck is unplayable now and wanted me to guide him towards another deck he could craft learn. Same as you, he started playing just prior to the release of witch wood and couldnt get to rank 15 on his own. He was stuck between rank 18 and 19. He was so adamant I felt I needed to show him that he was wrong. We started at rank 19, I spectated and told him every move he should make. We reached rank 15 with a winrate over 90% in a few hours. Finally he gave in and saw that, even if spiteful druid is not a Tier1 deck anymore, its perfectly fine in theory to reach his desired rank goals with it. This is not a story of how good of a player I am (I would consider myself a mediocre player).

So i dont just want to be that guy who blames you for everything without giving constructed advise. So here is what you (probably) should do and need to learn:

What I saw from watching my students play at ranks 15-20 is that the most common mistake people do is not knowing what 'role' they play in a certain matchup. There is quite a good article here: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/32384-legend-in-the-making-an-advanced-guide-to-competitive-hearthstone-part-1/ that covers the most basic problems of new players.

The most crucial thing is to know your role. Who is the beat down? Many 'bad'/new players I spectate trade when they should not trade and go face when you should have traded. Odd paladin is a deck thats very vulnerable to this mistake. So you should always ask yourself: Am I the beatdown in this match? If yes, go face and only trade in special cases when its really desirable or necessary. So you should learn specific matchups and adjust your playstyle in these matchups. (as the odd paladin you are probably the beatdown in almost every matchup)

Many people say that aggro/face decks are easy to play in hearthstone, thus the term 'braindead aggro' and the like are introduced. But good players will tell you that playing a deck like odd paladin can be quite challenging. What you, as the aggro player, should think about more in matches are:

- Can I beat my opponent's board clears? If yes, play around it, dont overcomitt, or even try to bait them early. That works well when facing against bad players. If you think you can not beat the opponent's aoe, DONT play around it. Go all out and try to close the game. It doesnt matter if you lose by a large margin or just little. It doesnt matter if you lose a little less. Unfavoured match ups are not won without taking risks. Just accept you can not beat defile in most cases so pretend the card does not exist in most cases - it will win you more games that way.

- How much can you afford to trade? Plan at least 2 turns ahead. As the aggro deck its crucial to count damage a few turns in advance. By spectating new players I see that they only play the turn they are in at the moment. They life in the present. In hearthstone and specificly as the aggro deck, you need to plan ahead, calculate face damage and your future turns.

- Learn the meta. Specifcly new players dont know what they are facing. You could use sites like HSreplay to check what deck your opponent is playing. Normally you should know 25+ cards in your opponent's deck after they played 2-3 cards. Thats the advantage of a meta and most people netdecking. That helps you plan your plays accordingly. (You could get a free trial of the programm 'Velen's Sight' that predicts cards in your opponent's hand to get to know the thought process.)

- Adjust your mulligan. Its just another thing I see new players struggeling with. They settle way too often with imperfect hands. Again, sites like HSreplay give you advice on what cards you should keep. If you are a premium member you can even show mulligan winrates for specific opponent's classes. Also accept that the value of cards in your opening hands can drastically change by your opponent's class.

Another more general tip: You need to activly put work into hearthstone to become a better player. Dont assume you will become better just by playing a ton of games. That will improve your play to a certain degree and help improve in single stages (like learning the meta can probably be done by just jaming games and unconsciously) but it wont fix most of your problems. My advice is to work with replays. HearthstoneDecktracker saves your replays for you to watch. It would be great if after every loss you take 5 minutes to watch the replay and make out what cost you the game.

In addition to that, you can and should work with other peoples replays. HSreplays offers a possibility to watch other pleople's replays as well. So if you struggly with certain matchups, eg spellhunter, watch a legend level match and see what the odd paladin does there.

All in all I didnt intend to discourage your from crafting another deck but I tried to tackle your problem (not being able to reach rank 15) from another point of view. If you want to play another deck because you dont like odd pala anymore - go for it!

Edit: I forgot: If you are playing on EU, you can add me if you want #Mint2174 . Not only can I give you imput over time, I also have a full collection - so you can borrow my decks to try them out before making the final decision to craft anything. O

 Hey,

I playtested your deck a bunch and made some changes which made the deck a lot better in my opinion.

1) The whole Grizzled Guardian + Astral Tiger package seems really weak. Against aggro both cards are not good, against control it doesnt offer enough value. Just not fatiguing is not enough against 8 damage hero powers, a 4 mana 3/5 that does not have taunt is really bad, on top of it it makes all future draws worse because it gets shuffled back into your deck again. Normally a good argument against my change here would be that Oaken Summons might not pull anything now, however there are still 4 targets left, which is enough.

2) I took out both Witchwood Grizzly . I know that sounds crazy at first, but hear me out. 

a) Lets talk about Witchwood Grizzly stand alone first: I do think its really really good against board centric aggro. So mainly Odd dude Paladin. However, its a dead card against any kind of control deck. And yes, I consider the revive as bad aswell against control, the 3 attack doesnt matter at all.

b) By taking out the  2 x Grizzled Guardian , I have only 2 beasts left. By taking out the Witchwood Grizzly only Hadronox remains as a beast, which is very important.

3) Now, whenever I play Witching Hour, I guarantee a Hadronox. So its almost impossible to lose versus control now, because you are going to play 3 Hadronox. So you only have to ensure to not die against aggro first. I think this deck has a lot of options to ensure that. See my next point.

4) With the 6 open Slots,

a) I added 2 x Doomsayer , doesnt really need any explanation. Might eat a silence early and ensures your taunts stay taunts later. In addition to that,

b) I added 2 x Rotten Applebaum. I will talk about the curve in a bit, but regarding Applebaum, I think he fits just way too perfectly. Its a 5 mana taunt you can always drop, healing is important, good Synergy with Hadronox.

c) Further more I didnt like the curve of your deck. There are 0 6 mana cards and 0 7 mana cards. It felt akward. So on these 2 slots I am still undecided. Regarding curve there are 2, maybe 3 minions that might fit. I am playing with 2 x Sunwalker at the moment. Its a strong taunt and fills the curve as a 6 mana card you can just play. However it doesnt feel perfect, its not that strong anymore. I might test Hungry Ettin . The statline is really nice, insane synergy with Hadronox and most of the time the opponent cant use the random 2 mana minion. Also Doomsayer Hail Marry. The new 7 mana 6/9 taunt Furious Ettin might also be decent in the deck.

5) Because druid is druid the deck lacks hard removal. So I thought of adding 2 x Voodoo Doll. It adds the answer to a 6 mana Tyrantus. Can be procced by your Lesser Jasper Spellstone. If you want to add more redundancy to Voodoo Doll, you could easily play 2 copies of Wrath. Wrath means you can draw a card and kill your Voodoo Doll at the same time, and Wrath is so flexible as a removal card, that it just fits really well in general.

6) So, all in all I really liked your core deck idea. By deleting beasts other than Hadronox I added a real new wincondition of 3 x Hadronox against Control. By Adding more sustain and better curve taunts I made it stronger against aggro. Tell me what you think, cheers.

I was expecting some free packs instead of a video...

I see your point, well argumented.
Having in hand both Witching Hour and Hadronox could be awful vs aggro, tho

I'll test your variation anyway. Thanks