Hearthpwn

As others have said...  patches is the earliest snowball card.

Put another way, patches gives you early board control.  Board control is super important in Hearthstone because the attacker gets to chose what minions "block" during an attack (if any).  This is different than other games like magic where the defender gets to chose.  You want to be the attacker in Hearthstone (have board control) especially if you're running an aggro deck.

The first few turns are really important.  They decide a lot of games.   And patches is the best early game card because he gives board presence and tempo.

Plus he thins your deck, has pirate synergy, and has charge (at worst 1 free damage to face).  For free most of the time.

Quote from The3Things >>

  If the doctoral candidate bit had been left out, then it is just another opinion.  But the credentials of the OP should matter.

Quote from MProdigy>>

IRB approved.  In fact, social network analysis follows similar procedures, but those cases require more protection since real names are often used.

To sum up, when given the choice to ignore post, criticize post, or criticize person, the majority chose to criticize person.  Very consistent with the literature. The question that is so hard to answer is why. I would need focus group data.  Most people’s bravado goes out the door when in person rather than behind a screen, so people would not have the same demeanor.

i can say that this is a lot tamer than reddit. That was the most alarming forum so far.  The one sentence postings are expected, but long thought out personal attacks are quite sad.  

 By my count here are the numbers through your post #57:

# chose to ignore the post:  ~2,000 views; 57 replies.  I'm too lazy to count people instead of posts

Despite my assumptions, I do not see how you can conclude from those data the majority chose to attack the person.

Sham science.  As others have stated, not even close to PhD-level analysis.

This is an interesting thread. 

This whole thread reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting where they are in a bar and that guy is trying to impress girls by quoting crap he read in textbooks (OP).  Then Will (the community) destroys him with the real-world perspective.

In MProdigy’s defense, (s)he has not been inflammatory in this post.  I would be interested to hear your analysis of the data in this thread MProdigy.  It appears the community does not believe your initial post and subsequent posts are PhD-level thinking.  I would also be in that camp, but would be delighted if you would prove me wrong. 

Personally for me, posts like this are unfortunate.  Posts like this make the psychology/science field look bad.  There’s way too much of that these days, especially here in America.  Most people at the PhD-level in the hard and soft sciences are great at their work.  If your project is genuine MProdigy, stuff like this just breeds mistrust between the public and actual experts.  Yes I fully understand this is a game forum, but every interaction influences (or reinforces) beliefs.

I agree with the above poster.  Defiantly 2 arcanologist and 2 iceblock.  Gives you an extra turn and the arcanologists also "thin" your deck.  Gives you a better chance of drawing your combo because you draw two cards from you deck for free leaving only 28 cards left for RNG draws (napkin math).  It's a waste to use a draw on iceblocks because you should be able to get them for free.

I've played around with a few versions of the mage TTK decks.  I haven't taken the time to rank up this season yet, so my perspective is from round ranks 18-15.  I like divinspree's version the best.  I am a fan of cabal courier over shimmering tempest... gives you another choice of what spell to use.  I also think thalnos and loot hoarder/novice engineers are better options than ethereal arcanist, ice barrier, and mirror image.  Mirror image is too much of a tempo loss imo, it does nothing to help you on the board.

The entire strategy is:

1.  Survive long enough to activate your quest.

2.  Draw enough cards to get your combo.

When you use your stalls and clears is important.  Tempo is also important.  Prioritize keeping the enemy board clear(ish) over drawing cards in the early game (frostbolt, frost nova, doomsayers, sheep big threats).  Also, I prioritize dropping a minion over casting a spell (assuming it's a decent trade next turn).  There is always RNG on the random spell draws, but it can be somewhat minimized with more "discover" mechanics and more draw. 

Yeah I ended up doing a very similar thing.  Started with the class cards, tried to build specific archetypes, and then narrowed it down from there based on the neutral cards.  Hard to find the optimal synergy though because a lot of neutral cards fit well into several decks.  Which deck does the shredder fit best in!?

I also had issues with 3 mana neutral cards in both of my sims.  My second time around I have only a few 6 mana cards and that was hard also.  Both times I ended up filling the gaps with 1 or 2 drops.

The format seems more like constructed to me.  There is definitely an arena vibe to it too though...  trying to pick between several "not ideal" options.  It requires an insane understanding of the game and will require strong deckbuilding skills.

Has anyone else tried the 240 card simulator that will be used for the upcoming Red Bull Sealed tourney?:  https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/redbull

I ran through it twice this morning and it is way harder than I thought it would be.  It's easy to make one good deck, but for me it was information overload to try to create three balanced decks from the same card pool.  It's almost impossible to chose the three best classes and get a decent archetype/curve.  The neutral card pool seems too small.  Then to worry about things like draw, removal, synergy, etc with all of the rarely-used cards you have to work with added a whole extra layer of challenge.

Really fun though.

How do others think this tourney will go?  What do you see as the best strategy?  One amazing deck and two weaker ones or three balanced decks?  I assume things like hard removal and draw are going to be critical.

It's gonna be interesting to see what the pros come up with.

I agree this season is strange.  I hit rank 4 a week in to the season with no real hurdles.  I flew through the mid-rank "aggro" decks and then started consistently beating the control decks in ranks 5-6.

Since then I've slid back to rank 7-8 and I've been stuck there ever since.  I slid back through the control decks and I'm stuck in the coinflip aggro hell again.  I breezed through aggro hell the first time.

I'm playing the same deck, and facing the same decks.  It makes no sense.

Using taunt on turn 6/7 shuts down the damage of the combo.  Sunwalker or abomination or defender of argus.   Also, like others have said, try to not have more than two creatures on the board at turns 5-8.

Saving a spell/silence/removal/charge/etc for the possible hyena is a must as well.

It's just tweaking your deck to fit the current meta.  There are always decks that your deck struggles against, that's the nature of card games.  And sometimes you just don't draw the right cards...   but that can be said about any matchup.  Your opponent is in the same position.  There are much worse combo's out there than UtH.

Quote from DarkenDragon »

lets talk probability of having those cards in hand. the more cards a combo requires the less likely you'll even have all in your hand. 

so to draw any 1 card its going to be 1/30 or 2/30 depending on how many copies of those cards you have in your deck, we'll assume you have 2 of each just for the best case scenario. 

so to draw just 1 of those cards thats a 2/30 or 6.7% chance of drawing that 1 card. now to draw one of the other cards is 2/30 * 2/29 (29 because you removed one of the other cards) which ends up being 0.46% chance of getting both cards. so just having 2 card combos is pretty small already, now if you want a 3 card combo, thats 2/30 * 2/29 * 2/28 = 0.0032% chance of getting it in your opening hand, of course as the game goes on, the odds get better cuz theres less cards in the deck, but honestly the odds of you getting them all early is very unlikely, in most cases the hunter will either have to play the waiting game where they're not playing cards, or they gotta use those combo cards on turns when they dont have the full combo. 

so if your complaining about a 4 card combo, then your doing something wrong. 

I personally don't have an issue with UtH, it's usually pretty easy to plan for/counter.

Having said that, it's a lot easier than your math suggests for the hunters to get the combo.  Tracking really synergies well with the UtH deck and allows them to specifically draw into the combo.  And as others have said, the starving buzzard also allows them to have a decent chance of picking up a timber wolf or a hyena.

The base combo (buzzard and UtH) is pretty easy to get.  Timber wolf/hyena are also often available by the time the buzzard draws.

The deck looks low on card draw.  If they deal with the pagle you're in trouble.  I'd replace one guardian of kings with a Lay on Hands.

The deck also looks too slow.  It's hard to strike a balance between surviving aggro and still having some punch left for control vs control matchups.  You might be in trouble against heavy aggro.  It seems too dependent on relying on the equality combos early on, and even then turn 4-6 might be too late against something like murlocs.

You have two 1 drops and only pagle as a two drop (I don't consider argent protector, sunfury protector, or pyromancer two drops).  A lot of your low mana cost minions are combos.  You don't have a lot of other low cost minions to combo them with.  So they will either sit in your hand, or be used sub-optimally.

The 2x defender of argus and the 1x sunfury protector seems like too much combined with all the other taunt in the deck.  Sunfury is nice to get an early taunt up so I'd keep that.  Maybe replace DoA with a good 2 drop (faerie dragon or even a bloodsail raider)?  Early minions comboed with argent protector are amazing at trading/preventing damage early game.

Do you see a use for the silver hand knight other than the sword of justice combo?  If not you might want to consider a harvest golem.  Same thing, but golem is a bit faster and a bit harder to remove.

It's hard to see how a deck will play on paper.  You'll have to test out the deck to see if it can withstand early aggro.  If it struggles, I'd recommend making a few of the changes I've listed above.

IMO Redemption is better then noble sacrifice in this deck.  They both have their uses, but from the perspective of this charge deck, redemption is better.

Mainly for the reasons above (2x charge through taunt).  Also, you decide when redemption is triggered, your opponent decides when noble sacrifice is triggered.  That makes redemption much more consistent because you control it.

Short term this is what I had in mind:

North America (NA):

Mondays:  

TopDeck tourney;  6:00 EST;  Best of 3, one hero, switching cards allowed;  Bracket-single elimination;  http://binarybeast.com

Tuesdays:  No recurring tournaments.

Wednesdays:

MG Limited Swiss;  8:00 EST;  One deck, no card switching, no epics or legendaries;  Swiss format;  Teamspeak 3 required;   http://challonge.com

Thursdays:  No recurring tournaments.

Fridays:

MG Friday Night Swiss;  8:00 EST;  One deck no card switching;  Swiss format;  Teamspeak 3 required ;  http://challonge.com

Saturdays:

MLG/MG Open;  2:00 EST;  Same hero best of 3;  Bracket-single elimination;  http://gamebattles.majorleaguegaming.com/pc/hearthstone-heroes-of-warcraft/

Zotac Cup;  6:00 EST;  “Blizzcon style” (3 premade decks, loser switches);  Bracket-single elimination;    hsna.zotac-cup.com

Sundays:

NESL Cup;  6:00 EST;  Best of 3, loss eliminates hero;  Bracket-single elimination;  http://www.nationalesl.com/us/hearthstone/1on1/news/

Yeah this is a great idea.  I agree a "google calendar" type of layout would be awesome.  There aren't a ton of tournies yet, but I see this getting very messy in the future when there are 50 tournies a week.  I hope it gets messy at least :)

To start even just a pinned list of the recurring tournies would be nice.  Tourney name, day/time, tournament format, link to rules/registration, notes section should be good enough.

I had the same idea and started a list last week, but got sidetracked with RL work.  I'll try to finish it unless someone else beats me to it.

I agree a Blessing of Kings would help a lot.  I'd replace the Redemption with a blessing of kings.  Worst case is you pop it on a recruit and you have a decent finisher.  

It looks like you have enough draw, especially if you're going into fatigue.  I'd consider removing the gnomish inventor and replacing it with a Chillwind Yeti.  Again, better stats that will allow you to do more damage.

Argent Commander is probably worth crafting if you don't have one.  It's sort of a more aggressive version of the Silver Hand Knight.

Finally, Faceless Manipulator becomes a good card as you move up in the ranks and start facing more legendaries.  It's 400 dust, but if you can't afford the legendaries, at least you can copy theirs.