Hearthpwn

Quote from Nere >>

The killing of innocents is also a part of her choice to rule by fear. The people must fear her more than loving the true heir to the throne, Jon. Also doing the things according to her advisor who failed her every single time and she lost the faith in him would lead her to some kind of failure again. She had to become a dragon and do the things her way

 This. Dany is not mad. Her dad was mad. Aerys exhibited classic textbook schizophrenia. His regression took years, it started with mild paranoia resulting in some brutality against real enemies, and progressed to violence against fantasized enemies (e.g., burning Ned's dad and brother) and finally morphed into delusions of grandeur with him wanting to burn Kings Landing under the belief he would be reborn from the ashes. He wanted to burn Kings Landing based on a fantasy in his head. That is mad.

Dany burned kings landing for strategic reasons. Her number one goal throughout the entire series has been ruling Westeros. At that moment, when the city had surrendered, she realized that it was not really a victory for her. She lost 2/3 dragons, half her armies and she no longer had the legitimate claim to throne. As she's said many times, the only way she was going to achieve her goal was fear---a display of power so awesome that Westeros would have no choice to bow to her. And she no longer had her most trusted advisers to counsel her otherwise. It was just a logical extension of what she had done before (when restrained by voices of reason), including burning and crucifying slavers, taking the slaver cities and allowing then to descend into chaos, burning the Dothraki capital, etc. While she's certainly shown compassion, it has always come second to her ambition.

While watching the episode I was a little shocked that it happened so fast, but upon reflection, I think it makes perfect sense.

Apparently this season has been the GoT version of Michael Douglas's Falling Down.

Quote from RavenSunHP >>

I am also a huge Pink Floyd fan, and i absolutely like the King Crimson, but not as much.

Imo, the Court is a good album, but not as mind-blowing as Ummagumma, or Animals or the Echoes track.

Surely Moonchild gets very close to that.

 You sir have strange tastes in music. I think most people (including the bands themselves, though clearly not yourself) would agree that Ummagumma is Floyd's worst album and Moonchild is the worst song on Court of the Crimson King.

Anyway, this was one of the first albums to take the blues out of rock and replace it with Jazz and classical (the birth of progressive rock). Crimson has several very different iterations, and I often go back and forth as to what I like best, but I love them all! I would check out also Larks Tongues in Aspic (mid-70s, more experimental), Red (a little heavier), Discipline (80s reboot with a new-wave tinge, but still heavy) and their most "recent" The Power Believe (Acid Jazz Metal)

Also if you can find them, concert bootlegs from the late 60s are amazing. The do a bit of jamming, they even released an tire album of different live jams from the middle section of 21st century schizoid man. And hearing them play the classical tune Mars, while destroying their drums, guitars and mellotron is something else entirely.

EDIT: Here's a 60s concert. Mars is the last tune (at 36 min)

Quote from ThisWasTheOnlyUsernameAvailable >>

Rouge is a tricky class to play, even Lackey Rouge takes some getting used to. It's important to know that it's a tempo deck and tempo means making moves not to get control of the board but to get stats into play. You have very limited removal and no healing so you need to make every backstab count as much as possible. Combos are super important as well. Use them for swing turns to swing the board in your favour.

It's never a good idea to go all in and just dump your hand on curve. That will lose you games. You need to play carefully and get max value out of each minion. Force the opponent to make unfavourable trades. SI:7 Agent is only a 3/3 but he can be a big threat on his own or with just one other minion in play.

Knowing when to use Sap is also one of the keys. It's a massive tempo swing card and lets you get back on the front foot but you have to use it correctly. It's one of the cards I see the most misplays with on ladder.

Also, know when to trade and when to go face. You have limited damage and unless there's a taunt in the way you need to hit face with the 'pick.

It's kinda hard to explain in a post but hopefully that helps a little... The pleasure is mine.

 

Quote from 7thSeekerr >>

what ranks are you on? and on what server? what enemies do you face often?

do you use a deck tracker?

if you want to i can watch some games and comment on decisions

generally you want to aim for a swing turn at turn 3-4 with backstab/si7 or sap to switch the tempo to your favour and never let go of the board from there

Quote from RavenSunHP >>

You do not really Control the board. At least, not in any matchup.

You just hold it enough* to reach the Face as hard as possible (and minimize damage on yours).

It's similar to old Miracle Rogue, but faster.

*knowing that "enough" is the key. 

Quote from user-11396338 >>

If you are running into the mirror a lot, Zilliax is strong in that matchup. As is lifedrinker, which is also strong against warrior. I tend to find shadowstep on the weak side so the changes from your list to mine are:

- 1 shadowstep

- 2 deadly poison (although leave this in over rat and togwaggle) 

- 2 hench-clan thug (negative synergy with pick)

- 1 fan of knives (no seeing many token druids or zoos)

+ 2 Evil cable rats

+ 2 life drinkers

+ 1 togwaggle

+ 1 zilliax

In terms of playing the matchups, learn which cards are good in specific matchups and look for them (for example backstab is great vs zoo but weak vs warrior). Try your best to learn when to give up on the board and set up leathals with pick double leeroy (plus eviscerstes). Generally you try to get early tempo and push damage in the early game, then transition to hitting face to win. More than happy to try and help further, just let me know.

Good luck, have fun!

 

 

My Crazy Idea: The worst deck competition. Here's how it works.

Phase 1: Deck Submission. Period during witch entrants must submit a deck that it is as bad as possible (i.e., has the worst chance of winning even when played as well as possible). When this phase ends, the decks are all saved into a pool for the next phase.

Phase 2: Tournament. The tournament is similar to Brawliseum/Arena, except that for each game, players are assigned a different random deck from the pool of bad decks submitted in phase 1. Players will never get their own deck, and can review the deck before each match. The goal of the tournament phase is to win as many games as possible with terrible decks!

Phase 3: Prizes. There will two types of awards. For the tournament itself, there will be rewards for winning games (up to 12 maybe?) similar to the current Brawliseum/Arena structure. Players are thus encouraged to play the bad decks they receive as well as they can to win. At the end of the tournament, there will be one or more large/special prize packages awarded to the player(s) that submitted the decks with the lowest win rate throughout the tournament, meaning they were the best a designing the worst possible decks!

The beauty of this format is 1) people have never tried to make intentionally bad decks, so there is no netdeck repository out there---there will be lots of diversity, 2) since players are genuinely trying to win the tournament, the worst decks really will be the ones that players could not win with no matter how hard they tried, and 3) it will highlight the best players as those who can figure out how to win with awful decks they did not design.

Quote from Sipitau >>

I find the meta quite balanced right now and not very Rock Paper Scissors like we’ve seen in the past. 

 Lackey Rogue is being played at higher rate than almost any deck in history. Not sure what this "balance" you speak of is.

Dany's ultimate undoing will be her love of Starbucks

Imma just put this all in spoilers in case:

Quote from b1ak1ce >>

Its a 1.5 mana minion with 3 mana worth of effects. Its just what Wardruid Loti was supposed to be, flexible.

The biggest problem with Zilliax is that it's neutral. If this was a Paladin, Hunter or Warrior card, I don't think people would have any problem. Seeing it in every Warrior deck is nothing like seeing it in EVERY deck, which is the case now. If Wardruid Loti was neutral we would probably see threads like this about that card.

This post is terrible.

Nefarian is dice rolls every turn, hoping to get lucky enough before the other side picks up steam. I played a game where my Nefarian  opponent pulled a turn 1 Dinosize, and that was pretty much it. I got the Brawl quest this week, and so I played 6 matches, went 4-2, and it think it was 3 wins each for each hero. On the whole seemed fairly balanced, but I see how getting bad rolls with Nafarian can make it seem underpowered

I was playing token Druid because it was the most fun I've had in a while. Mirror matches and matches against zoolock are full of tough decisions, minion trading, etc. Every play matters every turn. It's the reason I loved HS in the first place. But as others have said, other decks have gotten too good. Warrior has SO MUCH removal, it's nearly impossible to beat them unless they get super unlucky. Lackey Rogue simply ignores your board and goes face, and unless you get lucky with a Roar, you're not going to win. Even mage is now teching in Pyro, making that matchup less favorable. So i've stopped playing the deck, since half my matches (ranks 3-5) are against Rogue and Warrior

The only reason this card is not totally insane is the Shaman is otherwise fairly weak. This card alone makes Shaman playable, and if Shaman gets other tools in the next few expansions, watch out.

I think I've come to the conclusion, between this and Zilliax (and from Deathstalker Rexxar) that giving minions both rush and lifesteal is too powerful and should be avoided in the future.

As Blizzard has said, they will never buff cards because they can always just print a new card that is better. Betrayal sucks? Ok, here's a new card "disloyalty" that is the same but cost one less. And oh, since its good will make it Epic and make you buy dozens of packs in the hopes of getting it. 

As to whether they should do it, I think no. Buffing cards makes all other cards worse by comparison. Nerfing makes all other cards better. So nerfing, while maybe annoying sometimes, actually increases the play value of other cards in your collection, rather than just making one card better at the cost of all others

From the new VS Report Data Reaper today:

Rogue’s popularity continues to steadily climb, though it’s important to note that at legend, Lackey Rogue seems to have reached saturation. Not even the most powerful decks we’ve seen in the history of the Data Reaper Report managed to eclipse 30% popularity at legend. That popularity is higher at top legend, but at least there are some signs that indicate “enough is enough.”

So yeah, Lackey Rogue (27.37% of decks at Legend) is now one of all-time most played decks for any meta. That rate only drops slightly for ranks 1-4 (23.79%). I'll give it one more week to see if something can show up to make that decline, otherwise, I think its time throw down the nerf hammer. One deck being nearly a third of all decks played is not good for the game.