Hearthpwn

Man this is nasty. Constantly keeping tabs on your opponent's hand can be worth a card in itself and it will be a real skill tester on how greedy you intend to be. Will you take their boardclear now or do you hope to get their DK before they play it? Obviously really hard to get right since your opponent is always motivated to play the strongest, most on-curve thing every turn, making it less likely you steal their on-curve play before they can play it. You can't play their Bloodreaver Guldan before 10 mana if you get it and when they hit 10 mana, they might play it right away. But I expect this to be really obnoxious.

Quote from Kwakdizzle >>

I haven't checked, but don't basically all minions run in any priest deck have more health than attack? So this card doesn't really pose a deck building constraint, it fits in most priest decks and, like Keleseth, is a highroll to make the rest of your deck that much better if drawn on time.

Quote from Kwakdizzle >>

I haven't checked, but don't basically all minions run in any priest deck have more health than attack? So this card doesn't really pose a deck building constraint, it fits in most priest decks and, like Keleseth, is a highroll to make the rest of your deck that much better if drawn on time.

This has some cute applications such as your Doomsayers hitting back for 7 if opponent wants to clear them, or most dragon minions like Ysera becoming bloody huge not just in terms of effect but damage as well, but I'm not seeing it becoming a big role player. It might find a place in some decks that just so happen to have a lot of high health minions by nature but I don't think you can afford building around this, as most of your cards would be shit before this drops. It's definitely not for Inner Fire priest and no OTKs are happening from this, since the natural use of Inner Fire is after health buffs, while this comes before them. It's just a stat booster in decks where it makes sense, not a build around. It's also funny in Priest mirrors in Wild, as after you play this, your entire deck dies to Lightbomb.

It's not even how long it takes to complete or what your deck has to look like. I've spent a lot of time trying to make that deck work in wild and I've gotten it down to a science to complete it every time by turn 4. The real issue is, once it is completed...it isn't even that good. You get AoE'd twice and all 15 raptors are dead and that's if you chain them together. More than likely you get 2-3 and then end up with a 1 drop in hand while your opponent is merrily dropping 5-7 drops that you have to trade 1 for 3 into unless you get Tundra Rhino and just go face.

So...um...why is this legendary? And not, you know...a common, maaaybe rare, like it should be considering the power level. Seriously, this does feel like Mercadian Masques all over again. Is Blizz trying to dial down the power level of the game? Cause until the powerful sets rotate out, shit like this will see no play. And we've seen this card after card after card. There HAVE to be some supporting pieces we haven't seen yet, cause otherwise this set is just sad.

Good, this was pissing me off. The last thing I needed on my climb to rank 5 was to get matched up against a top 200 legend player four times in a row (two different players twice) just before hitting rank 5 last night. And for the legend players it was just as bad cause winning didn't get them jack and losing hurt like hell.

I don't get this. Does everyone have the memory of a goldfish? Wild Arena is nothing new, we had Wild Arena the whole time until things finally got so bad that they had to switch it to Standard to limit the card pool. Wild Arena was a shitshow, there were so many cards that there was no point playing around anything, and most decks were just a random conglomeration of stats cause god forbid you get any synergy between any of your pieces. Now, a once in a lifetime opportunity, a blast from the past, for a limited time only: you can go back to playing something that we know sucked...what's there to be happy about? The Brawls, sure, those are nice. But the Arena?

Yauch! Good, bye, Creeper. I mean, that card HAD to be nerfed, but I expected some mild mana tinkering or change in its discount mechanic. A nut punch for 3 attack is savage, and I like it. Will still do wonderfully in Evolve Shaman and Midrange Beast Hunter but I think we can forget seeing that bastard anywhere else. And good riddance.

As for Patches, I still wish they did something about Southsea Captain instead. Not having Charge is impactful for early trades, obviously, but against control or slower decks, it's only a difference of 1 or 2 damage and it's still a free tempo card. Not sure it's enough, but seeing as I got a golden Patches from a pack, I definitely welcome the free 3200 dust.

Bonemare is still an abomination in my eyes but the way I see it, the competition at 8 mana is so stiff that Bonemare is going to neigh its way right out of plenty of decks.

The definite highlight of these, despite the savagery they unleashed upon Creeper, is Raza. Oh boy does that completely turn the deck upside down. Suddenly Priest's usual turns cost 3-4 mana more than they would have. It's sad that the beautiful and comforting feeling of gradual stabilisation goes away when you played Raza on 5 against aggro, and then had a free face heal every turn, but I guess it's a price worth paying to see machine gun Priest take one to the nuts. Now Shadowreaper will be more of a successor to Shadowform Priest, as it should have been, and win via exhaustion rather than upwards of 30 to the face in one turn. Now I won't feel dirty playing that deck in Wild with Dragon Soul, Lyra and Saraad.

As for Jade Druid and Warlock, I'm quite fine with these not being touched. Several of the decks that took a hit had essentially no axis for counterplay (outside of lucky Dirty Rats on Raza that were essentially a suicide to play against Tempo), while you can wreck Jade Druid and Warlock quite easily with some proper tech choices in your flex slots. With several of these decks taking a major hit in power, it will be much easier to target Warlock with tech and shut it down without immediately getting devoured by Tempo. Dirty Rats, Skulking Geists, transform effects, mill...Warlock can be taken down, in both Wild and Standard.

The only other card I wish was touched but wasn't is Cobalt Scalebane but seeing as Bonemare, Patches and Creeper all took a hit in those decks, it's possible Scalebane as the one power card left is fine. Both Keleseth and Spiteful Summoner have quite a hefty price associated with them in terms of deck construction, allowing you good insight into what options your opponent has against you (e.g. flooding a board with mid-sized minions against Big Spell Priest is very safe due to their lack of proper AoE, Rogue can't really burst you out of hand without Eviscerates, or get through your taunts without Saps, etc.), where Scalebane is just a standalone powerhouse. We shall see if Scalebane even has a home though.

While the system change isn't quite Shadowverse levels of good, it seems pretty damn good to me. For those who haven't tried Shadowverse, here's how their system works, and here are some of the pros and cons of it (the info on Master Ranks may be incorrect, I never got that far).

Like in Hearthstone, Shadowverse has rank floors. Say you're in rank C. Once you reach the maximum of your rank, i.e. maximum points (read, Stars) in C3, you face 3 (or is it 4?) trials. If you win 2, you progress to the next rank, in this case B0. Once you've passed those rank promotion trials, you won't derank from there. You can derank between B0, B1, B2, B3, but you are locked within that B rank now. Unlike Hearthstone, the ladder does not reset every month unless you're at Grandmaster rank (in which case you drop to Master Rank and have to climb to Grandmaster again). Once you've broken through the trials to a given rank, you stay at that rank forever, even if you take a 6 month break (like me).

The benefit of this system is that new players or players with small collections will NEVER play an experienced player with a large collection unless that player creates a smurf account. If you're playing at D rank, you're playing against people who are just as green as you are, since the more experienced players have long filtered through to higher ranks...unless they just don't play ranked and they build their collection and experience through the Arena. In that case, they'll storm through the ladder very fast and you'll never see them again. The downside of the system is that if you happen to brew yourself a pretty good deck and you climb high with it, you may find yourself forever locked in a region of the ladder where your other homebrews can't get a word in and you have to either play a really good deck and play it well or you'll just be the local punching bag. There is no falling down from there to a rank where you'd be more comfortable. Once you've beaten your way through the ladder to a given rank, that's where you're at. This brings an additional problem of taking a break. If you don't play the game for a while and your collection starts severely lagging behind, your return could be a painful one if the decks you used to play are no longer successful. Thankfully Shadowverse is very generous and you get TONS of free gold and packs constantly to allow you to catch up, but it can be a problem regardless. If you take a break in this new Hearthstone ladder system, you'll gradually demote to a rank where you can get by with an outdated collection and probably still do fine thanks to being more experienced.

TLDL: I like it. No more climbing from rank 17 every darn month on my way to rank 5 and occasionally stumbling into Legend players at rank 16 or so. The system also makes taking breaks easier, since you won't be hitting a wall at 20 the moment you get back. Most of the frequent and experienced players will be at single digit ranks forever so you never have to face them and their thick, throbbing decks.

Quote from Neths >>

It also showed luck can play a massive role.

Frozen had match point (leading 2-1) & was about to stabilize. Surrender's only rescue was arguably a living mana top-deck followed by a mark of the lotus. The odds of him drawing those two cards is the odds of drawing living mana = 2/19 = 10.5% times the odds of drawing a mark of the lotus = 1/18 = 5.5%. 10.5% x 5.5% = 0.5%.

In the third game he got keleseth in his opening hand and it was the third card = 1/28 = 3.6%. Then he top-decked shadowstep = 2/27 = 7.4%. The odds of this combination = 3.6% x 7.4% = 0.3%.

Correct me if im wrong. 

And what's your point? That the luck of the draw plays a big role in card games? What a novel thought. I'm sure this will send waves throughout the community and inspire big changes in card games across the board...like Poker. If you can't handle victories and losses being decided by what ammunition you happen to draw in any given game in any given order, why are you playing or watching a card game? It's inherent in the fucking design, the entire process of deckbuilding is based around achieving as much consistency with your strategy as possible. Why is this even an argument?

...except it works completely differently in Hearthstone than in MTG...but hey, let's not let facts get in the way of our arguments, right?

The reason for not keywording this is pretty clear...I mean...they spell it our right there in the text. My guess as to why people here in the comments are still arguing for it suggests they either didn't even read it or didn't get it so let me repeat: " It's sort of a strange concept to begin with that something can be targeted by a battlecry or an attack but not by a spell." . There's a big damn difference between being untargetable and being untargetable ONLY by spells or hero powers. Not only does Shroud in Magic often have reminder text right there on the card - so there's no need to mouse over shit like there is in HS...and remember, HS isn't just a PC game, reading this shit on your phone can be a bitch - but Magic's Shroud does not affect hero powers (cause there aren't any) but affects ALL targeted abilities (also, they don't print Shroud anymore but that's beside the point). It doesn't work the same in Hearthstone. Battlecries work just fine and using the Shroud keyword would obfuscate that.

Now say you're a multi-gamer. You play Magic, Hearthstone, Shadowverse, Duelyst, what have you. All of the games keyword their abilities, but generally there is a good deal of overlap. Now imagine that Taunt worked in blocking all minions in Hearthstone but Ward did not work on Stealthed minions or Storm minions in Shadowverse. Since it's not spelled out on the card but is keyworded, you'd miss that shit ALL THE TIME when switching between games. If that lack of correspondence in mechanics happens often enough, it becomes pretty fucking frustrating to multi-game, as anyone playing multiple MOBAs or ARPGs would tell you. Having overlap among keywords is good as long as they work the same way. Even a slight bit of difference and the fact that you don't spell out the text makes gameplay worse. Also don't see why there's even an argument, seeing as the keyword wouldn't even appear on any cards that see play.

Play Taunt Druid, put in this along with Hadronox, Dragonhatcher (two Primordial Drakes in the deck) and whatever 1 attack minion you want, maybe Tar Creeper, maybe Stubborn Gastropod. If you're playing Wild, you can also add Sludge Belchers in case you already got your Hadronox in hand (you can also fetch hadronox with Curator). If you have Hadronox in play, you can pop her with Carnivorous Cube, get two more Hadronoxes later. After you're done with all that madness, just play N'Zoth and get an army of Belchers and Hadronoxes (and a Cube). Granted, you'll get shot to pieces by Raza Priest or OTKed by Quest Mage, but at least you tried to have fun with control for a few moments before you realised that all control gets dumped on by those two fucking decks.

This card is made for Miracle-type Control Rogues in my opinion. You obviously want to have a lot of draw to keep getting this back again and again, and the existence of Auctioneer partly negates the price you have to pay to run Leeching Poison and Deadly Poison, as both are cheap spells for draw and get replaced by Auctioneer. Once properly buffed, especially in Wild, you can have upwards of a 10/3 or 11/4 (Captain Greenskin) Lifeleech weapon that your opponent can't ever really get rid of. IT essentially becomes your win condition as you punch your opponent repeatedly in the face with it and keep healing back up. One issue is, with this thing out you essentially lose your hero power. So while other classes will be able to extract some minor incremental values turn after turn with their leftover mana, you won't have that opportunity. I was really hoping weapon rogue could be a thing when they started revealing the weapon enchantments last expansion, but now it might actually be happening. Provided you can draw this consistently enough.

When facing control though, it ran the opposite problem of being ok early and losing late once it runs out of threats. This gives it a TON of threats all in one package.