Hearthpwn

What I will call 'Dumb' decks (which are not just aggro decks) can boil down to a fairly simple set of rules to optimally pilot a deck.  All the strategies start with 'vomit your hand onto the board'.  This is not just aggro, but even some variants of control hunter, secret pally, some raptor rogues, tempo mage, zoolock.  The dumb-deck idea (as I will call it) is that by having a high statistical probability of being able to curve out well with a netdeck curated list of optimal card ingredients, vomiting your hand onto the board on curve and as soon as possible results in a fairly consistent win-rate provided that you follow a uniform set of cookie-cutter rules ( do you ever trade, and into which targets? What do you mulligan for? when do you switch from control to face? Should you be using your hero power?)  

Hearthstone should never be too much like baking.

Dumb deck pilots should well be able to judge what deck their opponent is playing to play around some counters, but the opponent's deck is a secondary consideration - you will not change your play-style that much because there isn't much of a fall-back strategy and dumb decks almost universally are not prepared for games that get anywhere close to fatigue.

When your opponent (smart or not) runs a dumb-deck, you can be confident that if you can make it to turn 9 or so, your odds of winning will go up quickly as you cannot vomit your hand into play indefinitely - these decks have a fairly shallow curve because playing on-curve (vomiting) is so so key (obviously playing on curve can be very important for 'smarter-decks' too, but it is life and death for aggro). 

This is what many (but not all) control decks cannot handle.  The entire game is and early-mid survival match where on-curve threats need to be dealt with efficiently and somewhat immediately.  As a control player, you know that you have the tools in your deck - but it is all about getting those tools at the right time (RNG) enough of the time (winrate).

RNG is an important part of the game - lack of RNG is why chess is actually a dull game and one that can be mastered by memorization of master level games (or so I am told). But too much RNG is a bad thing - all the dumb decks win essentially because of RNG denying slower opponents sufficiently consistent answer-cards (generally higher average card mana cost = less consistent early).  

Renolock takes smart-deck to an equally absurd extreme - it is an extremely consistent deck after, say, turn 7 and you are practically guaranteed to have a far better hand then your opponent at virtually every turn of the game, provided that you don't get run-down by aggro or OTK'd you have an absurdly good chance of winning.

Don't feel too proud of your 'smarts' if you play renolock - it is the deck, not your brain that gets you wins although you do have a wealth of sometimes non-obvious choices to make to pilot the deck to make it to turn 7.

Smart-control is where the game is at fun-wise.  If you live exclusively off of aggro and think it is more fun, you are a scum-bag.  If you play too much tempo mage, you are a scum-bag. But aggro is certainly needed and important because without it decks would get kind-of absurd, especially for new players without the requisite 31 legendaries required to play renolock (sarc.).

BTW I play mostly secret pally and raptor rogue in wild (prefer wild) and renolock, miracle rogue, miracle druid and evolve shaman in standard (though c'thun n'zoth reno control rogue prior to MSG was my favorite).

I would say shiv

that was cool!!

awesome that you can build a miracle deck that can work out okay sometimes even if you don't draw Gadgetzan Auctioneer

This should be insanely obvious but this card is so cool in miracle druid.  really ties the deck together and helps miracle make up for having an otherwise weak and challenging early game.  Miracle druid is so challenged early because you have lots of cheap cards but you know you will wreck yourself if you play too many of them.  but having deal 4 DMG plus card draw (wrath) and summon two tokens plus deal two dmg (living roots) really helps hold things down while you wait for turn six and otherwise try to spend most of your mana trying to ramp.  

Thanks for explaining the irony - I was totally lost without this explanation.

agreed, everyone builds controlish decks assuming they will go first.  I did face a kindof interesting board clear heavy warlock which seemed to be geared to going second or playing defense - but going first is such a huge advantage when you are picking which cards you will play each turn (hint: hunter).

then at the end of the deck I dogpiled a bunch of 9 and 10+ mana cards that I didn't really want or expect just so that from 1-8 there is virtually perfect certainty about what i will draw (also with no or little card draw/discovery)

Rafaam is pretty brutal of a 9 drop and taking the deal 10 random damage as a finisher.

It isn't the same as sally, it is better than sally.  If you really want an OP sally, just play sally  you can buff her in hand and put up with the slowness of deathrattle instead of an OP aggro-destroying abomination of OPness.  Unless you nerf the card to a 1-1 like sally it doesn't fit at 3 cost (and only then getting the battlecry (as a better version of sally would) would only be 'fair' given that it is a hunter only card.

Patches would be worthless if there was a AOE 1 dmg battlecry sally that anyone could play.  It would also be quite unfair to paladin which is getting a ton of cards that invalidate its otherwise good hero power.

You know how the new pally decks love to handbuff?

Devolve makes them cry.

Quote from Scarhound >>

Argh sorry to hear that you haven't hit N'Zoth enough! (apart from that Priest, who are just Old God targets anyway).

A no N'Zoth version would be a bit more aggro I'd say - the closing statement is to put N'Zoth down and win next turn. Interesting thought - might see what I can come up with.

How'd you get on with the deck since then?

- Scar

Good old face hunter actually works pretty well - everyone is expecting midrange or control hunter and people have made big dumb mistakes playing to a longer game.

Weird there can be a surprise factor from a positively retro deck archetype.  You can put in some of the newer cards too.  

I have surprising success with the camel!!  Apparently mages aren't running mana worm and priests aren't running the little card drawer so much anymore!

I HAVE NEVER Played out N'Zoth in this deck - the game will almost always be done before that turn.  Can we have a no n'zoth version ? :-)

Edit: okay maybe once vs Priest

Gadgetzan sucks because of what they did here - they really doubled down on archetype strengths making too many matches predictable.  Control priest out controls midrange - only Aggro or certain 'anti-control' decks will defeat priest.  Aggro looses to midrange and certain anti-aggro control decks.

Paper-rock-scissors.

wow you topped my luck, Thanks for making my pack opening seem like a lucky strike with 2 epics in about as many packs maybe (23).  I thought there was a 'gimme' legend every so often to prevent these streaks of exceptionally bad luck.

not sure why you are being down-voted, way worse than flamestrime

I pwned a buffadin deck with discardlock today.  He buffed his hand like 4 times hitting 3-4 minions almost everytime only to get killed on turn 7 while he barely got any usable value out of all that hand buffing.  

I think people who play hand buff are going to be losing a lot while they are trying to make the most out of their value trap strategy.

Can we just dub that failed strategy the 'value-trap handbuff deck'?  He built his deck to be good early, but he couldn't get a word in edgewise.  He even wiped my board near the end only to die to leeroy + soulfire