Hearthpwn

Two questions for this deck: 

When facing Guldan, do you keep Whirling Zapomatic in your starting hand? Seems to get dark-bombed everytime. 

Also, when facing handlock, do you go all out on damage, or do you try to keep them around ~15 while you build your board? I'd been going all out, but handlocks seem to consistently wall up and heal-up. 

Thanks!

I would love to hear his logic behind not playing Dark Cultists. I can't even imagine a hypothetical reason not to play them, but it sure seems to be working for Kolento!

Any suggestions for dealing with Dr. Boom and Rag? I can typically maintain board control through the midgame, but then I have absolutely no answers for the big guys. Curious how you handle them without BGH. 

I completely agree with this logic, but I take it to a stronger conclusion: this card is worthless. It's rare to be overloaded for more than 2. With 2 overload, this is essentially a zero cost spell that does two damage, which is terrible (see: Wisp). Even if you could squeeze an additional mana or two, this, at best, becomes a highly situational Innervate. Given Shaman's struggles with card-draw, I would bet the bank this card sees no use.

No, he climbed up from at least Rank 6 on stream. From what I saw, he didn't face too many fast decks (but I didn't watch all of it). I'm having a very hard time with this deck against face hunters and mech mages, as well as Shamans of any kind. I'm not quite sure how Xixo handled those decks. If anyone has advice, please share.

I think there's a big difference between an early card (Undertaker) being over-powered and a late-game card (Dr. Boom) being over-powered. In my opinion, the first is much more damaging to the game than the second. 

All my decks run answers to Undertaker because of their prevalence. The problem is that if I don't get this answer in my opening hand, the game could literally be out-of-hand by turn 2. That's simply no fun. 

With Dr. Boom, it's definitely a threat and some of my decks run BGH to counter it. But I also have a variety of other ways I can deal with it as well. And so much happens by turn 7 that my opponent playing Dr. Boom may not even have a huge impact on the game at all. And by that stage in the game, it's highly likely that I will have drawn at least some of my potential answers. 

I agree with people who dislike the lack of diversity in the game, though that I imagine will simply be improved with more cards. Overall, I think undertaker deserves special criticism simply because of how it can (not *will* but *can*) win a game by turn 2. 

Quote from suckachump »

Undertaker -> 1/1 or 2/1 to at least be vuln to t1 hero powers.

Mad Scientist -> Mage class card (give pallies a version if you need to, but Hunters do NOT need access to it).

I absolutely love both of these ideas.

My two best decks right now (Quartermaster Paladin and Ramp Druid) have both relied significantly on Piloted Shredder as the primary 4-drop minion. But, after playing around a bit, for both desks, I'm increasingly of the opinion that Sen'jin is simply a better 4-drop.

The "stickiness" value of the Shredder is certainly clear, and definitely helps with setting up the signature combo, but even so, I'm finding that it suffers from two significant drawbacks. First, with three health, the Shredder dies easily to most two-drops and a variety of damage spells. More importantly, however, I'm finding that the sheer number of terrible 2-drops makes the deathrattle effect unreliable at best, and downright damaging at worst. Loremaster Cho and Doomsayer are weirdly *frequent* results of the deathrattle, and almost always to my own detriment.

Anyways, I'm curious if anyone else has put any thought into this. 4-drops remain probably the most flexible part of my decks, and I'm looking for cards that give me better value than Shredder. Personally, I'm thinking that Sen'jin is it, at least in the rush-heavy part of the ladder where I play (Ranks 5-10). 

Has Blizzard actually ever buffed a card (honest question).

I've been playing a lot with Bolvar for this season, mostly in ranks 7-9. I think my final opinion is that its a fun, reasonably strong card (it has actually won me several games), but ultimately not one that belongs in a truly competitive deck. It ultimately suffers from two very real drawbacks: 

1. It is extremely vulnerable to silence. I know there has been a lot of discussion about this, and usually the counterargument is that a lot of cards can be silenced, so it's unfair to penalize one card for that reason. But, other than Twilight Drake, I can't think of a single other card that suffers as much from being silenced. Certainly not another 5-drop. 

2. It is virtually impossible to play on curve. I'm not sure I have ever managed to play this card on turn 5. The reasons for this are simple. In order to pump up his stats, he needs to be sitting in your hand for at least a few turns. But, especially if going first, keeping him in your opening hand in this meta is virtual suicide. With almost every match-up other than Warrior, you have to mulligan for 1 and 2 drops or you'll get run off the board. And with Warlocks, I generally have to assume I'm not playing against a handlock. So the only way to really play him on turn 5 is to get him with your first couple draws and *then* have enough minions to play and die so that he's a worthwhile play on turn 5. LIke I said, this has never happened for me. And if you play him turn 6 you're essentially wasting a mana. I usually end up playing him turn 7 or later, at which point his 5-cost isn't much of an advantage, since there's not that much to combo him with. 

Overall, I think he's kind of the Legendary equivalent of a Senjin Shieldmaster. Certainly not a bad card, but there's a reason you almost never see him played above rank 10--too many other cards are better.

Depends on what you mean by "viable." I used to get my deathrattle Shaman deck to Rank 6 or 7 pretty regular. Now it fades out around 10. I don't personally consider this a "viable" deck, because I can get others much higher on the ladder. 

Personally, I thought that Shaman was barely viable before and barely viable now, but only if you really know how to play it. 

Quote from keeN_1 »

if ypu consider zoo an ultra-aggro deck I immediately assume you do not know what you are talking about. Tempo and fighting for board control than bursting or attacking with established board is different to aggro like deathrattle hunter and pre-gvg mage. Of course there are different decks but general idea behind decks classified as zoo is not ultra aggro (wth is this anyway, tell me distinct features of aggro vs ultra aggro) to begin with. Too much bs - stopped reading op.

 

You're point's actually well taken, though I think my opinion still has some merit ;). The term "fast" might be better than "aggro" in describing Zoo -- though most of the people I face in ranks 6-10 play it as straight up Aggro. I used "ultra" aggro to describe the change in the game I've noticed since Naxx: namely, that turn one for many decks has turned into an extremely important turn, with the other player's immediate counter being equally important. If you aren't lucky enough to have the right card in your opening hand, then it's very hard to catch back up (for example, a turn five Holy Nova doesn't seem to ever come in time). I don't like having the game mostly decided after just a turn or two, even if it's in my favor. 

As for Mechwarper, I'm actually finding it to be a very difficult card to use properly and no where near as "gamechanging" (again, I don't think Undertaker is actually OP since it's such a terrible draw later in the game) as Undertaker for two reasons. First, when used to summon smaller minions, it just does so quickly but without any kind of snowball effect, so an AOE can catch the other side up pretty quickly. Second, when used with larger minions it's very difficult to plan out the mana curve for an opening hand--a turn 2 mechwarper doesn't actually speed up a Spidertank and if I bank on it summoning my Mechanical Yeti a turn early, then I'm jammed up if it gets removed. I finally took them out of the Mech-Priest deck I've been tinkering with and the deck seemed to actually improve quite a bit. 

As for Arena, I play it a lot, but I really enjoy crafting decks. I just don't like the current emphasis on speed and the importance of getting the right counter in the opening hand. It's why I play a lot of Control Warrior now...like everyone else apparently.

My dream would be for Blizzard to get rid of Undertaker and Nerubian egg (it severely limited the ability of AOE to work as a later turn catch-up), which would make a lot of neat mid-range decks much more viable.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that Undertaker couldn't be beaten, or that there weren't good strategies for doing so. I was more making the point that you can usually tell based on the first two turns whether or not you can stop the Undertaker onslaught (or pull it off) and it's the sheer predictability of the whole thing that turns me off. 

Glad to hear people are enjoying it though. I'm personally finding it very off-putting.

So to put this question in context, I have to be honest with where I'm coming from: I'm getting to the point where I'm wondering whether Hearthstone is fun to play anymore. The basic issue I'm having is the development of the current ultra-aggro vs. anti-aggro meta that has developed. Basically, in playing ladder, you have to either play one of the ultra-aggro decks (zoo, face-hunter) or use one of the decks that counter these decks (basically, Control Warrior or Handlock...are there any others?). I'm thankful that Mech Mage is a thing, just because it's at least kind of different, but I can't play it myself since I have no mage cards. And I like the few Paladin decks I see for the same reason. 

A prime example of this dynamic is Undertaker, which seems to be a feature of almost every serious aggro deck. I've played it myself in a deathrattle shaman and deathrattle priest decks, with reasonable success--got to ranks 6/7 with each without playing too much. But I found that it wasn't fun. If I got a good opening hand (i.e., Undertaker and 1 or 2 deathrattle minions) then my deck rolled. If not, it usually (but not always) failed. This is usually what happens when I go against Undertaker decks. 

So my question to the community is this: Are people having fun with this card? Either playing with or against it? 

I don't actually think the card is technically over-powered, since the number of times it fails probably offsets the number of times it works. But with its power tied so strongly to RNG and the opening hand, it just feels like it takes the fun out of the game. 

So I'm just curious if I'm kind of alone on feeling this way or if there are others out there (particularly those who play with the card) who feel that the strong dynamic of make or break opening hands is kind of ruining Hearthstone.

Cool deck. I really appreciated the guide--should help me make some adjustments to the current Mech Warrior deck I'm trying out. Three questions, if you have time: 

1) How do you get value out of the Warbots? Do you play them turn one or wait? I'm finding that they frequently die to a 3/2 unless I get a quick Taskmaster or feel like using a WW, which on turn 2 is usually just a 2 for 1 trade. 

2) Could you explain what you meant when you said the Korkron Elites are an efficient way of dealing with the Sludge Belchers? I would think that a 4/3 going up against a 3/5 would be less than ideal, since you'd be leaving it with one health.

3) Since I don't have Grommash, I've been trying out Ragnaros. So far, this seems to work, but it's only been because I can usually do a good job of maintaining board control.  Given that I only have about 3000 dust (and have virtually no legendaries), how critical is crafting Grommash?

A final though re: Juggernaut. I understand the criticism of not wanting a mid-range deck to rely on a late game effect, but I've found it's a great fallback for when you can't quite finish the game before the later phase. Numerous times, I've lost control of the board or my opponent has thrown down enough taunts to slow me down forcing a late game. The juggernaut's mine has come through for me on a number of such occasions, and I've only played about 30 games so far. 

Thanks again!