Hearthstone Arena Walkthrough: Shaman - game 2

Time for game 2. You should be familiar with this deck and what is going on by now. But if you need a refresher check out the draft here, and game 1 here.

 No coin this time. We're up against a paladin. Only the spirit is keepable and I really dislike mulling everything.

Hearthstone Arena Walkthrough: Shaman - game 1

All right we've got our deck, it's time to battle! I haven't tried recording matches before so we'll see how it goes.

 Mulligan decision time. We're matched up against a priest. The Oozes are just 3/2 for 2 and the only time I want that is early, so I'm keeping them. The windspeaker is a finisher so it's out. The Feral Spirit is just fine especially because I'm on the coin. Basically in the shaman the coin is what you use to mitigate the overload.

Hearthstone Arena Walkthrough: 12 ways to make your arena run last longer

Buckle in everybody, this one is going to be loooooooooooooooong. I did a shaman arena run and recorded EVERYTHING. We're going to start with the draft portion then subsequent posts will cover the match results. For each pick I'm also including what AntiGrav1ty (of https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AifXEOqTcGcLdFVvWk1GRjVJTHJUaTVLcGViR1RRTFE&gid=17 fame) would do. And by that I mean all things being equal - I'm just stating his pick order preference, not taking judgment calls into account. Let's Go!

should we get on this?

http://www.arenamastery.com/index.php

or something similar?

or this? http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/arena-strategy/441-hearthstone-arena-tracker

is it time to update our spreadsheet?

Hearthstone Deck Tech

How the hell did this pile of poo get 7 wins. I give up.

their class

coin

win

lose

prior wins

prior losses

note

2/22/2014	18	paladin	hunter	0	1	0	0	0	he quit on T4
2/22/2014	18	paladin	paladin	0	0	1	1	0	WHY CANT I GERT A timely consecrate
2/22/2014	18	paladin	shaman	1	0	1	1	1	yuck
2/22/2014	18	paladin	warlock	0	1	0	1	2	thrallmar + blessing king + blessing wizsdom
2/22/2014	18	paladin	paladin	1	1	0	2	2	horrible start - no chance
2/22/2014	18	paladin	shaman	1	1	0	3	2	too much early overload for him
2/22/2014	18	paladin	hunter	1	1	0	4	2	he got me to 5, but i withstood his baron gedon
2/22/2014	18	paladin	rogue	0	1	0	5	2	kept a consecrate - drew 2 4 drops
2/22/2014	18	paladin	druid	0	1	0	6	2
2/22/2014	18	paladin	mage	0	0	1	7	2	he went mana wurm then coin, yeoch - he had front foot - T6 blizzard - T9 blizzard - T10 flamestrike - Then Ragnaros - boooooo

Hearthstone Arena, What's the Pick?

Hearthstone Arena: 8 win mage

Here's my 8 win mage deck.

Here are my notes

their class

coin

win

lose

prior wins

prior losses

note

mage	0	1	0	0	0	easy peasy
paladin	0	1	0	1	0	T8 double balled him
druid	1	1	0	2	0	brutal flame strike on T7 --> concession
shaman	1	0	1	3	0	drew the shitty part or my deck - he was all fire elementals
druid	0	1	0	3	1	took forever, coulda used burn earlier - or polymorph
shaman	1	1	0	4	1	lost comment
shaman	0	1	0	5	1	polymorhphed his earth elemental - game - over
warrior	1	1	0	6	1	crushed him didn't even eneed my burn
hunter	1	0	1	7	1	forgot i was against a hunter. went too slow
mage	0	1	0	7	2	got front foot and kept it. ended with pyroblast and fireball and flamestrike in hand
mage	1	0	1	8	2	REMATCH FROM PREVIOUS - didn't get my good stuff this time

Modern Deck Tech: Young Pyromancer Scapeshift

Hi all! It's been a while since Ive contributed much to the blog. I have not been seriously dedicated to Magic for a while. I gave up on Theros limited when I couldnt win a match, but probably should give it a fresh try with Born of the Gods. I have been playing some (and reading a lot) about Standard. I went to the January 11th PTQ and audibled last minute to Esper Humans. I was very happy with this choice as I felt it crushes fast aggro and UWx control. I started out a quick 3-0 and then drew with Esper Control in a game three where I think I would have won had I not over extended into a Verdict. After picking up my forth win against Mono Black Devotion, I lost three straight to Esper Control (with a great sideboard plan featuring Nightveil Specters and Blood Barons), Rwg Devotion (that seems like a hopeless match-up, though I made the mistake of not killing a Stormbreath at first chance and allowed him to get +4 mana off of Nykthos, which he used to play another Stormbreath), and last round to Mono Blue Devotion (of which I was quite on tilt and dont remember much). All in all the deck is very fun, maybe it is the fact that I have almost never played aggro, but something like Soldier of the Pantheon into Thoughtseize and a Temple feels really good. I dont know where the deck goes from here, cutting a color to be WU or WB is an option, Brimaz is obviously good, and Ephara seems like exactly what the deck needed to avoid late game flood. There is another PTQ March 1st, but I dont think I will be able to make it. On the other hand I will most likely attend the SCG Open on March 15-16.

Speaking of, my birthday present to myself was a Legacy deck!! After reading Drew Levin's articles about getting into Legacy I realized that not only is Dredge exactly my kind of deck, but it is by far the cheapest Tier ~1.5 deck out there. I am at heart a combo player who learns well by hours of goldfishing, determining keepable hands, lines of play etc. But this is not the reason for this post!

This coming weekend is the Pro Tour in Valencia, featuring the Modern format for its constructed portion. Despite the bashing it gets, Modern has been my favorite format since I started playing again a year ago. This again has to do with my leanings toward combo decks and the fact that Standard has zero of them. For the Modern Grand Prix in Portland last spring I put together an Eggs deck, spent hours and a few practice tournaments preparing, only to have Second Sunrise axed a week or so before the event. Splinter Twin may have been the next obvious choice of combo deck, but I instead fell quite in love with Scapeshift. The GP didnt go great, lack of prep with the deck and major lack of sleep, but I was inspired. The core of the combo is seven lands and a Scapeshift. This means there is a lot of flexibility of what you do up until that point. The traditional Scapeshift deck tries to get there as quickly as possible via the ramp of Sakura Tribe Elder, Farseek and Search for Tomorrow. I feel the weakness of the deck is its lack of interaction and inconsistency. Sometimes you are ramping up mana and die to a couple Tarmagoyfs. Sometimes they Thoughtseize your Scapeshift and you die waiting to topdeck another. This led me to think about building a Scapeshift control deck: instead of ramping as quickly as possible into your combo, you sit back and interact with your opponent and slow them down with cheap counters and bounce until you just naturally get to seven lands and then kill them on the spot.

A hard control deck with an ultimate win condition:

4 Young Pyromancer
4 Snapcaster Mage

2 Spellsnare
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mana Leak
4 Remand
4 Cryptic Command

4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Scapeshift
1 Life from the Loam
1 Noxious Revival (or Call to Mind/ Mystical Retrieval)

4 Steam Vents
4 Stomping Ground
3 Breeding Pool
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Mountain
1 Island

Young Pyromancer is beautiful here. Most decks using him lean on his aggro/tempo characteristics. This deck aims to abuse the controlling effect of generating free chump blockers while playing a normal counterspell game. Bolting a Wild Nactl and getting a 1/1 to chump their Tarmagoyf seems like a great investment for R. Using Gifts Ungiven seems like a flexible and powerful option without much downside now that Deathrite is gone. It maybe that the three Gifts should just be Scapeshift and the two other cards just some more interruption or draw, but I think it is worth testing, and I sure hate getting a hand clogged with two Scapeshifts. The ability to Gifts for Loam and Ghost Quarter against UWR control or Tron is extremely powerful, although may need to be regulated to the board. There may also need to be two Regrowth options so that a gifts for Scapeshift/Snapcaster/Noxious Revival/Call to Mind works through a Thoughtseize. Mystical Retrieval gets around this issue, but is more awkward when they put it in your hand as it plus Scapeshift is now 8 mana. I dont know about Probe, it seems awesome with Pyromancer, and information is invaluable in a deck like this, but it may need to be more interactive.

The mana base is very rough. The mountain count is one extra than Sharfman's GP San Diego Top 8 list, but he admitted that was low, and you need to remember that all his ramp was searching out a disproportionate ratio of non-mountain lands. We probably require at least one more mountain in place of the Cascade Bluffs or Ghost Quarter, if the latter is moved to the board.

Some options Ive thought about adding include: Spell Pierce, Repeal, Izzet Charm, Electrolyze, and Think Twice, as well as adding an Academy Ruins for a Gifts target along with something like Engineered Explosives. Spell Pierce seems a little too narrow when I really need to interact with what ever my opponent does in the early turns due to a lack of sweepers, undoubtedly in the board though. Repeal is probably my top choice to fit in, I have always been a fan of this card as a catch-all since it did duty in the board of my Dragonstorm deck back when Guildpact first came out. It is always mana inefficient, but the extra card, possibly two with Pyromancer, and the flexibility makes it worth a slot or two. Izzet Charm and Electrolyze fall under a heading of not passing the Wild Nactl test (and the fact that Deathrite was one of their favorite targets). Think Twice just seems weaker than Gitaxian Probe, although it is an instant and yields card advantage.

I by no means thing this deck is broken, nor have I tested it at all, I just think it is a powerful take on utilizing Scapeshift and Young Pyromancer, and if anything like it surfaces in Valencia Id like to say I had the idea independently. The two major questions testing needs to answer is whether this is an upgrade to the game plan of traditional Scapeshift, and whether traditional reanimation packages are better targets for Gifts. One thing I know is that Gifts Ungiven is going to show up much more then naively expected this weekend.

Questions? Comments? (Sorry no links to cards Im too busy!)

Hearthstone Arena, What's the Pick?

Welcome back. You know the drill by now!

I went King Krush, I was disappointed.

Hearthstone is Gatecrash!

Want to know a secret? Hearthstone is Gatecrash. Gatecrash is Hearthstone.

I came to this conclusion a little while ago, when Brian and Marshall were wrapping up 2013. In Gatecrash limited, the two-drop was king. There were so many great two-drops that if you didn't have a two-drop, it meant you were falling behind with a good chance of never catching up. Because the Boros deck had a sick 3/2 for 2, even mediocre two-drops became must-haves, even in decks that didn't want vanilla bears.

Like this guy in a controlling Orzhov or Dimir deck

In Hearthstone, because the mana available is always increasing, if you fall behind it is very difficult to get back to an even footing, which is why cards like these guys become a lot more desirable:

I'll play either happily

The board-control style I play loves these guys. They let us get to the end game without dying first, so that we can get a chance to outplay our opponents. And on the occasion when the Villain does not have an early drop, these give us the board presence that we need to start whittling away at that life total or hopefully trading up for the villain's next creature.

Hearthstone Arena: Two recent break even decks

Welcome Back!!! Let's talk arena deck building. Today we have two decks a 7 win mage and a 9 win Shaman. I'm not really sure how different a 7 win deck is from a 9 win deck, or a 5 win deck for that matter. There is a lot of variance going on here. Anways I'm just going to review the decks and give them a general classification. I'm starting with Aggro, MidRange, and Control. I would say my default strategy for the arena is to play MidRange.Let's go!

Hearthstone Arena: What's the Pick

Welcome back everyone to another edition of What's the Pick? As always highlight below to see my opinion (I know it's not mobile friendly, but whatever).

We start off with a gross one.

 I went for the 1 drop because it is the least bad. Maybe the Mana wraith is a better call

12-win Hunter deck breakdown

I used to think I knew what was good and what was bad in Hearthstone Arena. But then I drafted what I thought was an unexciting Hunter deck and as you already knew from the title of this post, cruised to a 12-2 record.

Let the Hunt Begin! For your consideration, here is the decklist:

Not that good-looking, right?

Even now, looking at the list, I can't figure out why it won. I have seven hunter-class cards, no beast theme, and plenty of chaff. Going in, I decided to skip out on all but the best Hunter cards and stick to beefy neutral guys.

I chose Hunter over Druid and Warrior because I had two daily quests for that class and I am all about killing two birds with one stone. Early on in the draft, I passed up on Scavenging Hyena and then immediately following that, skipped a Starving Buzzard. Those guys can be conditionally great and if I already had a couple Unleash the Hounds, then I would be all for it (don't play one in game without the other if you can). But early in the draft, I picked solid neutral minions instead.

Cards that were crap most of the time:

• Young Priestess - So much worse than Blood Imp. She was up against Master Swordsmith and Alarm-o-bot, and I'm not in love with extra power, so I tried her out. I thought I might get some taunt to protect her, but that never happened.
• Leper Gnome - This ugly little guy feels better than the priestess, but he's actually just worse, right? I think since he has no big upside I don't mind trading him off early, even for a hero power because it gains me tempo.
• Explosive Trap - The way I play, I don't leave a bunch of 2-toughness dudes on the other side of the board. This was great against one shaman and I set it up with my warrior opponent on 2, but otherwise it was a sometimes one-for-one.
• Questing Adventurer - One time he got big and dominated, but otherwise he just sat in my hand until I played him and one other card late in the game. In Rogue he can be sweet early.

Hunter cards that stood out as good value:

• Unleash the Hounds - The current version is strong to very strong. Once I picked up my second one, I started looking for beast and neutral combos. I only found one Cult Master and one Stormwind Champion, but they made this good spell backbreaking.
• Deadly Shot - Since I play for board control, this is a real sweet removal spell. I did not cast it one time where the Random Number Generator came into play. It likes to take out real big dudes that can't be dealt with otherwise and usually at a mana advantage.
• Eaglehorn Bow - Number of times the secret trigger happened: 0. Number of times I cared: 0. If Fiery War Axe cost 3, I would still run it ALL DAY LONG.
• Beast Command - If you don't already know, this thing can turn up one of three beasts that are all really good for 3 mana, but you have no control over which you get: 4/4 taunt, 4/2 charge, or 2/4 with the Raid Leader ability. 
• Savannah Highmane - Is this a nod to Savannah Lion? I hope not; it is much stronger, obviously. Maybe Blizzard is poking fun at MtG because a lion should be so much stronger than a 2/1.

Otherwise I had a bunch of strong neutral minions: see 2x Yeti, 3x 3/3s for 3 with upside, Stormwind Champion, Frostwolf Warlord, Acidic Swamp Ooze, 2x two-mana card drawers and two pandas. My style is to play a Wolf Rider or a Swamp Ooze or a Novice Enigneer, then immediately Panda it back to keep it from being vulnerable.

Memorable plays:

• In round 11 against a shaman, Villain had a 2-power weapon, a cult master, and a shielded Argent Commander against my lone fresh Savannah Highmane. He attacked my face and left me at 6. On my turn, I got a 6/6 for three, taking the divine shield away, Oozed his weapon, and Unleashed two Hounds to kill his weapon, the Cult Master, and the Commander, leaving me with a 6/1 lion and a 6/6 knight, I didn't have enough mana to Cult Master also, but it was in my hand.
• In round 13, Instead of controlling the board, I got a warrior down to 2 with an Explosive Trap set but had burned through almost all of my cards in hand and the Villain had a big board presence. This may have been wrong. He saw the trap for what it was and did not attack, but he was locked unless he could gain some more life since his ability of gain two life cancels out my deal two to his face. I just needed to draw a hasty creature or weapon. The charge minion could be negated by taunters, but I got beast command and got the right guy to face him. 
• In round 14, my paladin opponent cast t1 Abusive Sergeant, t2 Blessing of Wisdom. I did the only thing in my power, which was to Unleash a single Hound on my t2 to trade one-for-one, since Villain already drew a card. Villain got me down to 2 life and thought he had it won, but I stabilized with a timely Dark Iron buff and my weapon and I won at 2.

Cult Master plus Unleash the Hounds won several matches on the back of raw card advantage. Unleash also plays good board control when things start to get out of hand, usually if a Villain gets some tasty trades that leave him with high-power, low-toughness minions.

I won 3x warrior, 3x shaman, 2x paladin, warlock, priest, mage, and rogue. I lost against a druid and a paladin. 330 gold loot drop, plus 100 gold from quests makes for a successful run.

Hearthstone Uncommon Situations

So when playing I've come across some unusal situations. Let's take a look. First off we have a strong T1 play

winner winner

next up we have a piece from the dangerous but tasty all in collection. 

 That questing has has like 4 cards of value in it. Too bad I'm about to drop a silence owl

One game even went so long that we both hit fatigue

 what makes me mad about this one is that I blundered it away a few turns prior.

Sometimes you gotta roll the dice...

sometimes they shoot you in the face.

 This dude let me hang around for like 5 turns

 eventually I drew the burn I needed.

I don't know if you are familiar with Gorehowl

but right here.

we've got a solid 7 for 1

that's all for today.

Hearthstone oddities

I don't know how much longer we will have the beta for but let's enjoy it while we can.

look ma no 4s

\that's all for know

Limited Resources says M14 was the best set of the year

and I agree. I had more fun drafting M14 than any of the other sets. Gatecrash was super lame. Dragon's Maze was mind melting. Theros was blah. M14 was ... magical!  But why?

First let me say that I think the format is much healthier when you are drafting three packs of the same set (cube and grab bag aside, we're talking tournament booster draft here). To illustrate why thing about Dragon's Maze. Gatekeepers were a thing. In particular that green one with gain 7 life was quite good. However the concentration of gates in the subsequent packs was quite low. In order to play with the gimick from Dragon's Maze I had to draft it and the gates heavily in the first pack, then for the rest of the draft that part just disappeared. Of course this effect was exacerbated by the colors of your deck getting set and then making some gates just not useful at all except for the gatekeeper ETB. Basically the point is if you only have one pack then the bloc synergies need to feel real strong otherwise you just feel like you're drafting grab bag (which is cool by the way, but that's a topic for another blog).

More importantly, when the Wizards are building the core sets they agree to only work with known quantities. There of course are some new cards but the mechanical underpinnings and the color philosophy of the set are all well established. Because they understand their tools really well when building a core set they know just what is needed to fix deficiencies in the draft format.

When they make a new expansion it is like Michelangelo working with a digital artwork platform. When they make a core set it is like Michelangelo working in Marble. Which would you rather draft?

Hearthstone Arena Resurgence

Well we went through a bit of a drought in the Arena. But thanks mostly to Caruthers we are back on the front foot. Check out our recent results.

Always nice to see another 12 in our results. Now I'm behind and need to catch up. I also want to focus on my recent 9 win warrior deck. Take a look

I hated this deck when I drafted it. I stand behind the cards in the deck I just don't like the distribution. It is poised to dominate the early game, but if we get past turn 8, uh oh.

I was surprised to win my first three games and figured I was just getting lucky. But I kept winning. Most of the wins were based off of tempo. I was essentially guaranteed to dominate the early game. Then as long as I drew a little bit of reach I could close it out. There was a close one against a 3x Swipe Druid but I was still hanging on. 

My first loss came from some poor mulliganing and poor drawing that left me with a super awkward hand. 2/3 for 3 and the like. Then I went back to the winning form until I got steam rolled. Again I didn't mull well and then he just played better cards than I did, so on T7 I was behind. Then he dropped a ragnaros. oops. In the last game I was up against a mage and I didn't even win he early game. He just had all the right answers to my dudes and I was sunk.

I feel like this deck is good at grinding out a few wins and I got some good draws/luck and manage to return a solid overperform. It feels like there is no way this deck does less than 5 wins, but no way it could possibly win more than 9. You just run up against some legit cards and it is all over.

I want to finish by giving a bit shout out to GOREHOWL!!!

That bad boy is the real deal. Twice I whittled it down to 0 power. Man does a 7 for 1 feel good. And that late there is plenty of extra mana to sink into Armor so that I wouldn't die. A typical turn was kill his dude, armor up, drop a creature. That is a winning recipe.