I've actually had an opponent concede on turn 4 after I played two consecutive mana wraiths. A W is a W, I guess they were looking for a faster game.
--Patrick
[PC Game] Hearthstone (Practically Beta)
- Thread starter Ravenpoe
- Start date
--Patrick
If you're going to run Malygos, then I'd highly recommend Emperor Thaurissan. Malygos by himself doesn't do much in this deck. At best, you can play him on turn 9 and shoot 8 magic missiles (though I'd drop them too) before he gets removed. But with an Emperor Thaurissan in hand, you can drop Malygos to 8 mana, frost bolts to 1 mana, and if you include ice lances, they can drop to 0 mana, allowing an amazing combo of Malygos icebolt icebolt ice lance ice lance for 10 mana and 40 damage. Obviously this is a best case scenario, and one you can't count on all the time (which I can attest to since I've been playing a malygos freeze mage of late as well) but the synergy there is just too good. Otherwise, I'd recommend dropping Malygos for something better, like Antonidas if you have him.
I like the theme behind Rend Blackhand, but he's bad. He's not Majordomo bad, but he's still bad. His health is just too low, and 9 times out of ten he's just an overpriced big game hunter that requires you to be holding a dragon to even work. Maybe if low attack legendaries (like Ysera) become more common, he'll find a place, but right now he's just bad.
figmentPez
Staff member
Hearthstone can be very confusing sometimes:
So, heroic Nefarian is pretty tough. Once you break his armor, he summons in onyxia and just starts raining death upon you, and once you defeat onyxia, he clears your board, and you still have to finish off his health. So I just... never broke his armor, until I could land a killing blow.
figmentPez
Staff member
At the start of this season I got the message that I'd made it to rank 9, and that this put me in the top 7% of ranked players. Now, assuming that most players who bother with ladder manage to climb to rank 20 and earn the card back, that means that something close to 90% of all ranked play is taking place between rank 20 and rank 10. This explains to me why the ladder system feels so messed up. The vast majority of players are all lumped together in less than a dozen ranks. No wonder ladder is usually facing net-deck after net-deck, no matter what rank you're playing at.
Well the system does count the people who just play one game or those who only bother playing constructed to 20 making rank 19 top 50% of rank. The problem is that the ladder season is so short and basically gives no rewards. If you want to get to legend you have to play over a hundred games from rank 5 with a 60~ percent win rate. So most don't even bother to rank up. I've tried but I just can't play enough in one month to even get close.
I was listening to that song most of the afternoon. That chu-chu-chu-chu chugga chugga is just so catchy.
Oh man I love playing ridiculous decks. I saw someone mention dusting captain greenskin after reading someone playing mech shaman and then it hit me. Mech/Pirate Shaman. It is funny seeing them trying to choose between mechwarper or ship's cannon to kill. Every time it's been mechwarper followed by me dropping 2 pirates to ruin their day. It's not the greatest deck but the few times I've gotten to greenskin my doomhammer has been great.
If you're just starting out, I would recommend playing arena, and learning what kinds of cards have the most value and how to properly draft for a mana curve. You won't have many cards, making constructed difficult (but not impossible) but in Arena everyone uses random cards. It's not much more expensive than buying packs (150 gold vs 100 gold) and you're guaranteed at least 1 card pack in the process, while doing moderately well will cause you to win some gold and break even, and doing better will make you profit.
http://hearthstoneplayers.com/beginners-arena-guide-choosing-a-class-and-drafting-a-deck/
figmentPez
Staff member
I'd recommend Trump Teachings, although the videos were made before the most recent update, the basics of strategy still apply, and the beginner decks will mostly still work (and should be easy to customize with whatever new cards you've unlocked).
If you want to learn to draft Arena decks, watch his iDraft series. Each of those will walk through an arena draft, giving you time to make your choices (though you should pause the video for even more time) and then explain why each of the choices is better or worse.
My suggestsions:
1. Play ranked during the middle of the month. At the beginning all the previously high ranked players have been knocked down, and at the end there seem to be a lot more people running powerful decks (I don't know if this is a last minute rush to rank up, or if they've gotten bored during the month and smurfed their way back down the ladder to enjoy some easy wins.)
2. Start saving to buy the single player adventures. I wouldn't save all your gold for that, but there are some fantastic cards available from the adventures, and you can know exactly what cards you'll be getting for your gold.
3. Friend all of us Halforumites, so that you have someone to spectate when you get that daily quest. (Also, consider spectating our matches in general, to watch how we play).
4. Reroll quests that you don't like. That little red X up in the corner? That's not a "delete permanently" button. If you get a quest for a class you're not interested in, or you want to try for a quest that will give more gold, you can click that button, and it will give you a new quest (though you can only do it once, unless it glitches, which may have been fixed)
5. Don't go by disenchanting guides! Disenchant cards you don't want to play. Some of these guides throw out all the fun cards! Mindgames, Far Sight, Bane of Doom (which is now a good card, thanks to a buff), Dark Wispers, Blingtron, etc. I've used all of these, and had a lot of fun doing so. Also, some of these lists are just plain wrong. The one I'm looking at now says to disenchant Mind Control Tech... which is bad advice. MCT is a powerful card right now.
figmentPez
Staff member
I don't think anyone has collected them, yet. I'm figmentPez #1379
@Ravenpoe Do you think you could add the battletags to the first post please. Make it easier for new players to find them.
Also something I see a lot is people use their removal on the first thing that pops out or just on face when they are not even close to killing them. Sometimes it is better to trade your minion and drop a bigger one saving your good removal for one of their bigger minions. Anyway just have fun and you can add me too Rovewin#1716
Yeah don't go disenchanting too many things. Just remember that if you have two normals of something and a gold card you can always disenchant the gold card for a lot of dust or just one of the normals if you really like the look of the gold card.
Also something I see a lot is people use their removal on the first thing that pops out or just on face when they are not even close to killing them. Sometimes it is better to trade your minion and drop a bigger one saving your good removal for one of their bigger minions. Anyway just have fun and you can add me too Rovewin#1716
Done, but I'm too lazy to comb through this long-ass thread and find every name. Let me know which ones are missing.
Hey... I beat them the day of. And in the case of Maloriak, the next day, because I got fed up and went to bed.
But yeah, other than that, I'm lazy.
My stats running facehunter last night, rising from Rank 18 or so to rank 10.
Demonlock and Patron warrior are my most unfavorable matchups, but the win % against them is still acceptable. I haven't seen a single druid on the climb, and I've only faced one oil rogue, which is also a very unfavorable matchup. Once I start running into more of those, it will be time to retire the facehunter and move to a different deck.
I've destroyed every other facehunter I've run into (which, as you can see, aren't many). Seems like most running that deck are terrible. The only hunter loss was against a control hunter.
Demonlock and Patron warrior are my most unfavorable matchups, but the win % against them is still acceptable. I haven't seen a single druid on the climb, and I've only faced one oil rogue, which is also a very unfavorable matchup. Once I start running into more of those, it will be time to retire the facehunter and move to a different deck.
I've destroyed every other facehunter I've run into (which, as you can see, aren't many). Seems like most running that deck are terrible. The only hunter loss was against a control hunter.
figmentPez
Staff member
I wish I was running into less druids. I was playing my dragon priest on the ladder for fun and 3 druids, 3 pallies, 1 demonlock, and 1 freeze mage. Each druid started out with a phenomenal turn 1 or 2. It was piloted shredder for 2 of them with the other being thurrisian turn 2. I never thought it'd be a mistake to mulligan away my shadow word death. 
Against a druid, it's usually a good idea to keep stuff like SW: Death, just in case they innervate out something big.I wish I was running into less druids. I was playing my dragon priest on the ladder for fun and 3 druids, 3 pallies, 1 demonlock, and 1 freeze mage. Each druid started out with a phenomenal turn 1 or 2. It was piloted shredder for 2 of them with the other being thurrisian turn 2. I never thought it'd be a mistake to mulligan away my shadow word death.
Also, this is why you play priest.
Actually no, you don't. But I can understand the "gotta go to the bathroom nownownownownownow" sort of mentality that top players demonstrate. It's how they became top players. Brain must be at or near redline at all times or else lethargy sets in.
--Patrick
Gotta keep your apm up.
Pro player Savjz has a nice article on liquidhearth about why aggro decks are not as simple-minded as people think.
http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/hearthstone/484799-liquidsavjz-in-defense-of-aggro
http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/hearthstone/484799-liquidsavjz-in-defense-of-aggro
figmentPez
Staff member
I think that post makes a lot of good points, but it also kind of muddies the issue. Talking about why it takes thought to make an aggro deck work at Legendary rank, but then also talking about how anti-aggro is the choice at low rank, is really mixing two different issues. The fine distinction between a single digit rank player, being planning and forethought is completely different than Face Hunter being able to stomp it's way from 20 up past the teens, even if a trained monkey is running the deck.
This highlights why the current ladder system is so messed up, with it's monthly resets. Ideally, I think the lower ranks should be players who aren't really aware that "the meta" is a thing. People whose deckbuilding or playing skills aren't really up to climbing higher. There shouldn't be a necessity for them to tune their decks to anti-aggro, because aggro decks that can consistently win against bad players should easily climb out of range of those players and stay out of that range.
To me there's a big difference between someone whining about "Face Hunter" at rank >13, and someone who is playing at rank 20 at the beginning of the month, can't get any wins to complete their Priest quest because they're facing aggro deck after aggro deck , and then goes to casual to face the exact same thing, over and over and over.