And then Mage's turn 1: Pyroblast the 10 health Druid for lethal.
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I won with Druid by playing Violet Illusionist into Ultimate Infestation and Starfire. My opponent conceded before I could keep playing spells. I know last time Paladin could pull off some crazy turn 1 kills with Patches+buffs.
Yeah, basically. We've had this Brawl before, if memory serves. Wasn't a huge fan of it then, and I don't think it's better now - paying health for your spells encourages fast games of just blasting each other's faces with cost-effective spells. Aggro, effectively.
Got one win with a Mage deck I threw together, and that'll be all for me this week.
Just got back from a road trip, have been trying the Lich King. I agree with the consensus from a couple pages ago: It's not fun. It's not fun to restart until you get a good draw, and he gets a bad one. It's not fun to lose, over and over again, to his ridiculous overpowered cards. Pretty bad design all around.
I think the Lich King is actually great design:
They didn't do a Heroic Mode this time, so they had to figure out how to create one encounter that gave something good for newcomers AND hardcore players.
With some classes being easy (Druid, Priest) and some being extremely hard (Paladin), and a first reward that unlocks with one win and a second (cosmetic) reward that unlocks with nine, they really managed to capture all of the playerbase's needs.
Those who don't have a good collection still get their pack, those who enjoyed Heroic Mode pretty much got the same feel with some of the challenges, and those who don't care about Heroic Mode (me, for example) only miss out on a cosmetic item.
@Brawl: Aggro Mage, easy win. My poor opponent had Prince Malchezaar in their deck. No idea what their game plan was, honestly, but it was not a very good one.
I don't really get that. Basically every strategy I have seen for most of the classes is some sort of cheese were you restart repeatedly until you get the right cards. The only real exception is druid because they decided to make lich king do nothing against the most popular druid deck they buffed with the expansion.
It is mostly just frustrating content with very little payoff because the solution ends up being just kill him before he does anything, with murloc or something else.
Yeah. Druid you win with Jade, and Priest you win with whatever gets lucky. Everything else you win by trying to rush him before turn 7 and hoping he gets a bad opening.
EDIT: Finally got him with all classes. Looked up a bunch of cheeseball strategies and got my revenge. Lots of mulliganing was done, still think it's not very well designed.
I don't think you'd do too well vs. Arthas with a deck full of 30 murlocs as Hunter...
YES! Paladin victory with a life-steal hand-buff deck. Three days of fine tuning / grinding was a pain but I'm going to pretend pulling a win with a self made deck was worth it (not that I have the dust for a net-deck anyway).
I got my first synergy Frostlich Jaina pick (first few cards you pick from a synergy pool...mage gets Frostlich Jaina in that pool). Turns out it is just as good as Kripp was complaining that it was. It carried me so hard in almost every game I played it (lost one to a hunter who Leeroy'd me down)
Got my Arthas, finally. Most of the decks were simple enough, just reshuffling to get the right hand. Had to craft a Beardo to pull off Exodia Paladin (was lucky and got Evil Uther as my freebie). Ironically, I saved Priest for last and had more trouble with him than Paladin because I was trying a budget-grade Inner Fire combo deck, which he kept dismantling with removal before I could get the engine together. Swapped to a Dragon Priest and solved it instantly, even without drawing a SWH for phase 2.
So I just won a game from embarrassment. My opponent had been misplaying a bit through out the game (sometimes very obviously like a botched plague scientist play where they played it first and then played their second card). Close to the end they were still massively in the lead from a Tirion (can't remember where from as they were a rogue) and Ysera. They had a 5/2 weapon and Ysera still out. I killed Ysera with a moatlurker just to divert 9 damage from my face figuring he would just trade with the weapon. I had nothing else on the board to threaten with so I was in a pretty bad position. Instead he played Ultrasaur and dreamed my moatlurker permanently killing the Ysera. After seeing what they had done, they conceded despite having a 5/2 weapon and a ultrasaur to my empty board.
Speaking of totally undeserved victories.
I was playing my Evolve Shaman a bit earlier today to get a 5 shaman win quest done. I am in a commanding lead, with solid board control, and a full 7 minions on board. Don't quite have lethal (had a few totems making up that 7, and I don't run bloodlust), so I take some value trades to keep his board down and play Thrall to set up for the win next turn.
Thrall turns one of those totems into an Unlicensed Apocathery. I suddenly take 30 damage to face from each of my other 6 minions evolving triggering the effect. I had 2 HP left thanks to the Armor from thrall.... but my opponent then equips Frostmorne and attacks my face for the win.
It may have been overextending (though using Thrall to rebuild a cleared board is kind of weird, as you need a board for Thrall's battlecry to do anything), but in no situation should your punish for playing a card be literally kill yourself due to RNG effect of your own card, unless the card you are playing is Yogg. It's a silly interaction and requires a really loose definition of summoning. (If Alchemist saw any actual play you'd see players upset over stuff like polymorph letting opposing players trigger the effect to deal extra damage as well).
We are still talking about HS. Destroying hopes and rebuilding them through RNG is this game's forte. For further info just look at Yogg-Saron.
I will never understand this mindset. People don't concede games to me when I fail to draw a critical removal spell in arena several turns in a row even though my deck has multiple such copies and we've gone through half of the entire deck. Getting just the cards you need to win an otherwise hopeless game is awesome, and represents the sort of 3-6% winrate improvement that rewards persistence and can lead to working one's way up the ladder or turning a 5-2 arena run into a 7-2 arena run.
That's really unfortunate. I've had that happen with Warlock deathknight as well (it also kills you if you somehow had apothecary and it gets resummoned with all your other demons).
I don't think you misplayed in that situation, but it's a less than ideal situation, and I think you may have misplayed somehow in getting there. Both thrall and evolve are actually a little dangerous with totems due to apothecary and doomsayer respectively. You use them when that's part of your board, but typically you want to hang on to your mass evolve effects specifically to be used in combination with doppelgangster, which sometimes comes with a spare totem on the board, but your odds are way better to get an awesome board with 3 doppelgangsters on the field and one totem, than with 7 guys including several totems.
Also, I'm a little confused about your deckbuilding note. Why don't you run bloodlust? The whole thing about Shaman that makes them scary right now is that you have 4 major finishers: 2x bloodlust plus any board, and 2x doppelganster+mass evolves. You want to specifically pair off those effects, so you force the opponent to constantly use removal on pointless crappy things (like 1/4 taunts, the 1/2 elementals, totems etc.) so that you can't bloodlust kill them, and then you play a huge doppelganster evolve board that they no longer have the cards to handle.
This is not correct advice. Apologies for bluntness, but for anyone reading, do not follow this gameplan.
Having played Evolve Shaman up to rank 5, you're mostly just gunning and hoping they don't have board clears/spreading plague. Evolve/shaman DK specifically is most devastating on big boards, as it turns a good board into a great board that will usually pick up multiple points of health, and hopefully some points of attack. The apothecary was unfortunate but sometimes RNG happens. You should be running blust, I'm on a 2x Bloodlust 2x Devolve list that has worked great. I've usually found that it's incredibly easy to have a nearly full board by turn 5 due to the strength of token generators in standard like Fire Fly, which means closing out the game with 15+ points of damage from hand in the form of Bloodlust is so strong. I consistently want myself looking for payoff cards and only once in a blue moon have I felt "flooded" by my payoff cards, and last time that happened I won the game with back to back bloodlusts.
It really depends on the board make up and what class you are playing against when deciding how far you can extend. If 4 of the 7 cards are totems having a 7 minion board is usually ok. Similarly against druid (spreading plague hurts if you extend too much but if you can deal with them quickly it may be worth the risk), aggro anything, zoo and rogue having 7 real minions on the board is totally fine because they very rarely carry a way to effectively remove all your minions quickly. Only against mages, paladins you think run the clear combo, priests, hunters who might have unleash the hounds, control warlock and control warrior should you be really worried about over extending as they can actually punish you for it.
If you have 7 minions on the board you should almost always play Thrall (sacking the 1 mana 1/1 totem if you have it mostly for these edge cases if you think you can win with out another 3 mana minion).
The nerfs were announced
Spoiler: TL;DRInnervate gains you only 1 mana.
Fiery War Axe's cost went up to 3
Hex's cost went up to 4
Murloc Warleader no longer buffs health
Spreading Plague's cost went up to 6
...not the nerfs I was expecting. So jade loses innervate and gets counterfeit coin (probably not good enough for them) and spreading plague is slower. Will that be enough to make it so druid isn't everywhere? I'm not sure but I also don't play jade druid. I know it hurts my token druid a bit (rip turn 1 fledgling we hardly knew you) but at the same time it doesn't really make jade that much easier to counter.
I do think Fiery Win Axe is going to lose its title and see play only in the most aggro of warrior decks.
Murloc warleader nerf sucks for murloc decks, making them weaker to AoE (not sure if the nerf was really needed or not).
Hex's cost increase again didn't seem needed. I mean it was really good but at the same time it still seems like a strange nerf.
I'm very surprised Druid got off so lightly there. I consider the nerfs to the other classes to be worse than the ones Druid received.
I don't see the current state of Druidstone changing as a result of these. And that's a shame, because seeing how the meta is without Druid in HCT has been pretty enlightening. For clarification, Druid was almost 100% banned by everybody, to an extent I've never seen of any other class.
The changes just don't do enough. Druid can still ramp like crazy without Innervate. Ultimate Infestation is still an insane Jade engine. Spreading Plague going up a mana helps against aggressive decks...except that Blizzard simultaneously nerfed the two best aggressive decks with Pirate Warrior and Murloc Paladin.
Randomly nerfing Hex is particularly bizarre. Has anyone complained about that card? Heck, I don't even know if I'd class Shaman as Tier 1 right now, and the Evolve Shaman lists don't run Hex.
I think the Druid nerfs are going to be fairly successful: double Innervate into Ultimate Infestation from Turn 5 or so is no longer going to be a thing, and aggro decks can keep them in check, since Spreading Plague is now tamed somewhat.
Other way around: it's too expensive for aggro decks and makes Pirate Warrior awkward, curve-wise. For a slower Warrior, though, it's a very strong tool to take back the board and gain card advantage while building up your board. Seems quite good for midrange Warrior, in fact, still.