Hearthstone 21: We DO take candle!

[Zevox]

I got the Twig for free, did everyone else?

I got the Hunter weapon - or rather, a Twilight Acolyte, since that's what its 400 dust became.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, Invisibility Cloak kind of turns The Darkness into a complete buy.

While true, the irony of this cannot be understated.

[boomwolf]

The darkness is a pushover anyway if you got decent picks during the run.

The demon is hard, you need a good deck that can win off a third of its cards.

The dragon is the bane of me. I not even once managed to get to a point I fight back, let alone bear him. He steamrolls me every time. And it's like rouge is hard-coded to fight him, because I got rouge to him four times now, and lost horribly each time.


Speaking of rouge...
Is it just me, or are the choices outright awful for it?
Fatigue pack is moronic, you can't fatigue early matches as they get much bigger decks, so it's suicide.
C'thun and jade both become shackles if you got one pack and failed to find another.
Pirates unreliable and can't really deal with later matches as they are too small.
Weapon pack is meh
"tricks" pack totally depends on the cards you already have.
Thief is... Thief.

I fail to find any strategy to have good rogue runs. Every treasure seems out of place, every pack choice is either between trash, or trying to stack absurd levels of C'thun/jade (and I had all out decks of both, both failed the dragon final boss)

What am I missing?
Priest and mage were so easy in comparison. So was druid.

[Nerocite]

Spoiler: Dungeon Run Spoiler?

Show

If you let Tad fish up all his minions, you get his pole. Unfortunately I never drew it. Fortunately I didn't need to, as the silver hand army carried me to victory.

[ShinyRocks]

Fully cleared both my dungeon runs so far:

Paladin - took the 'double health' treasure twice, so I started the final battle with 200 health. It wasn't a bit of a slog, but the huge health meant I could just hang around til I could play my two Lich Kings and so on.

Rogue - managed to build a super-jade deck. The battlecries trigger twice treasure, combined with 7 Jade Spirits and 5 Aya Blackpaws meant I had a LOT of golems. It was stupid easy.

Update: struggling with Hunter. Don't know if I'm getting bad picks or what, but the decks just don't *work*. Lost to the Beholder final boss on one, and the candle-craft guy in another - creating 1/1 copies of minions is crazy powerful.

I got the Hunter weapon as my free one, and then the Warlock one in a pack. Not really interested in either of them...

[Haruspex_Pariah]

I got the Twig as my free weapon, then Hunter and Warlock from packs. Haven't really tried Druid yet, still messing around with Warlock and Hunter.

Won dungeon run with Shaman this time. Got the flag and the justicar ring, allowing me to spawn 1/3 or 2/2 Totems (of my choice) for 1 mana. Then I just drafted as much Totem Synergy as I could and beat Azari with super buff Totems.

Is it too early to be soliciting deck build advice for Standard laddering?

[Gandariel]

Cleared mage on the first try, too. Invisibility + Spell Power + Antonidas and Apprentice made it very easy.

I do not like PvE, but this is really fun and I may just end up trying to get all classes down. Some of the super items are sick (weapon with mega windfury and poisonous?)

And a fun note: to my side is currently the card with the highest winrate in the game :D

This of course just reflects the fact that the most successful decks at the moment are aggro paladin and minion less Hunter

[Haruspex_Pariah]

And a fun note: to my side is currently the card with the highest winrate in the game :D

This of course just reflects the fact that the most successful decks at the moment are aggro paladin and minion less Hunter

That is surprising. I was expecting some variation of Priest or OTK Mage, based on the cards. Maybe those decks take time to finalize tho.

[Gandariel]

Yeah, I guess priest will be back soon enough.

But as I said, both Hunter legendaries are very intriguing to me, and I hope they turn out to be good as to justify me crafting them :)

[Beelzebub1111]

The archmage cloak carries you only so far. Once you get to round 6 it's deminishing returns. Great for turning into board clearing, especially with priest, but it's a crapshoot.

Also A F Kay totally tricked me. I was not prepared

[Gandariel]

Cloak totally carried me all the way through the run as Mage.

Late bosses have way too much Health, and I was counting on limited burn spells (especially vs the guy who mills your deck. Even less burn!)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Got my first full run last night, Hunter, on my first shot. Built around deathrattle, and took +1 mana and enemy minions cost 1 more. It was pretty disgusting, and I even stabilized against the dragon.

[Winthur]

The dragon is the bane of me. I not even once managed to get to a point I fight back, let alone bear him. He steamrolls me every time. And it's like rouge is hard-coded to fight him, because I got rouge to him four times now, and lost horribly each time.

When I piloted a Hunter deck against the Dragon, I also ended up with 200 HP thanks to taking the double health passive twice, and I just kept on consistently hitting face and clearing big threats. Never cleared any of the Master Chests even though they got a few buffs. I ended up taking a lot of Big Beasts and the like, so I had lots of value past 6 mana. It was really easy that way, and after receiving no reward whatsoever for beating the final boss I thought that to get rewards you need to break chests during the fight and still win or something.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

So I tried tinkering around with the Twig. The basic idea is this:

Equip Twig, swing until one charge left.

Play Malygos. Break Twig. Swipe + Swipe + Moonfire + Moonfire = 30 damage.

Turns out, even with all the card draw Druid has, a combo that depends on two Legendaries and four other cards is tricky to assemble before either you die or you just win some other way. Holding a Swipe when the enemy board calls for it can often be a lethal error, in my experience.

I'll keep at it though. It's been ages since I last sat down and built my own deck.

[boomwolf]

The archmage cloak carries you only so far. Once you get to round 6 it's deminishing returns. Great for turning into board clearing, especially with priest, but it's a crapshoot.

Also A F Kay totally tricked me. I was not prepared

Its not deminishing at all if you nab 5 copies of runin as I have in my mage run.

[Seerow]

I've been playing a lot of dungeon run. I actually have yet to make a single deck for constructed yet, but I am getting close to finishing all 9 classes for the card back. Only Mage left.

Best highlight was my one shot Warlock. Final Boss was the Darkness, I had Perma Stealth as one of my buffs, and 3 mal'ganis in the deck. Just had to survive until turn 9 and he literally could do nothing. Was kind of funny to watch the AI waste removal on its own minions due to lack of anything else to do.

[Destro_Yersul]

I've been playing tons of dungeon run as well. Waxmancer Sturmi is my nemesis.

[Seerow]

So I decided to step into constructed, and for my first crafted deck of the expansion, I decided to go with the Buffadin I was eager to try out.

Spoiler: Deck List

Show

### Buffadin
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Mammoth
#
# 2x (1) Righteous Protector
# 2x (2) Argent Protector
# 2x (2) Hydrologist
# 2x (2) Loot Hoarder
# 2x (2) Potion of Heroism
# 2x (2) Primalfin Champion
# 2x (3) Acolyte of Pain
# 2x (3) Aldor Peacekeeper
# 2x (3) Benevolent Djinn
# 1x (3) Rallying Blade
# 1x (3) Wickerflame Burnbristle
# 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon
# 2x (4) Blessing of Kings
# 1x (4) Chillblade Champion
# 1x (5) Faceless Manipulator
# 2x (6) Spikeridged Steed
# 1x (6) Val'anyr
# 1x (7) Lynessa Sunsorrow
# 1x (8) Tirion Fordring
#
AAECAZ8FCJME+gbZrgK8vQL30ALj4wK36QLD6gIL+wGvB/4Hjwn7DLPBAojHAorHAuPLAu3SArLpAgA=
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

I'm not certain I would call it -good- yet, but when it works, it really works. Potion of Heroism seems to be exactly the spell that buffadin needed to make Primalfin Champion worth it. Also a neat thing I discovered: Counterspell may stop you from getting the buff, but if you buff a Primalfin and get counterspelled, the spell still comes back to your hand. Similarly if a buff gets counterspelled, and you play Lynessa later, she gets the benefit of the counterspelled buff anyway. Takes a lot of the sting out of getting a big buff countered. Lynessa is consistently coming down as a 7/11 taunt divine shield draw 1-2 cards, and occasionally much better.

I do feel like Val'anyr in this deck may be a bad idea. Seems like it works best in decks where you focus on Dopple/Chain Gang and duplicate the hell out of it to make that buff go off constantly. In this particular deck it definitely feels slow. I am considering cutting it to put in the second Chillblade Champion, or possibly looking at Corpsetaker (though without a windfury in the deck I'm not sure she's worth it).

[ShinyRocks]

I've been playing tons of dungeon run as well. Waxmancer Sturmi is my nemesis.

Yeah, his power is crazy strong. But Blackseed is the one I've struggled with the most.

Finally cleared a Hunter run - apparently I've killed 44 bosses before I managed it! Several Deathspeaker Rexxars, plus 'your hero power costs 1', plus 'your minions cost no more than 5' leads to a big range of Zombeast options. Add on the 'adapt a minion for every boss you've beaten this run' and I got a 16/13 Windfury untargetable Divine Shield Charge Zombeast and finally took down Xol, the Beholder boss. I only managed it because I combined a Bloatbat with Poisonous so when she dropped Deathwing, he immediately got taken out by the poisonous explosion.

[Destro_Yersul]

The one time I ran into Blackseed I was mage. Being able to ping off the spores helped a lot.

Just had a hunter run where I got thoroughly curbstomped by the beholder. Got to the point where the last card in my hand was the Rod of Roasting, so I just played that and hoped for the best. Four pyroblasts to my own face later...

[The Glyphstone]

The devourer demon was surprisingly easy as Jade Shaman. Even melting my deck still got him flattened by double battlecry Jade spam.

[Zevox]

I've done three: Mage, Paladin, and Rogue. As Mage I barely eked out a win against the Devourer, as I mentioned before. As Rogue I beat him handily thanks to drawing a lot of Jade and ending with N'Zoth to bring back Ayas. As Paladin, I thought I was going to have an easy time since I had the upgraded and 1-mana hero power... then I ran into the Kobold King as the final fight, and got clobbered by how overpowered the cards his hero power gives him are.

That said, I'm rapidly losing interest in Dungeon Run, because there's no rewards. It doesn't even count for quests. So, I get to the end, feel briefly good about winning/bad about losing, and then there's nothing to show for it regardless. Not exactly satisfying, that.

[The Glyphstone]

I'm faintly hoping that community pressure/complaints about the total lack of rewards will make them change something.

[Zevox]

I'm faintly hoping that community pressure/complaints about the total lack of rewards will make them change something.

I hope they make it count for quests. If it at least did that, I'd be happy. I get them not wanting to give something extra for beating it, since it is single-player content in an otherwise multiplayer game, but well, my time for the game is limited, so if I have to choose between spending it on a mode that does let me finish quests and one that doesn't, pretty easy choice there.

[AmberVael]

So I saw some decklists recommending Aluneth for various quest mage archetypes. After giving it a couple of tries, I'm really not seeing it. I think you need to be able to dump your hand for Aluneth to be viable.

Suffice to say, in the games I played, Aluneth only got played once. By my opponent, who stole it from me. They fatigued to death in short order.

[The Glyphstone]

I hope they make it count for quests. If it at least did that, I'd be happy. I get them not wanting to give something extra for beating it, since it is single-player content in an otherwise multiplayer game, but well, my time for the game is limited, so if I have to choose between spending it on a mode that does let me finish quests and one that doesn't, pretty easy choice there.

That's one option. The other one I've seen floated that I like is letting Dungeon Run bosses count towards your win-count for the 10g/3 wins counter, probably at a reduced rate - something like 4 bosses=1 win, 7=2, 8=3 or similar.

[Zevox]

Did another dungeon run, as Priest. This one ended earlier than any other run I've done, on the sixth boss - the one whose hero power reduces the cost of the cards in his hand by 1. I'd drafted a pretty slow deck, mostly picking the sets of cards related to spell combos (so, I had three Lyras, for instance), which made it hard to fight him down before he got insane.

Wound up getting killed by 2x Call of the Wild + Kill Command for 16 damage burst. Yeah, ow.

[Rodin]

Speaking of rouge...
Is it just me, or are the choices outright awful for it?
Fatigue pack is moronic, you can't fatigue early matches as they get much bigger decks, so it's suicide.
C'thun and jade both become shackles if you got one pack and failed to find another.
Pirates unreliable and can't really deal with later matches as they are too small.
Weapon pack is meh
"tricks" pack totally depends on the cards you already have.
Thief is... Thief.

I fail to find any strategy to have good rogue runs. Every treasure seems out of place, every pack choice is either between trash, or trying to stack absurd levels of C'thun/jade (and I had all out decks of both, both failed the dragon final boss)

What am I missing?
Priest and mage were so easy in comparison. So was druid.

Mill Rogue can actually be deceptively powerful, especially if you get +1/+1 to your minions and/or discounted spells. You aren't trying to fatigue them, but instead abusing card draw and deck destruction. I had a couple Beneath the Grounds and the new guy that shuffles the Ambushes into your own deck. I filled both decks with spiders, then used Brann + Coldlight + Gang Up to fill my board with 5/5 spiders. Meanwhile, the boss was stuck at 10 cards milling.

Made it to the 7th boss with that deck - unfortunately it was the Trapped Room and I had never met it before. I played things out too early and got rushed down before I could get my combos up to speed.

I did manage to fatigue the worm dude that eats minions, who I believe was the 6th boss.

[Mystic Muse]

So, won with paladin and Warlock so far. Leaving priest, hunter and mage for last because they have my favorite portraits of the remaining classes.

Paladin, I took cloak of invisibility, and the Darkness pretty much just folded.

Warlock, I had 200 health at the final boss, and 3 bloodreaver gul'dans in my deck, plus a fair number of demons, sooooo.

[Gandariel]

Final tally: After trying once with each class, i managed to win with four: Druid, Mage, Rogue, Shaman.
Comments:
Warrior: Loss: I expected it to be a control deck, took cost reduction for expensive minions... only got offered pirates and cheap stuff.
Shaman: Win. Double battlecry jade really is easy mode. Edit: Actually tried this twice. First time I tried elementals and failed
Rogue: Win. No jades. Spell damage plus cheap spells plus the "Wish" card winning me several games. *BARELY* won
Paladin: Loss: One of my first runs, don't remember the exact reason of my loss
Hunter: Loss: Upgraded hero power was extremely strong, but i ended up losing to some guy who was summoning fat dudes every turn.
Druid: Win: Double battlecry jade
Warlock: Loss. Took some Unique bundles, except the game was forcing me to take non-uniques... so i died holding an unactivated Reno :(
Mage: Win. Stealth plus spelldamage and Antonidas. burned every boss to death
Priest: Loss. My first run. Picked C'thun, terrible package, all the cards are way too "fair".

Fun highlight in my Rogue deck:
vs the guy who ramps like crazy, Armors up, and then starts dropping huge dudes.

My deck had no board presence i could exploit to damage him, so i basically just had to let him ramp and armor up for free, and then he started dropping one huge dude per turn.
A fun set of Steals and Arfus had given me two Webweaves and one Anti-magic shell.
So i wound up with a strong board of untargetable poisoners, which let me do some face damage every turn and basically negate his turns effortlessly.