Hearthstone 22: Evening the Odds

[Zevox]

dunno, the card reveal page seems to be stuck on Myra Rotspring for me.

Yeah, I think they aren't updating it on the weekend. So, no idea what new cards might be popping up.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

HearthstoneTopDecks has a dedicated updated list minutes after card reveals.

[Thomas Cardew]

Finally managed to hit rank 5 today, just in time for the end. I'd been hovering around 6-8 for the last few week due to lack of time to play, really bad rng, and my inability to make it past 6. I hit 6 full stars like 10 times but couldn't manage to get that final win. Now it's time to not play again for 3 months... Oh well

[The Glyphstone]

Mecha'Thun is such a bizarre card. What's even the point of a win condition that niche and hard to pull off?

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Mecha'Thun is such a bizarre card. What's even the point of a win condition that niche and hard to pull off?

Same reason Fire Plume Harbinger with grumble in hand one turn then leeroy into 5 mana grumble another turn and then 1 mana leeroy windfury greater sapphire spellstone for 48 damage exists.

To have fun with friends and laugh when you manage to pull it off once at bargain basement rank 5 or legend.

[Rynjin]

To make Myra's Unstable Element a meme OTK deck, of course.

And also of course, as anti-Azari strats.

[tonberrian]

Hmm. I was going to suggest Mecha'thun -> Unstable Element > Deathwing, but that leaves you with a Deathwing on the board...

[Lord Raziere]

To make Myra's Unstable Element a meme OTK deck, of course.

And also of course, as anti-Azari strats.

Yep, thats the card I was waiting for. time to figure out how to make that work! card draw will be important....as well as playing a lot of cheap things....maybe some weird aggro-combo hybrid so that you be aggressive early game but use card draw late game.....

[Psyren]

I mean, in Rogue you should have no trouble emptying your hand even without Deathwing - they're designed to have the cheapest spells around.

My first thought was doing something with Myra and Kobold Illusionist, but then the Mecha itself is still in your hand. Any ideas on getting rid of it?

My second thought was a Warlock with Dollmaster Dorian + Cataclysm, but it feels too slow against any kind of aggro.

My third thought was sticking him into a Twig Druid deck as an alternative win condition to Malygos. Play him, break twig, then you have 10 crystals to do things with. Druids have few problems either with drawing their entire deck or stalling long enough to do so. That's probably where I'd start.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

People in youtube comments suggesting a hemet warlock with all 3 or less cost besides hemet, cataclysm, and Mecha'Thun.

The Rogue combo would have to go mecha'thun into shadowstep into next turn mecha'thun backstab prep evis evis or backstab prep evis prep evis

[Psyren]

The more I think about Mecha'thun as an alternate wincon in Twig Druid, the more I like the idea. The nice part is that you don't even need the Twig to make it work. Something like:

Spoiler

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### Null Sector
# Class: Druid
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Raven
#
# 2x (0) Innervate
# 2x (0) Moonfire
# 2x (1) Lesser Jasper Spellstone
# 2x (1) Naturalize
# 2x (2) Wild Growth
# 2x (2) Wrath
# 2x (3) Ferocious Howl
# 2x (4) Branching Paths
# 2x (4) Swipe
# 1x (4) Twig of the World Tree
# 1x (5) Faceless Manipulator
# 2x (5) Nourish
# 1x (5) Starfall
# 2x (6) Spreading Plague
# 1x (7) Malfurion the Pestilent
# 1x (8) The Lich King
# 1x (9) Malygos
# 1x (10) Ultimate Infestation
# 1x (10) Mecha'thun

The idea is that you would play the Twig game normally (i.e. fish for your twig and try to break it when you have Mal, Faceless and some painful burn in hand.) But if your opponent has turtled up or they otherwise disrupt your plan - like maybe they oozed your twig early and have some removal waiting for your Malygos, or they've armored out of range of even your 36 damage in one turn - they'll still be all too happy to wipe your board once you play the likes of Malygos and deal or threaten a bunch of face burn. Once they do, you have your backup plan of Mecha'thun + Innervate + Naturalize in hand already. Thanks to Howl + Paths + Malfurion earlier in the game you'll have all the armor you'll need to survive until then, plus enough card draw from Nourish and UI to burn through your entire deck.

The best part (at least for me) is that I have all these cards except Mechy himself, so I'll be able to try it out if I'm lucky with the preorder

[Gandariel]

Mecha thun is just a meme card. I hope.

More importantly. Am I crazy or is druid getting insane cards? Cheaper sprint that also tutors, targeted thaurissan...

[ChaosOS]

Druid is gonna be nuts. The 7/4/4 eot guy helps maly druid because now your melon pulls him, lich king, and malygos. Obviously it just pulls all four combo pieces for Togwaggle.

Anyways, easiest Mech'thun is in wild you go Emperor on Mecha'thun plus Bloodbloom, then with an empty deck you go Mecha'thun->Bloodbloom->Cataclysm.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

I've built a floop malygos druid that runs 1 florist to be drawn by psychmelon, with drakkari enchanter to play on 10 mana and reduce maly to 0 or floop and a faceless to 0

[Psyren]

I've resolved to just never play Wild and instead slate everything that rotates out for dusting. (Not that I'll actually dust any of it unless I really crave something, and even then I'll start with the lamer ones like Bring It On.)

Speaking of Wild and epics, Dreampetal Florist + Mecha'thun would be interesting I think. (Argh, ninja)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

More importantly. Am I crazy or is druid getting insane cards? Cheaper sprint that also tutors, targeted thaurissan...

Yep, I don't know what they're thinking, but Druid is just getting more overall good cards.

[Joran]

Mecha'Thun is such a bizarre card. What's even the point of a win condition that niche and hard to pull off?

It's a good Timmy/Tammy and Johnny/Jenny card.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...ike-2013-12-03

Sometimes they create fun cards to give players an alternate win condition and let their creative deck building juices flow.

[Psyren]

It's definitely working on me; I was a huge Johnny in my MTG days. I still remember my Darksteel Reactor deck...

Ever since Beardo rotated I've still been trying to get the Pally DK hero power to work as well.

[Spore]

It's definitely working on me; I was a huge Johnny in my MTG days. I still remember my Darksteel Reactor deck...

I actually started off with Pokemon but I assume I've been a Timmy there. I was so incredibly envious of the big creatures, completely ignoring card advantages and support cards.

[Zevox]

Galley updated, lots of new cards...

Spoiler

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Neutral
3: Augmented Elekk - Eh. I mean, good stats for the cost, and we've seen a few cards that shuffle more cards into your deck, but unless maybe Academic Espionage really takes off, I have a hard time imagining this being constructed-worthy.
4: Replicating Menace - Seems weak. It's Eggnapper that gives you only one extra 1/1 for +1 mana, just with the mech tag and magnetic slapped on. And well, Magnetic is like a buff, and buffs tend to be best giving health rather than attack (Velen's Chosen, Spikeridge Steed), so not expecting that to save it. Probably bad.
6: Arcane Dynamo - Costs too much. Arena card, probably not even that great there.
10: Mecha'thun - Why the hell do they think it's okay to print this? If this thing works at all, it's going to be the most infuriating thing to play against - it's literally a card that wins you the game and cannot be played around in any meaningful way. And unfortunately, Myra's Unstable Element gives it a pretty clear path to possibly working. Just going to cross my fingers and hope it's bad and doesn't work out, since that's about all we can do. If it isn't though, I would wager this gets nerfed awfully quick.

Druid
4: Juicy Psychmelon - Four mana draw four, and it gets very specific cards? Seriously, what the hell are they doing with this set? This is insane. Blatantly broken. If this doesn't get nerfed at some point, I'll be stunned.
7: Dreampetal Florist - So, from this I take it that someone or several people at Blizzard are pushing very hard for combo Druid to dominate the Boomsday meta. With cards like this, they'll probably get their wish.

Priest
5: Power Word: Replicate - So... why not just run Faceless Manipulator? I mean, I guess they're going for combo piece with this, but really, a 5 mana card to do that already exists, and it's neutral.

Rogue
3: Necrium Blade - Ah, back to pushing some kind of Deathrattle Rogue I see. Well, this is a fairly solid card, sure, but the archetype still doesn't have any reason to exist. No deathrattles or deathrattle synergy are currently so good that you build any deck around them, and I don't see why this would change that.
5: Necrium Vial - Without something on the power level of Sylvanas around, this is a laughable card. Won't see any play unless we get some really OP deathrattles. And no, I don't think Mechanical Welp will do it, can't play them both on the same turn and he can be readily removed if your opponent is afraid of this happening.

Shaman
1: Voltaic Burst - Miniature Unleash the Hounds on 1, with 1 overload? Not bad at all, actually. Especially with Flametongue Totem around. This could be a staple in more aggressive or midrange Shaman decks for the next couple of years easily.
2: Omega Mind - Cool and appeals to me as a control player, but if Hallazeal never managed to find much of a niche, I have my doubts that this will either definitely one of the weaker Omega cards.
4: Thunderhead - And this makes Voltaic Burst that much better. Honestly, this one might a bit OP as-is - I'd think it should only summon one spark at a time, not two. Some kind of new Midrange Shaman could easily be spawned from thosetwo cards alone.
4: Storm Chaser - This, on the other hand, I don't get so much. Big Spells has been Mage's thing, not Shaman's, and Shaman doesn't really have a specific high-cost spell they'd want to search for to my recollection. Maybe in a future set we'll see one, or the legendary spell in this set will qualify (we still haven't seen the Shaman one, right?), but for now, not sure what they expect this card to do.

Warlock
1: The Soularium - Zoo card I guess. Any other kind of Warlock is cool with the card draw their hero power gives, and would likely end up discarding at least one if not more of the cards.

Warrior
6: Security Rover - So... it's an almost-strictly worse version of the Old Gods variation on Hogger, which saw no play to begin with. Yeah, this is crap.

Have to say, after Mecha'thun and those Druid cards, I'm starting to get worried about this expansion. There's some stuff getting printed that I really don't think should be, for what I would have thought to be obvious reasons. There could be some seriously not-fun-to-face decks running around after the expansion at this rate...

[Lord Raziere]

I'm mostly concerned about druid getting so many good cards. like seriously what gives?

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Looking at rogue deathrattle triggers with only the boomsday deathrattles does it a disservice. Let me introduce you to Kobold Illusionist

A 4 mana 3/3 rare rogue minion with deathrattle: summon a 1/1 copy of a minion in your hand from Kobolds And Catacombs.

You can play illusionist and prep vial for a 6 mana 10 spell damage, and then for free break the weapon and backstab illusionist and suddenly for 6 mana you've got +20 spell damage. You can just use two razorpetals or sinister strikes to deal 42 or 46 damage, or using all your mana you can use two sinister strike, eviscerate for 71 damage.

Storm Chaser can search Volcanoes to clear and heal using Omegamind or Eureka in malygos decks.

Also you can have Juicy Psychmelon draw florist, lich king, and Malygos. 4 mana tutor most of a combo? YES.

[Zevox]

You know, that's perhaps a big part of the problem I'm starting to feel with the cards so far. Way too much combo nonsense, especially Malygos combos. About the only combo deck I've ever found fun to play is Shudderwock, and that's partially because it's as close as I've ever come to having a Control Shaman deck that works well. Otherwise, combo decks are just a nuisance that's slightly less aggravating than aggro to me.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

On the other side of the same coin, a combo meta is a meta that requires the most thought than any other meta besides maybe control. Aggro and Midrange are just zombies going for the face where the brains are, control decks just hit them with a boardclear bat a bunch of times before one more zombie in the horde falls to the ground. Combo metas you need to pay attention to what you've drawn, what you've got left, and what you can use to answer what your opponent just did without losing part of your combo.

Anyway, I saw the writing on the wall and used my dust I collected in the past few tavern brawl packs to craft Malygos.

[Zevox]

On the other side of the same coin, a combo meta is a meta that requires the most thought than any other meta besides maybe control.

True, which is why they annoy me less than aggro decks. But they still reach that point where they just push the "I win" button, which becomes frustrating if you can't disrupt it other than by killing them before they get there (aka playing an aggro or midrange deck, in many cases). And without Dirty Rat, that's pretty much how it goes. That one new Warlock card might help there, but since it's a Warlock card rather than a Neutral one, it's inherently a lot more limited in what decks it can help to foil combo decks.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

In other news, holy human flies batman, elemental mage will definitely work with that huge tempo loss for 7 mana card that makes all their minions way better!

Not really, but first reactions of people seem to be strong.

Luna's Pocket Galaxy: 7 mana mage spell, Change the cost of minions in your deck to 1.

You could play some conglomerate combo deck where you play all these different combos and sometimes you'll get lucky and one of the combos you won't draw any of the pieces, so you proceed to draw out your deck to get them.

Can't wait to see what insane combos shaman, hunter, and druids' legendary spells activate and what warlock's legendary minion does.

[Anarion]

In other news, holy human flies batman, elemental mage will definitely work with that huge tempo loss for 7 mana card that makes all their minions way better!

Not really, but first reactions of people seem to be strong.

Luna's Pocket Galaxy: 7 mana mage spell, Change the cost of minions in your deck to 1.

You could play some conglomerate combo deck where you play all these different combos and sometimes you'll get lucky and one of the combos you won't draw any of the pieces, so you proceed to draw out your deck to get them.

Can't wait to see what insane combos shaman, hunter, and druids' legendary spells activate and what warlock's legendary minion does.

A 7 mana cost reducer like that is pretty good. It’s specifically paying tempo now for a lot of burst tempo later. It could work for elemental Mage if they have a good way to cycle through their deck after (arcane intellect probably isn’t enough). TBH though, I’m more excited about that sort of cost reduction in a control shell. It offers burst tempo options (like playing Lich King plus Alex plus Ysera at once) in addition to playing to fatigue.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

It basically gives an Aviana effect to every minion in your deck, so... combo city for a slow Mage. Or you play it on a slow turn in a tempo oriented Mage, when you have lots of board already and don't want to play into a board clear.

[Joran]

In other news, holy human flies batman, elemental mage will definitely work with that huge tempo loss for 7 mana card that makes all their minions way better!

Not really, but first reactions of people seem to be strong.

Luna's Pocket Galaxy: 7 mana mage spell, Change the cost of minions in your deck to 1.

You could play some conglomerate combo deck where you play all these different combos and sometimes you'll get lucky and one of the combos you won't draw any of the pieces, so you proceed to draw out your deck to get them.

Can't wait to see what insane combos shaman, hunter, and druids' legendary spells activate and what warlock's legendary minion does.

Obvious idea is playing this with Antonidas or Malygos or Alexstrasza for a burst combo, although the fail state is if you draw your combo pieces before you can play this card.

It's also a pay 7 mana, do nothing, which might just kill you against aggro decks.

[Gandariel]

The only rational conclusion I could reach is that Blizzard really doesn't like old Control warrior.

Not only have they thoroughly killed its competitiveness, they are very clearly pushing for late game decks to be combo oriented, as opposed to grindy.

The Druid draw spell, druid Thaurissan, druid legendary minion, and the new Mage legendary spell offer a very clear deck building direction: survive until you assemble your combo, then win with said combo. Warlock already has this in the form of Rin.

Maybe shaman has something like this, too? With the new "big spell tutor" ?

I highly doubt Mecha Thun will work, but if it does it's going to be the same.

And overall... It's not the worst, honestly.
Having a flashy combo as finisher is probably more fun than grinding through each other's resources in 30 minute long games. These "I win" buttons ensure that even control matchups won't take too long.

They can start printing Antique Healbots and Duplicates again without fear that fatigue decks will return, because exodia decks crush them.

And it's not like they're completely uninteractive.
The interaction is "kill them before they can combo".


Either that, or they're nerfing Malygos and Antonidas and they've been snickering for the past month reading reddit complaints