I'm kind of hold the opinion that it was a dick move by then to not allow Flux and the others to purchase the site saying they are going to shut it down. Then at the 11th hour once they had moved to here decided "hey let's just sell it anyway."
Chances are I'll probably still stay here since I'm hoping this is where Flux and co. Will keep updating cause they've shown us over the years that they care and want to keep the community thriving. However if they stay at "the other site", I may stay there as it's where I got my start with the hearthstone community.
All in all, I'm both happy and annoyed at this move by curse. Happy because Hearthpwn lives. Annoyed because as I said in the beginning dick move to sell to another party when Flux was showing an intrest to keep it alive.
Apparently the company that bought Hearthpwn also bought some other gaming sites from Curse, so I think it's safe to assume it was a package deal, and that's the reason Curse wouldn't sell Hearthpwn to Flux.
That said, it was still handled in a dickish and unprofessional manner, leaving mods and users in the dark until the last minute, telling everyone the site would close down only for it to stay up, etc. I doubt this was the new owners' doing though, seeing as this has only hurt Hearthpwn's reputation and relationship with their userbase. Had things been handled more competently they probably could have retained flux, the mod team and the users, but instead here we all are.
Does Augmented Elekk copy Morrigan when her deathrattle triggers? Or does the game not consider 'swap' and 'shuffle' to be the same thing?
I definitely like the ideas going on here, even if it's probably not going to be the next T1 deck. I can always appreciate a wacky deck that tries to win in unorthodox ways. I don't have a Morrigan so I can't really give solid advice, but I wonder whether adding more spells (2nd siphon soul, twisting nether) might improve the consistency of your swaps. Then again it'd reduce the likelihood of dorian generating tokens, so there's that.
OOC is obviously going to face an initial hurdle in the fact that Hearthpwn is the established site, but I'm confident it's only a matter of time before they lose that advantage. This site is brand spanking new and it's already at least on par with Hpwn in terms of functionality, with regular updates and a highly responsive administration promising more improvements in the future.
It's bizarre to me how much companies tend to undervalue their volunteer staff and fan communities. Whoever is taking over Hearthpwn is gonna have a hard time finding/retaining competent mods, at least in the short run.
My primary impetus for building decks is the release of new content. I love to play around with new cards and see if they're up to snuff, even if it's fairly obvious from the card design and other available cards what the deck is going to look like. Hell, I even like playing around with cards that are pretty obviously bad (EG Pogo-hopper on release) to see if I can get the gimmick to work.
Other than that I also like to revisit cards that seem powerful but don't see too much play. Spirit of the Frog for example was a card that just seemed obviously broken, especially with Shaman's suite of burn spells, yet it was only seeing sporadic play in control shaman.
One thing that really discourages me from trying a new deck is when it's obvious from the outset that I'm going to need 3-6 legendaries that I don't have to build the deck. I'm fairly casual and mostly F2P so I don't really have mountains of dust to throw around.
Regarding Tech cards, I'm notoriously bad at keeping slots open for them. If there's a deck I play on ladder a lot I'll eventually come to the realisation that maybe adding weapon removal or a silence or w/e might be a bright idea, but most of my decks are initially built without tech cards included.
Would it be possible to include a link back to the post that's being replied to at the top of a reply by default? Right now it feels like you have to quote-reply to make it clear who you're responding to because of the chronological sequencing of comments (which I prefer to the reddit system of nested comments BTW).
There's so many ways to cheese with sound the bells I'm surprised they put it in a basic deck. You can also reduce it to zero with The Upper Hand or Take a Chance in the tavern and there's even the passive treasure Elixir of Vile that allows you to cast spells with health points instead of mana.
Emerald Goggles is one of the more finnicky ones since you need to be able to empty your hand to pull it off.
^Aggro decks are also far more likely to gas out so the card draw function of tracking is more pertinent to them. if you're out of cards on turn 5 you really really want to draw Highmane, Leeroy or Kill Command and not some dopey 1 drop.
Not running Magic Carpet, Lackeys, knife juggler and Dire wolf alpha really hurts the 14 1 drop Zoo deck but I think it's the only archetype that can get away with running the full royalty package. That said, I really dislike the Rafaam and double healbot in the above list: with Mistress of Mixtures, Prince Valanar and Zilliax you already have more healing cards than a normal zoodeck should be playing. I'd like to see 2 Grim rally, 2 Sea giant and a single soulfire added to the list, so maybe also cut one Omega Agent and one Mistress of Mixtures.
I think the Scalper really suffers from the weapon condition in standard. None of the hunter lists has more than a couple of flexible slots and both of the available weapons want to be played with secrets or beasts respectively. I like the card but playing it as a vanilla 2/4 is just so bad that it doesn't make the cut.
Maybe in an upcoming set Hunter will get a decent weapon that plays nice with either the bow or the hatchet and Scalper can be made to work.
6 Weapons strikes me as too much, especially since you don't want to override your eaglehorn bow in a secret hunter deck. However, 3/5 secrets in a deck that runs spellstone and eaglehorn might not be enough. Subject 9 seems like an obvious addition since you don't actually want to draw your secrets by mid-game; getting them all out of your deck will improve your average draw considerably. Secretkeeper is an obvious inclusion considering the lack of proactive one-drop minions. Bloodsail raider, Youthful brewmaster and Stitched tracker all look a bit iffy to me, especially the latter since you have no high end value cards to fish for.
What class are you playing OP? With all of the freezes available to mage on top of Ice block in wild, you might be better off playing an aggro deck that runs a significant burn or weapon component (rogue, shaman, warrior) rather than something minion-based like Zoo.
Your deck can be found in the deck lists section, just order it by submission date rather than upvotes and it's on the first page. You can also find it by going to your profile and clicking on 'decks'.
^ I've seen plenty of pro players hold Tracking on the mulligan and play it on turn one. Of course the difference between competitive play and ladder is that you typically know what your opponent is playing, often down to the exact decklist, so you can formulate a game-plan and anticipate what cards you are going to need several turns from now.
Still, I don't think holding tracking is a rookie mistake per se, I think the real distinction is in whether the player makes the correct decision when offered a tough choice or just picks the Zul'Jin ten times out of ten.
Presently in the card search function, the "expansion" filter works differently from the others: it's not a drop-down list with a scroll bar, rather, it's just a teeny tiny scroll bar that can only display three options at a time. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a "null" option, so once you've selected an expansion, and you want to search for cards from multiple expansions, or you're not sure of the expansion, you have to reload the search tool.
I don't really see a reason for that filter to work differently from the others, which are much more convenient.
My main criticism would be that I think your definition of "swing card" is overly broad and as a result most of these cards aren't very swingy. The way I would define the term is a card that capitalises on the opponent being ahead (on board, in resources) and turns that advantage around (or at least evens it). Very obvious examples would be Unleash the Hounds, Divine Favour or Brawl, all of which easily set up an uneven exchange for the two players. Less obvious examples would be Thunderhead or Unleash the Beast, both of which you really want to play into a board so you can capitalise on the rush mechanic to reverse the roles and put *you* ahead on board.
Disregarding the swing theme for a moment, I think most of these cards are too underpowered, with the exception of Smoke Bomb which will never ever see print because it has the exact same problems as Conceal, which was hall-of-famed for its sins. The card is too good at setting up Auctioneer turns and lethals without providing the opponent reasonable counterplay options.
The Ram is solid but it's battlecry will hardly ever be relevant. If/when you ever empty your hand, will you really be concerned about +1 attack on your 2/2 minion? The reason Quick Shot was played and Core Rager was not is that drawing a card is more relevant than ever when your hand is empty, and direct damage is the thing you want to be doing as a hunter in topdeck mode, not developing minions or trading the board. It the ram had battlecry: gain charge if your hand is empty, at least you could topdeck it for an extra 2 face damage.
Camouflage strikes me as too narrow a card to warrant maindeck inclusion, although it might be a good sideboard card in specialist against specifically OTK Paladin. A spellbender-like effect that can protect your board would probably fit better with what most Hunter decks are trying to do, which is establish an early board advantage and ride that out to victory.
Dreadhound scamp isn't powerful enough IMO. Even if you hit it in your disco lock, you're summoning a free 1/2 instead of discarding it. If you compare it to past discard enablers -that rarely saw play mind you- like Clutchmother Zavas, Silverware Golem, Fist of Jaraxxus or High Priestess Jeklik, the payoff seems pitiful.
I like the idea behind Rot and Decay but I think a more elegant & powerful way to word the card would be to give all your minions poisonous for one turn. This would be very strong, but still situational. You still need a board full of tokens/weenies, an enemy board of tall minions and the card itself to get value out of it.
Finally, I don't see gutterspark working well in any sort of mage deck. A 5 mana holy smite is just awful, especially in the mage class which has an abundance of burn spells and generally lacks minions. If you ever get five of your own minions killed as a mage, are you really that excited about dealing two damage for zero mana?
Overall I think you should take into consideration what the deck that would feature any of these cards is trying to accomplish: What is the overall game-plan? How does the proposed card enable that plan or thwart the opponent's counters to it?
I think the random nature of thief cards is where it has a hard time gaining traction. You just can't create a concrete game plan. Sometimes you get lucky but others you might just get a random card. If they made thief cards that were more deliberate and targeted this might change.
I think they've already started doing that by printing burgle effects that discover cards(Madame Lazul, Cloning Device, Hench Clan Burglar) rather than purely random ones. There's still a large random element of course, but at least you get some level of control over the outcome.
I think it's possible, but I don't think it very likely just based on this evidence. Stealing has always been part of the priest identity and it's been mostly left underexplored. Every other set they prient a thief rogue legendary (Lazul is just the new Chameleos). The more obvious reason for Talanji is Spirit of the Dead + Bwonsamdi, although the way she was worded does leave the room open for other kinds of shenanigans.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the archetype see a little bit of support. We've seen with rogue that even just one or two powerful synergy cards can be enough to warrant a "burgle package" without going all-in on the theme. For example you could have a spell that said "5 mana : deal 3 damage to all minions. If you have a card from another class in your hand, deal 5 damage instead."
At the moment there just isn't enough of a consistent upside to taking cards from your opponent's deck to not just play that deck instead.
Apparently the company that bought Hearthpwn also bought some other gaming sites from Curse, so I think it's safe to assume it was a package deal, and that's the reason Curse wouldn't sell Hearthpwn to Flux.
That said, it was still handled in a dickish and unprofessional manner, leaving mods and users in the dark until the last minute, telling everyone the site would close down only for it to stay up, etc. I doubt this was the new owners' doing though, seeing as this has only hurt Hearthpwn's reputation and relationship with their userbase. Had things been handled more competently they probably could have retained flux, the mod team and the users, but instead here we all are.
That sucks, but at least it's consistent with the wording I guess.
Does Augmented Elekk copy Morrigan when her deathrattle triggers? Or does the game not consider 'swap' and 'shuffle' to be the same thing?
I definitely like the ideas going on here, even if it's probably not going to be the next T1 deck. I can always appreciate a wacky deck that tries to win in unorthodox ways. I don't have a Morrigan so I can't really give solid advice, but I wonder whether adding more spells (2nd siphon soul, twisting nether) might improve the consistency of your swaps. Then again it'd reduce the likelihood of dorian generating tokens, so there's that.
OOC is obviously going to face an initial hurdle in the fact that Hearthpwn is the established site, but I'm confident it's only a matter of time before they lose that advantage. This site is brand spanking new and it's already at least on par with Hpwn in terms of functionality, with regular updates and a highly responsive administration promising more improvements in the future.
It's bizarre to me how much companies tend to undervalue their volunteer staff and fan communities. Whoever is taking over Hearthpwn is gonna have a hard time finding/retaining competent mods, at least in the short run.
My primary impetus for building decks is the release of new content. I love to play around with new cards and see if they're up to snuff, even if it's fairly obvious from the card design and other available cards what the deck is going to look like. Hell, I even like playing around with cards that are pretty obviously bad (EG Pogo-hopper on release) to see if I can get the gimmick to work.
Other than that I also like to revisit cards that seem powerful but don't see too much play. Spirit of the Frog for example was a card that just seemed obviously broken, especially with Shaman's suite of burn spells, yet it was only seeing sporadic play in control shaman.
One thing that really discourages me from trying a new deck is when it's obvious from the outset that I'm going to need 3-6 legendaries that I don't have to build the deck. I'm fairly casual and mostly F2P so I don't really have mountains of dust to throw around.
Regarding Tech cards, I'm notoriously bad at keeping slots open for them. If there's a deck I play on ladder a lot I'll eventually come to the realisation that maybe adding weapon removal or a silence or w/e might be a bright idea, but most of my decks are initially built without tech cards included.
Would it be possible to include a link back to the post that's being replied to at the top of a reply by default? Right now it feels like you have to quote-reply to make it clear who you're responding to because of the chronological sequencing of comments (which I prefer to the reddit system of nested comments BTW).
There's so many ways to cheese with sound the bells I'm surprised they put it in a basic deck. You can also reduce it to zero with The Upper Hand or Take a Chance in the tavern and there's even the passive treasure Elixir of Vile that allows you to cast spells with health points instead of mana.
Emerald Goggles is one of the more finnicky ones since you need to be able to empty your hand to pull it off.
^Aggro decks are also far more likely to gas out so the card draw function of tracking is more pertinent to them. if you're out of cards on turn 5 you really really want to draw Highmane, Leeroy or Kill Command and not some dopey 1 drop.
Not running Magic Carpet, Lackeys, knife juggler and Dire wolf alpha really hurts the 14 1 drop Zoo deck but I think it's the only archetype that can get away with running the full royalty package. That said, I really dislike the Rafaam and double healbot in the above list: with Mistress of Mixtures, Prince Valanar and Zilliax you already have more healing cards than a normal zoodeck should be playing. I'd like to see 2 Grim rally, 2 Sea giant and a single soulfire added to the list, so maybe also cut one Omega Agent and one Mistress of Mixtures.
I think the Scalper really suffers from the weapon condition in standard. None of the hunter lists has more than a couple of flexible slots and both of the available weapons want to be played with secrets or beasts respectively. I like the card but playing it as a vanilla 2/4 is just so bad that it doesn't make the cut.
Maybe in an upcoming set Hunter will get a decent weapon that plays nice with either the bow or the hatchet and Scalper can be made to work.
6 Weapons strikes me as too much, especially since you don't want to override your eaglehorn bow in a secret hunter deck. However, 3/5 secrets in a deck that runs spellstone and eaglehorn might not be enough. Subject 9 seems like an obvious addition since you don't actually want to draw your secrets by mid-game; getting them all out of your deck will improve your average draw considerably. Secretkeeper is an obvious inclusion considering the lack of proactive one-drop minions. Bloodsail raider, Youthful brewmaster and Stitched tracker all look a bit iffy to me, especially the latter since you have no high end value cards to fish for.
Consider:
-2 Bloodsail Raider
-2 Headhunter's hatchet
-2 Youthful Brewmaster
-2 Stitched Tracker
-1 Springpaw
+1 Subject 9
+2 Secretkeeper
+2 Sunreaver Spy
+1 Rat trap
+1 Snake trap
+2 Kill Command
What class are you playing OP? With all of the freezes available to mage on top of Ice block in wild, you might be better off playing an aggro deck that runs a significant burn or weapon component (rogue, shaman, warrior) rather than something minion-based like Zoo.
Full disclosure, I don't regularly play wild.
Your deck can be found in the deck lists section, just order it by submission date rather than upvotes and it's on the first page. You can also find it by going to your profile and clicking on 'decks'.
Ah, I didn't realise that you could deselect with ctrl. That helps, but it's not entirely intuitive, at least not for me.
^ I've seen plenty of pro players hold Tracking on the mulligan and play it on turn one. Of course the difference between competitive play and ladder is that you typically know what your opponent is playing, often down to the exact decklist, so you can formulate a game-plan and anticipate what cards you are going to need several turns from now.
Still, I don't think holding tracking is a rookie mistake per se, I think the real distinction is in whether the player makes the correct decision when offered a tough choice or just picks the Zul'Jin ten times out of ten.
Presently in the card search function, the "expansion" filter works differently from the others: it's not a drop-down list with a scroll bar, rather, it's just a teeny tiny scroll bar that can only display three options at a time. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a "null" option, so once you've selected an expansion, and you want to search for cards from multiple expansions, or you're not sure of the expansion, you have to reload the search tool.
I don't really see a reason for that filter to work differently from the others, which are much more convenient.
My main criticism would be that I think your definition of "swing card" is overly broad and as a result most of these cards aren't very swingy. The way I would define the term is a card that capitalises on the opponent being ahead (on board, in resources) and turns that advantage around (or at least evens it). Very obvious examples would be Unleash the Hounds, Divine Favour or Brawl, all of which easily set up an uneven exchange for the two players. Less obvious examples would be Thunderhead or Unleash the Beast, both of which you really want to play into a board so you can capitalise on the rush mechanic to reverse the roles and put *you* ahead on board.
Disregarding the swing theme for a moment, I think most of these cards are too underpowered, with the exception of Smoke Bomb which will never ever see print because it has the exact same problems as Conceal, which was hall-of-famed for its sins. The card is too good at setting up Auctioneer turns and lethals without providing the opponent reasonable counterplay options.
The Ram is solid but it's battlecry will hardly ever be relevant. If/when you ever empty your hand, will you really be concerned about +1 attack on your 2/2 minion? The reason Quick Shot was played and Core Rager was not is that drawing a card is more relevant than ever when your hand is empty, and direct damage is the thing you want to be doing as a hunter in topdeck mode, not developing minions or trading the board. It the ram had battlecry: gain charge if your hand is empty, at least you could topdeck it for an extra 2 face damage.
Camouflage strikes me as too narrow a card to warrant maindeck inclusion, although it might be a good sideboard card in specialist against specifically OTK Paladin. A spellbender-like effect that can protect your board would probably fit better with what most Hunter decks are trying to do, which is establish an early board advantage and ride that out to victory.
Dreadhound scamp isn't powerful enough IMO. Even if you hit it in your disco lock, you're summoning a free 1/2 instead of discarding it. If you compare it to past discard enablers -that rarely saw play mind you- like Clutchmother Zavas, Silverware Golem, Fist of Jaraxxus or High Priestess Jeklik, the payoff seems pitiful.
I like the idea behind Rot and Decay but I think a more elegant & powerful way to word the card would be to give all your minions poisonous for one turn. This would be very strong, but still situational. You still need a board full of tokens/weenies, an enemy board of tall minions and the card itself to get value out of it.
Finally, I don't see gutterspark working well in any sort of mage deck. A 5 mana holy smite is just awful, especially in the mage class which has an abundance of burn spells and generally lacks minions. If you ever get five of your own minions killed as a mage, are you really that excited about dealing two damage for zero mana?
Overall I think you should take into consideration what the deck that would feature any of these cards is trying to accomplish: What is the overall game-plan? How does the proposed card enable that plan or thwart the opponent's counters to it?
I think they've already started doing that by printing burgle effects that discover cards(Madame Lazul, Cloning Device, Hench Clan Burglar) rather than purely random ones. There's still a large random element of course, but at least you get some level of control over the outcome.
I think it's possible, but I don't think it very likely just based on this evidence. Stealing has always been part of the priest identity and it's been mostly left underexplored. Every other set they prient a thief rogue legendary (Lazul is just the new Chameleos). The more obvious reason for Talanji is Spirit of the Dead + Bwonsamdi, although the way she was worded does leave the room open for other kinds of shenanigans.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the archetype see a little bit of support. We've seen with rogue that even just one or two powerful synergy cards can be enough to warrant a "burgle package" without going all-in on the theme. For example you could have a spell that said "5 mana : deal 3 damage to all minions. If you have a card from another class in your hand, deal 5 damage instead."
At the moment there just isn't enough of a consistent upside to taking cards from your opponent's deck to not just play that deck instead.