I have to find a way to wrap it all up now. I'm thinking of sending Sally to The Caverns Below to deal with the corruption at its source, so stay tuned for a competitively weak but thematically strong version of quest rogue!
(Who knows when I'll get around to it though, or if part 6 will even be quest rogue?)
With so much of the apparent power creep in this expansion being tied to dragons and Galakrond, I'm hoping the effect on the health of the game isn't so big as it first seems.
As much as I'd enjoy dragon-stone for a few weeks, I'll be glad is some/most classes are still better off doing something else.
Full disclosure: this one is especially difficult to win with. But I can almost guarantee each game played summons more Sergeant Sallys than your opponent will have ever seen in the 3 years she has been in the game, so I guess that is something.
As ever though, the main purpose of these decks is to tell a story so do hop on over to the deck description if you are interested.
Now we know its official name and card text, I like how it was written. It's not the most efficient, but it adds to the flavour of the card without introducing ambiguities.
I am more pessimistic about the card's competitive potential than most (over the years I've seen way too many slow cards in rogue that are great on paper but never see any competitive play), but for those of us that play shuffle rogue decks anyway it is undoubtedly a welcome addition to the game.
Very probably. Shuffle heavy decks are never high tier ones and decks with only a bit of shuffling would probably be better off just using existing draw + Galakrond(?). But great for folks who don't care about climbing the ladder and enjoy shuffling shenanigans.
The card is nice, I’m just kind of confused why the one class that’s good at shuffling in tons of copies of minions into their deck is getting the card that counters that strategy
The answer is simply that destroying single minions (which will most often be what Flik is used for I expect) is rogue's thing, so there's just a coincidence of class for the two effects. That doesn't mean it had to be in rogue of course...
Anyway, if you look at it from an archetype perspective instead of a class one, then it isn't a problem. E.g. in the hypothetical pogo-rogue meta, you can run this to counter it, but not by playing your own pogo deck since Flik will kill all of yours too.
So if it is actually run as a tech against rogue, it will only work in archetypes different to the one being tech'd against, thereby avoiding the issue of a deck being its own best counter.
Vilespine is better only because it costs one mana less and you can run two copies of it. Besides that, this card is very good, coz it gives you nive body (4/4) and good assasinate effect
Pfft. This is rogue. You can run as many of any card as you like (unless your opponent has their own Flik...).
Seriously though, this is pretty much an auto-include in standard and probably takes the place of one of the Vilespines in wild. It might even be played in addition to both Vilespines there.
I don't mind the kobolds, partly because they don't impose any specific mechanics like murlocs do. Also, them getting picked on in the artwork of spells for the non-EVIL classes seems to be one of the primary story telling aspects outside of the solo content.
I do think 3 expansions with a continuing theme is quite enough though.
And she does animate the Walking Fountain (unless that already moves around in Dalaran?). But having so many murlocs felt un-Hagatha-y since there were only 2 murlocs in WW, and one of them was Dr Boom's creation (Nightmare Amalgam).
Oh well. Still better than Rafaam's flavour of... generic demon cards. Hopefully DoD and its introduction of nether dragons will give a satisfactory explanation.
Face Collector is an animated piece of moss and a bit of a hoarder. Lore wise I think the pertinent question is not 'what is Face Collector's story?', but 'what about Hagatha can we infer from its existence?'.
A huge part of the Witchwood set (about half of it I guess) was character building for Hagatha and the wood as a whole as much as it was about the individual cards. It is a bit of a shame the cards in RoS and SoU failed to really make use of her ability to turn motionless objects into wandering monsters.
Still, I feel they got her closer than Rafaam. I love Togwaggle being in rogue, but I have to wonder how supreme Rafaam could have been if he had been rogue instead and let loose with his thief identity...
Obviously a staple in any Galakrond deck, with the above comparisons to Twin Emperor Vek'lor being astute.
I'm interested in how the decision making process will play out when you have drawn both Kronx and Galakrond, but have not invoked enough times to want to play Galakrond yet. Especially in priest if there isn't anything worth using Galakrond's battlecry to kill.
So no Alexstrasza for hunter then? It did seem an odd match, especially with the green poisonous proto-drakes in the other hunter card art.
Anyway, this looks like another attempt at Acidmaw to me (which is fitting with the poisonous theme the class has this time). A bit less fun, but no doubt has a better chance of seeing play since you don't need to hit much to justify playing a 6 mana 7/6.
This card is very good, especially wild deathrattle rogue will love it. But in general, I would say that this is even better than Myra? It draws you a card, gives him a deathrattle that you actually want (because it is from your deck), you can have two of them... the only condition is playing a combo, which shouldn´t be such a problem in rogue
All the comparisons to Myra Rotspring are fair enough (lore-wise this does appear to be a kobold who has been trained by Myra and has a very similar effect after all), but they do gloss over the deck construction limitations the apothecary imposes, while Myra herself is self-contained. That is not to say it isn't stronger than Myra, but rather that it should be stronger on average because it restricts the rest of the deck more.
As someone who has played Myra and deathrattle rogue way more than most though, I do appreciate having space for small deathrattles that would be sorely disappointing to draw with the apothecary. Plated Beetle comes to mind. If you want that sort of deathrattle-heavy deck I would expect Myra to be stronger because she gives you a direct choice, but if you are aiming for a select few big deathrattles then the apothecary wins.
--------------------
Looking at the lore picture however: it is awesome to see these little call-backs to past characters, even if they are indirect. Can we now infer that Dr Boom roped his old employee into the League of EVIL? And if so, did any of the other Boom-labs scientists join?
OMFG, i just read it "The Banner Saga part 4 is here" and i got so hyped for a second. Then i read it again, my dreams were shattered :(
I was about to apologise for accidentally causing some misplaced hype, but since you didn't seem to mis-read the thread title last time I think this one is on you.
The upshot is that I have now heard of The Banner Saga. Can I assume from your moment of hype that it is a good game?
So I can play the Brawl now... but it thinks I am at 8 wins because that is where I got to before they closed it. As a result I have the joy of meeting other players with 8 wins, so only degenerate decks.
But that's OK, because I jumped straight to 8 wins so the game assumes I already got my free pack for the first win so there is no reason to play anyway.
Despite knowing I reached 8 wins it hasn't thought to give me the rewards I didn't get because they closed down the Brawl early. I don't normally voice my complaints, but being 2 packs and about 150+ gold down on rewards sucks and I hope the devs plan on doing something for everyone who got locked out.
Blizzard's Press Kit has the key art, but it's far from wallpaper dimensions. Couldn't find anything better, the media section of playhearthstone.com has indeed disappeared.
When I took a close look at the key art I was surprised to find a giant parrot sporting a cannon and a (very crude rendering of) an orc. The orc even has two bone coloured lines on its shoulder, so it looks like Skycap'n Kragg is making a return!
That or it is a simple Easter egg for anyone who takes the time to look at the detail of their artwork. Either way, it is a neat little inclusion.
What it is meant to be is exactly what it is: a constructed game mode with its MMR hidden to remove the sense of pressure you might feel to win in ranked.
What I would like it to be is essentially what rank 15 is: a place with no cost to losing and where a large fraction of players are reasonably competent but not interested in ranking up, leading to a diverse array of decks both inside and outside the meta. You could say the same for rank 10 too, but as soon as you 'accidentally' get into rank 9 you can forget about encountering anything interesting, while ranks 14 and 13 are still fairly well populated with home brew decks.
What I would really like it to be is a place where everyone goes to successfully escape meta decks and, understanding that is why everyone else is there, they spread the joy by bringing their own non-meta deck. Such a game mode is a beautiful dream, but not one I am naive or optimistic enough to seriously hope for.
I'm curious since this is Wild and Hunter - why Chief Inspector rather than Flare or Eater of Secrets? Just the bigger body?
Read the deck "guide" :)
As Sinti said, the "guide" explains all. My theme decks have a bit of room to use the most powerful options, but in this case the the Chief Inspector was irreplaceable for the story to work.
I have to find a way to wrap it all up now. I'm thinking of sending Sally to The Caverns Below to deal with the corruption at its source, so stay tuned for a competitively weak but thematically strong version of quest rogue!
(Who knows when I'll get around to it though, or if part 6 will even be quest rogue?)
With so much of the apparent power creep in this expansion being tied to dragons and Galakrond, I'm hoping the effect on the health of the game isn't so big as it first seems.
As much as I'd enjoy dragon-stone for a few weeks, I'll be glad is some/most classes are still better off doing something else.
Hi all,
With the weekend lull in card reveals it is time to unveil part 5 of my Banana Saga series of decks:
Full disclosure: this one is especially difficult to win with. But I can almost guarantee each game played summons more Sergeant Sallys than your opponent will have ever seen in the 3 years she has been in the game, so I guess that is something.
As ever though, the main purpose of these decks is to tell a story so do hop on over to the deck description if you are interested.
Now we know its official name and card text, I like how it was written. It's not the most efficient, but it adds to the flavour of the card without introducing ambiguities.
I am more pessimistic about the card's competitive potential than most (over the years I've seen way too many slow cards in rogue that are great on paper but never see any competitive play), but for those of us that play shuffle rogue decks anyway it is undoubtedly a welcome addition to the game.
Very probably. Shuffle heavy decks are never high tier ones and decks with only a bit of shuffling would probably be better off just using existing draw + Galakrond(?). But great for folks who don't care about climbing the ladder and enjoy shuffling shenanigans.
The answer is simply that destroying single minions (which will most often be what Flik is used for I expect) is rogue's thing, so there's just a coincidence of class for the two effects. That doesn't mean it had to be in rogue of course...
Anyway, if you look at it from an archetype perspective instead of a class one, then it isn't a problem. E.g. in the hypothetical pogo-rogue meta, you can run this to counter it, but not by playing your own pogo deck since Flik will kill all of yours too.
So if it is actually run as a tech against rogue, it will only work in archetypes different to the one being tech'd against, thereby avoiding the issue of a deck being its own best counter.
Pfft. This is rogue. You can run as many of any card as you like (unless your opponent has their own Flik...).
Seriously though, this is pretty much an auto-include in standard and probably takes the place of one of the Vilespines in wild. It might even be played in addition to both Vilespines there.
I don't mind the kobolds, partly because they don't impose any specific mechanics like murlocs do. Also, them getting picked on in the artwork of spells for the non-EVIL classes seems to be one of the primary story telling aspects outside of the solo content.
I do think 3 expansions with a continuing theme is quite enough though.
And she does animate the Walking Fountain (unless that already moves around in Dalaran?). But having so many murlocs felt un-Hagatha-y since there were only 2 murlocs in WW, and one of them was Dr Boom's creation (Nightmare Amalgam).
Oh well. Still better than Rafaam's flavour of... generic demon cards. Hopefully DoD and its introduction of nether dragons will give a satisfactory explanation.
Face Collector is an animated piece of moss and a bit of a hoarder. Lore wise I think the pertinent question is not 'what is Face Collector's story?', but 'what about Hagatha can we infer from its existence?'.
A huge part of the Witchwood set (about half of it I guess) was character building for Hagatha and the wood as a whole as much as it was about the individual cards. It is a bit of a shame the cards in RoS and SoU failed to really make use of her ability to turn motionless objects into wandering monsters.
Still, I feel they got her closer than Rafaam. I love Togwaggle being in rogue, but I have to wonder how supreme Rafaam could have been if he had been rogue instead and let loose with his thief identity...
Obviously a staple in any Galakrond deck, with the above comparisons to Twin Emperor Vek'lor being astute.
I'm interested in how the decision making process will play out when you have drawn both Kronx and Galakrond, but have not invoked enough times to want to play Galakrond yet. Especially in priest if there isn't anything worth using Galakrond's battlecry to kill.
So no Alexstrasza for hunter then? It did seem an odd match, especially with the green poisonous proto-drakes in the other hunter card art.
Anyway, this looks like another attempt at Acidmaw to me (which is fitting with the poisonous theme the class has this time). A bit less fun, but no doubt has a better chance of seeing play since you don't need to hit much to justify playing a 6 mana 7/6.
All the comparisons to Myra Rotspring are fair enough (lore-wise this does appear to be a kobold who has been trained by Myra and has a very similar effect after all), but they do gloss over the deck construction limitations the apothecary imposes, while Myra herself is self-contained. That is not to say it isn't stronger than Myra, but rather that it should be stronger on average because it restricts the rest of the deck more.
As someone who has played Myra and deathrattle rogue way more than most though, I do appreciate having space for small deathrattles that would be sorely disappointing to draw with the apothecary. Plated Beetle comes to mind. If you want that sort of deathrattle-heavy deck I would expect Myra to be stronger because she gives you a direct choice, but if you are aiming for a select few big deathrattles then the apothecary wins.
--------------------
Looking at the lore picture however: it is awesome to see these little call-backs to past characters, even if they are indirect. Can we now infer that Dr Boom roped his old employee into the League of EVIL? And if so, did any of the other Boom-labs scientists join?
I was about to apologise for accidentally causing some misplaced hype, but since you didn't seem to mis-read the thread title last time I think this one is on you.
The upshot is that I have now heard of The Banner Saga. Can I assume from your moment of hype that it is a good game?
So I can play the Brawl now... but it thinks I am at 8 wins because that is where I got to before they closed it. As a result I have the joy of meeting other players with 8 wins, so only degenerate decks.
But that's OK, because I jumped straight to 8 wins so the game assumes I already got my free pack for the first win so there is no reason to play anyway.
Despite knowing I reached 8 wins it hasn't thought to give me the rewards I didn't get because they closed down the Brawl early. I don't normally voice my complaints, but being 2 packs and about 150+ gold down on rewards sucks and I hope the devs plan on doing something for everyone who got locked out.
Same problem here. Like me you presumably you have an unfinished run from before. It seems Blizzard is working to make sure we can claim our rewards: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dwi3fv/tavern_brawl_update/
When I took a close look at the key art I was surprised to find a giant parrot sporting a cannon and a (very crude rendering of) an orc. The orc even has two bone coloured lines on its shoulder, so it looks like Skycap'n Kragg is making a return!
That or it is a simple Easter egg for anyone who takes the time to look at the detail of their artwork. Either way, it is a neat little inclusion.
What it is meant to be is exactly what it is: a constructed game mode with its MMR hidden to remove the sense of pressure you might feel to win in ranked.
What I would like it to be is essentially what rank 15 is: a place with no cost to losing and where a large fraction of players are reasonably competent but not interested in ranking up, leading to a diverse array of decks both inside and outside the meta. You could say the same for rank 10 too, but as soon as you 'accidentally' get into rank 9 you can forget about encountering anything interesting, while ranks 14 and 13 are still fairly well populated with home brew decks.
What I would really like it to be is a place where everyone goes to successfully escape meta decks and, understanding that is why everyone else is there, they spread the joy by bringing their own non-meta deck. Such a game mode is a beautiful dream, but not one I am naive or optimistic enough to seriously hope for.
She may well be the weakest card in the deck, but she is not actively detrimental and only has positive synergies.
As Sinti said, the "guide" explains all. My theme decks have a bit of room to use the most powerful options, but in this case the the Chief Inspector was irreplaceable for the story to work.