Being someone who may end up playing both games, I am not bothered by it at all. In fact I hope you guys really jump on this game and set yourselves up to be a top site for LoR content, and community gathering. I'd gladly wait on a few new features to the existing HS site, etc, if it means you guys are able to build a larger overall audience here at OoC by snagging a chunk of LoR players and bringing them here.
The more people you get here, the more users you have, the more successful this site can be. And that's awesome! So HS, LoR, MtGA, if you want to expand into covering Eternal as well, that'd be cool! It's not a super popular card game, especially after MtGA came out since Eternal was mostly an attempt to make a digital MtG clone that had better graphics/UI than Magic Online, but pretty sure it still has more users than Artifact. :)
Edit: Also, don't forget about The Bazaar. You know, Reynad's deck building game that we first heard about over a year ago... but then again, I think they announced the game as they were finishing initial design and moving to code the first shell of an alpha test. So would expect it may be a little longer before that one is out.
Yeah, I had some interest in Artifact, but never got on board on launch because of the initial cost. And then after the first few weeks I heard all the complaints. The random attacks were also a huge problem for me. I get if characters are lined up against each other in Artifact, have them fight. But when you have an opening ahead of your character, why not let the player choose to either hit the tower or help defeat an enemy in the spot directly to their right/left?
Ultimately, very glad I didn't get Artifact. But any card game with a F2P model is a card game I'm willing to at least try out. Haven't been on it lately, but I was enjoying Eternal for a while, which honestly this is kind of a mix of HS and Eternal or MtG. But comparing one of those to this wouldn't have made for as funny of a joke.
I agree with you, 100%, and always write guides as soon as I post a deck (which isn't often). But honestly, this deck doesn't need that much of a guide.
But... Guide:
The object of this deck is to control the board and stall until you can drop Emperor Thaurissan to get a tick on Malygos, as well as both copies of Sinister Strike and Eviscerate. Once you reduce each of these 5 cards by 1 mana you can play them all for 10 mana and do 34 face damage for an OTK!
The point of the quest is that the reward you get helps to control the board, by allowing trading with your hero while not taking damage. It also makes your Blade Flurry better as 3 damage to all is better than 1 to all enemy minions. The random card generation helps to ensure you don't run out of cards to play, and as always [Hearthstone Card (Gadgetzan Engineer) Not Found] helps you draw through your deck to find the combo pieces you need.
{DISCLAIMER} This guide was not written by the deck creator. The author of this guide has not played a single game with this deck at the time of writing the guide.
Not again ... lol. Havent played any token spawners yet, so dunno if it covers everything or this card only. Might be a problem with Basic set being gone and shaman HP tokens being flagged as basic set or something, tho it should at least summon Totem Golem if nothing else.
It was nerfed September 2016 to be "Summon a basic totem", so Totem Golem would not be in the pool. Only the four basic totems from hero power.
Which is weird... if you play with Shaman hero power right now does it not summon a totem either? What about SHR with Paladin?
You're asking me as if I've really put a lot of thought into this deck lately! :D
I quite literally found this deck list of mine on an old, no longer useful Hearthstone related site... *cough*... when the Fire Fest-E.V.I.L. came around this year and posted it here instead. Notice it includes nothing past K&C except a single Vivid Nightmare... it's not been updated/optimized in a while. The idea actually came from something I tried to build back in the Un'Goro days that used Herald Volazj and Mirage Caller to do basically the same thing but with a much MUCH lower win rate! Then during the Fire Festival 2018 I was like "Hey! I could do that thing I wanted to do, but using a Big Priest shell!" And so this deck was born to celebrate the Firelord in style!
Anyway, I suppose you could either swap that out for the Plague, or even make a few more changes, like remove both SW Horror, or one of them and Lightbomb to add in the Plague and a second Statue. The main reason I only have one Obsidian in this deck: I don't own a second copy. I'd love to see what list you come up with if you make some changes though.
Side Note: What ever happened to Freeze Shaman?!?!?! Print a few cards for the archetype and then never mention it again? Come on, Blizzard!!!
Was a meme, blizzard knew it was a meme, people hated shaman a lot when koft was in the planning phase so they gave the class the worst cards ever printed.
Actually, Deathseer Thrall was a really nice card that expansion! As soon as I opened that guy I built an Evolution Shaman deck and played that a LOT!!! Got over 100 of my first 500 Shaman wins with that deck alone in the first month or so. Then it suddenly fell off on win rate, around the time that Keleseth decks rose to prominence.
But meme or not, I would have loved to see more freeze support for Shaman. #MakeMoorabiGreatForOnce
One of the things that makes Big Priest possible in Wild is the amount of board clearing effects Priest gets year in and year out. This happens because they don't have a great one in Classic/Basic, so they print one every now and then. But with all they've got now in Wild they can mass clear and/or stall until they cheat our and then resurrect a ton of big dudes to win.
Frost Nova may very well limit their ability to print more mass freezes, but I'm honestly okay with that. Time Warp Mages in Wild are already pretty strong, imagine how much strong they'd get if they had more cheap mass freezes that also came with cool and helpful effects? If they were to do this, the card replacing Frost Nova in Classic woudl have to be the new mass freeze card so that they don't go printing a bunch year after year.
Uh, no. Big priest and quest mage are currently barely playable in wild. The reason big priest is strong is because Blizzard decided to implement a half-assed resurrection mechanic. Wild priest is at a point where the amount of removals it has are extremely bloated. So much so that insane board clears like Lightbomb and Dragonfire Potion see little to no play.
I never said either was played a lot, but that doesn't mean they both aren't still strong decks. Big Priest has dropped in favor because it loses often to the currently preferred Mage deck, Secret Mage. But both Big Priest and Time Warp Mage with Vargoth and Arcane Giants can still win games. When I play that deck I often win burning my opponent down before I even need to play the Vargoth, Giants, and Quest turn.
And yes, the Wild Priest cards are overloaded with board clears. That was exactly the point I was making and applying to the discussion of Frost Nova and printing more mass freeze cards.
To be clearer on my BP comment, yes, the rez mechanic is what technically allows it to be a thing since you can rez multilpe copies of a single dead minion. However, not every game plays out so perfectly and you can't always get early minions on board. In those cases you often need board clears to survive until you can use the busted rez mechanic to set up a big board that your opponent can't deal with. At least that has been my personal experience playing the deck in the past.
One of the things that makes Big Priest possible in Wild is the amount of board clearing effects Priest gets year in and year out. This happens because they don't have a great one in Classic/Basic, so they print one every now and then. But with all they've got now in Wild they can mass clear and/or stall until they cheat our and then resurrect a ton of big dudes to win.
Frost Nova may very well limit their ability to print more mass freezes, but I'm honestly okay with that. Time Warp Mages in Wild are already pretty strong, imagine how much strong they'd get if they had more cheap mass freezes that also came with cool and helpful effects? If they were to do this, the card replacing Frost Nova in Classic woudl have to be the new mass freeze card so that they don't go printing a bunch year after year.
I built a Big Priest variant around the time of the 2018 Fire Festival in honor of the Firelord himself! The intention was multiple Ragnaros copies plus Enchanter to rain down a second Cataclym on your opponent (as in reshaping the world, not the card)!
First, the interaction for Jaraxxus is definitely strange, but because he is a minion who takes over as your hero and not a hero card, the interaction exists. Lord J can still be on your board as a minion in some situations (summon through Voidcaller or Skull, or Bane of Doom summoning a random demon), and since he is a minion at heart the spell still works even if he's in your hero slot.
The best solution for Jaraxxus if they want to make him playable is to make him into a true Hero card. But they can't really do that either because then one class would always have a hero card in Standard as he is part of the Classic set. So the other big solution could be blocking that interaction when Jaraxxus is in the hero position, or maybe coding Zeph to not offer Sac Pact when J is in the hero position. But as others have pointed out, Sac Pact isn't the biggest problem with J.
I actually still don't have Jaraxxus, despite playing since launch. I didn't start playing the game a lot until Un'Goro, and then prior to crafting Jaraxxus I opened Bloodreaver Gul'dan as my free log in DK for Frozen Throne. So as you said in OP, what was the point of Jaraxxus if I had Gul'dan DK?
Still a really cool card, and whenever I actually open him I'll probably try to build something around him, but who knows if it'll be any good. Maybe we'll see some support for midrange warlock over the next couple of expansions, then with rotation in April 2020 a deck with Jaraxxus might pop up and be viable.
Yes! I don't know what you'd want to swap, but I was thinking Call of the Wild would be great in a Highlander deck, especially if you play it before Zul'jin.
I actually missed hunter, and I agree the card is quite potent, it was too slow/outclassed before it rotated but now the meta is a bit slower than it was back then in the midrange shaman/patches era.. so it might fit, as to what to replace well you could look at win rates and cards that feel less impactful and switch them highlander decks tend to be very flexible.
My initial thought was the Masked Contender seeing as I felt I rarely got to play that card with the effect active, but that is just my personal experiences. nd while it's just a one card swap it still feels like a big hit to your deck's curve replacing a 4 mana card with a 9 mana card.
Yes! I don't know what you'd want to swap, but I was thinking Call of the Wild would be great in a Highlander deck, especially if you play it before Zul'jin.
I used to use Bloodhoof Brave quite a bit. Some of the Aggro/Tempo lists currently run a few "enrage" minions. It could fit if you need to tech against aggro, and even against slower decks it's not a bad minion to hit with Inner Rage and suddenly have a 7/5 taunt on board.
I honestly didn’t notice the exclusion of Classic/Basic in that list. I did notice there are 11 sets total. Which now that you point out they are all the Wild sets, yeah... I bet Classic/Basic are excluded. That’s pretty sweet actually!
If you think about it, they have never had that many sets in Arena since they made it Standard years ago, but removing the largest set means adding a few more to replace it. And since the Adventures are only around 35 cards each, you’d need all 11 Wild sets to make up the difference in card pool after removing Classic/Basic.
Yeah, I've seen people use it in really aggressive Pirate Warrior decks in the past, and it can dominate pretty hard if you get it out first thing and your opponent is playing a slower deck. It's just... I can't bring myself to ever play that weapon! It's a personal choice.
It might be if you start overdrawing while you have a full hand? Or if you just draw too many cards in a single turn as Flux suggests.
I was just playing the Mindblast OTK version listed on the site, and I over drew several cards, going up to 6 damage in a single fatigue draw. Luckily I was also able to play a couple Spirit Lashes and 4x Mind Blast to set myself up for a win and to survive 7 potential fatigue damage next turn.
However, as my next turn started, my deck reloaded. So it will fatigue if you try to draw forever in a single turn, but does seem to regenerate the following turn.
They do sort of prorate packs through occasional sales or bundles. For rotating sets specifically, they had the “Mammoth Bundle” as year of the Mammoth was near the end, and I believe they had a similar “Raven bundle” earlier this year. Both were at discounted rates and included packs of the oldest 5 sets in standard (I think). To make this more of an actual prorated price they could allow you to customize the bundle and pick how many packs you want from each available set in the bundle, or maybe remove or increase the 1 bundle limit. That way if you want to buy a lot of older packs at discount you could do that, instead of just 10 to 5 or so per expansion included in the bundle.
Being someone who may end up playing both games, I am not bothered by it at all. In fact I hope you guys really jump on this game and set yourselves up to be a top site for LoR content, and community gathering. I'd gladly wait on a few new features to the existing HS site, etc, if it means you guys are able to build a larger overall audience here at OoC by snagging a chunk of LoR players and bringing them here.
The more people you get here, the more users you have, the more successful this site can be. And that's awesome! So HS, LoR, MtGA, if you want to expand into covering Eternal as well, that'd be cool! It's not a super popular card game, especially after MtGA came out since Eternal was mostly an attempt to make a digital MtG clone that had better graphics/UI than Magic Online, but pretty sure it still has more users than Artifact. :)
Edit: Also, don't forget about The Bazaar. You know, Reynad's deck building game that we first heard about over a year ago... but then again, I think they announced the game as they were finishing initial design and moving to code the first shell of an alpha test. So would expect it may be a little longer before that one is out.
Yeah, I had some interest in Artifact, but never got on board on launch because of the initial cost. And then after the first few weeks I heard all the complaints. The random attacks were also a huge problem for me. I get if characters are lined up against each other in Artifact, have them fight. But when you have an opening ahead of your character, why not let the player choose to either hit the tower or help defeat an enemy in the spot directly to their right/left?
Ultimately, very glad I didn't get Artifact. But any card game with a F2P model is a card game I'm willing to at least try out. Haven't been on it lately, but I was enjoying Eternal for a while, which honestly this is kind of a mix of HS and Eternal or MtG. But comparing one of those to this wouldn't have made for as funny of a joke.
This is the game that Artifact wants to be when it grows up.
I agree with you, 100%, and always write guides as soon as I post a deck (which isn't often). But honestly, this deck doesn't need that much of a guide.
But... Guide:
The object of this deck is to control the board and stall until you can drop Emperor Thaurissan to get a tick on Malygos, as well as both copies of Sinister Strike and Eviscerate. Once you reduce each of these 5 cards by 1 mana you can play them all for 10 mana and do 34 face damage for an OTK!
The point of the quest is that the reward you get helps to control the board, by allowing trading with your hero while not taking damage. It also makes your Blade Flurry better as 3 damage to all is better than 1 to all enemy minions. The random card generation helps to ensure you don't run out of cards to play, and as always [Hearthstone Card (Gadgetzan Engineer) Not Found] helps you draw through your deck to find the combo pieces you need.
{DISCLAIMER} This guide was not written by the deck creator. The author of this guide has not played a single game with this deck at the time of writing the guide.
It was nerfed September 2016 to be "Summon a basic totem", so Totem Golem would not be in the pool. Only the four basic totems from hero power.
Which is weird... if you play with Shaman hero power right now does it not summon a totem either? What about SHR with Paladin?
You're asking me as if I've really put a lot of thought into this deck lately! :D
I quite literally found this deck list of mine on an old, no longer useful Hearthstone related site... *cough*... when the Fire Fest-E.V.I.L. came around this year and posted it here instead. Notice it includes nothing past K&C except a single Vivid Nightmare... it's not been updated/optimized in a while. The idea actually came from something I tried to build back in the Un'Goro days that used Herald Volazj and Mirage Caller to do basically the same thing but with a much MUCH lower win rate! Then during the Fire Festival 2018 I was like "Hey! I could do that thing I wanted to do, but using a Big Priest shell!" And so this deck was born to celebrate the Firelord in style!
Anyway, I suppose you could either swap that out for the Plague, or even make a few more changes, like remove both SW Horror, or one of them and Lightbomb to add in the Plague and a second Statue. The main reason I only have one Obsidian in this deck: I don't own a second copy. I'd love to see what list you come up with if you make some changes though.
Actually, Deathseer Thrall was a really nice card that expansion! As soon as I opened that guy I built an Evolution Shaman deck and played that a LOT!!! Got over 100 of my first 500 Shaman wins with that deck alone in the first month or so. Then it suddenly fell off on win rate, around the time that Keleseth decks rose to prominence.
But meme or not, I would have loved to see more freeze support for Shaman. #MakeMoorabiGreatForOnce
I never said either was played a lot, but that doesn't mean they both aren't still strong decks. Big Priest has dropped in favor because it loses often to the currently preferred Mage deck, Secret Mage. But both Big Priest and Time Warp Mage with Vargoth and Arcane Giants can still win games. When I play that deck I often win burning my opponent down before I even need to play the Vargoth, Giants, and Quest turn.
And yes, the Wild Priest cards are overloaded with board clears. That was exactly the point I was making and applying to the discussion of Frost Nova and printing more mass freeze cards.
To be clearer on my BP comment, yes, the rez mechanic is what technically allows it to be a thing since you can rez multilpe copies of a single dead minion. However, not every game plays out so perfectly and you can't always get early minions on board. In those cases you often need board clears to survive until you can use the busted rez mechanic to set up a big board that your opponent can't deal with. At least that has been my personal experience playing the deck in the past.
Short answer is that it's a digital card game, so they wanted to include some RNG effects to take advantage of the digital space.
Side Note: What ever happened to Freeze Shaman?!?!?! Print a few cards for the archetype and then never mention it again? Come on, Blizzard!!!
One of the things that makes Big Priest possible in Wild is the amount of board clearing effects Priest gets year in and year out. This happens because they don't have a great one in Classic/Basic, so they print one every now and then. But with all they've got now in Wild they can mass clear and/or stall until they cheat our and then resurrect a ton of big dudes to win.
Frost Nova may very well limit their ability to print more mass freezes, but I'm honestly okay with that. Time Warp Mages in Wild are already pretty strong, imagine how much strong they'd get if they had more cheap mass freezes that also came with cool and helpful effects? If they were to do this, the card replacing Frost Nova in Classic woudl have to be the new mass freeze card so that they don't go printing a bunch year after year.
I built a Big Priest variant around the time of the 2018 Fire Festival in honor of the Firelord himself! The intention was multiple Ragnaros copies plus Enchanter to rain down a second Cataclym on your opponent (as in reshaping the world, not the card)!
First, the interaction for Jaraxxus is definitely strange, but because he is a minion who takes over as your hero and not a hero card, the interaction exists. Lord J can still be on your board as a minion in some situations (summon through Voidcaller or Skull, or Bane of Doom summoning a random demon), and since he is a minion at heart the spell still works even if he's in your hero slot.
The best solution for Jaraxxus if they want to make him playable is to make him into a true Hero card. But they can't really do that either because then one class would always have a hero card in Standard as he is part of the Classic set. So the other big solution could be blocking that interaction when Jaraxxus is in the hero position, or maybe coding Zeph to not offer Sac Pact when J is in the hero position. But as others have pointed out, Sac Pact isn't the biggest problem with J.
I actually still don't have Jaraxxus, despite playing since launch. I didn't start playing the game a lot until Un'Goro, and then prior to crafting Jaraxxus I opened Bloodreaver Gul'dan as my free log in DK for Frozen Throne. So as you said in OP, what was the point of Jaraxxus if I had Gul'dan DK?
Still a really cool card, and whenever I actually open him I'll probably try to build something around him, but who knows if it'll be any good. Maybe we'll see some support for midrange warlock over the next couple of expansions, then with rotation in April 2020 a deck with Jaraxxus might pop up and be viable.
My initial thought was the Masked Contender seeing as I felt I rarely got to play that card with the effect active, but that is just my personal experiences. nd while it's just a one card swap it still feels like a big hit to your deck's curve replacing a 4 mana card with a 9 mana card.
Yes! I don't know what you'd want to swap, but I was thinking Call of the Wild would be great in a Highlander deck, especially if you play it before Zul'jin.
I used to use Bloodhoof Brave quite a bit. Some of the Aggro/Tempo lists currently run a few "enrage" minions. It could fit if you need to tech against aggro, and even against slower decks it's not a bad minion to hit with Inner Rage and suddenly have a 7/5 taunt on board.
I honestly didn’t notice the exclusion of Classic/Basic in that list. I did notice there are 11 sets total. Which now that you point out they are all the Wild sets, yeah... I bet Classic/Basic are excluded. That’s pretty sweet actually!
If you think about it, they have never had that many sets in Arena since they made it Standard years ago, but removing the largest set means adding a few more to replace it. And since the Adventures are only around 35 cards each, you’d need all 11 Wild sets to make up the difference in card pool after removing Classic/Basic.
Should have included some of the HoF too!
Yeah, I've seen people use it in really aggressive Pirate Warrior decks in the past, and it can dominate pretty hard if you get it out first thing and your opponent is playing a slower deck. It's just... I can't bring myself to ever play that weapon! It's a personal choice.
:)
It might be if you start overdrawing while you have a full hand? Or if you just draw too many cards in a single turn as Flux suggests.
I was just playing the Mindblast OTK version listed on the site, and I over drew several cards, going up to 6 damage in a single fatigue draw. Luckily I was also able to play a couple Spirit Lashes and 4x Mind Blast to set myself up for a win and to survive 7 potential fatigue damage next turn.
However, as my next turn started, my deck reloaded. So it will fatigue if you try to draw forever in a single turn, but does seem to regenerate the following turn.
They do sort of prorate packs through occasional sales or bundles. For rotating sets specifically, they had the “Mammoth Bundle” as year of the Mammoth was near the end, and I believe they had a similar “Raven bundle” earlier this year. Both were at discounted rates and included packs of the oldest 5 sets in standard (I think). To make this more of an actual prorated price they could allow you to customize the bundle and pick how many packs you want from each available set in the bundle, or maybe remove or increase the 1 bundle limit. That way if you want to buy a lot of older packs at discount you could do that, instead of just 10 to 5 or so per expansion included in the bundle.