In what way doesn't it work? It should be fairly easy to complete the questline and there are various other synergies as well.
If you mean the deck is relatively weak compared to meta decks, then I agree, but the first paragraph of the guide already mentions that.
I've looked at several other decks that people build around Rise to the Occasion and they all came to a point where the way to improve the deck was to drop the questline. I wanted to see what would happen if you go all in on the questline by maximizing the chance of completing it by turn 5. I think this deck succeeds in that goal, but the outcome of the experiment is that the quest reward often isn't enough to carry you to victory with an almost empty hand and 1-drops as top-decks.
I'm only at 1200 honor right now. I haven't been playing much because the Wild meta is terrible and Mercenaries is eating up time. I guess I could play more Standard or stop grinding Mercenaries.
It doesn't help that the majority of my opponents is Alliance. If the rewards were equal, I'd have picked Horde, but Vanndar just fits my play style so much more better than Derk'Thar.
The weird thing is that deals for constructed have been getting better over time, with more packs and guaranteed legendaries, plus proper duplicate protection, but Mercenaries hasn't had a good deal since its introduction.
The main thing I'm concerned about is coins for maxed out mercenaries. Unless they either prevent those from spawning or introduce a way to recycle them, over time it will become harder and harder to get the coins for the mercenaries that you haven't maxed out yet.
While I agree that it's not completely useless, it isn't all that much work to get characters to level 30 by sticking them on the bench for a few days while you complete dailies. The real grind is getting coins and I'd be pleasantly surprised if The Training Grounds provides those.
I think this is a symptom of the underlying problem that it's really expensive to build a wide collection. Because every legendary matters, people will feel bad when they pull something from a pack that they could have gotten for free later.
What you're saying is exactly what I was getting at: the easiest way to nerf only the OwlTK deck is to make Owl not do face damage. If they take that route, will Phylactery still be a meta-relevant card or will it only be useful for memes? I do like meme decks, but I generally use legendaries that I already have rather than crafting them for a meme deck.
Freeze Shaman worked better than I expected against Quest Mage and Quest Hunter. A bit of armor can be enough to stay out of lethal range and you can summon a large enough board that the opponent cannot afford to send all their damage face. When they get their quest reward, you don't need to trade into it if you can keep freezing it until the end of the game.
There is still the question what Quest Warlock will do to the meta once it settles, but if that deck is oppressive I expect it to get nerfed again.
Rotating set format would be a very nice deck building challenge.
For gold cards, I like the animations but dislike the golden borders, so my ideal would be an option to show the animation in a normal card border.
Spectating GM/tournament games in-client would be great, but they don't even have custom viewers in the studio for their live streams, so I'm not holding my breath.
Playing against AI on ladder doesn't sound very exciting, especially with the Hearthstone AI not being all that great.
You probably could mod the client if you want to, but all the important information and decisions are server-side, so you can't change the game state or see things you're not supposed to see. Action games often have to send hidden information to the client in advance so it can be shown immediately when it comes into view, but as a slower game Hearthstone can afford to not send the information until the player is allowed to see it.
Same here: I could do 10 games on one particular day, but not keep up an average of 10 games per day for a month. And free time isn't even the bottleneck, as I have a lot of holidays saved up; I just don't want to spend so much of it playing Hearthstone.
Let's hope that there are additional sources or multipliers that we don't know about yet.
This is cheaper than Arbor Up though, so it could be played on the turn before to trade without losing power on the board. If Token Druid is meta, this card is likely to be good in the mirror match at least.
What I'm more worried about is that when your opponent doesn't play many minions or only plays big minions, you won't get a lot of value out of this. The stats are such that you need to summon at least one Wyvern to make it worth the mana.
The card text says "all enemies", so that can be an advantage over Hellfire and there is no risk of damaging your Imp.
While the card seems useful, I do share the concern that 5 mana might be too much. It could be worth it if you want tutor a particular spell, but for the average deck there are likely better alternatives.
In what way doesn't it work? It should be fairly easy to complete the questline and there are various other synergies as well.
If you mean the deck is relatively weak compared to meta decks, then I agree, but the first paragraph of the guide already mentions that.
I've looked at several other decks that people build around Rise to the Occasion and they all came to a point where the way to improve the deck was to drop the questline. I wanted to see what would happen if you go all in on the questline by maximizing the chance of completing it by turn 5. I think this deck succeeds in that goal, but the outcome of the experiment is that the quest reward often isn't enough to carry you to victory with an almost empty hand and 1-drops as top-decks.
I'm only at 1200 honor right now. I haven't been playing much because the Wild meta is terrible and Mercenaries is eating up time. I guess I could play more Standard or stop grinding Mercenaries.
It doesn't help that the majority of my opponents is Alliance. If the rewards were equal, I'd have picked Horde, but Vanndar just fits my play style so much more better than Derk'Thar.
The weird thing is that deals for constructed have been getting better over time, with more packs and guaranteed legendaries, plus proper duplicate protection, but Mercenaries hasn't had a good deal since its introduction.
The main thing I'm concerned about is coins for maxed out mercenaries. Unless they either prevent those from spawning or introduce a way to recycle them, over time it will become harder and harder to get the coins for the mercenaries that you haven't maxed out yet.
While I agree that it's not completely useless, it isn't all that much work to get characters to level 30 by sticking them on the bench for a few days while you complete dailies. The real grind is getting coins and I'd be pleasantly surprised if The Training Grounds provides those.
This article states that they are disenchantable until January 11th.
I think this is a symptom of the underlying problem that it's really expensive to build a wide collection. Because every legendary matters, people will feel bad when they pull something from a pack that they could have gotten for free later.
I guess it can be used like Soul of the Forest in sacrifice decks, so it's probably good enough indeed.
Even though I have some dust in the bank, I'm always worried about dust costs because it's gone in no time when crafting legendaries.
What you're saying is exactly what I was getting at: the easiest way to nerf only the OwlTK deck is to make Owl not do face damage. If they take that route, will Phylactery still be a meta-relevant card or will it only be useful for memes? I do like meme decks, but I generally use legendaries that I already have rather than crafting them for a meme deck.
Regarding early crafting, Dreadlich Tamsin will probably be good in other decks, but if Humongous Owl gets nerfed will Tamsin's Phylactery still be good?
Freeze Shaman worked better than I expected against Quest Mage and Quest Hunter. A bit of armor can be enough to stay out of lethal range and you can summon a large enough board that the opponent cannot afford to send all their damage face. When they get their quest reward, you don't need to trade into it if you can keep freezing it until the end of the game.
There is still the question what Quest Warlock will do to the meta once it settles, but if that deck is oppressive I expect it to get nerfed again.
New deck with lots of Alterac Valley cards:
Rotating set format would be a very nice deck building challenge.
For gold cards, I like the animations but dislike the golden borders, so my ideal would be an option to show the animation in a normal card border.
Spectating GM/tournament games in-client would be great, but they don't even have custom viewers in the studio for their live streams, so I'm not holding my breath.
Playing against AI on ladder doesn't sound very exciting, especially with the Hearthstone AI not being all that great.
You probably could mod the client if you want to, but all the important information and decisions are server-side, so you can't change the game state or see things you're not supposed to see. Action games often have to send hidden information to the client in advance so it can be shown immediately when it comes into view, but as a slower game Hearthstone can afford to not send the information until the player is allowed to see it.
Same here: I could do 10 games on one particular day, but not keep up an average of 10 games per day for a month. And free time isn't even the bottleneck, as I have a lot of holidays saved up; I just don't want to spend so much of it playing Hearthstone.
Let's hope that there are additional sources or multipliers that we don't know about yet.
I played a game with Tamsin earlier today and couldn't figure out how to get value out of her hero power. I guess I'm not the only one then.
This is cheaper than Arbor Up though, so it could be played on the turn before to trade without losing power on the board. If Token Druid is meta, this card is likely to be good in the mirror match at least.
What I'm more worried about is that when your opponent doesn't play many minions or only plays big minions, you won't get a lot of value out of this. The stats are such that you need to summon at least one Wyvern to make it worth the mana.
There is no way to know for sure just from the card text, but I think it's more likely that only the base damage is boosted and the Fel bonus is not.
The card text says "all enemies", so that can be an advantage over Hellfire and there is no risk of damaging your Imp.
While the card seems useful, I do share the concern that 5 mana might be too much. It could be worth it if you want tutor a particular spell, but for the average deck there are likely better alternatives.
I assumed this turn from a balance perspective, but when taken literally the card text does suggest it is permanent.