I noticed that all the rares I got this month were cards that I had golden copies of, but not yet two regular copies. Which allowed me to disenchant the golden ones for extra dust.
Note that I have two copies of every Standard rare currently. Did the same thing happen to other players in the same situation?
It's 4x for epics and legendaries, but golden rares disenchant for 5x regular (100 vs 20) and commons for 10x (50 vs 5). The worst case for these packs (1500 dust) is about the same as 15 average regular packs.
So if you want to buy dust, this is more efficient than regular packs. But buying dust is very expensive, so I wouldn't recommend doing it at all if you're on a budget.
Against most decks your win condition is fatigue, but if your opponent has a low-value deck, you could try to beat them with taunts.
When on the fatigue plan, try to cast Naturalize multiple times per turn, so you burn as many cards as possible.
Oaken Summons is good early on if Deathlord is banned, since you can evade the battlecry of Hecklebot. Don't over-use it though, especially if Naturalize was banned, since you can give up your fatigue advantage that way.
If the opponent has a card that shuffles, ban that if possible.
I got to Gold 1 soon after the expansion, but then dropped all the way back to the Gold 5 rank floor as the meta decks got more refined. But tonight I gave it another shot and I made it to Platinum a few hours before the end of the month.
One thing Hearthstone gets right code-wise is that the server doesn't trust the client. Therefore, the server will validate the deck when a game is started, so even if the client is buggy or hacked, games with invalid decks will be prevented from being started.
There are many possible reasons for a deck to be invalid in Wild: it may contain the wrong number of cards, more than the allowed number of copies of a single card, class cards of the wrong class, non-collectible cards etc.
Copy-pasting the deck code as a new deck, like Thonson suggested, might fix the issue. If it doesn't, then please post the deck code; it would be interesting to see what is going on.
Personally, I only squelch opponents if they're emoting a lot and it is distracting me from planning my turns. But it's not hard to imagine other players being bothered more by emotes and therefore wanting to always squelch. That doesn't mean emotes are a misfeature in general, just that it's not for everyone.
Albatross might only be nerfed to 3/3: if it's not statted aggressively, I think aggro decks will be looking for replacements.
Isn't the point of Bloodbloom in Mecha'thun Warlock to discount Cataclysm? In that case, it would not contribute anything to the combo at 4 mana. What they could do is make it work like Preparation: 0 mana, take two damage, discount your next spell this turn by 2 mana.
Tom60229 is a former World Champion, while Surrender and Tyler have won HCT events. They're not familiar outside their region as streamers perhaps, although Tyler does stream in English.
Blizzard signed a contract with Google to broadcast their eSports on YouTube. Perhaps disappointed by the lower viewer numbers, it seems they moved all their promotional streams back to Twitch, but I don't think they'll be able to do that for Grandmasters until the contract expires.
I got it now, with your hint and another. Kinda embarrassing I didn't think of that given my current forum title ;)
OK, I'll narrow it down:
I think the hint was actually about
Hint:
I'm also missing #13. I'll list the many things I tried that weren't it, maybe something will spark an idea:
Voice line: Expired Merchant
Literal food: Witchwood Apple, Gurubashi Offering
Cutlery: Deadly Fork, Silverware Golem
Food sellers: Refreshment Vendor, Ice Cream Peddler, Chef Nomi, Barista Lynchen
Edible minions: Murloc Tastyfin, Tasty Flyfish, Angry Chicken
Minions that eat: Hungry Crab, Golakka Crawler, Gral, the Shark, Eater of Secrets, Priest of the Feast
Spells that eat: Bite, Consume Magic, Siphon Soul
Bananas: King Mukla, Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale, Banana Buffoon
Puns: Naga Sand Witch, Zola the Gorgon
Edit: You can look at these for entertainment value, but they're not going to bring you closer to the actual answer.
About #14:
Yeah, there are so many birds that are made of fire, that threw me off at first as well.
I noticed that all the rares I got this month were cards that I had golden copies of, but not yet two regular copies. Which allowed me to disenchant the golden ones for extra dust.
Note that I have two copies of every Standard rare currently. Did the same thing happen to other players in the same situation?
It's 4x for epics and legendaries, but golden rares disenchant for 5x regular (100 vs 20) and commons for 10x (50 vs 5). The worst case for these packs (1500 dust) is about the same as 15 average regular packs.
So if you want to buy dust, this is more efficient than regular packs. But buying dust is very expensive, so I wouldn't recommend doing it at all if you're on a budget.
I made a new deck and this one is actually pretty strong:
This is what I've been playing:
Against most decks your win condition is fatigue, but if your opponent has a low-value deck, you could try to beat them with taunts.
When on the fatigue plan, try to cast Naturalize multiple times per turn, so you burn as many cards as possible.
Oaken Summons is good early on if Deathlord is banned, since you can evade the battlecry of Hecklebot. Don't over-use it though, especially if Naturalize was banned, since you can give up your fatigue advantage that way.
If the opponent has a card that shuffles, ban that if possible.
I got to Gold 1 soon after the expansion, but then dropped all the way back to the Gold 5 rank floor as the meta decks got more refined. But tonight I gave it another shot and I made it to Platinum a few hours before the end of the month.
This was the deck I used:
One thing Hearthstone gets right code-wise is that the server doesn't trust the client. Therefore, the server will validate the deck when a game is started, so even if the client is buggy or hacked, games with invalid decks will be prevented from being started.
There are many possible reasons for a deck to be invalid in Wild: it may contain the wrong number of cards, more than the allowed number of copies of a single card, class cards of the wrong class, non-collectible cards etc.
Copy-pasting the deck code as a new deck, like Thonson suggested, might fix the issue. If it doesn't, then please post the deck code; it would be interesting to see what is going on.
Opening the YOD packs last would be better, I think, since you'd get more out of the duplicate protection that way.
Personally, I only squelch opponents if they're emoting a lot and it is distracting me from planning my turns. But it's not hard to imagine other players being bothered more by emotes and therefore wanting to always squelch. That doesn't mean emotes are a misfeature in general, just that it's not for everyone.
I agree with most of your predictions.
Albatross might only be nerfed to 3/3: if it's not statted aggressively, I think aggro decks will be looking for replacements.
Isn't the point of Bloodbloom in Mecha'thun Warlock to discount Cataclysm? In that case, it would not contribute anything to the combo at 4 mana. What they could do is make it work like Preparation: 0 mana, take two damage, discount your next spell this turn by 2 mana.
Tom60229 is a former World Champion, while Surrender and Tyler have won HCT events. They're not familiar outside their region as streamers perhaps, although Tyler does stream in English.
Blizzard signed a contract with Google to broadcast their eSports on YouTube. Perhaps disappointed by the lower viewer numbers, it seems they moved all their promotional streams back to Twitch, but I don't think they'll be able to do that for Grandmasters until the contract expires.
And why isn't Kripp in the Salty team?