Riftcleaver is a decent replacement for Rend Blackhand. Even more so in decks where you can fit in Lesser Amethyst Spellstone or lots of healing. You could use Sense Demons as a tutor and also run Aranasi Broodmother, then you are very likely to draw useful cards with it (like Betrug; I have doubts about Portal Keeper though).
Dollmaster Dorian is nice for extra Plot Twist value, plus you can combine it with Voidlord drawn by Plot Twist or Sense Demons or just by luck on a single draw.
I agree with other posters that adding Reno, Kazakus and Zephrys would help a lot. Kazakus and Zephrys are great at finding board clears, while Reno buys you time against aggro. Since you want to be life tapping a lot to find your Plot Twists, Reno is extra useful for this deck.
Is Curse of Rafaam there specifically to defeat Ice Block? Because in general I'd rather run removal like Darkbomb or Spirit Bomb or Demonwrath than hoping to stall an opponent with the curse. And there are anti-secret techs that would be more useful against other classes.
In general, I think the lack of good beasts is a problem; the mech and demon options are just stronger.
Perhaps you could run Stonetusk Boar; if you want to play lots of small minions for History Buff. [Hearthstone Card (Soularium) Not Found] might be good as well, to draw a lot of cheap cards.
Note that the non-golden legendary pity timer is a separate timer per pack type, so assuming the golden pity timer works in the same way, you'd only trigger it by getting hundreds of packs from the same type. The OP mentions only Uldum packs, so they should hit the pity timer soonish if 400 is indeed the limit.
Personally I typically get 100 to 120 packs per expansion. I have a golden legendary from some expansions but not from all, so any pity timer limit would be above 100 at least.
As far as I know you can complete daily quests vs the innkeeper, that might be a way to grow her collection without losing a ton of games.
The only quest which can be completed against the innkeeper is the win 7 games one.
Hmm, I thought that used to work for other types of quests as well, but I can't find any mention of it online, so it may be a figment of my imagination.
As far as I know you can complete daily quests vs the innkeeper, that might be a way to grow her collection without losing a ton of games.
Assuming you mean the Dr. Boom hero rather than the minion, you could probably make Control Warrior deck by just throwing all mechs and removal you have together. Use Plague of Wrath instead of Brawl, double Execute, double Omega Assembly etc. I don't know how exciting it would be to play though.
Token Druid is pretty cheap and has the potential to high-roll, so it will get some wins. For example this deck contains no epics and legendaries except SN1P-SN4P.
In any kind deck where you have cheap high-health minions like Upgradeable Framebot or Rabble Bouncer or (pseudo) eggs like Mechano-Egg or Mechanical Whelp, you can add Faceless Rager to get extra tempo. It is a situational card and therefore not very popular, but when you find yourself in the right situation it can really swing games.
- Mech Hunter; This meta is full of control and Ctrl Warrior in particular is even stronger. Mech Hunter (thankfully) has mostly died a death now.
Do you mean the aggressive version built around Goblin Bombs? I prefer playing the slower deathrattle deck using Mechanical Whelp instead and that used to be very good versus Control Warrior. I haven't played it since the expansion release though.
- Any Highkeeper Ra deck; As yet I've still to see this work for any deck consistently. There's a couple of really meme-y versions out there, but they struggle
I never expected this to be anything more than a meme. It's actually easier to summon Ra than I thought, but versus aggro it's too slow of a process and versus control it's not a guaranteed win.
The package I'm using is Glinda Crowskin, Grim Rally, Witchwood Piper and Sense Demons. You have to draw Glinda naturally, but the Piper draws the cultist and can itself be tutored as a demon. Plus having that extra draw thins your deck, making it more likely to draw Glinda. You do have to stick Glinda to the board, but with a taunt on the board that wasn't all that hard in practice.
This was at rank 15 Wild shortly after the expansion launched, which is not the most competitive meta; sticking Glinda might be trickier versus try-hard decks. In that case there is still the option to use Expired Merchant and Soulwarden to get more copies of Glinda.
Having more alternatives can be useful for a highlander deck. Bouncing Zephrys the Great might be too greedy, but at least greed is thematic for a burgle deck.
Glowstone Technician is really good with magnetic. If you go that route, you might want to include Glow-Tron as well.
Since you're already running Da Undatakah and exactly two good deathrattles, you could add a single Immortal Prelate and get infinite value in the ultra-late game. You wouldn't have enough card draw to get there often, but if you ever find yourself losing in fatigue it is an option to consider.
By the way, it turns out Dragon Shaman with the quest is a bad idea. The first problem is that because the quest is in your opening hand, there is less likely to be a dragon in your early hands, which makes Firetree Witchdoctor and Scaleworm poor plays until you draw a dragon. The second problem is that most of the dragon battlecries don't improve all that much after quest completion.
In theory you could open a channel in advance and it will start playing when the broadcast starts. In practice, Twitch isn't all that reliable and playback can hang when switching video (broadcast start or from/to commercials). I don't know if that matters for pack drops though: it would depend on whether you're actually disconnected from the channel or only from the video feed.
In general, it seems most people (myself included) first try to make decks that complete the quests as soon as possible. For some quests that might be the right way, but in other cases it might be better to build a deck that completes the quest eventually, so treat the quest as a package and not as an archetype. clawz161 already mentioned this for the Paladin and Warrior quests. Although personally I would call the old Druid deck (Malygos/Togwaggle/Mecha'thun Druid) a template rather than a package, since those decks had about 25 fixed slots and 5 variable slots in which the win condition could be inserted.
An upside to completing quests later is that Questing Explorer is more likely to draw you cards.
Druid
In theory the Druid quest is crazy good, but when I'm playing against it, it doesn't feel exceptionally powerful. I've gotten wins against it playing decks that honestly weren't all that good. Maybe what is happening is that the plays that can be made with a completed quest have good tempo, but not insane tempo like the late-game options of some other decks. And the quest reward doesn't kick in until turn 5 (coin) or 6, while tempo has a bigger impact in the earlier turns.
I'm wondering if a quest variant of Token Druid is possible. Cards like Power of the Wild, Tending Tauren and Cenarius become significantly better with the quest reward and maybe that's the extra pressure you need to defeat the likes of Control Warrior.
Warrior
The Warrior quest is easier to complete than I thought. But it is also more mana intensive to use than I realized: let's say you want to use your new hero power twice on turn 7, then you spend 2x2 mana on golems and can therefore spend only 3 mana on cards.
I tried a variation on Pirate Warrior at first and while I won, the quest was pointless in that deck. Now I'm trying a rush variant.
Priest
Completing the Priest quest with small heals takes a long time, so maybe it's better to focus on a few big heals instead. If you play Zilliax and two copies of Divine Hymn, that's enough healing. That would leave more card slots and mana to do other things: if your entire deck is geared towards quest completion, then the cards you can play in the late game are not good enough. While the quest reward is very nice, it's not a game winner: you do need a late-game plan in your deck.
Shaman
The Shaman quest I haven't played yet, but it seems easy enough to use since battlecries are something that Shaman is already good at and the original hero power isn't very good in the late game anyway.
I'll probably try Dragon Shaman at some point; dragons and dragon synergy cards often have battlecries. It's a pity there is no class dragon for Shaman though.
Elemental Shaman could also work with the quest, although I don't know if there are enough good elementals left in Standard; maybe this is more viable in Wild where the Un'Goro elementals are also available.
The package approach won't work here: this quest takes too long to complete without Plot Twist and playing Plot Twist in a deck not built around that card is not very good.
For something that takes so much effort, the quest reward isn't all that great. Maybe part of the issue is that the base Warlock hero power is already very good, so something that replaces it must be extremely good to be worth its cost. That's why Odd Warlock was hardly played at all, while there were enough good odd-costed cards to build it.
Hunter
As YJHS2000 writes, this is hard to complete without Swarm of Locusts. And that card has the potential to fill up the board so Zul'jin cannot summon any other (stronger) minions. I think that for decks already running Zul'jin, the quest is not worth either replacing him or running the risk of the battlecry fizzling.
Maybe there is hope for a mech variant of Token Hunter: there are a lot of cards that summon microbots and goblin bombs, for example Replicating Menace contributes 3 or 4 to the quest (assuming magnetizing doesn't count as a summon), while SN1P-SN4P on turn 6 would contribute 5 or 6. Still, getting to 20 will take a while.
Rogue
The quest seems easy to complete. I'm not sure what kind of decks it would fit in though.
While the immunity is nice, it doesn't scale to the late game like Spectral Cutlass does. So you might not be able to play games long enough to make Tess Greymane worthwhile (or to even draw Tess in time most games).
For a more aggressive game plan, this doesn't have the burst potential that Waggle Pick + Leeroy Jenkins does.
Perhaps it could work in a tempo deck in which the weapon is used to remove opposing minions while your own minions go face repeatedly. Maybe some kind of Captain Hooktusk deck, minus Raiding Party.
Mage
I think I've only seen one opponent play this so far, in a highlander deck. It wasn't very impactful there since it look a long time to complete. Mage already has a lot of value generation options; I'm not sure this is good enough to wait that long for.
It might be a good addition to a Mana Cyclone deck, since you could delay playing the quest until the Cyclone turn, assuming you draw Cyclone early.
Paladin
I don't have much of an opinion on this quest yet: I don't have it myself and I haven't seen it played except in some very early streams.
Run both lackeys and self damage packages, I tried it, it's quite effective, yet to face warrior or paladin though
You can combine lackeys with self-damage, but fitting demon synergy in there as well would be difficult. EVIL Genius needs something cheap to sacrifice, so you need tokens and/or deathrattles and once you have those, you probably want to capitalize on that by adding more typical zoo cards like Dire Wolf Alpha.
I ran into one Warrior so far and while I lost, it was pretty close until Omega Devastator came online. That's what led me to include Mojomaster Zihi.
Sure, but just pick the best of both worlds. Having too many self-damaging cards can be very dangerous and there are plenty of safer options too.
There is quite a bit of healing in the deck, so you have a lot more than 30 health to work with. The current list has around 20 to 25 points of healing, depending on how much value you get from the Spider, Zilliax and when you draw the Broodmothers. If that is not enough, you could replace a Flame Imp by a second Crystallizer and add a second Rotten Applebaum.
As long as you can deal more damage than you receive, you'll be fine against most decks. Pure burn decks are rare these days: most aggressive decks rely on repeated minion damage before being able to finish you off. If you win the minion war, you're likely outside of their burn range and then they'll have to use their burn on your minions just to stay alive.
I am trying a Lackey/Pain hybrid, and it's not so strong as one would expect. Very hand-dependant, so i find it inconsistent, although not bad overall. At least it's a viable archetype now.
eg i could beat a Quest Druid, but a Quest Priest overpowered me.
At least this is my impression so far.
I also beat a Quest Druid: they got their quest online but by then I had 3 demons on the board and Ectomancy turned that into a board they couldn't deal with.
Quest Priest with a completed quest was too much to handle, even with Lord Jaraxxus. And I'm not sure it's feasible to finish them off before they complete the quest, since the earlier you start pushing damage, the earlier they can complete the quest. I think you can always get a win if you have a strong start, but with a mediocre start it's going to be tough.
Please try this deck and share your experiences and improvements. I certainly had a blast finishing off my opponent with a 15-attack Frothing Berserker.
I got Hack the System in my very first pack, but a few packs later I got a golden Zephrys the Great, so overall I think Yogg was in a good mood. He also gave me a puzzle box and two pilgrims...
The quest reward looked very powerful in the streamers' games, especially with Oasis Surger. But you do have to spend the first 4-5 turns playing behind the curve and the question is whether the meta will allow that.
That's not going to be very effective tech: it would only disable Zephrys from the moment both Bombers are played until the moment the first bomb is drawn. So for much of the game, Zephrys would still be active.
Any particular bosses you're having trouble with? I have not defeated Thaddius and Kel'Thuzad yet, but did defeat all the other Naxx bosses and I've saved my decks for about half of them. This was around the time of K&C, I think, so the decks do include modern cards but aren't fully up-to-date. But they would be a decent starting point for tuning.
It's probably pretty common to q up, mulligan immediately, and then run off to the bathroom or grab a snack. I know I'm guilty of doing this as it's the only semi-predictable length of time between matches.
It's not a big deal, but you could take a break of any length before queuing up. I understand that streamers want to get their viewers invested in a new match before they run off to the bathroom or kitchen, but most of us don't risk losing viewers if we take a break between matches.
Besides Blink Fox and Hench-Clan Burglar there is also the new Bazaar Mugger. And you can use Shadowstep of course, or discover more copies of Pilfer through lackeys. Face Collector can give you cards from other classes, but only about half of the time, since there are a lot of neutral legendaries.
Technically Academic Espionage also works, but then you're not playing a tempo deck and I'm not sure whether the upgraded hero power is all that useful in a value game.
Riftcleaver is a decent replacement for Rend Blackhand. Even more so in decks where you can fit in Lesser Amethyst Spellstone or lots of healing. You could use Sense Demons as a tutor and also run Aranasi Broodmother, then you are very likely to draw useful cards with it (like Betrug; I have doubts about Portal Keeper though).
Dollmaster Dorian is nice for extra Plot Twist value, plus you can combine it with Voidlord drawn by Plot Twist or Sense Demons or just by luck on a single draw.
I agree with other posters that adding Reno, Kazakus and Zephrys would help a lot. Kazakus and Zephrys are great at finding board clears, while Reno buys you time against aggro. Since you want to be life tapping a lot to find your Plot Twists, Reno is extra useful for this deck.
Is Curse of Rafaam there specifically to defeat Ice Block? Because in general I'd rather run removal like Darkbomb or Spirit Bomb or Demonwrath than hoping to stall an opponent with the curse. And there are anti-secret techs that would be more useful against other classes.
If you're playing handbuff, Doubling Imp is really good. But... not a beast.
Maybe play it anyway, plus Nightmare Amalgam and Sense Demons. Although that may be too slow for a zoo deck.
In general, I think the lack of good beasts is a problem; the mech and demon options are just stronger.
Perhaps you could run Stonetusk Boar; if you want to play lots of small minions for History Buff. [Hearthstone Card (Soularium) Not Found] might be good as well, to draw a lot of cheap cards.
Note that the non-golden legendary pity timer is a separate timer per pack type, so assuming the golden pity timer works in the same way, you'd only trigger it by getting hundreds of packs from the same type. The OP mentions only Uldum packs, so they should hit the pity timer soonish if 400 is indeed the limit.
Personally I typically get 100 to 120 packs per expansion. I have a golden legendary from some expansions but not from all, so any pity timer limit would be above 100 at least.
Hmm, I thought that used to work for other types of quests as well, but I can't find any mention of it online, so it may be a figment of my imagination.
As far as I know you can complete daily quests vs the innkeeper, that might be a way to grow her collection without losing a ton of games.
Assuming you mean the Dr. Boom hero rather than the minion, you could probably make Control Warrior deck by just throwing all mechs and removal you have together. Use Plague of Wrath instead of Brawl, double Execute, double Omega Assembly etc. I don't know how exciting it would be to play though.
Token Druid is pretty cheap and has the potential to high-roll, so it will get some wins. For example this deck contains no epics and legendaries except SN1P-SN4P.
In any kind deck where you have cheap high-health minions like Upgradeable Framebot or Rabble Bouncer or (pseudo) eggs like Mechano-Egg or Mechanical Whelp, you can add Faceless Rager to get extra tempo. It is a situational card and therefore not very popular, but when you find yourself in the right situation it can really swing games.
Do you mean the aggressive version built around Goblin Bombs? I prefer playing the slower deathrattle deck using Mechanical Whelp instead and that used to be very good versus Control Warrior. I haven't played it since the expansion release though.
I never expected this to be anything more than a meme. It's actually easier to summon Ra than I thought, but versus aggro it's too slow of a process and versus control it's not a guaranteed win.
The package I'm using is Glinda Crowskin, Grim Rally, Witchwood Piper and Sense Demons. You have to draw Glinda naturally, but the Piper draws the cultist and can itself be tutored as a demon. Plus having that extra draw thins your deck, making it more likely to draw Glinda. You do have to stick Glinda to the board, but with a taunt on the board that wasn't all that hard in practice.
This was at rank 15 Wild shortly after the expansion launched, which is not the most competitive meta; sticking Glinda might be trickier versus try-hard decks. In that case there is still the option to use Expired Merchant and Soulwarden to get more copies of Glinda.
Having more alternatives can be useful for a highlander deck. Bouncing Zephrys the Great might be too greedy, but at least greed is thematic for a burgle deck.
After playing with it for a bit, I'm wondering... is Hack the System actually not that bad?
Glowstone Technician is really good with magnetic. If you go that route, you might want to include Glow-Tron as well.
Since you're already running Da Undatakah and exactly two good deathrattles, you could add a single Immortal Prelate and get infinite value in the ultra-late game. You wouldn't have enough card draw to get there often, but if you ever find yourself losing in fatigue it is an option to consider.
By the way, it turns out Dragon Shaman with the quest is a bad idea. The first problem is that because the quest is in your opening hand, there is less likely to be a dragon in your early hands, which makes Firetree Witchdoctor and Scaleworm poor plays until you draw a dragon. The second problem is that most of the dragon battlecries don't improve all that much after quest completion.
In theory you could open a channel in advance and it will start playing when the broadcast starts. In practice, Twitch isn't all that reliable and playback can hang when switching video (broadcast start or from/to commercials). I don't know if that matters for pack drops though: it would depend on whether you're actually disconnected from the channel or only from the video feed.
In general, it seems most people (myself included) first try to make decks that complete the quests as soon as possible. For some quests that might be the right way, but in other cases it might be better to build a deck that completes the quest eventually, so treat the quest as a package and not as an archetype. clawz161 already mentioned this for the Paladin and Warrior quests. Although personally I would call the old Druid deck (Malygos/Togwaggle/Mecha'thun Druid) a template rather than a package, since those decks had about 25 fixed slots and 5 variable slots in which the win condition could be inserted.
An upside to completing quests later is that Questing Explorer is more likely to draw you cards.
Druid
In theory the Druid quest is crazy good, but when I'm playing against it, it doesn't feel exceptionally powerful. I've gotten wins against it playing decks that honestly weren't all that good. Maybe what is happening is that the plays that can be made with a completed quest have good tempo, but not insane tempo like the late-game options of some other decks. And the quest reward doesn't kick in until turn 5 (coin) or 6, while tempo has a bigger impact in the earlier turns.
I'm wondering if a quest variant of Token Druid is possible. Cards like Power of the Wild, Tending Tauren and Cenarius become significantly better with the quest reward and maybe that's the extra pressure you need to defeat the likes of Control Warrior.
Warrior
The Warrior quest is easier to complete than I thought. But it is also more mana intensive to use than I realized: let's say you want to use your new hero power twice on turn 7, then you spend 2x2 mana on golems and can therefore spend only 3 mana on cards.
I tried a variation on Pirate Warrior at first and while I won, the quest was pointless in that deck. Now I'm trying a rush variant.
Priest
Completing the Priest quest with small heals takes a long time, so maybe it's better to focus on a few big heals instead. If you play Zilliax and two copies of Divine Hymn, that's enough healing. That would leave more card slots and mana to do other things: if your entire deck is geared towards quest completion, then the cards you can play in the late game are not good enough. While the quest reward is very nice, it's not a game winner: you do need a late-game plan in your deck.
Shaman
The Shaman quest I haven't played yet, but it seems easy enough to use since battlecries are something that Shaman is already good at and the original hero power isn't very good in the late game anyway.
I'll probably try Dragon Shaman at some point; dragons and dragon synergy cards often have battlecries. It's a pity there is no class dragon for Shaman though.
Elemental Shaman could also work with the quest, although I don't know if there are enough good elementals left in Standard; maybe this is more viable in Wild where the Un'Goro elementals are also available.
A Control Shaman deck with the quest also seems possible. Shaman has great board clears in Hagatha's Scheme and Earthquake and healing in Witch's Brew and Walking Fountain. It would mean giving up Hagatha the Witch though.
Warlock
The package approach won't work here: this quest takes too long to complete without Plot Twist and playing Plot Twist in a deck not built around that card is not very good.
For something that takes so much effort, the quest reward isn't all that great. Maybe part of the issue is that the base Warlock hero power is already very good, so something that replaces it must be extremely good to be worth its cost. That's why Odd Warlock was hardly played at all, while there were enough good odd-costed cards to build it.
Hunter
As YJHS2000 writes, this is hard to complete without Swarm of Locusts. And that card has the potential to fill up the board so Zul'jin cannot summon any other (stronger) minions. I think that for decks already running Zul'jin, the quest is not worth either replacing him or running the risk of the battlecry fizzling.
Maybe there is hope for a mech variant of Token Hunter: there are a lot of cards that summon microbots and goblin bombs, for example Replicating Menace contributes 3 or 4 to the quest (assuming magnetizing doesn't count as a summon), while SN1P-SN4P on turn 6 would contribute 5 or 6. Still, getting to 20 will take a while.
Rogue
The quest seems easy to complete. I'm not sure what kind of decks it would fit in though.
While the immunity is nice, it doesn't scale to the late game like Spectral Cutlass does. So you might not be able to play games long enough to make Tess Greymane worthwhile (or to even draw Tess in time most games).
For a more aggressive game plan, this doesn't have the burst potential that Waggle Pick + Leeroy Jenkins does.
Perhaps it could work in a tempo deck in which the weapon is used to remove opposing minions while your own minions go face repeatedly. Maybe some kind of Captain Hooktusk deck, minus Raiding Party.
Mage
I think I've only seen one opponent play this so far, in a highlander deck. It wasn't very impactful there since it look a long time to complete. Mage already has a lot of value generation options; I'm not sure this is good enough to wait that long for.
It might be a good addition to a Mana Cyclone deck, since you could delay playing the quest until the Cyclone turn, assuming you draw Cyclone early.
Paladin
I don't have much of an opinion on this quest yet: I don't have it myself and I haven't seen it played except in some very early streams.
You can combine lackeys with self-damage, but fitting demon synergy in there as well would be difficult. EVIL Genius needs something cheap to sacrifice, so you need tokens and/or deathrattles and once you have those, you probably want to capitalize on that by adding more typical zoo cards like Dire Wolf Alpha.
I ran into one Warrior so far and while I lost, it was pretty close until Omega Devastator came online. That's what led me to include Mojomaster Zihi.
There is quite a bit of healing in the deck, so you have a lot more than 30 health to work with. The current list has around 20 to 25 points of healing, depending on how much value you get from the Spider, Zilliax and when you draw the Broodmothers. If that is not enough, you could replace a Flame Imp by a second Crystallizer and add a second Rotten Applebaum.
As long as you can deal more damage than you receive, you'll be fine against most decks. Pure burn decks are rare these days: most aggressive decks rely on repeated minion damage before being able to finish you off. If you win the minion war, you're likely outside of their burn range and then they'll have to use their burn on your minions just to stay alive.
I also beat a Quest Druid: they got their quest online but by then I had 3 demons on the board and Ectomancy turned that into a board they couldn't deal with.
Quest Priest with a completed quest was too much to handle, even with Lord Jaraxxus. And I'm not sure it's feasible to finish them off before they complete the quest, since the earlier you start pushing damage, the earlier they can complete the quest. I think you can always get a win if you have a strong start, but with a mediocre start it's going to be tough.
It could be a hidden treasure, it could be a mirage... Does the self-damage Warlock archetype finally work?
Please try this deck and share your experiences and improvements. I certainly had a blast finishing off my opponent with a 15-attack Frothing Berserker.
I got Hack the System in my very first pack, but a few packs later I got a golden Zephrys the Great, so overall I think Yogg was in a good mood. He also gave me a puzzle box and two pilgrims...
The quest reward looked very powerful in the streamers' games, especially with Oasis Surger. But you do have to spend the first 4-5 turns playing behind the curve and the question is whether the meta will allow that.
That's not going to be very effective tech: it would only disable Zephrys from the moment both Bombers are played until the moment the first bomb is drawn. So for much of the game, Zephrys would still be active.
Any particular bosses you're having trouble with? I have not defeated Thaddius and Kel'Thuzad yet, but did defeat all the other Naxx bosses and I've saved my decks for about half of them. This was around the time of K&C, I think, so the decks do include modern cards but aren't fully up-to-date. But they would be a decent starting point for tuning.
It's not a big deal, but you could take a break of any length before queuing up. I understand that streamers want to get their viewers invested in a new match before they run off to the bathroom or kitchen, but most of us don't risk losing viewers if we take a break between matches.
Besides Blink Fox and Hench-Clan Burglar there is also the new Bazaar Mugger. And you can use Shadowstep of course, or discover more copies of Pilfer through lackeys. Face Collector can give you cards from other classes, but only about half of the time, since there are a lot of neutral legendaries.
Technically Academic Espionage also works, but then you're not playing a tempo deck and I'm not sure whether the upgraded hero power is all that useful in a value game.