Hearthstone

I decided to leave my impressions and thoughts about these first few days of the expansion and an analysis of the legendary cards i've got. The thread is long so bear with me.

Glide is a card that i despised upon first glance. I mostly play slow decks and it looked like something designed to completely screw over with them in aggro DH which is supposed to be weak to Control decks. I only played against two DH with Glide so far. The meta isn't favorable for the card but it's awful if you are trying to keep resources in hand. They vomit everything on their hand and then they play this and refill their hand while discarding yours (it's not true discard but it feels like that). It may not be as op as i thought but it's as anti-fun as i thought. 

I got Lorekeeper Polkelt from the bundle and i've been testing him mostly in highlander decks. It's an interesting card that has its uses but it can be a liability as well. You can play him one turn before you get to your big cards and you are guaranteed to draw them on the next turn. I have used it to have Dinotamer Brann consistently in my hand by turn 7 but if you don't draw Polkelt in time then he just becomes useless. Also, he's bad for specific card combinations. I've been testing Professor Slate in the deck as well and it's not good to have both him and/or Rapid Fire at the bottom of your deck. Polkelt is a little tricky to use properly and not as much of a meta breaker as people thought.

Speaking of Professor Slate, that's a card i haven't seen at all. Not in ladder, not in videos, absolutely nothing. I decided to test the card and it's quite good. Hunter doesn't lack hard removal. In fact, they have a lot of it right now with both Slate and Krolusk Barkstripper joining his arsenal alongside Deadly Shot and Rotnest Drake. The key difference is that Slate isn't random. You can choose your destruction target and that's relevant against wider boards. The problem is the lack of good spells to use with the card. Rapid Fire is good with Slate and... pretty much nothing else. Well, there's Vereesa Windrunner but nobody uses her so... Yeah. Besides that, we have Explosive Shot and Multi-Shot. These are not good enough. There will be people making the atrocious mistake of running into an Explosive Trap before removing Slate but i can't really count secrets as those are very easy to play around. In the end, the card lacks proper support but he can easily become great with a decent and cheap Multi-hit/AoE spell (like Grievous Bite in Wild).

Mindrender Illucia is another card that's really hard to utilize properly. She is mostly good for disrupting combos but those are extremely rare because the ladder is full of aggro decks. In my experience, she isn't great in control or midrange games because even if you waste your opponent's resources they can do the same to you. You don't want to play her with your big cards in hand and if you wait too much then there won't be much left to disrupt. In aggro games you can actually use her more effectively because your opponent is mostly holding low cost cards and you are holding high cost cards. If you play her early you can screw them and they won't be able to do much with your hand. Overall, she is another card that's really tricky to play with and she gives me the tech card vibe. 

The meta isn't great on my end as i'm facing Druid all the time. There are a lot of Face Rogues (ugh...) and all sorts of Hunter decks as well. I rarely see Paladins and Warriors and not much else. Druids tend to fall apart pretty quickly against any aggression. However, it's undeniable that Lightning Bloom is a liability and it's just going to cause problems for the remainder of the year and the next one. Secret Passage is also pretty ridiculous. Voracious Reader is only good in extreme hyper aggressive decks that vomit their hands very quickly but the card isn't very good in any deck with cards that costs 4 or more. I think it will be fine if Face DH and Face Rogue fall from the meta.

Just as i expected, Mozaki, Master Duelist is extremely difficult to utilize as she is a combo card and the ladder is infested with aggression. Combo decks just fall apart very easily because of that. So far, she seems like a big meme that's going to see play just because combo lovers will never give up on making cards like that work. Ras Frostwhisper is much better and can be slotted into Highlander Mage without any other support cards. I don't play Shaman so i don't know how he's doing in that class. Btw, Ras is the only dual class legendary i've got so far. Really unlucky.

Finally, there's Sphere of Sapience. The card is very good in specific decks. I utilize it in my Wild OTK Miracle Priest. The deck always ran into the problem of drawing my big key minions before i could play Zerek's Cloning Gallery and the weapon prevents that which greatly increased its consistency. The weapon is good in Big Warrior and Duel Paladin as well because you really want to keep the big minions in the deck so you cheat them out. Sphere is pretty good, especially in decks that want to keep certain cards inside the deck.

Edit: I completely forgot about Infiltrator Lilian. I guess that's how much i care about aggressive cards. I tried her in a Secret Passage Stealth Rogue and it was fine. The deck has a lot of damage. Self-Sharpening Sword and Vulpera Toxinblade are really strong. Sometimes i didn't even need Secret Passage to win but that card just improves the deck's consistency a lot. Drawing 5 cards for so little just leaves a ton of flexibility and you can make the most out of your mana because of it. Also, if you draw Eviscerate the combo is going to active already. Lilian itself is just okay. The guaranteed damage can make the difference occasionally but she isn't needed to play a deck like this.

So far, the expansion just feels okay. There's some big mana cheat shenanigans happening (mostly because of Lightning Bloom but High Abbess Alura also contributes to the issue), lots of aggro decks, combo decks dying to aggro decks (as always) and Control decks seem to be AFK (at least, i haven't seen a lot of them). Let's see what's going to happen next week. Any thoughts? Thanks for reading!

Hello everyone, it's that time again. It's that time where I either show you a fun new way to play Hearthstone, I give you ideas for new rewards, I introduce much needed system/quality of life changes, or I present a concept for a much requested feature for Hearthstone.

Today, I'm doing all of that.

I've said it several times before and I'll say it again. If you see any flaws, have any questions, or just want to point something out that I didn't cover, please let me know. My designs are not perfect nor am I.

The first thing that I have to address with this "renovation" is the simple change to the Hearthstone splash screen we all know and love.

Tavern Brawl and Arena have found new home in the Tables Menu. If you're familiar with Tables then you understand why I placed them there. For those of you who don't know what Tables is, you have find out here.

Now, let's click the play button.

Instead of choosing a deck I opted to have players choose the class they'd rather play at the moment. I've also split the Format button into three since to me it makes more sense instead of having to push the button several times to get to the Format you wanted.

The third Format is of my own creation and it's called Explorer, you can find my post explaining what it does and how it works here.

A lot of you may ask, "Why did you remove the decks from the deck selection screen?"

Here's why.

I FINALLY figured out how to make my Deck Box system visually appealing and understandable. Once you've selected the class you wish to play you're taken to see all of you decks with the corresponding class, which in turn, makes deck organization a bit easier. This also bumps the total number of deck slots significantly, BUT every class can only have a maximum of 6 decks.

I'm sure you've noticed a new system I've placed within the new system (sysception?), these are quick stat tabs. These account for the total win count for it's corresponding deck. As you can see with the "Call of Conjuring" Explorer deck, it has a 50.2% win rate, it's favored against Paladin, and has a bad track record when going up against other mages.

Let's jump to the Collection Manager real quick.

Once you've selected the class you want to look at in the Collection Manager you're presented with this screen. It simply acts like the current Collection Manager except you are only seeing that classes' decks and can edit the ordering and such there.

Now let's click the new "Adventure" button.

This is the new Adventure screen, it still the Target Practice mode and all the old adventures, But it also has something new.

Endless Adventure is something I came up with when I was making Tables but I never really elaborated on it entirely.

Endless Adventure is just a really, really long Dungeon Run with a few new additions. 

Once you select "Endless Adventure" in the top right you'll be presented with this screen offering you two ways to play the Endless Adventure.

The Casual version of this is for player who just REALLY like the PVE content, while the Heroic version offers challenge for those whom are brave enough to face it. Losing ends the run, that should be obvious but I still have to put that out there.

Endless Adventure relies heavily on every boss this game has to offer, yes all of them. From all the way back to Naxxramas to future PVE content this will host each and every boss, it has to. We all know that the power level just isn't the same anymore so with this mode being introduced the older bosses will definitely need some tidying up.

The first 14 bosses of the run will be your run of the mill experience. Defeating bosses visiting Bob's Tavern, adding packages to your deck, visiting Magni's Forge, defeating more bosses......Magni's Forge?

Yes Magni's Forge is a new addition to the Dungeon Run formula. Magni hosts cards specific to his forge that can't be obtained by selecting a treasure.

(Onyx Axe and the Two-Handed "Bow" were taken from r/customhearthstone since all my creativity is used for these long-winded posts. The Ironforge monstrosity is mine though)

Once you've obtained 5 of Magni's cards you'll not see him for the rest of the run.

Aside from visiting Magni's Forge, you'll have a visitor on very, very rare occasions.

Warpweaver Tuviss will visit the adventurer whenever he feels like it, sometimes he won't visit at all.

Tuviss has Treasures, but not for free. He will require's an even trade, a treasure for a treasure. Simple as that.

(Also from r/customhearthstone)

The credit for Magni and Tuviss goes to u/TurkusGyrational on Reddit. He was inspired by Tables and sent me a message with a few of his own ideas, I just put my own little twist on them.

Once you've advanced to the 15th boss a real challenge starts.

That's right, the plague lords are back.

Every 15th Boss is a plague lord, As I said earlier all the old bosses need to be up scaled and the plague lords are no exception.

Some of you may say that they're too weak, but I've had numerous perfect runs destroyed by bad draws and RNG to these guys so I think they'll remain a fair challenge.

Some of you may be asking yourselves, "What happens when I have 60 cards in my deck?"

Well, you can't get any more treasures, you can't get any more of Magni's cards or anything new from Tuviss, but now Dismiss and You're All Fired! have become valuable tools for your runs.

Boss number 200,  Tekahn, the Plague Lord of Flame, is the final boss before you and those sweet, sweet rewards.

"Final boss?!? it's called Endless Adventure' though?"

You're right it is called 'Endless Adventure', but Tekahn is still the final boss. What lies beyond him is the greatest challenge of all.

Other players.

Once Tekahn and the other 199 bosses have been taken down you start matchmaking with your adventure deck, challenging other players who've made it this far to a fight to the death! One wrong move could cause a loss and thus the loss of your adventure deck.... until you do it all over again.

"Hey, you said rewards. I don't see any rewards."

You're right, aside from Gold, Arena Tickets, Dust and Packs, I've made other rewards that should entice players to play Endless Adventure. These rewards will be added to the adventure chest every time you defeat a Plague Lord (Heroic Mode only).

They're all over on my other showcase for Tables. But I can still list them off for those who have read Tables and have forgotten what they are.
(Scroll about halfway down to find them)

Pack Tokens, used to purchase a pack of your choice.
Pack Sleeves, guarantees you an Epic or Legendary card when you open a pack.

And Full Art Tokens when you don't want to get full art cards the hard way.
Oh you've never read my Full Art Cards concept? Well here you go.

If you read the article you know how long or challenging it could be to earn a full art card, but with a Full Art Token, it unlocks the card right away.

For those of you who didn't click the link, here's some samples of full art cards. How they work and how they are earned is explained in the article linked.

Pretty neat huh?

Battlegrounds get's it's own button on the home screen because, well. It does great as a mode on its pwn it has definitely attracted some new players to the Tavern so I think it deserves to be one of the first things a player sees.

Tavern Brawl and Arena have a new home here in the Tables menu. They have their own rules and their own ways of playing so it made sense that they belong here. If you're unfamiliar with Tables, you can check it out here.

That covers the renovation of the Tavern but what's this? The sparkling new Tavern has attracted some new faces.

Kang, The Fist of First Dawn and Kaln Vilehoof have sat down to play some good ol' Hearthstone.

(All the cards and Hero Powers are of my creation and you can probably tell by either how OP they are, or how bad they are. I'll let you decide.)

Kang is a Monk who uses his Hero Power in a very unique way, it relies on the content of your deck, I'll explain.

The Hero Power changes depending on which of these three keywords (Mistweaver, Windwalker, and Brewmaster) are most present in the deck. The Chi cards can be shuffled in by minions or spells and the minions and spells themselves can have these keywords printed on them as well to count towards one of the three Hero Powers.

These Hero Powers are all Passive and always active, unless a card deactives them like Mindbreaker.

In the event of a tie in regards to how many Chi cards are in your deck, the Hero Power will switch each turn.

These are the Legendaries of the set, sorry for the textgore. Like I said, I'm awful at card design.

As you can see they each have their corresponding Chi printed on them so they could count towards that Chi for the Hero power.

Kaln is a Death Knight who can use his Hero Power to summon one Companion Ghoul to fight along side him.

The DK can go with his own strategy to win, but the Companion Ghoul can be a powerful asset.

The DK has cards that support the Ghoul for the rest of the game. Some without drawbacks, others that increase the cost of the Hero Power for the rest of the game.

This will be my final post in regards to something of this scale, I have nothing left to offer. If something comes up in the future I may dive back into doing something like this but only time will tell.

If anything I hope my series of posts have inspired you to be creative beyond the realm of making a custom card here and there. Make a set, make a game mode, make a new way to play Hearthstone.

Because you never know who may be reading...

As always, thank you for reading,
-Grif

Enjoy this magnificent pack I opened today!

https://imgur.com/a/87tZduj

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I know it is a bit early to claim anything about any decks. I could afford stealth cards after openning my packs and wanted to try it out. I got 9-1 with this deck on plat 9. Maybe someone got these cards from packs and can't afford any others right now so wanted to share it out.

If you want, you can replace Wand Thiefs and/or Blackjack Stunners with Backstabs and/or Sinister Strikes, I won't completely suggest that tho because Blackjack Stunner gives you the ability of getting rid of fat taunt minions and Wand Thief gives you some burn spells and also Evocation.

Also, If you don't have Shadowjeweler Hanar, You may want to replace secret package with some aggro tools like Cold Blood and/or Sneaky Delinquent. I wouldn't suggest that neither because Bamboozle is great with your 1 health minions and they stick to board thanks to new Robes of Protection and also Ambush is great for getting rid of some sticky taunt minions.

I couldn't get Secret Passage for now, It might be great to go lethal with searching Eviscerates from your deck. As soon as i crafted them, I will test it in this deck.

I hope you like it and Any suggestions + replacement advices are appreciated.

Deck ID Not Found

guide written on the deck page

For most of us, we have opened our pack and started playing some of the pre-fab decks and experimenting with the new cards.  As always, the new mechanics are running rampant and "working" really well and showing some awesome power.  As with every expansion, we can anticipate nerfs coming, Ashes of Outland came on a bit quicker than anticipated though. 

With that in mind, I can see the potential nerfs because people will be barking about it pretty loud:

4) Soul Fragment - The reason I think people will complain about this is that it is an automatic "cast" that gives the Warlock and Demon Hunter health and another card.  For Suicide Warlock, this is allowing them to actually use some bigger minions like Pit Lord that normally wouldn't see play and gives Demon Hunter some health back after attacking everything under the sun.  I would predict that there will be a nerf to either the number of Soul Fragments that get added per card, or it will change to a (1) mana cost card.  Either way it would really hinder the mechanic of the cards.

3) Glide - Manipulating the cards in your hand to take advantage of Outcast is something that Demon Hunter can do pretty well.  The fact that this card ALSO manipulates your opponent's hand will have people barking about how unfair it is that you build a control deck only to have an aggro deck run this card to refill their hand and mess with yours. My prediction would be that they either remove the Outcast aspect or increase the mana to (5)

2) Lightning Bloom - The fact that you can bust this out and potentially get Kael'thas Sunstrider out WAY faster and start going off is going to have people up in arms.  Even though that would require the "God hand", it was the same situation with Aviana druid decks.  It requires a lot of set up, but once you had it, you went off. I'm thinking that they will nerf this to cost (1).

1) Secret Passage - Now for the crown jewel of the new Rogue arsenal... This card is so impressively abusive in both Standard and Wild formats.  I have seen players drop this on turn 3, fire off 4 of the cards they drew, eliminate my side of the board beef up their newly drawn weapon, and come back with their original hand... and then do it again a couple of turns later.  Honestly, it is such a great card and super fun to use, how could it NOT get targeted by nerfs.  I imagine that they will need to balance out this card, since it can be activated with The Coin and you get 2 cards played which will help trigger any combo cards as well, to update it's mana cost to (2).  Doing this will make it less likely to abuse the crap out of it right out the gate, but still show a lot of value. 

What are everyone else's thoughts on these as well as other cards you can see people being irritated about enough to have Blizzard kill the cards?

Hi there

Usually I leave my arena runs on 2 losses for a free ticket for expansion launch, but this time that hasn't happened.

Did they decide to add SA to arena but not reset the arena runs?

I could easily have missed this already being announced or discussed - apologies if so.

I have had a lot of success with deck I hit diamond from silver today with this deck with barely any losses.

I posted this deck on my hearthpwn account as well with a more detailed description but no mulligan guide or anything as of yet.

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1360390-insane-aggro-destroyer-priest-cabal-priest

Hope you enjoy

Hi, all.

So, up until yesterday I had saved around 9.2k gold for SA packs. My only wish was to obtain Illucia and after opening 80 packs (including freebies), I finally got her. Right now I have 2k gold remaining and I don't feel like buying any more packs - my current legendaries are Infiltrator Lilian (freebie), Ace Hunter, Malicia, Ras and Illucia. Normally I would like to have Alabaster, Polkelt and Sphere as well, but I am not that likely to open another legendary, yet alone one of the desired three in the next 20 packs. So, I considered the following options: Buying two wings of an adventure or the BG-bundle. And right now I just can't decide what I should go after.

From the pve adventures I only want Naxx tbh, but since I missed the chance to buy the first wing, I can't use gold to purchase it, so that's out of the question. I considered whether I wanted to buy BrM and ONiK and I figured, it's not worth to do it for the sake of new cards, since most of them don't see any play and the ones, that do, are so derp cheap, that I can craft them easily with dust. This led me to the following options - GA or the dungeon-run adventures in RoS/SoU. Now, my goal is mainly to have fun. I have heard, that GA was a bit underwhelming and it didn't offer much replayability, so I am leaning towards the other picks, but I would like to hear your opinion on those three adventures. 

Regarding the BG-bundle: I play bgs casually. My rating is 6.3k, so you can see, that I am not that devoted to it. It was another thing I decided to buy due the fun factor.

So, those are my options. I would like to hear what you guys think and what you could recommend me. Btw, I am aware, that I could save my gold for the next expansion, but I think I will accumulate enough, when it hits. Not to mention, I am not in the mood for such long-term investments.

For me this was the shortest expansion and I've had HS since beta (played frequently since Knights of Frozen Throne). Never have I seen so many players who refuse to put any new card on their decks on day 1. And they are right, I guess. Because this expansion provided with new cards but no new decks or decent archetypes for wild. So I want to try a good token druid with the new cards but somehow I've played against 0 of them in ladder. Does anyone have a good list for it? just want to have some fun with the good cards and actually win :/

Edit: actually if you have any other decent ideas for other decks, feel free to share :)

This is not a complaint thread, more of a commentary and attempt at a neutral analysis of my pack opening.

First off I need to set the stage. I am 100% free to play and typically save up at least 8k gold between expansions. My philosophy is to purchase 60 decks and use whatever freebies Blizzard hands out to form the basis of my collection. If I get close to the legendary pity timer at the end of opening those packs, I'll buy a few packs at a time until I hit the timer. This time around I already had three packs waiting from my monthly ladder rewards and I completed day 1 of the special quests to get two more packs before I opened anything.

My login reward was Infiltrator Lilian. I guess it has some promise, but it wasn't my first choice. I suspect with the Self-Sharpening Sword and Secret Passage there will be some decks out there that will make use of her.

I got my first legendary Ras Frostwhisper at pack 3, not even halfway into the first 10 timer for a new set. He looks pretty cool and I think there is some potential for a spell power mage deck to work with this.

My next one came 19 packs later, Lord Barov. I'm not too excited about this one, but who knows. Two out of my first 5 epics in this stretch were Secret Passage, so I've at least got that much nerf dust coming to me. :-)

The next one did not come until 39 packs later. I can't tell you how anxious I got waiting for that gold glow. This one I do feel good about, Sphere of Sapience should be integral for a few decks that come up. And that was the end of my notable cards. My most notable pack was having an epic show up in the same pack as my last legendary. My golden count was 9 (1 epic, 4 rare, and 4 common).

Interestingly enough, 65 packs was the exact amount I needed to get all the rare cards. I double checked using 'missing' and 'extra' searches in my collection, and I have exactly two of every rare card. I also got 12 total epic cards and the three legendary. With the epic timer at 10, that probably makes five packs the average, so I'm right on the money there. If we remove the first legendary and the first 10 cards that puts me at 2/50 which is slightly below average.

I do have some dust stored up that I can comfortably craft a few must have epic or legendary cards. I'll just be patient and wait to see which ones those are.

Anyone else care to share their experience?

I just played almost 5 hours straight after Scholomance Academy's release and I'd like to discuss our first impressions here. I'm aware of the fact that nothing is solved yet and it's probably way too early to judge the meta, but let's just put together our observations, shall we? 

For me, Beast Spell Druid was the most successful deck I played. I don't remember losing a game with it. I'm not even sure if this can be kept in line by aggro anymore. 

Soul Fragment Handlock was fun and looks promising, but needs some refinement. I don't own Kelidan, but I think he might be a good addition to this deck. 

Aggro Alura Paladin is meh. Sometimes I managed to snowball hard, but most of the time I got out valued. Haven't played Pure Alura yet and the games against that deck felt fair. 

Priest seems to be in a good place. I queued into lots of buff Priests and they are very hard to beat imho. Will probably try this out this weekend. 

Zoolock was very underwhelming. This needs much refinement. 

I tried a Deathrattle Hunter list for a few games, but it wasn't very exciting. Much depends on drawing Teron in time. 

Big Warrior appears to be a thing. Very hard to beat if you cant apply lots of pressure early. 

Demon Hunter looks cool. Not OP, just fun to play imho. I got Kreen as a golden legendary from the bundle and I'm really happy with that. 

What surprised me most was mage. I got all the legendarys and finally crafted Solarian and Kalecgos but neither the Spell Damage nor the Highlander archetype worked for me. I played Flux's Pew Pew Pew Mage for almost and hour and won only two games (one was a disconnect and the second a frustrated but unnecessary concede after a misplay). Can someone please explain to me how Mozaki is supposed to work? Either I don't draw her or I'm not able to hold on to enough cheap spells to do something significant. I wanted to make this work so badly, but I'm at a loss right now. Maybe I tried too many of the new cards at once. 

So what are your first impressions? I haven't seen much of Rogue, how are they doing? Have you made similar experiences like me? Where do you disagree? Any advice for mage? 

Well, as the title said:had an unfinished Arenarun, which is now still open. Anyone experiencing the same? 

So: Scholomance Academy is out, and with it, a new meta is here. People have finished opening their packs and are trying out their new cards on the ladder (or going Face Hunter). Is there any deck that you found nearly unbeatable or unfun to play against?

Anything like Day 1 Demon Hunter or Galakrond Shaman?

Personally, I've been playing Soul Fragment Warlock and I've found it impossible to win against Druid after even one Survival of the Fittest. It turns all trades in their favor for the rest of the game. An aggro deck may however succeed well against that archetype, and people are posting all kinds of crazy Turn 1 Gibberling plays.

Is Druidstone incoming?

Been feeling like arena is slowly dying all around with it being super unbalanced and totally forgotten not just in news but also lack of leaderboards and such. So seeing some love from anywhere right now just makes me really happy and i'm stoked to have a new column just for arena. 

Thanks!

https://hsreplay.net/replay/3VjutPRPSsGQ4d3zBv3fc8

Had to share this replay. Priest vs Paladin, turn 3 he coins into Nozdormu the Timeless and immediately after I topdeck Mind Control. The match did not last long after that.

I've been working on a project for a few months now and I'm a little stuck on creating a Death Knight class. I want it's Hero Power to be seldomly used, powerful, but at the same time not game breaking or too uninteractive.

I've made another class that utilizes a fluid Hero Power so I would like to avoid another passive Hero Power.

So what I'm asking is if it's even possible? Resurrection effects keep coming to mind but depending on existing neutral cards it could be heavily favored toward a DK that capitalizes on rez effects. I haven't played WoW in a hot minute so I've also kind of forgotten what DK's are supposed to be all about.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.