Be Excellent To Each Other

Had a fun fight against a Warlock (as a Rogue).

Had him down to 1 health, with minions on the board, but he had a lot of cards.

Alas, he had healing cards to bring himself back up to 5, then got some taunts out (again a Shieldbearer and Void thingy save him). Then he brings out the guy that gives boosts and taunt, and then a void terror followed by sunfury protector. Basically, he ended up with two taunts, one of which was about 12/6. Good use of mana and synergy, and something I'd not seen before, so I was cool with the loss.

Warlocks are an interesting class to play against and play as yourself outside of the zoo/hand locks, the class has a lot of interesting cards and abilities, and the life tap is a devilish risk/reward mechanic once zoo locks aren't just using it to draw an extra card every turn.

It's the fucking zoo locks in particular that are incredibly tedious. The giant/drake (hand) locks make for more of an interesting challenge to play against but are still rather cheap IMO.

So yes, I quite like the warlock class to play against as long as they're not zoo locks (would never play one myself), and a 'freestyle' warlock makes for an interesting game for sure.

Then again there's nothing quite so satisfying as beating down a zoo lock.

I'm not very keen on these terms coined by others. 'Lock' for example, doesn't seem to make sense in the context. 'Miracle' to refer to Rogue card draw is equally meaningless to me.

'Zoo' to prefer to primarily beast minions... OK.

Rush/Aggro/Control make some sense (although I'd conflate the first two), but I'm not inclined to roll with other terms if they are not intuitive to me.

Is Zoo Lock not a contraction of Zoo Warlock? I thought the lock part was just the second half of warlock, but I could be wrong.

That makes some sense, however based on observations of its use, it seems to be combined with the mode where the Warlock holds cards and taps constantly to fill their hand, to play cards such as Drake/Giant. I took lock to be literally 'locking' their hand before they hit a certain number of cards. Could be wrong of course.

That's a handlock, they fill their hand full of cards to be able to play the giants early. Should be called a giantlock really...

Hand Lock (fill their HAND with cards WarLOCK) - Not just the giant plays (Mountain Giants early on, Molten Giants later on), but also the Twilight Drakes, so Giant Lock wouldn't cover everything. Against a Hand Lock you generally have to reckon on needing to kill two Mountain Giants, two Twilight Drakes and two Molten Giants at the worst case scenario. The shaman's Earth Shock is spectacularly good against Twilight Drakes as it one shots them whatever health they're spawned with. (Base card is 4/1 and the Earth Shock effect is 'Silence a minion and then deal one damage to it.)

Molten Giants you can mitigate against a bit by not taking him below 15 health until you've seen one of the Molten Giants already or have lethal next turn, otherwise he can play both Moltens on one turn. (And if he gets the fuckers behind a taunt....)

Zoo Lock (swarms the board with a pretty random selection of minions a bit like you'd find a random selection of animals at the ZOO WarLOCK - We all know what this is, probably going to be a few murlocs in there but not the same thing as a pure murloc rush deck.

Whatever the case the 'Lock' bit is a contraction of Warlock.

Incidentally, top gold mining tip from the hoarder (almost 1900g):

If you're given a 40 gold quest for the day, whatever it is, mulligan it on the quest screen (you can do this once per day), as you may trade it in for a 60 gold quest, or the dream 100 gold quest.

The logic behind this is simple - in the worst case you'll just get another 40g quest. Even if it's one you can't play because of wrong class, keep it. The next day you might get a 60 gold quest, and you can re-roll the old 40 one again. This might pay off really well as you could re-roll one that synergises with your new one. More gold for less effort.

I re-rolled my 40g to a 100g domination quest today - so it's worth doing.

That's quite a sneaky yet effective strategy, I'd expect nothing less from a priest player

I really have turned on this game on a dime, couldn't even be arsed to get my two wins for the daily quest just now, (total exercise in frustration, four aggro decks on the trot and gimmick decks ahoy), and even then I'm not sure what the point is as I'm not in the mood for an Arena run anyway (I have enough gold for two now).

Aggro decks (and gimmick decks which are unbeatable when they fire up) all over the fucking place, I'm down at Rank 20 after just about tipping into Rank 18 the other day, simply cannot be arsed. After a long and busy day at work it's the last thing I want to be bothered with, it's genuinely just annoying me.

TO THE MARIO-KART-O-TRON!

Two and a half hours of Mario Kart 8 later, and I feel happy again, so I'll see if I can finish off the daily quest and maybe even take on an Arena run.....

Yay! Won a match via Leper Gnome joy!

Basically he had no health but loads of minions and taunts. I was dying soon, but managed to get a Leper Gnome out and his rattle did the biz.

Blimey, I'm actually at the point now where I'm Rank 20 zero stars, and to complete the daily quest I simply concede games that I don't like the opening plays of, to get to ones that I can win without getting annoyed. (And since I can't even be arsed with arena now there's the possibility I'll end up hoarding enough gold to buy the Naxx expansion with gold rather than cash.)

Example I just conceded against a priest on Turn 2.

Turn 1 he played cleric, I coined into an ooze (an ooze kills a cleric), he does shadow word pain on the ooze, I think 'I can't be arsed playing the 'dance around the fucking cleric' nonsense', concede, move onto the next game.

And yet a week ago I was massively into the game, very odd.

You do know you can complete the daily challenges without playing 'ranked' - you get a much wider range of enemies / play styles and cards if you just play casual ?

Yeah but in ranked I pretty much know all the decks, so I can tell within two or three turns if it's a game that's going to piss me off or not, and whether or not it'll be a relatively easy one to win. If there's anything I don't like the look of, just concede and start a fresh one.

Casual can throw up all kinds of bizarre 'curved balls' (TM Cliff Richard) which are great if you're in the mood for an unpredictable and potentially lengthy tussle, but I just want to get the daily quest done as efficiently and quickly as possible for the gold, and then fuck it off and play Mario Kart 8

It's as though you're averse to the challenge. Every class has its gimmicky combo bullshit.

Force of nature/savage roar,
Leroy/Shadowstep,
Hounds/timberwolf
Divine spirit/inner fire

They're frustrating, and you try to play around them, but sometimes you can't and you lose. Trump loses against the same decks, but sometimes he wins, but he doesn't concede on Turn 2 and that's part of why he can hit legend.

Every Pay To Play cunt and their uncle has Rag in the deck, and a Ysera, and whatever class specific bullshit they can craft. Everyone has the power to do that, but only the good players keep playing in the face of these cards, and win.

I'm still losing against these guys - I played one game the other day and during the course of the game he played 4 giants against me (boulder near the start after hoarding cards - sea in the middle on a near full board and then 2 'free' molten ones when he was getting low on health.)

I have others where its legendary after legendary after about turn 7 (I currently only have Nat although i've thoughtstolen a few of theirs which is always nice when they are almost out of cards and play something big and i can just steal it and then hit them in the face with it next round).

There are some learning points when a particular set of drops happens and it can be very frustrating when you know you have the perfect card for a situation but you've not pulled it yet or you get a bad run of cards but thats the way the game works.

On last month I ended up at level 15 (my best) and simply switched out of ranked because I lost about 3 games in a row and didnt feel like i was going to progress so i switched to casual and played against a lot more alternative card decks and play-styles.

I played against a full murloc rogue in casual earlier, you wouldn't see that in ranked!

I've managed Rank 11 in the last three seasons IIRC (certainly in the last two), which whilst being a long way from legend still isn't a bad result, you don't get to Rank 11 without being prepared to dig in and fight down some tough plays and tough decks from quality opponents. (See also a reasonable number of 6 or 7 win runs in arena.) I certainly wasn't conceding in those games on the seasons where I was working for the best rank I could get.

I think you're conflating me not being able or willing to do something, with me just not wanting to do it at the moment. (i.e. Play around the Turn 1 cleric as per above. I had a reasonable selection of cards in my hand but it was going to be a tough game with him almost inevitably getting some solid draw off the cleric (one he'd SWP-ed my ooze), and I wasn't in the mood for that sort of game.)

I run hot and cold with these things (I was the same with WoW), when I'm not in the mood for a game I'm REALLY not in the mood for a game, and that's the place I'm in with Hearthstone at the moment, doubtless that'll change again at some point, either when the new content comes along or just because I change my mind - but at the moment all I want to do is log in, complete my daily quest as quickly as possible (i.e. not dig in for a long and tough game against a priest with 10 cards in his hand), and log out again

Hmmmm Hearthly Jnr has just informed me that my playing Mario Kart 8 is distracting her from drawing her pictures and that I must play on my computer instead

Arena run then I guess

3:3 arena run. Moderately interesting and enjoyable, certainly a million times more engaging than ranked or casual is at the moment.

Horror show of the session was a hunter who managed no less than THREE UTHs, two of which had the complimentary buzzard as well.

So that'll be it for the foreseeable I think, daily quests for gold, arena runs as and when the mood takes me.

YAY - I re-rolled a 40G quest to a 60G quest!

NAY - I now have to win five games with warrior or rogue

Oh well I've no rank to lose to speak of so it'll pass a bit of time on

Good god this warrior deck I've cobbled together is pretty effective (four wins on the trot now) but by christ it's slow, in three of the four games I've ended up fatigued!

It's brilliant at controlling the board down, but not so good at punchy facey.

In my last game against a mage I honestly thought I was going to run out of minions, as I had a handful of cards that were all answers to questions that weren't being asked.

First time I've enjoyed Constructed for a while though, and somehow I've ended up back at Rank 16 lolerz.

EDIT - Just lost game 5 to end the streak, fucker played three legendaries (druid) of which the last was Ysera which I immediately silenced but the one card he drew off it was Ysera Awakens.... Anything else I reckon I could have dealt with.

I've cashed in today's quest and that's 2085g now

I could buy 20 packs for free.... but I won't!

Tightarse!

God fucking dammit, had a druid play on subsequent turns:

Ironbark

to

Ironbark

to

Raggy

to

Molten Giant

Beat all that lot down but ran out of steam on the board unfortunately, one card away from fatigue and he was holding three cards. That'll be a concede then.

Had a good couple of games with a Druid in Arena, but just got obliterated by a card-draw Pally.

Three Cult Masters, Three Blessing of Wisdom, Two Loot Hoarders (and two resurrect minion secrets), etc etc. By the time he beat me he had one card left and I had (I think) 14.

I held on in there until I cleared the board, and he brought out the Truesilver Champion weapon, a Bloodsail Raider, a Questing Adventurer and a Blessing of Wisdom on the same turn. By then, anything I could put up on the board got smashed in a turn. Great game though, and he did really well to get a deck that was so synchronised.

For 'well' read 'lucky', yeah I know we can all get good and bad card drafts in arena, but when people succeed in putting together decks that wouldn't look out of place in constructed in terms of card synergy and gimmicks, it's possible to feel a bit aggrieved.

True, but it's fun when you pull it off. I had an awesome deck with tons of overloads and the elemental that goes mental for overloads. It was tres fun.

Fucking hell got a Twisting Nether played against me in Arena for the first time in a long time. (In fact, not sure I've ever seen it more than once or twice in all my play in the game combined, not just Arena.)

At the back of my mind I was thinking 'He doesn't seem to be doing much on the board, even though I'm about two turns max away from lethal and I'm swarming the board....'

Yeah, that hurt.

~2205 gold now I think. Tum te tum.

Just doing the daily quest with the Trump F2P shammy deck, utterly infuriating game against a mage.

I was getting poor draw out of the deck but managed to control him all the way down to him being one card away from fatigue - (I had 10 cards still, including some quality in the back half of my deck as I had drawn neither Azure Drake or Argent Commander up until that point) - and I still had 20 health.

Then he plays Alexstrasza against me one turn, (to take my health to 15), which I take out, next turn Fireball > Fireball > Frostbolt for the perfect 15 damage. I'd noticed he hadn't used any Fireballs and only one Frostbolt so should have seen it coming, but controlling the board was hard enough with the relatively crappy card draw I was getting.

Bastard.

How long till Naxxramus is out?

Naxxramus is being released this "summer". The original Naxxramus raid was launched on the 20th of June. Just saying like...

That would be nice, can stop hoarding all my golds after it is out, up to 1705 now. So tempting to play arena or just splurge it all on packs.

Interesting. Seems logical that they'd sync it to the original, and they might not give much warning before they do. Exciting!

Hail fellow gold-hoarder!

It gets abit compulsive doesn't it, I want to spend it but nice to see the big numbers

I'm at 1400g now

You do realise if everyone was determined to play the game totally for free then THERE'D BE NO GAME AT ALL?

(Trooper doesn't count because he bought card packs.)

I bought some packs at the start, hence having Gelbin Mekkatorque. Yes I do take your point though, but it is nice that Blizz seem to be the first games company that I have seen with a F2P game that doesn't gouge you to have a chance at winning. And I am sure some players have invested a huge amount of cash into it. Would be interesting to see the figures but that would never happen.
Also if Blizz were not making enough out of the game I am sure they would tweek it, so I feel no guilt about playing it as a 'free' game, especially after the amount of my monies Blizz have had off me over the years playing WOW and SC.

It just seems a shame to me that given Blizzard have produced what is arguably the first really 'ethical' F2P game in the world (and a damn fine game at that), folks couldn't at least see fit to tip a fiver or suchlike in their direction.

Otherwise the lesson is 'Fuck it, we may as well gouge like every other bastard out there, let's take a look at what EA are up to.....'

I gave them a tenner I think. All the packs I got were bloody rubbish though!

But in your heart you know it's the right thing to do

You were all about not spending money on this until you cracked and spent £60, and now it's just the right thing to do? ;P

I NEVER SAID THAT.

Actually I probably did, in the beta or something, or whatever.

I've certainly said that paying £1.49 for an Arena entry seems crazy (and I stand by that) but I'm pretty sure that by the time I bought £35 worth of cards I was pretty sanguine about the game and how much quality gaming I'd had out of it so spending £35 on cards seemed entirely reasonable.

The second £35 worth of cards, not quite so reasonable.

F2P-4-EVA.

I should call out your skinflintery in a Hearthstone DUEL TO THE DEATH.

But you'd probably beat me with your horrible cheaty priest

Just lost to a perfect beast Hunter deck in Arena.

Two Buzzards, two hounds, two hyenas, two wolf things, etc.

And now I'm playing against a Priest who has played FIVE Shattered Sun Clerics so far!

They *must* cleanse the sunwell, that thing is well rank.

Hunters can be so fucking infuriating in Arena, just had one of the bastards pull two perfect UTH combos on me, he honestly couldn't have had better card draw for Constructed.

And there's me lurching around with one of the worst pally decks you've ever seen (no weapons were offered, for starters).

3:3 isn't a bad finish but I had the fucker on the ropes when he top drew an UTH with the Buzzard in hand, worked through that one and then he pulled exactly the same shit on me again about three turns later.

The previous loss was a pisser too when a speculative Mad Bomber from my opponent managed to completely ignore his side of the board and snipe down mine with a precision you wouldn't have quite thought possible.

I've had lucky runs in Arena too and I know it all balances out in the end, but I went 2:0 up and then it was loss, loss, win, loss for a disappointing 3:3 finish when I really fancied my chances for better.