Hearthstone

[SoulJustIn]

hmmm,

Blizzard Entertainment released Android app on 26/2/2015

since i saw Marie-hime-sama like the game......so i try it with my tablet........

i wonder is this connect to you all..... i try add someone.....

[arakura]

I hope you werent taking my post seriously >,>

I was trying my hardest to sound sarcastic but not too bitter

[Decay]

The Blackrock Mountain adventure expansion was just announced today. It will be structured like Naxxramas was, and will have five wings with 31 new cards. The big theme of this expansion will be dragons. The Dragon tribe has been added, and dragon synergy cards will be a thing. 

 

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/18140859/blackrock-mountain-a-hearthstone-adventure-announced-at-pax-east-3-6-2015

[Kaguya]

The Blackrock Mountain adventure expansion was just announced today. It will be structured like Naxxramas was, and will have five wings with 31 new cards. The big theme of this expansion will be dragons. The Dragon tribe has been added, and dragon synergy cards will be a thing. 

 

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/18140859/blackrock-mountain-a-hearthstone-adventure-announced-at-pax-east-3-6-2015

Don't forget the cinematic:

[Decay]

Some quick thoughts on the revealed cards:

 

Grim Patron: Pretty bad. Any sort of proactive play involving him requires way too specific of a combo or ends up being heavily prone to AoE. Doesn't do anything that the other warrior OTK decks can't do better. Doesn't synergize well enough with the other classes.

 

Hungry Dragon: Strong in some situations, weak in others, it's hard to evaluate this card. It's very much a snowball card that you use to build on and cement a lead. Without that lead, the enemy is very likely to be able to negate the tempo advantage of playing a 4 mana 5/6.

 

Blackwing Technician: Incredibly strong. Eats a piloted shredder without dying, can't be ping killed after eating a 2 drop, is very unlikely to be removed the turn it's played, and creates a perfect 1-2 punch with Hungry Dragon or Twilight Drake. Incidentally, both of those cards can fit in many non-dragon-focused midrange decks, making Blackwing Technician good in general.

 

Dark Iron Stalker: Provides excellent value, yet somehow still unlikely to be played. Rogue is not hurting for AoE and it doesn't really fit into any existing archetypes. Since this expansion is limited in scope, this is the one class card Rogue will be getting, meaning that you can't really expect any new rogue archetypes either. This card cannot alone lead the charge for a new midrange/control rogue deck like Webspinner/Undertaker did for Deathrattle Hunter. 

 

Rend Blackhand: Terrible. Its body is flimsy as hell. It dies to almost every card in the game and its effect is not as good as it looks. Killing a minion is really good, right? And legendaries are the best minions so how can that be? Most strong legendaries have powerful battlecries or deathrattles but weakish bodies. Many of the ones that don't can be killed by BGH which is cheaper and has a better body for the cost. This is a more situational BGH with double the stats but more than double the mana cost. You will spend your whole turn killing a body that might not even be very important and the enemy will spend a third of their mana to counter your play. Oh, and it requires a dragon to be in your hand, just to add some icing to the shit cake. This card is good against the 4/12s, that's pretty much it. Oh, some more comical things about how bad this minion is: aggro decks run very few to no legendaries and this card will die to like one of their minions, you will die if you play it. If the only legendary on the board is yours, it will kill it because it targets your own as well. This card may be worse than Hemet Nesingwary. Also, this may be the new worst Arena legendary. I think I'd rather have a Lorewalker Cho. 

 

One neat thing about the expansion in general is the "if you hold a dragon" card text. It's a neat way to handle synergies for a card type that is typically expensive and hard to play on the board. Mid-range and control decks are typically hard to get synergy bonuses for because you have few minions on the board at any given time or are constantly trading. This enables you to build a strong board with synergy bonuses while waiting for your big mean dragon to come out. One thing that this expansion worries me about is that it could make the game more prone to snowballing. Blackwing Technician is really strong and as more cards like it are released, I can foresee a situation where the opponent with the strongest opening hand always wins and nothing past turns 3 or 4 matters. Blizzard needs to introduce more swingy cards to counteract this. But that could introduce its own set of problems. Hopefully they find the right balance.

[Kelebek1]

Grim Patron is amazing, what are you talking about. Grim Patron on empty board + Bouncing Blade? And with the bombers. And with a whole load of things, it's great, although probably too expensive. Will win you games though if combo'd right.

[Decay]

Okay, so you do Grim Patron + Bouncing Blade. That took your entire turn, and now the enemy can efficiently AoE down your board full of weaklings and have mana to spare. In constructed, this will happen most of the time.

 

Who likes math? The most likely outcome of that combo is a tie between getting two 3/3s, and two 3/3s and a 3/2. One of those two things will happen a third of the time. That averages out to 7.5/7 for 8 mana and two cards. Somewhat underwhelming value. Of course, those are also the two worst results, so there's nowhere to go but up from there. You have a 2% chance of getting 4 3/3s and 2 3/1s, basically the dream. The other way to look at it is that two and three minion results make up only a third of the possible results, most of the time you will get four or more. But again, even if you flood the board with six guys, you will probably get it wiped by AoE. You need a Warsong Commander to actually reliably make use of the zerg rush, but at that point you may as well be building a Frothing/Raging Worgen OTK deck.

 

Here are a bunch of numbers: 

 2     0     0   16.7%

 2     1     0   16.7%

 3     0     1    6.7%
 2     2     0    9.2%

 3     1     1    9.4%
 2     3     0    3.6%

 4     0     2    2.0%
 3     2     1    7.1%
 3     1     2    4.2%
 3     0     3    0.8%
 2     4     0    1.1%
 2     3     1    4.4%
 2     2     2    4.6%
 2     1     3    2.1%
 2     0     4    0.4%
 1     5     0    0.3%
 1     4     1    1.7%
 1     3     2    2.8%
 1     2     3    2.2%
 1     1     4    0.9%
 1     0     5    0.2%
 0     6     0    0.1%
 0     5     1    0.3%
 0     4     2    0.8%
 0     3     3    0.9%
 0     2     4    0.6%
 0     1     5    0.2%
 0     0     6    0.04%

Sometimes immediately impressive looking results aren't always the best play. This is similar to how Muster For Battle + Quartermaster on the same turn is usually countered quite easily, the goal is to set up your recruits to make it so Quartermaster gets immediate value. Grim Patron + Bouncing Blade can't do this. You need Grim Patron + Warsong Commander + a ton of other weird cards like inner rage. Also, Blizzard needs to fix the Warsong Commander bug.

[Kaguya]

Grim patron sucks. 

 

Also, this is too much for me to handle.

[dsddf]

Dark Iron Stalker: Provides excellent value, yet somehow still unlikely to be played. Rogue is not hurting for AoE and it doesn't really fit into any existing archetypes. Since this expansion is limited in scope, this is the one class card Rogue will be getting, meaning that you can't really expect any new rogue archetypes either. This card cannot alone lead the charge for a new midrange/control rogue deck like Webspinner/Undertaker did for Deathrattle Hunter. 

 

I could see a control dragon rogue with some alex combo to finish things off.

[Kaguya]

[Flutterz]

[ChrisPZT]

As someone whose favourite class is Paladin, I approve. 

[Decay]

So I think the 1st and 2nd of each month are the easiest time to play the Arena mode if you're into that. A lot of the best players ladder immediately instead of spending time in the arena, and a lot of average and bad players flock to the arena to take refuge from the influx of good players in the low ranks. Anyways, possibly related, I just got another 12 win arena run, it's been a month or so. http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/8u7ckf

 

The deck kind of sucked in some ways. When it went bad, it tended to go real bad, but it had amazing burst potential if you set it up right. Playing rogue in arena is really tricky because you have to strike the perfect balance of taking face damage and trading, and especially with Sharpsword Oil and Cold Blood you have to protect your board at the same time, but being over-protective has its drawbacks. You have to play a highly tempo-oriented play style, sometimes making very poor value trades, just to keep ahead of the opponent. I think it's the highest difficulty class to learn and play well. Even still, Rogue has my highest rate of 12 win arena runs, but I consider that more luck than anything else.

 

I'm excited for Blackrock Mountain because my two favorite arena classes are Hunter and Shaman, and their new commons are great. Shaman has been really weak post-GvG but I think they'll get a big boost with BRM.

[Kaguya]

So I think the 1st and 2nd of each month are the easiest time to play the Arena mode if you're into that. A lot of the best players ladder immediately instead of spending time in the arena, and a lot of average and bad players flock to the arena to take refuge from the influx of good players in the low ranks. Anyways, possibly related, I just got another 12 win arena run, it's been a month or so. http://www.heartharena.com/arena-run/8u7ckf

 

The deck kind of sucked in some ways. When it went bad, it tended to go real bad, but it had amazing burst potential if you set it up right. Playing rogue in arena is really tricky because you have to strike the perfect balance of taking face damage and trading, and especially with Sharpsword Oil and Cold Blood you have to protect your board at the same time, but being over-protective has its drawbacks. You have to play a highly tempo-oriented play style, sometimes making very poor value trades, just to keep ahead of the opponent. I think it's the highest difficulty class to learn and play well. Even still, Rogue has my highest rate of 12 win arena runs, but I consider that more luck than anything else.

 

I'm excited for Blackrock Mountain because my two favorite arena classes are Hunter and Shaman, and their new commons are great. Shaman has been really weak post-GvG but I think they'll get a big boost with BRM.

Seems like a bad deck. I'm impressed you managed to go 12 with it.

[Decay]

I would say at least five of my wins were achieved when I was pretty far behind on the board and I just bullshitted out some burst combo out of nowhere.

[Mevvrynne]

finished the first wing's normal mode class challenges and heroic modes the other day.  As far as concept the fights are pretty fun to play but the heroic modes felt more RNG based, especially the first one.  The first one I used a half/half expensive and mid-game minions on a priest so that I actually could play things in the early game.  I got insanely lucky against dark iron arena heroic with my mech mage deck, basically the only way I was able to win was a lucky mirror entity on his sylvanas.  And heroic emperor took me a buff-centered priest with at least 2 silences and 2 crazed alchemists.

 

First wing overall was pretty good.

[Decay]

For the first heroic fight, I used a Paladin deck which can control the board with spells (humility, equality/consecrate, etc) while having almost all of the minions be huge. The only non-huge minions were aldor peacekeepers. It worked out pretty well.

[babiker]

Wow, this thread sure is active, and I never even knew of it .-.

 

Well, I've been getting into hearthstone myself the past month-ish, and I've been having quite a fun time. My only complaint with it is that it's pretty damn hard for new players to catch up with the beta-players, and no amount of grinding can possibly get you the amount of cards you need to catch up to them. Your only way is to spend a lot of money, which you know,  isn't all that great 

 

Then again, this is a rather small  complaint, as it would be weird if I could catch up to you old-timers, and the whole dust system is pretty awesome too, with it you can make at least one deck you want with enough time (and luck).

 

Over all, gg Blizzard. 

 

Also, random question: If I where to ask ya'll what's the best legendary dragon (not counting the new BRM cards), what would be your pick? So far (and I'm mainly basing my opinion off reading these cards and not actually seeing them in play), I think Onyxia is the most generally-good card that would fit in most decks. Deathwing has too high a cost and can mess you up, Ysera is too slow, Malygos needs the right deck, and Nozdormu- what??? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that effect really sucks. Alexstrasza (how dafuq do u even pronounce that) would be the very close second, but his effect can be rather meh at times. But enough of my nooby opinions, experienced players should have better things to say 

[Kaguya]

I remember the old times.

Nozdormu is a joke card. Don't ever play it, it sucks.

 

Alextraza is really good in some decks (it actually gets played in constructed from time to time! Wow!). Control warrior comes to mind. I'd mention handlock, but I'm not sure whether or not the demon variety ever uses it, and that's the meta handlock currently.

 

There was a saying that playing Ysera on an empty board would win you the game. I think that's mostly still true. In a slow, control-ish metagame, people would absolutely play it. They don't, though.

 

Malygos is really, really scary. Constructed is so finely-tuned that if someone plays malygos against you and you don't remove it or kill him, you absolutely will lose the game the next turn... Though controls warriors with 20+ armor can generally stay alive.

 

Onyxia is good, but it sucks against any type of board clear. For that much mana, I'd rather play something else. Still good, though.

 

Deathwing- Nope. I'd rather play twisting nether. And I'd almost never play twisting nether. It can only work in a slow metagame, but in a slow metagame, you can't afford to enter top-deck mode. Card sucks.

 

For the new ones-

 

Nefarian- Hey, look. It's 9 mana 8/8 with bad thoughtsteal! Demon handlock cuts 4 mana 8/8 because it's not good enough... This card is hopeless. I'd rather play Ysera. I guess that in a super-slow meta, you could try to play both.

 

Chromaggus- If it stays on the board long enough it's pretty good? I think I'd rather play Kel-thuzad most of the time, but I bet that in a slow enough meta it can work. Value. 

 

 

I'd probably pick Onyxia or Ysera in arena.

[Zakamutt]

Very few decks play malygos, too situational I'd say given that you need both a nuke and malygos on hand and no removal next turn. That said it /is/ a scary card... then again, most big cards are.

 

Alex is probably the strongest of the bunch in its all-rounder strength. Can both heal you and be used to finish off the opponent (also used in freeze mage as an integral card btw.) Ysera is p. good but argh the randomness.

 

I don't think I've ever lost a game against someone that played onyxia against me, lol. Nozdormu could be good for surprise factor if you're good at thinking fast but it generally a good old gimmick card w.

 

Deathwing was used as a finisher at the topdeck stage by some fairly good midrange mage deck I think, lol. I never tried using it myself but I can see it having some potential when things reach that stage (and that's definitely possible in some metagames). At the very least, nobody will expect it w

[Decay]

For whatever reason, in the past week the arena meta has been very soft, imo. The skill level of your average opponent went down by quite a bit. I guess BRM's release influenced a lot of returning and new players to start playing again but I didn't expect it to be like this. It's like how it was at around Naxx's time of release. So I guess get in now while the getting's good, I don't know how long this will last for.

[Mevvrynne]

Heroic Rag in a nutshell

[babiker]

Me want Antonidas ;_;

[Mikimir]

Hearthstone for Iphone is out (quite some time ago). Incoming 1v1-me-I'll-rek-u-m8 friends.

[Vemocleus]

Just about to get the new adventure, woo!