Hearthstone

[pindicator]

I really do hate this week's brawl

Still, you have to admit it was the perfect counterpoint to last weeks, which had almost no randomness

I played it more than the average brawl (since I had the Tavern Brawl quest on Wednesday) and mostly found that when both people are doing stupid stuff, it mostly balanced out. Then again, I only really had one game lopsided in my opponent's favor (as opposed to a couple in my favor), so it might just be results-oriented thinking

Results oriented thinking may be why I hate it. I also had the brawl quest and I don't know how many games in a row I had awful draw after awful draw while my opponents drop big drops every turn. (Although the shaman who got t1 Mistcaller t2 Neptulon against me made me laugh it was so absurd. )

[SevenSpirits]

I think I enjoyed it more than the brawl that was just random decks. (OK, that's not saying much.) At least it resulted in unusual situations, and having to make choices you usually don't have to make. I.e. do I play this card now while it's discounted the most, or do I play the cards that give the most immediate advantage? Sometimes there were interesting decisions.

Certainly the results of the games seemed mostly luck-based. (I had one hilarious game where I went turn 3 aviana, coin, innervate, Belcher, Pit Fighter, Cenarius to give them all +2/+2.) But that doesn't necessarily take mean you don't get to make interesting decisions during the game.

[pindicator]

Okay, this brawl is full of RNG and awesome. Maybe my favorite brawl yet.

Edit: Had a lot of fun with a Poisoned Blade Rogue deck. Deck's below and probably could use a lot of improvement, but it's fun! I'd play two Poisoned Blades if I had them.

Board clear, inspire, and ramp seems to be the best way to construct a deck though. You just want to be hitting the hero power as much as possible every turn, so often you have a full hand.

[SevenSpirits]

My impression is that druid (innervate, astral communion...) is too good to pass on. But Poisoned Blade is sure a cool idea

[Ichabod]

I recently played a very interesting arena game. I was mage, playing against a Paladin. I was on the defensive most of the game, but managed to mostly control things around turn 8/9. I cleared his board, only leaving a Maiden of the Lake. I had 3 mana left after clearing, so I played my Acolyte of Pain, threatening to get 2 cards out of it (either from the Maiden or the inevitable dude next turn).

We both had like 2/3 cards. I had like 20 life, he had more.

What my opponent did? He used Seal of Champions on the Maiden to kill my Acolyte in one hit, thus denying me a draw. So, he wasted the Dvine Shield on a 1-attack minion.

Later, I managed to get rid of the Maiden, dropped a big minion and he didn't have a proper answer to it, so I won.

What I'm trying to point out is the extend that I see my opponents go to deny draws. Card advantage is definetely important, but it's not worth wasting one of the best swing cards in the game just to give one less card to the opponent. In this case, my opponent ended up losing mostly because of that.

[Dantski]

I recently played a very interesting arena game. I was mage, playing against a Paladin. I was on the defensive most of the game, but managed to mostly control things around turn 8/9. I cleared his board, only leaving a Maiden of the Lake. I had 3 mana left after clearing, so I played my Acolyte of Pain, threatening to get 2 cards out of it (either from the Maiden or the inevitable dude next turn).

We both had like 2/3 cards. I had like 20 life, he had more.

What my opponent did? He used Seal of Champions on the Maiden to kill my Acolyte in one hit, thus denying me a draw. So, he wasted the Dvine Shield on a 1-attack minion.

Later, I managed to get rid of the Maiden, dropped a big minion and he didn't have a proper answer to it, so I won.

What I'm trying to point out is the extend that I see my opponents go to deny draws. Card advantage is definetely important, but it's not worth wasting one of the best swing cards in the game just to give one less card to the opponent. In this case, my opponent ended up losing mostly because of that.

Well unless you saw the entirerity (sp?) of his deck I'm not sure he really made a mistake. Removal is less common with more cards being released so current board advantage and denying you a card (or maybe 2 since you were mage) is a reasonable choice.

If your opponent hadn't done this would it really have changed that much? It sounds like you would've drawn an extra card, possibly denied him a use of his hero power and still would've been able to kill his maiden later. Maybe he drew a better card to use seal on later but I don't have that information.

[Ichabod]

True, we'll never know for sure (replay function for HS, wouldn't that be a nice feature!), and my perspective is definetely biased. It was just a piece of "gaming pseudopsichology" that I wanted to share, the extent players go to kill the poor Acolyte.

[Sir Bruce]

Denying draws is very powerful when both people are at 2-3 cards and you have board control. Seal of Champions seems like a weakish card to me in general so this seems like a no-brainer play to me. But I don't play arena where I guess it could be more valuable in killing a bigger drop later, although this line still leaves him with a 5/6 on board and we know you couldn't deal with a 2/6 so a 5/6 is even a bigger deal. What else was in his hand?

[v8mark]

I recently played a very interesting arena game. I was mage, playing against a Paladin. I was on the defensive most of the game, but managed to mostly control things around turn 8/9. I cleared his board, only leaving a Maiden of the Lake. I had 3 mana left after clearing, so I played my Acolyte of Pain, threatening to get 2 cards out of it (either from the Maiden or the inevitable dude next turn).

We both had like 2/3 cards. I had like 20 life, he had more.

What my opponent did? He used Seal of Champions on the Maiden to kill my Acolyte in one hit, thus denying me a draw. So, he wasted the Dvine Shield on a 1-attack minion.

Later, I managed to get rid of the Maiden, dropped a big minion and he didn't have a proper answer to it, so I won.

What I'm trying to point out is the extend that I see my opponents go to deny draws. Card advantage is definetely important, but it's not worth wasting one of the best swing cards in the game just to give one less card to the opponent. In this case, my opponent ended up losing mostly because of that.

This is basically my argument when I say that I think Acolyte of Pain is a good card. Anything that influences the behaviour of your opponent tends to be under-appreciated, because it's hard to know how influential it actually was unless you can see the other side (ie you are the one being influenced). If you play Acolyte, your opponent basically can't play any minion with less than 3 attack unless he can remove or silence the Acolyte in the same turn. Most of the time that's fairly influential.

The same is true of other marginal cards like Neru'bar Weblord, which I think is less bad than others seem to think, although it's considerably more deck-dependent. The fact that you're the one playing it means you get to choose when both players are inconvenienced, tilting a supposedly 'balanced' effect in your favour. (Same with Mad Bomber, although that's obviously a much better card.)

Seal of Champions is a really good card in Arena anyway. It's basically an Argent Protector for one more mana, but with a better upside: instead of a 2/2 body you get to deal 3 damage, with the minor additional upside of retaining the +3 attack on the minion in question. ADWCTA's tier list has it as an 82, the joint third-best common card for Paladins, with only Truesilver and Kraken higher. It's seen as equivalent to Argent Protector, Shielded Minibot and Consecration.

[Sir Bruce]

And that's why I'm bad at arena. The permanence of the +3 does add a lot of value. On first glance I thought "this is a worse frostbolt". Maybe I should run it instead of 1xBlessing of Kings in my aggro secretdin...