(July 19th, 2017, 18:14)The Black Sword Wrote: Just finished an arena run 11-3.
I was down to 4 life in the final game against a rogue. He starts emoting 'well played' as I end turn, into 'oops' as he realises tidal surge can't go face. I then have an option of clearing the board with twilight flamecaller or a primordial drake. I figure the taunt should be safer.
My opponent's remaining card in hand turns out to be the hogrider who gains charge against taunt minions and then he topdecks a vilespine to kill Drake. GG.
Would have been my first 12 wins too.
So close! Spiked hogrider is a popular arena card, but not something you can really play around. Without the taunt there would be so many lethal combos. If it's any consolation, the rewards for 11 wins and 12 wins seem to be practically identical. :P
I really like the hog cards. The flavour is fun and I think it's a nice way to design charge. But vilespine... That one makes me mad every time it's played against me.
I'm getting back to HS, in time for the new expansion. I lost the fire festival bonuses, but the frost one also seems nice, since I mostly play Arena. Hopefully I can farm some noobs using the free run. Kidding aside, nowadays I only manage to do well with mage in arena. I know the top rogue cards, but the drafts never seem to click for me when playing rogue, even when the deck seems good. I think I don't play it correctly. Paladin is very draft dependent, I think, there's not a lot of technique when playing, so I prefer playing mage, where I think I can get some wins even with a mediocre deck.
My last draft is a shaman, with a low curve and 2 evolves (I love this card). I'm trying to play more like my deck type suggests, not playing around board clears when it's clear I won't be winning any value battles and playing for my "burn" outs (I have a doom hammer, for example). That's why I think I do well with mage, my usual play style is to clear the board and win on value, and that suits most mage drafts really well. So when I go with other classes, I end up playing against my deck.
Quote: Hopefully I can farm some noobs using the free run.
It got me playing arena again for the first time in a while and there were a lot of decisions where I wished I had more experience, to have an idea of what my opponents decks would look like. Combined with the free win, it seems like it's quite easy to profit from a run right now.
Missing on the screenshot are spiked hogrider, frozen crusher, reckless rocketeer, sunwalker, sated threshodon and primordial drake.
I had this draft from two months ago or so, already at 0/1 when I reinstalled. The other game I lost a game to a hunter that played really well. Overall, my mage opponents never had AoE, and the rogue matchups won on tempo, but always at the cost of being low life and open to my burn from hand.
I tried logging back in to do an arena, but they seem to have a special sequence designed to get returning players to leave in annoyance. I'm stuck on a single quest that requires me to do 100 damage to heroes and only gives classic packs as a reward. It takes up all three quest slots and can't be rerolled, so I can't earn gold until I work through it to get the useless classic packs. Also as far as I can tell it blocked me from getting the free arena. I don't care that much, so GG blizzard.
What do you guys think about the new cards revealed? I really like the hunter legendary (Professor Putricide (?), not the Hero Card). I think I'll make a secret-based midrange hunter when expansion comes, because that seems fun and potentially powerful.
Congrats! Seems like a nice aggressive mage deck, with enough card-generation cards to have an impact in the late game.
The thing about Putricide is that playing a vanilla 5/4 on turn 4 isn't the worst thing ever. It's very likely you'll at least trade a card for a card, but the threat of it might force some very questionable resource usage by your opponent (similar to what happens when Fandril is played).
I see the utility of the card more in the sense of refilling your board after a board clear or something like that. It's hard dealing with multiple hunter secrets and most of them generate quite a bit of tempo (in standard, I think only hidden cache is a bad result), so for 6 mana you can generate quite a dangerous board from nothing.
Worth noticing that I have almost zero ladder/deck-building experience, so take my comments with a grain of salt.
By the way, I agree about Blood Razor and I think Ghastly Conjurer will also be used in mage decks. Resource generation is that powerful.
Bonemare is going to be a monster in arena. I have to think it will find a home in constructed too.
Spreading plague looks pretty strong to me. Seems like it might be an effective way for jade or ramp druid to buy time until primordial drake or other swing plays against aggro. It's not too insane to imagine a deck where this card and mark of the lotus both sense either...
Fatespinner is also very interesting. Having to rely on a deathrattle to clear the board is not very good. It's a card I'd like to try out, but I don't think it will live up to some people's hype. Still the flexibility of being a control card against aggro and an aggressive card against control/combo has to be given some credit.
Blood razor will see play. Warrior just has so many ways to take advantage of whirlwind effects. I'm actually playing a berzerker deck in wild ladder right now and still works pretty well. But even in a control deck, clear out the low health minions and draw cards.
Eternal servitude... I don't know if it's all that amazing, but the kind of people who play control priest are going to love a card like this.
Plague Scientist. Because rogue really needed more efficient tempo swing removal for arena. :P For constructed it seems like it may not have a home. But I've been thinking about scenarios were you get multiple kills from the poison. You can give poison to things like knife juggler or Sergeant Sally. Imagine if you could play this card in the same deck with flamewaker.
Kidding aside, nowadays I only manage to do well with mage in arena. I know the top rogue cards, but the drafts never seem to click for me when playing rogue, even when the deck seems good. I think I don't play it correctly. Paladin is very draft dependent, I think, there's not a lot of technique when playing, so I prefer playing mage, where I think I can get some wins even with a mediocre deck.![[Image: devil.gif]](http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/devil.gif)
![[Image: YMfoown.jpg]](http://imgur.com/YMfoown.jpg)
Seems like a nice aggressive mage deck, with enough card-generation cards to have an impact in the late game.