Hearthstone Players!

I'm holding off on Arena until all my classes are Level 10 so when I get bored with leveling I've been playing the odd Ranked match with the jank-ass Mage and Druid decks I've scraped together. I've mainly been doing it to complete Quests and to scrounge enough wins for a new card back. Anyway, I've been doing OK but tonight I ran into a Priest running all sorts of shit I didn't recognize (which isn't saying much), but I'd never seen 90% of it: a spell that copies one of my random cards (he copied my Polymorph twice?!), some 0/6 douche whose attack is always equal to his health, a card that swaps the health and attack of a minion, some shadow ability that lets his Priest do 2 damage, etc. Once I realized what I was dealing with I thought I was screwed but with the judicious use of Polymorph and Flamestrike, as well as a perfectly-timed summoning of one of my weak minions to bait him into using his second copied Polymorph on it (I was paranoid that he had another one and I was right), I was finally able to get permanent minion advantage and take him out when he had 2 cards left in his deck and I had 3. I was so elated, and I wish I could have somehow dedicated my win to QPCloudy after watching him get curb-stomped this morning by some d-bag Priest player.

I'm pretty sure I lose 9 times out of 10 to that deck but good draws and good timing let me eke it out. I love trying to figure out the timing in this game; it's not only knowing when to play cards, it's also knowing when to take damage as well as when to threaten attack and what to threaten with. My gaming group is composed of old-school MTG players that still enjoy the occasional casual game and, as a Magic noob, the one thing I've picked up from them is that a lot of the time it's worth it to take some damage to further one's strategy rather than wasting resources to squash some weenie. And nothing makes me happier than my opponent wasting minions and attacks to take out one of my cheap Charge minions just because it popped him on the nose for 1-3 damage.

That opponent's screen name was Shadow, and he was playing a priest. It was literally a Shadow Priest. Fuck that guy.

SebastianBludd wrote: Anyway, I've been doing OK but tonight I ran into a Priest running all sorts of shit I didn't recognize (which isn't saying much), but I'd never seen 90% of it: a spell that copies one of my random cards (he copied my Polymorph twice?!), some 0/6 douche whose attack is always equal to his health, a card that swaps the health and attack of a minion, some shadow ability that lets his Priest do 2 damage, etc.

Priests have a few copying spells: Mind Vision, 1 mana, Put a copy of a random card in your opponent's hand into your hand.
Thoughtsteal, 3 mana, Copy 2 cards from your opponent's deck and put them into your hand (Note the language. If your one copy of a legendary is in your hand or if you've already played both copies of card, Thoughtsteal can't take it.)
Mindgames, 4 mana, Put a copy of a random creature from your opponent's deck into the battlefield. (Mindgames has the same exclusions as Thoughtsteal.)
The douche is Lightspawn. It's a 0/5, actually.
Priest has a couple ways to do the Shadow thing. The most frequently seen is Auchenai Soulpriest, 4 mana 3/5, which causes all healing effects to instead do an equivalent amount of damage. That means the Priest can't heal, but if his Zombie Chow dies while the Auchenai is on the board, for example, it will do 5 damage to you, rather than heal you.
The other way is Shadowform, 3 mana, Your Hero Power becomes "Deal 2 damage"; If already in Shadowform, 3 damage. Cards will still heal, but the Hero Power is permanently Mind Spike/Mind Shatter. Keep in mind that the Hero Power resets every time it changes, so they can use Lesser Heal, cast Shadowform, and then use Mind Spike or use Mind Spike, cast Shadowform, and then use Mind Shatter. If you're interested, here's the Shadow Priest deck I was using pre-Blackrock: www.hearthpwn.com/decks/206592-shadow I had some solid success with it. Vol'jin and Sylvanus aren't essential, but you're obviously going to need at least two epics (Shadowform) and I'd be hesitant to play Priest these days without at least one LIghtbomb and Cabal Shadow Priest (She just mind controls stuff, despite the name.)

He definitely played two Mind Visions in one turn and the other was Shadowform. His deck was a lot like yours, minus most of the Epics and Legendaries.

Are the higher Gold/reward Quests super rare? All I get are 40 Gold Quests, even if I try and switch them out.

The subtleties of rerolling quests! Ok, here's how this works.The probabilities are about this:So you re-roll quests as often as possible when you see a 40, right? Only if you play and finish your quest every day. Here's where the subtlety comes in. There's the obvious ploy of having overlapping quests (unless you will be playing for a long time that day.) It'd be "better" to keep a 40 plus a 60 with overlap and get that 100 gold for 5 games of work, instead of a shot at 120 gold for 10 games of work.

You also should know there's a "queue" of quests behind the scenes that's six quests deep. You can get up to three quests per day if your queue is full and your menu is empty. Let me explain this.

• It's Monday. You have a single 40g quest in your menu, you re-reroll it for 60g and earn it. You head off to Vegas.
• It's Tuesday, no play.
• It's Wednesday, no play.
• It's Thursday, you sign in, and see three new quests. You earn only one of them. Back to Vegas.
• A week passes. There was some liquor involved. It's bat country.
• It's Friday, you sign in and have three quests, two you remember from the previous Thursday and a new one. No re-rolls, you get to work and get all three.
• It's Saturday, you get three quests. You finish these.
• It's Sunday, you get two quests. You finish these.
• It's Monday, you get one quest.

The catch is, if you re-roll a quest, you wipe out your hidden queue. So, if you have been away for a few days, don't re-reroll a quest on your menu until you are sure your queue is emptied.

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Laddering with a Dragon Priest deck and on a savage win streak. Going from 19 to 16.3 and still chugging. Beating Face Hunters, Beast Hunters, some kind of Druid, Zoo, &c.

Good stuff.

All that said, I still re-roll any quest that looks annoying to me. If I don't have a current deck for it, I'll dump it. "Druid/Warrior 60g"? Gone before it can finish the animation.

Honestly, I don't like the 60g quests, as I feel the reward for them isn't there unless I play more than I really want to. I only keep those for classes I play pretty regularly or have a current Arena deck for.

Took too long to see the play in a recent Arena match. I was Druid with a 5/4 on the board. Opponent was Mage with an empty board. They drop Force Tank MAX and hand it back to me at ten mana. Rope was about halfway across the screen when I realized what I wanted was Force of Nature (6), 2/2 hit, 2/2 hit, 5/4 hit to clear the FTM, 2/2 to face and make a Volcanic Drake (3). What I got was Force of Nature, 2/2 hit, 5/4 hit, let two 2/2's fallow, end turn. So instead of me with a 6/4 to her empty board, I got my empty board to her 7/2 FML. I did get to listen to that slithery sound the Treants make though, that was nice.

I'm getting better with my Warlock. It's not full zoo, sort of a mix. Trying to win with dudes and using spells to board control.

Jackwraith - thanks for the help

I want to keep working on my Rogue. I like that class. I have some ideas.

I really think I need more cards. I'm going to probably buy one of the adventure packs to get them. Which should I buy first?

I asked Jackwraith that exact question last night as he was watching me get pwned by a Hunter control deck, and he suggested Naxxramas because it has a lot of staples that are still popular in the meta.

I plan on buying that one as well as starting Arena runs to get cards that way, too.

Stormy: Np. I was watching a number of you guys last night in between playing my Dragadin deck for a few games (went 6-1, beating 3 Face Hunters in a row (Fuck. Those. Guys.), and the one loss was a great game against a Control Warrior who got Alex and Grom plus Taskmaster in successive turns. I had my Alex down and got him to 10, but there it is.) Even watched Barnes a couple times. He was changing up the build on his Priest deck and kind of struggling with it. Happens.

Naxx is the way to go, IMO. With cards like Zombie Chow, Nerubian Egg, Unstable Ghoul, Mad Scientist, Shade of Naxxramas, Sludge Belcher, Loatheb, and even KT, you're playing with a lot of cards that are in regular rotation. Plus there's Dark Cultist for Priest, Voidcaller for Warlock, and Death's Bite for Warrior. That will give you a big leg up toward competitive decks. Plus, the bosses and class challenges are a lot of fun and they teach you to adapt at a somewhat slower pace, since the computer plays very nice on normal mode. If you feel like more of a challenge, you can always try the heroics, too.

stormseeker75 wrote: I really think I need more cards. I'm going to probably buy one of the adventure packs to get them. Which should I buy first?

Naxx is the one to get first. Has more impact cards, I think, and the good stuff is either awesome (e.g., Loatheb, Sludge Belcher) or hilarious (e.g., Kel'Thuzad, Stalagg & Feugen).

Unless you hate it, spending gold on Arena runs is the way to go. It lets you play with cards you don't have, it will clue you in quickly on the concept of value (when you look at the board on turn 5 and all your stuff is gone and they have three guys? They have figured out value,) and getting just barely good enough (3 wins on average) gets you the 50+ net gold to have made it a smarter play than just buying a pack of GvG. Those little nets add up into Classic packs eventually.

Okay, so I will buy Naxx in the next couple days. I've done a couple Arena runs. I got to 3 wins the last time so I'm doing better. I think the trick is that I'm not sure what type of deck to build so I just start grabbing shit. My last Warlock felt pretty awesome but it just didn't work great. Mage feels like a tough matchup for Warlock.

Boss came in while I was 2-2 in Arena--was going to kill the opponent, but had to concede, alas. 40 dust and the karmic pack:


Woot woot. Had to parlay that into a Classic pack:


Aw yeah. Get on my level you n00bs!

orange is legendary, blue is rare and purple is...?

Black Barney wrote: orange is legendary, blue is rare and purple is...?

Epic. Better than rare, but not Legendary. Still 2x to a deck.