Here's something I have a hard time with. I get why control decks work, and I get why synergistic decks work ("get in here"), and why face decks work. But something is missing in my high-level understanding of the value of various cards because I cannot for the life of me figure out why any mage deck works. Especially freeze decks. Seems like you'd just be delaying the inevitable. I mean, I can PLAY one of these decks, win with it, and still not really grasp at a high level why I won. I mean, 2 0/2 minions with taunt is obviously great for the cost, and the power is fine, but I would otherwise assume the mage cards are sort of garbage.
Freeze mage is a combo deck. It's nothing but card draw, stalling options, and the combo.
Aggro flamewaker mage (the only constructed mage deck I know of making use of mirror image) is a face deck. The mirror images simultaneously act as burn and as protection for the flamewaker - he's basically the largest source of damage in the deck but he needs to stick around over the course of a couple of turns to get all the damage out of him.
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
Here's something I have a hard time with. I get why control decks work, and I get why synergistic decks work ("get in here"), and why face decks work. But something is missing in my high-level understanding of the value of various cards because I cannot for the life of me figure out why any mage deck works. Especially freeze decks. Seems like you'd just be delaying the inevitable. I mean, I can PLAY one of these decks, win with it, and still not really grasp at a high level why I won. I mean, 2 0/2 minions with taunt is obviously great for the cost, and the power is fine, but I would otherwise assume the mage cards are sort of garbage.
In a way, freeze mages ARE delaying the inevitable, you got that right. They're just so good at delaying that the inevitable comes after the freeze mage gets his Alexstraza and his Antonidas and his double ice lances and sometimes pyroblast too why not and even majordomo too if you're facing trendy freeze mages
e: and also a bunch of card draw of the "I'm gonna ping my acolyte of pain over and over while I stall you" variety
frostbolt frostbolt ice lance ice lance is a lotta damage too
14
Its 14 damage
18 if you drop Bloodmage Thalnos first or have an Azure Drake on the board already.
Infinity if you have Malygos and got a turn of Thaurissan off.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
Just had a hybrid hunter concede when I (midrange zoo) was at 12 health, he was at 20, he had a secret and a knife juggler (but no cards in hand) and I had a Defender of Argus and a defender'd Imp Gang Boss.
O....kay?
I feel like you can still win from that position with good draws. Might as well at least play out the game.
Also faced off against a Secrets Hunter (like, at least 8 that I saw) who had double Keeper of Secrets and Illuminator. The idea was clearly keep buffing an Eaglehorn bow from all the secrets. Neat idea, although falls down somewhat against Dragon Warrior with all the armor gain it has.
The Secrets Hunter and a demonlock I faced earlier were both running double Kezan, which I found a little odd. Is this a thing people are doing now?
edit: the "standard" freeze mage combo is Thalnos, Fireball, Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Ice Lance for 21 damage. It's often more these days as you use Thaurissan to generate more damage.
Freeze has sort of moved more to a paradigm where you use Thaurissan to set up a good Antonidas combo and then you just generate so much burn they can't heal through it (runs Antonidas and Pyroblast).
Here's something I have a hard time with. I get why control decks work, and I get why synergistic decks work ("get in here"), and why face decks work. But something is missing in my high-level understanding of the value of various cards because I cannot for the life of me figure out why any mage deck works. Especially freeze decks. Seems like you'd just be delaying the inevitable. I mean, I can PLAY one of these decks, win with it, and still not really grasp at a high level why I won. I mean, 2 0/2 minions with taunt is obviously great for the cost, and the power is fine, but I would otherwise assume the mage cards are sort of garbage.
Mage has four deck archtypes floating around that function differently. Freeze mage has been covered. As has the flamewaker aggro deck.
Tempo mage and mech mage are more selective with what class cards they use.
Mech mage has fallen hard and basically uses frost bolts, fireballs, and blast mages to take out threats before they can attack while its own threats hit the opponent. Mirror entity prevents the opponent from making easy plays some turns as the copied creature the mage gets will swing first since it will be ready to go when the mage's turn is up again.
Tempo mage does that (minus the blast mages) but also throws on some extra spells to power up mana wyrms and flamewakers plus some extra spells to refill its hand with creatures. It does always care about precision (it runs unstable portal and flame cannon) so long as more likely than not the spells do something helpful.
the point is not that freeze mage gets to use all those and their 2 fireballs and stuff, it's that between all their spells (not to mention giants) they have a large number of tools to abruptly close out the game after they stall
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
I'm already watching him, but thanks for thinking of me :P
The Escape Goat on
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Iron WeaselDillon!You son of a bitch!Registered Userregular
I managed to claw back from an 0-2 start to at least finish even tonight. Would have liked to win one more, but it's already a new personal best so I'm not gonna whine. Got just enough gold for another Arena ticket so I'll try again tomorrow. I can't suck forever (because I'll eventually run out of gold)!
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Yikes. Not running Belcher is that bad, that mech priest has been getting murdered by Face Hunters.
Part of it is certainly that he doesn't play Hearthstone outside of the daily much and he often goes in cold on the deck, which means you'll definitely be playing pretty sub-optimally.
Last night, I guess I came up against a rather obnoxious Freeze mage. Emotes generally don't bother me and normally I would have squelched him, but I got some decent card draw that answered most of this threats (eg: Owl for the doomsayer) meaning it was quite interesting to see him try irritate me and it not really working.
I'm not proud of myself, but I did get some satisfaction in taking my time in killing him in the last turn.
You mean the totem drop? While also landing in the middle of the other spawned and your skeleton-dude-whose-name-I-forget?
If so, yeah that's pretty legit RNG.
Weblord doesn't do too much against patron warrior though, right? I don't think any of their cards have battle cries except for cruel task master.
That warrior was having a really bad game. Later he dropped the charge orc and frothing berserker and would have cleared my board, except he forgot that my baron was gonna make my sludge belcher spawn and additional taunt.
That warrior was having a really bad game. Later he dropped the charge orc and frothing berserker and would have cleared my board, except he forgot that my baron was gonna make my sludge belcher spawn and additional taunt.
Which would have been really if he had a Charge enhanced Grim Patron in play. To them, 2 attack or less minions are like water to Gremlins.
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Can someone refer me to a twitch feed of someone who plays a demonlock deck? Every warlock i find on twitch is playing a zoo deck, and I'd like to actually watch someone else play for ideas on improvement. I like my deck, but i usually can only manage to hit rank 13 before getting bombarded with face hunter / zoo decks.
How the goddamn bloody fuck assorted other bad words do you beat
Nefarian and Onyxia? I'm running this deck, only with the multiplying spiders from Naxx in place of the river crocolisk to try to take out all the one-health spawn, but nope. Yes, I save the elven archers and dwarven riflemen for the skeletons he spawns and I hope for an acidic ooze for when Onyxia shows up, but I still can't keep control of the board. What am I doing wrong? Keep in mind I have very few cards besides Naxx, Blackrock to this point and a smattering of not-great cards besides the normal deck.
How the goddamn bloody fuck assorted other bad words do you beat
Nefarian and Onyxia? I'm running this deck, only with the multiplying spiders from Naxx in place of the river crocolisk to try to take out all the one-health spawn, but nope. Yes, I save the elven archers and dwarven riflemen for the skeletons he spawns and I hope for an acidic ooze for when Onyxia shows up, but I still can't keep control of the board. What am I doing wrong? Keep in mind I have very few cards besides Naxx, Blackrock to this point and a smattering of not-great cards besides the normal deck.
Do a slow build Priest deck that kills Nefarian in a single turn.
How the goddamn bloody fuck assorted other bad words do you beat
Nefarian and Onyxia? I'm running this deck, only with the multiplying spiders from Naxx in place of the river crocolisk to try to take out all the one-health spawn, but nope. Yes, I save the elven archers and dwarven riflemen for the skeletons he spawns and I hope for an acidic ooze for when Onyxia shows up, but I still can't keep control of the board. What am I doing wrong? Keep in mind I have very few cards besides Naxx, Blackrock to this point and a smattering of not-great cards besides the normal deck.
I don't really remember what I used on this fight, but one thing to try if you have Naxx cards is to stick in some nerubian eggs, sludge belchers and piloted shredders in there. If you can play the eggs before the board is cleared that should give you good board presence the following round, and the generally stickier minions help to negate the tokens he generates.
How the goddamn bloody fuck assorted other bad words do you beat
Nefarian and Onyxia? I'm running this deck, only with the multiplying spiders from Naxx in place of the river crocolisk to try to take out all the one-health spawn, but nope. Yes, I save the elven archers and dwarven riflemen for the skeletons he spawns and I hope for an acidic ooze for when Onyxia shows up, but I still can't keep control of the board. What am I doing wrong? Keep in mind I have very few cards besides Naxx, Blackrock to this point and a smattering of not-great cards besides the normal deck.
Do a slow build Priest deck that kills Nefarian in a single turn.
Most cards here are normal and only a few absolutely required. If you have KT + big Taunt you can auto-win
Well, I don't have nearly all of the non-standard Priest cards, but I guess I'll give it a shot. I actually tried KT but I got demolished several times before I could even use him.
I tried hunting some face yesterday. It was pretty fun! I can see why people like it.
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IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
So I don't have a screenshot but a pretty hilarious thing happened the other day playing I think a priest? Played this epic that has both players put a random minion from their hands onto the battlefield. "I have no time for games!" x2 echo
Second one promptly dropped Sneed's Old Shredder for them and Dr. Boom for me.
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imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
I know I'm a bit late, but earlier today we were having a heated discussion about Face Hunters and whether or not such decks are good for the game. Lots of folks have strong feelings both ways about the deck, and I think that's fine, in fact if we all played this game the same way it would be woefully tedious.
But in the interest of contributing something a bit more tangible to the discussion, I'd like to pose a question: how do you deal with Face Hunters and other hyper aggressive decks of its ilk? I think everyone in this thread has been steamrolled by a Hunter or a Zoolock or some other aggro flavor of the month. It's frustrating. But instead of complaining about it, let's be the awesome PA community that we are and brainstorm. Let's share our go-to decks for stomping all over aggro!
Here's mine:
It is extremely simple to play and quite fun. It runs no taunts or healing. And it absolutely stomps all over Face Hunter and Aggro Zoolock. Also has good matchups against Tempo and Mech Mage.
Believe it or not, this deck is actually faster than hunter and zoo. The basic idea is to use your efficient early drops to maintain board control and then use surprise burst from BoM and BoK. Or you can have insane games where on T3 you have 2 4/4s and a 4/3, or by T4 you have 2 Volcanic Drakes on the board. The deck has a lot of burst potential and your opponent will find themselves suddenly dead on T6/7/8. And I think the legendaries are generally replaceable.
Biggest problem is that it's atrocious against Patron Warrior. Since that's like, the top rated deck this week, if you see a lot of those, don't play this deck.
Aggro warrior is faster and murders every deck that has no taunt. I love facing face hunters because they die on turn 5 and they are extremely sad about it.
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imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
Step 1. Equip weapon
Step 2. Punch them in face
Step 3. Repeat step 2 till hamburger.
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imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
you know who doesnt care about patron warrior? murder-face warrior.
So I don't have a screenshot but a pretty hilarious thing happened the other day playing I think a priest? Played this epic that has both players put a random minion from their hands onto the battlefield. "I have no time for games!" x2 echo
Second one promptly dropped Sneed's Old Shredder for them and Dr. Boom for me.
Ancestor's Call! Neat card. Used in Malygos combo Shaman a lot.
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IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
That was it. Given I was playing druid and thus had Keeper as we are wont to do, he had a bad time.
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Freeze mage is a combo deck. It's nothing but card draw, stalling options, and the combo.
Aggro flamewaker mage (the only constructed mage deck I know of making use of mirror image) is a face deck. The mirror images simultaneously act as burn and as protection for the flamewaker - he's basically the largest source of damage in the deck but he needs to stick around over the course of a couple of turns to get all the damage out of him.
In a way, freeze mages ARE delaying the inevitable, you got that right. They're just so good at delaying that the inevitable comes after the freeze mage gets his Alexstraza and his Antonidas and his double ice lances and sometimes pyroblast too why not and even majordomo too if you're facing trendy freeze mages
e: and also a bunch of card draw of the "I'm gonna ping my acolyte of pain over and over while I stall you" variety
That's 2 cards vs 4 cards.
Freeze doesn't get to use all 4 all that often.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Infinity if you have Malygos and got a turn of Thaurissan off.
O....kay?
I feel like you can still win from that position with good draws. Might as well at least play out the game.
Also faced off against a Secrets Hunter (like, at least 8 that I saw) who had double Keeper of Secrets and Illuminator. The idea was clearly keep buffing an Eaglehorn bow from all the secrets. Neat idea, although falls down somewhat against Dragon Warrior with all the armor gain it has.
The Secrets Hunter and a demonlock I faced earlier were both running double Kezan, which I found a little odd. Is this a thing people are doing now?
edit: the "standard" freeze mage combo is Thalnos, Fireball, Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Ice Lance for 21 damage. It's often more these days as you use Thaurissan to generate more damage.
Freeze has sort of moved more to a paradigm where you use Thaurissan to set up a good Antonidas combo and then you just generate so much burn they can't heal through it (runs Antonidas and Pyroblast).
Mage has four deck archtypes floating around that function differently. Freeze mage has been covered. As has the flamewaker aggro deck.
Tempo mage and mech mage are more selective with what class cards they use.
Mech mage has fallen hard and basically uses frost bolts, fireballs, and blast mages to take out threats before they can attack while its own threats hit the opponent. Mirror entity prevents the opponent from making easy plays some turns as the copied creature the mage gets will swing first since it will be ready to go when the mage's turn is up again.
Tempo mage does that (minus the blast mages) but also throws on some extra spells to power up mana wyrms and flamewakers plus some extra spells to refill its hand with creatures. It does always care about precision (it runs unstable portal and flame cannon) so long as more likely than not the spells do something helpful.
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the point is not that freeze mage gets to use all those and their 2 fireballs and stuff, it's that between all their spells (not to mention giants) they have a large number of tools to abruptly close out the game after they stall
I'm already watching him, but thanks for thinking of me :P
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
Part of it is certainly that he doesn't play Hearthstone outside of the daily much and he often goes in cold on the deck, which means you'll definitely be playing pretty sub-optimally.
hurts losing those stars for nothing
I'm not proud of myself, but I did get some satisfaction in taking my time in killing him in the last turn.
If so, yeah that's pretty legit RNG.
Weblord doesn't do too much against patron warrior though, right? I don't think any of their cards have battle cries except for cruel task master.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
That warrior was having a really bad game. Later he dropped the charge orc and frothing berserker and would have cleared my board, except he forgot that my baron was gonna make my sludge belcher spawn and additional taunt.
Which would have been really if he had a Charge enhanced Grim Patron in play. To them, 2 attack or less minions are like water to Gremlins.
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Do a slow build Priest deck that kills Nefarian in a single turn.
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/239967-heroic-nefarian-skip-onyxia-otk
Most cards here are normal and only a few absolutely required. If you have KT + big Taunt you can auto-win
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Well, I don't have nearly all of the non-standard Priest cards, but I guess I'll give it a shot. I actually tried KT but I got demolished several times before I could even use him.
Second one promptly dropped Sneed's Old Shredder for them and Dr. Boom for me.
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Aggro warrior is faster and murders every deck that has no taunt. I love facing face hunters because they die on turn 5 and they are extremely sad about it.
Step 2. Punch them in face
Step 3. Repeat step 2 till hamburger.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Ancestor's Call! Neat card. Used in Malygos combo Shaman a lot.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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Alternately, pulling out a druid's keeper with ancestor's call is hilarious and devastating.
you shoulda used an image from the Cavs/hawks game 3 for this card.
I've always known I'd be a "win more" finisher if I were a card!
Don't forget that great wisp synergy!
Someone please point me to good druid deck