Hi guys!

So, Hearthstone's first expansion is coming out today (it already has in the US) and I'm wondering whether anyone here would be interested in playing some casual matches and trying out decks together. From the forum it seems like no one from GB is playing HS, which is a damn shame since I find it to be an amazing game.

So if you're up for some friendly matches and trying out strategies post here!

@imsh_pl: What are you talking about? We have enough Hearthstone players on this site to form a small to moderate tournament. lol

ID: GhostDragon#15968

I haven't played since the first major content update. How are the new cards?

@jnal: The new cards have really shaken things up. I would say that this was exactly what the game needed after weeks of stagnation. I am facing less hunters because people are experimenting right now with the new cards.

That said, I think the staple decks such as aggro Hunter and Zoolock will still be viable after this expansion. The difference is that the new cards will give us more counters towards these decks and will make other playstyles more viable. For example, i heard that control hunter could be a thing in this new meta.

Still playing though I don't spend money so I can't imagine making a super competitive gvg constructed deck for quite some time, but I can just play arena infinitely meanwhile.

As a Warrior player I seriously can't imagine how we ever survived the ladder before now. Shield Maiden and Antique Heal Bot are A-Maz-ing. My win-rate against both Hunter and Zoo is 100% with these additions. I just sit back and they can play whatever they want and it doesn't matter. I just heal for days and can comfortably kill everything they've got. I actually got a zoo down to 2 cards! I don't think I've ever done that before.

Unstable Portal is the most broken card ever, pretty amusing. Turn 5 Rag? Turn 6 Ysera? Turn 3 Cairne?

@fredchuckdave: Yeah, it's rarely bad. Even when you get something seemingly innocuous like a Dark Iron Dwarf, the value is too high. How funny is it that during the initial review after Blizzcon, people were saying it was terrible? Lifecoach was adamant about how no one would ever play it.

I'm actually so pissed at Blizzard that GvG is STILL not up in the EU...

Yep, fellow Hearthstoner here. I'v been having a great time previewing the cards in arena, and now that it's live on ladder I've been having fun playing dumb gimmick decks with the few new cards I have.

I've been playing pretty much daily since the original beta and I really enjoy the GvG changes. I haven't spent enough time to really know what my new favourites are, but I'm having a lot of fun with the new cards.

I haven't played too much in the past few weeks because I was waiting for the GvG launch. But I'll jump back in this week, I'm mostly an Arena guy so I'll definitely be looking forward to the shake-up there (already been watching some Trump/Kripp play and enjoying that). I've been long of the opinion that Hearthstone is a fantastic game, but one that needed more cards to start coming to really build. So this is ideal. I'll be interested to see how they handle things a year or two down the line (whether they end up restricting sets for ranked play or anything like that) but I'm looking forward to playing that thing for many years to come.

I'm on every couple of days grinding for coins / cashing in quests. Just bough 20 packs of GvG cards today and I think I managed to get every common and rare so I'm going to be rebuilding all my decks. I dont play ranked or arena so if you want an easy win and don't mind playing against some terrible gimmick / theme decks i'll be around. Username: TheRealMoot#1110 and yes, I have a Murloc deck.

I'm having a lot of fun with the new cards so far. It's definitely made me try out some other classes I was never a fan of and also alter the decks of the classes i normally do use.

I just find it refreshing to start seeing different and new cards i've never seen before get played.

@imsh_pl: The EU servers are now up. Though I hear that they are very laggy right now.

I was kinda surprised how totally normal the NA servers were, and I logged into them within an hour or so of GvG going live. Seemed just like a normal day, except there were new cards. It was a vast improvement over the laggy shitshow that happened when Naxxramas launched.

its actually not that great. not only are you filling your deck with that card but you also have to use 3 mana to get a random minion at a 3 mana discount meaning it could be anything it could be a wisp.
the likelyhood of geting something useful and also get a chance to use it at a proper time with out getting steam rolled is not that high especially if you do it on turn 3.
so if your talking about specifik situations there are so many others that can also be as good, like tree of life plus Auchenai Soulpriest meaning if your at lets say 16 and he is at 15 health and cast tree of life you technically take 14 dmg and he takes 15. or so many other.
im more in to fel reaver a 5 mana 8/8 when ever your opponent use a card discard 3 cards from your deck but you can just iron bark owl or other forms of silence and bam you got a really cheap 8/8 out fast
or the card lightbomb but its all about opinions

I haven't played much constructed lately because I just don't have the cards or dust to make a fun new deck, but the arena is super crazy.

The other day, I went 12-1 with an aggro Shaman deck based around Jeeves and Hobgoblin. The Hobgoblins did surprisingly well. At one point, I was just putting down too many threatening low cost cards and my opponents had no choice but to leave one or two Hobgoblins, leading to things like a 5/5 Novice Engineer or a super bulky Jeeves.

It's a lot easier to get your board to stick around because the extra padding from the new cards has made it harder to get a ton of aoe clears.

Yeah, so not only did the game launch at like 11pm here in Europe, it also turns out that Arena rewards classic packs. So thanks for that Blizzard.

What deck are you guys using for ladder? I've pretty much been playing Warrior exclusively since GvG launched. This is my latest iteration:

Bouncing Blade: Not as good as I thought it was going to be. Terrible against aggro because of all the 1-2 health minions. Great against Warrior and Priest cause you can kill off everything else they've got on the board and then turn this into a Deadly Shot.

Antique Healbot/Shieldmaiden: Allows for an extremely greedy late game. These 4 beat aggro by themselves. You draw one and then you're pretty much guaranteed to live long enough to draw the others.

Dr. Boom: Good for baiting out removal. The Boom Bots still get value and may even draw silence. I started playing him for fun but he's not bad.

Troggzor: This guy is the Sylvannas for spells. You can't ignore him and he's awkward to play around. I put him in because I was getting beaten badly by Priest and figured he'd help. Good against those new Mage and Shaman decks too.

Everyone in this thread (and Hearthstone in general) who already has multiple legendaries from GvG: you disgust me.

jk, luv u

but no really, get out

In other news, the only GvG legendary I opened was Voljin, who just takes too much effort to pull off (you can steal health from your own high health minions, but then you're kinda sabotaging yourself) or is very, very reactive (you're sitting around waiting for them to play Ancient of War or Ragnaros or Ysera or whatever so you can swap its health). Crazed Alchemist makes it kinda fun, but even if you successfully pull off getting a decently sized Voljin, like, great, you get a 5-mana minion that is (hopefully) at least a 6/6, and then it just immediately gets hit by removal. I mean, it technically helps you deal with an opponent's beefy creature, but you need a minion already on the board to actually kill that minion you just swapped health with, or you need to play Holy Smite. You could try some Divine Spirit-Inner Fire shenanigans with it, but that's not exactly the most reliable formula. Voljin is just REALLY inefficient even when it "works", and ranked became a format where everybody plays the same 5-6 efficient legendaries so it just doesn't make the cut in comparison to the impact those cards have.

He's not Neptulon bad, but Voljin is pretty lame. Voljin's ability is frankly pretty unimpressive for a legendary. It feels more in the league of an epic card, like Patient Assassin or something, in the sense that its ability could be useful but there a million situations where it will be useless to you. It almost feels like it needs some other ability, like "gain life equal to the health Voljin just stole", except then that's probably too good and also that's more of a Paladin ability. Also has the issue that, like Twilight Drake, it's a great Earth Shock or other Silence target.

@bisonhero: Sjow was using Neptulon in a non-murloc deck and it seemed decent. It's basically a super Ancient of Lore. Just think of the Murlocs you draw as more totems Shamans use to garbage up the board like they like to do. It's a pretty clever design when you think about how often Shamans grind out the game to the point where both players have used up all removal and are in topdecking wars. (I hate Shamans.)

@hansolol: It reminds me of Doomguard, in the sense that people mostly ignored the Demon theme in Vanilla Hearthstone, but Doomguard was something that you could just throw in a zoo deck along with a bunch of neutral minions as a finisher regardless of its Demon status. I feel like Blizzard's attempt to inject a Murloc theme to Shaman is going to be ignored pretty hard, but yeah, I guess I could see people playing Neptulon for the late game random topdeck potential when both players are out of removal spells.

Still seems like it pales in comparison to Al'Akir and Rockbiter Weapon.

@bisonhero: Voljin is a Fire Elemental for all intents and purposes, though probably not that great against aggro decks. I think he's probably better than Bomb Lobber and Bomb Lobber is basically an Argent Commander for 5.

@grillbar: It's 2 mana, for 3 mana it would be a slightly better version of Innervate/Farsight. But essentially it's innervate that also draws a card, which is nuts. It's like an 85-90% chance to be good, and of that 85 maybe 30% of the time you just win the game on the spot.

@fredchuckdave: I see your point, but my issue is that Argent Commander, Fire Elemental, and Bomb Lobber do something by themselves. If you top deck those cards and that's the only thing in your hand, they come into play and immediately fuck something up. Voljin is less consistent because you need to be ahead, either in the sense that you have a 2-power minion on the board that can suicide into the health-swapped minion, or you need to still have enough gas left in your hand that after swapping health you can deal two damage via Holy Smite or Holy Nova or something else.

And yeah, it's a huge gamble, because against aggro decks you're just never gonna have an enemy minion worth stealing health from, and you'll probably have to settle for taking health from an enemy Dark Iron Dwarf, or one of your own minions that you're about to suicide anyways.

It just feels like one of the worst class legendaries, when it basically just acts as super iffy removal, except Priest already has a bunch of more reliable removal options and other beefy creatures they could use. I kinda just don't see what purpose it serves other than making a scrub deck where hopefully you steal health from an Ancient of War or Ysera, and then on the next turn you play Divine Spirit and Inner Fire and some removal on enemy taunt minions and then just go for the face.

Grabbed 40 packs (only 1 legendary!) and made 3 new decks with some rough outlines for play. I'd hope to flesh them out over the next few weeks

It's certainly mixed up the meta and i can see some more viable "gimmick" decks being used for a laugh (looking forward to seeing a true form pirate Rogue deck).

@bisonhero: Voljin will definitely see a lot of play in tournaments, if the meta is always aggro (most of the time it is) then it won't be as good in constructed. Will likely still be decent in Arena regardless. If by some miracle the meta shift crap actually happens more than once a nerf then it will oscillate between being alright to being very good. A big part of doing well with priest is having board control though so I think Vol'jin fits in with that.

Loving the new cards. I play exclusively as Priest and this expansion has really improved my decks. Really love seeing everyone experimenting with new styles.

Any other Priests here? Let me know what's been working for you. Troggzor, Lightbomb and the Shrinkmeisters are my new favourites.

@dgtlty: had some great priest cards in GvG too. I'm surprised you're not using shadowboxer. it's like knife juggler but instead of activating on a minion play it's whenever someone gets healed. great for popping shields or whittling down enemies.

Hearthstone is a fantastic IPAD game. Ideal drop in drop out gameplay. Things only frustrate me when you come up against an opponent whose obviously just got lucky with card packs and has the most ridiculous deck that destroys yours. I guess that's part and parcel but it can be annoying. Very beginner friendly also.

I really like the new cards, and it coming out at the same time I got a touch screen laptop has turned it into a complete time vampire. Got about 50 packs, which is kind of too many to organically introduce to my decks, and I don't know what to craft to make new decks. Probably wait until the meta calms down and then try something. I really want to avoid netdecking with this new stuff, because that's what sucked all my enjoyment out of pre-GvG HS.

Really want to make a pure-mech deck, but I'm not sure which hero to choose. Maybe rogue, since I really like the iron sensei

I didn't play for a few weeks, but I recently saw a few of the new cards and now I'm back in. Probably going to try to build some mech centered decks and generally rehash every single one of my decks.

Deck building's always been fun, but got really stale since their was just a lot of cards you pretty much couldn't pass up if you wanted to stand any chance in higher ranks, so them finally giving out a lot of new options is great.

Nah I much prefer this Hearthstone alternative.

@hansolol: I've been running a Mech Zoo deck and a "freeze mage deck". So, far I've found the most success with my Mech Zoo deck. Mechwarper gives me some insane value and it works really well with Annoy-o-tron. Ditto for Tinkertown Tech because a 4/4 on turn 3 is always welcome. The deck on a whole is very aggressive at the beginning, but it falls very hard towards the end like most zoo decks. So, I either win at turn 5 or I lose the game. Also, it is very vulnerable to aoe like Shaman's Lightning Storm. I need to work on fixing these problems.

My second deck is a mage deck. This is an even rougher deck than my Zoolock. I'm thinking of running this as a freeze mech mage, but it looks like I need to find more synergy and late game for this deck.

I've been getting into the arena again with the release of the new cards, but oh man.. the randomness... I'd say at least 60-70% of my games (both wins and losses) are more or less decided by some random element going one way or another. Not to mention the drafts...

@ares42 said:

Yeah, I still just don't like how Arena is structured at all.

In Magic, there's a proper draft format where you and other players all open booster packs, and each of you get to take turns choosing 1 card at a time from the pack. There can be lots of mind games, and sometimes it's worth it to take a card from a pack that you won't even play if it means denying it to another play whose deck it would help. It's random, but you get a ton of opportunities to make picks that improve your deck or weaken your opponents' decks, and it's a closed system where you reasonably have an idea what might be out there because you've seen a significant portion of a lot of the booster packs that were opened. Arena is not that.

There's another format called sealed deck, where each player just opens enough booster packs to have 90 cards, and then makes a deck out of that. I feel like it's less consistent than draft, since if your packs just have no synergy and no real power rares, you can't do anything about it. Arena is closer to this format, but instead of just giving you 90 cards up front to look through, it pointlessly obfuscates the process by just letting you pick 1-out-of-3 at a time. So in Arena, sometimes you pass up a card only on, only to realize in your last couple picks that it either was your only chance to pick up that common, or that it synergizes well with the later cards you picked up but you had no way of knowing that at the time.

Also, Hearthstone is just poorly balanced for a limited format (a format where you're just given a random assortment of cards and make a deck), because Mage's win rate still seems absurd. The people I know that have done 12 wins in Arena pretty much all think it's ridiculously rare with any class but Mage.

@bisonhero: I've been having most of my success with Paladin, but ye Mage is also quite strong these days it seems.

I actually quite like the format, it just needs a little more "guidance" (also, traditional draft is way too "cumbersome" for something like this). It's just so extremely obvious that if you get a deck with a fair amount of class cards you're gonna do so much better. Basically all my 10+ runs have been with something like 6-10 strong class cards. With some more forced picks (like the 10 and 30 rare+) it would feel a bit more fair. Iirc in traditional draft you're guaranteed at least 25% higher quality cards, right ? In the arena it's less than 10% =/

@ares42: Yeah, traditional draft pretty much dictates the proportion of rares and uncommons and commons available to the aggregate card pool, though players may potentially pass on rares or uncommons if the card is not in a colour that they're playing. The better comparison is sealed, where you opened 6 booster packs to get your 90 cards, so you probably have 6 rares available to you, though again, they may not all make it into your deck.

So yeah, that's another shitty thing about Arena, in that sometimes some asshole gets a couple legendaries and he chose the right ones, whereas your 90-card pool never had a legendary at all.

Good point about how the class cards really can help an Arena run. I've seen people do quite well as Paladin, especially if they pulled like 3-4 Truesilver Champions. It's also the reason why Mage is so good, in that if you can pull enough Flamestrikes and Fireballs you can do phenomenally, whereas the odds of a Shaman getting even 1 Lightning Storm aren't great.

Draft is my favourite format in Magic, and yeah it's a shame Arena doesn't really come close to capturing that. It's because they want you to be able to draft your deck, then go away and come back a day later and play a game or two and repeat. Having a fixed pod that you drafted with and played against wouldn't work for that.

Maybe if it was made more like sealed it would be better (i.e. they gave you 12-18 packs and you had to open them all, then had a new "mini" library which you had to make a deck from). The problem with that is in Hearthstone you can't mix classes, so the boosters would have to be seeded with your class choice...

If anyone wants to add me I'm TheMasterDS#1719. I play a fair amount of Hearthstone though I'd be more interested in doing spectating than matches. I do not have a lot of Blizzard Friends so I don't have a lot of opportunities for that.

I'm curious how people are finding the expansion now? It seems like the meta hasn't really shifted much just aggro warlock is the (presumed) best relatively cheap deck and control warrior is still probably the best overall deck with a handful of different cards from the expansion. Rogue is dead and Mages/Paladins are good again. The main issue of netdecking isn't solved in the slightest and if you want to run a really good deck (without having played the game for hundreds of matches) that isn't ridiculously boring/simple to play you have to put down $40-100.

Arena is more fun but still very time consuming, so even though I have an essentially infinite gold/card source I don't have much motivation to play it beyond a few hours every few days.

Only way to easily solve zoo is to nerf lifetap, though cards like Mechwarper and Goblin Blastmage may eventually get some attention as well.

I am the very definition of a casual player. Unfortunately, I do not play enough to be a reliable opponent. :/

I picked this up again today.

Had an 7 game win streak, despite not knowing what I was doing. 2 of those were disconnects though.

Then I had a game where by turn 4 the opponent had, via a card called Lightwell among others, built up a minion to 17/17 and I had obviously lost. I'm not even sure how you deal with that card, it had 5 health and he cast it first thing. No way to do that amount of damage early on. Couldn't wear it down, couldn't wear anything else down. The one thing I can think of is getting a lot of minions out and splitting the damage, but that won't happen until several turns in...

He was cool about it though.

I've been playing this deck the last few days. It isn't great but watching people just slowly run out of cards as you sort of just wait and suffocate them is hilarious.

Playing about an arena run a day. Game is still pretty fun.

I played some of the beta for 2-3 weeks. My brother just got into it so I tried to pick it up again. I just dont enjoy it. My cards suck, and I dont want to spend money to get new ones. I get just rained on by people with rare, epic, and legendary cards. Even when I not completely over matched, seems like everyone has a deck with great synergy. I always seem to end up with BS hands.

I think Rogue has basically always been a dead class. Miracle Rogue worked because it feels like Blizzard just completely overlooked those card synergies internally, and then once the game went into beta they for some reason ignored it for like 6 months until finally nerfing a couple of the cards involved. Other than that, the only other Rogue deck I encounter is cheeky Rogue mill decks, which I appreciate because that deck can be tricky to play depending on the matchup, so bless their little hearts for trying. Those 2 deck archetypes aside, I feel like Rogue's mechanics are just super weak and liable to trade poorly for the Rogue; they're burning through so many cheap cards to enable combo that they dump their hand pretty quick, Shiv and Fan of Knives and Azure Drake have become semi-mandatory and only get you so far, no one wants to play Sprint, and the Gadgetzan Auctioneer nerf had to happen but it further scuttles weaker Rogue deck archetypes which might've relied on Auctioneer. I guess Jeeves is possibly Blizzard's attempt at a replacement. I've never enjoyed Rogue because I feel like it's so easy to just get completely hosed.

Anyway, yeah, I'm surprised how little I feel like I'm seeing that many new decks emerging. I swear Naxxramas did crazier things to the meta.

• Mage got wall-to-wall solid commons and rares (Soot Spewer aside), so the Mage resurgence is nice. Blastmage absolutely needs a small nerf, it's ridiculous
• Paladin got some nice new toys, though surprisingly I'm seeing very little Paladin in the area of ranked that I occupy
• Druid's additions are pretty meh, though the commons are alright
• Hunter's additions are pretty meh, though I like Glaivezooka.
• Shadowboxer, Shrinkmeister, and Lightbomb are interesting in Priest, not sure about the rest
• They're trying to push weapon Rogue pretty hard, and I'd like to try messing around with it, if only because Goblin Auto-Barber and Tinker's Sharpsword Oil are easily accessible. Iron Sensei is one of the better class Mechs. Not feelin' much on the other cards.
• Shaman I'm not crazy about. Haven't used Crackle yet because for the life of me I can't figure out what to take from my Shaman decks to make room for it. Vitality Totem could theoretically fit into slower, defensive Shaman decks. I don't really like their attempt to push Murloc Shaman, because Murloc decks are like the least creative thing ever.
• Darkbomb, Mistress of Pain, and Imp-losion are all solid, and Mal'Ganis is like, easily top 3 legendaries in GvG. So Warlock did alright. Anima Golem is playable.
• I don't play much Warrior, and all the Warrior decks I've seen are mostly unchanged except for adding Shield Maiden and Antique Healbot (because nobody plays any Warrior deck but Control Warrior at this point). Crush and Bouncing Blade seem alright maybe? Warrior probably has the worst class commons out of all of GvG.
• As for the neutrals, lots of Mechs to enable Mech decks, and that's fine. I like what Explosive Sheep adds to Mage decks, but it feels like it has no place anywhere else except in some kind of really weird Warrior deck. I expect Mechwarper to get some kind of minor nerf; probably keep its cost, but lose a stat point or something. Recombobulator leads to fun antics. I think Jeeves is interesting. Piloted Shredder and Piloted Sky Golem are basically bigger Harvest Golems, so they're gonna see some play. Antique Healbot is straight up not costed properly so of course every control deck is using it; Healing Touch restores 8 life and costs 3, so for 2 mana more than that you also get a 3/3. Last time I checked, 2 mana shouldn't get you a vanilla 3/3 with no drawbacks. I think most of the neutral Legendaries are kinda clever but underwhelming, except for Dr. Boom who is just guaranteed value and fucking every deck that can afford to play a 7-mana minion is playing him, which is already getting tiring. He feels like the Ragnaros of the set, in that he's the obvious Legendary that everybody is crafting once they have enough dust.

Anyway, time to get back to figuring out how I'm going to make a Hobgoblin Angry Chicken deck.

not seriously

maybe seriously?

I just got Bolvar and Dr. Boom in back-to-back packs. I'm excited to try them out in a new Paladin deck. Already have Tirion as well.

Don't know much about no meta, but I'm having a good time in the rank 20-15 range. My shaman deck is all about taking those mechs that spawn random minions and triggering their deathrattles as many times as possible. It's beautiful nonsense.