Guardians of the hearth

Ep09 Simply the beast

If you want to be a guest or just give advise/feedback

Mail: [email protected]@guardiansofthehearth.online

Twitter: @Guardianshearth

Discord: Algaron#7415

Discord server: https://discord.gg/n9FwTjy

Thanks for listening

 

Talking about the time that has been.

Info about Discord and Patron

Discord

Way of communicating with me

Will add decks to each class

You can post your awesome creations and ideas for me to craft.

Give me feedback on what you want to have on discord or the show in general.

I'm trying to prioritize between things and you can help me fix the right stuff.

Patron

I have started a patron page for this show.

Free show

Just a option for you to contribute

I don’t know if I can afford this show as it looks atm with my wife still being ill and the yearly costs are coming in a few months.

I will try to keep this on for as long as I can with or without help but this is a way for you to help out if you are able.

Perks I need to figure out but give tips in discord

Coaching sessions could be a thing for some levels and that's something i’m up for anyways if anyone would have me :-)

 

Deckbuilding therory

Deck analyst questions

When we are building a deck or just find one from the web we can ask us some questions just to get to know the deck better and hopefully be able to play it better.

 

How do I win

Card draw? Ways of getting more fuel

Aoe clear.?

Singletarget clear

Silence? And our targets

Meta adaption - tech cards

Weekness? Way around?, know what to focus

 

Decklists for deckbuilding segment

### Algaron beast hunter# Class: Hunter# Format: Standard# Year of the Raven## 2x (1) Helpless Hatchling

Wanted to try out and it's somewhat good because it can alter the other beast on the hand.

And you don't care if it gets killed

# 2x (1) Springpaw

Core rush # 2x (2) Crackling Razormaw

Adapt versatile # 2x (2) Headhunter's Hatchet

Solid? # 2x (2) Hunting Mastiff

Good clear later and to revive # 2x (2) Revenge of the Wild

Core could turn games.

Use with brain. Can be used early to get an advantage even if you don't get so much out of it. # 2x (2) Scavenging Hyena

Wincon

Target on it's back # 2x (3) Animal Companion

Solid, can give buffs, taunt or charge# 2x (3) Augmented Elekk

Were to be used with dire frenzy and otherwise a good 3/4# 2x (3) Cave Hydra

Great clear if it can survive or get charge# 2x (3) Master's Call

Draw 3 minions for 3, great when we just have beasts# 2x (4) Dire Frenzy

Great buff, often have a beast out or a rush minion.

Use on rush/charge or wincons# 1x (4) Lifedrinker

Little heal and a bit reach # 1x (5) Halazzi, the Lynx

Draw refuel # 2x (5) Tundra Rhino

Charge

Target# 1x (6) Deathstalker Rexxar

Great refill

Aoe

Save # 1x (6) Savannah Highmane

Target

#

"Current" - From 10 to rank 5 in EU

### Algaron beast hunter

# Class: Hunter

# Format: Standard

# Year of the Raven

#

# 1x (1) Dire Mole

Good vs aggro, big chance to survive a turn.

Not good to revive

# 2x (1) Springpaw

# 2x (1) Timber Wolf

Cheap buff that can solve impossible scenarios

# 2x (2) Crackling Razormaw

# 1x (2) Dinomancy

Tech card

Good vs control like warlock, druid, priest

Can help create targets and make them survive without spending cards

Can be hard to know when to invest.

Not a complete waste with 2 copies but almost. Your heropower will be reset so you can play again

# 2x (2) Dire Wolf Alpha

Buff

Tricky to play around with revive, placement focused

# 1x (2) Flare

Tech vs hunter but exists other secret decks. Should work against rouge death Knight

# 1x (2) Headhunter's Hatchet

# 1x (2) Hunting Mastiff

# 2x (2) Revenge of the Wild

# 2x (2) Scavenging Hyena

# 2x (3) Animal Companion

# 1x (3) Ironbeak Owl

Silence

# 2x (3) Master's Call

# 1x (3) Unleash the Hounds

Who let the dogs out.

Have charge and can easy be buffed

Not that good against decks with few minions.

A lot of minion decks in meta try two

# 2x (3) Vicious Fledgling

Win con

Adapt

Good with rhino turn 8

# 1x (4) Flanking Strike

3dmg and get a 3/3, stable

# 1x (5) Baited Arrow

Can be good with the 5/5, but expensive. Rhino makes the same dmg and always gets a minion and it's more versatile

# 1x (5) Halazzi, the Lynx

# 1x (5) Tundra Rhino

# 1x (6) Deathstalker Rexxar

#

AAECAR8MogK7BYAH2wmTwwLd0gKG0wKL5QK69gKiigOwiwPjiwMJtQPeBNkHgQqfwgKOwwKghQOkiAPXjwMA

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

 

NA Variant - from rank 20 to 11 NA

### beast hunter

# Class: Hunter

# Format: Standard

# Year of the Raven

#

# 2x (1) Springpaw

# 2x (1) Timber Wolf

# 2x (2) Crackling Razormaw

# 1x (2) Dinomancy

# 2x (2) Dire Wolf Alpha

# 1x (2) Flare

# 1x (2) Headhunter's Hatchet

# 1x (2) Hunting Mastiff

# 2x (2) Revenge of the Wild

# 2x (2) Scavenging Hyena

# 2x (3) Animal Companion

# 2x (3) Kill Command

# 2x (3) Master's Call

# 2x (3) Unleash the Hounds

# 2x (3) Vicious Fledgling

# 1x (4) Dire Frenzy

# 1x (5) Halazzi, the Lynx

# 2x (5) Tundra Rhino

#

AAECAR8GgAeTwwK69gLJ+AKwiwPjiwMMqAK1A94EuwXZB9sJgQqfwgKOwwKghQOkiAPXjwMA

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

 

Other tested or untested cards

1 Bestial Wrath

+2at and immune this turn

Can be good to Combat some minions but the minion need to be able to attack and can be dead card on hand

1 Jeweled Macaw - 1/1 bc add a rng beast

Gives us a beast, refuel but not working with synergi

1 raptor Hatchling - 2/1 DR shuffle a 4/3 raptor into the deck

Quests

1 Stampede

Refuel

1 The beast within - give a beast +1+1 then it attack a rng enemy minion

This can find it plays into the deck, It makes a non rush minion able to attack and a minion that can attack can attack after this has been used to

3 - Bear shark - 4/3 can’t be tageted by spells or abilities

3 - Kill Command - deal 3 dmg, 5 if you control a beast

Range, might be better then flanking strike and baited arrow

5- Starving buzzard - 3/2 whenever you summon a beast, draw a card

Card draw but to expensive i think

9 King Krush - Finisher

 

Neutral

1 Stonetusk Boar - 1/1 charge

Can be good if we go more towards buffs

1 Swamp leech - 2/1 Lifesteal

1 Young dragonhawk -1/1 windfury

2 Golakka Crawler - ⅔ BC destroy a pirate

Tech against pirates

2 plated beetle - ⅔ DR gain 3 armor

2 Subborn Gastropod - ½ taun poisonous

2 Vicious Scalehide - ⅓ rush lifesteal

3 King mukla - 5/5 bc give op 2 bananas

Can make them to discard cards

Early aggression

4 Arfus - 2/2 dr add a rng death knight card to your hand

5 Bitter tide hydra - 8/8 WHenever this minion takes dmg deal 3 to your hero

Aggro

5 Subject 9 - 4/4 bc draw 5 different secrets from your deck

If going secrets route

Witchwood Grizzly - 3/12 taunt, BC lose 1 health for each card in your op hand

7 Amani war bear - 5/7 Rush taunt

7 Corridor creeper - ⅖ Cost 1 less whenever a minion dies whiule this is in your hand

Often cheap but no synergi with revenge of the wild

Ep08 Hunter ramblings

Talking about the time that has been.

Going through Hunter cards and trying to bring some understanding of the class and what we might be able to create.

 

Got stuck in some thoughts about what blizzard could do for the next year with legendarys that will change your hero power from the start of the game.

 

The episode were gotten long so we will take the in dept of the deck in next episode.

 

 

If you want to be a guest or just give advise/feedback

Mail: [email protected]@guardiansofthehearth.online

Twitter: @Guardianshearth

DIscord: Algaron#7415

Discord server: https://discord.gg/n9FwTjy

Haven't added anything to the discord but it exists 

Thanks for listening

EP 07: Charlies mechs

Intoducing Charlie the new "co-host" and some new segment jingles.

 

Talking about constricting game modes and how that can help us.

 

Deckbuilding segment build together some mech mages decks, last one I couldnt find the time to try and solve but I add it here.

Theese decks arent ment to be good.

They are just a part of the show :-)

 

### Cheap mech

# Class: Mage

# Format: Standard

# Year of the Raven

#

# 2x (1) Mecharoo

# 2x (1) Skaterbot

# 2x (2) Galvanizer

# 1x (2) Research Project

# 2x (2) Upgradeable Framebot

# 1x (2) Youthful Brewmaster

# 2x (3) Arcane Intellect

# 2x (3) Bronze Gatekeeper

# 2x (3) Demolisher

# 2x (3) Harvest Golem

# 2x (4) Coppertail Imposter

# 1x (4) Cult Master

# 2x (5) Fungalmancer

# 2x (5) Rusty Recycler

# 2x (5) Wargear

# 1x (6) Blizzard

# 1x (7) Flamestrike

# 1x (9) Bull Dozer

#

AAECAf0EBp8DyQOrBuwHtPwCi4ADDKsEigbTB9HhAp/1AqX1ApD2ApH7Avb9Atf+AtGAA8yBAwA=

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

### Average mech

# Class: Mage

# Format: Standard

# Year of the Raven

#

# 2x (1) Mecharoo

# 2x (1) Skaterbot

# 2x (2) Book of Specters

# 2x (2) Galvanizer

# 2x (2) Upgradeable Framebot

# 1x (2) Youthful Brewmaster

# 1x (3) Arcane Intellect

# 2x (3) Bronze Gatekeeper

# 2x (3) Harvest Golem

# 2x (3) Void Ripper

# 1x (3) Voodoo Doll

# 2x (4) Corpsetaker

# 1x (4) Weaponized Piñata

# 1x (5) Fungalmancer

# 2x (5) Rusty Recycler

# 2x (5) Wargear

# 1x (6) Blizzard

# 1x (7) Flamestrike

# 1x (9) Bull Dozer

#

AAECAf0ECJ8DyQOrBOwH0eECt/EChvsCi4ADC4oGlugC/eoCzu8Cn/UCpfUCkPYCkfsC9v0C1/4CzIEDAA==

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

### Expensive mech

# Class: Mage

# Format: Standard

# Year of the Raven

#

# 2x (1) Mecharoo

# 1x (1) Skaterbot

# 1x (2) Archmage Arugal

# 2x (2) Book of Specters

# 2x (2) Galvanizer

# 2x (2) Upgradeable Framebot

# 1x (3) Arcane Intellect

# 2x (3) Bronze Gatekeeper

# 2x (3) Nightmare Amalgam

# 1x (3) Stargazer Luna

# 2x (3) Void Ripper

# 1x (3) Voodoo Doll

# 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon

# 2x (4) Corpsetaker

# 1x (4) Defender of Argus

# 1x (4) Weaponized Piñata

# 1x (5) Fungalmancer

# 2x (5) Wargear

# 1x (5) Zilliax

# 1x (6) Blizzard

# 1x (7) Flamestrike

#

AAECAf0EDMkDqwT7BewH0eECw+oCt/ECzPQCn/UC7vYChvsCoIADCZboAv3qAs7vAqX1ApH7Avb9Atf+AsyBA96CAwA=

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

 

### Mech prince# Class: Mage# Format: Standard# Year of the Raven## 2x (1) Faithful Lumi# 2x (1) Mecharoo# 2x (1) Skaterbot# 1x (2) Prince Keleseth# 2x (3) Arcane Intellect# 2x (3) Bronze Gatekeeper# 2x (3) Demolisher# 2x (3) Nightmare Amalgam# 1x (3) Stargazer Luna# 2x (3) Void Ripper# 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon# 2x (4) Corpsetaker# 1x (4) Defender of Argus# 1x (4) Weaponized Piñata# 1x (5) Fungalmancer# 2x (5) Wargear# 1x (5) Zilliax# 1x (6) Aluneth# 1x (6) Blizzard# 1x (7) Flamestrike# AAECAf0ECskD+wXsB6LTAtHhApziAsPqAu72Aob7AqCAAwqrBNMHlugC/eoCn/UCpfUCmfcC9v0CzIED3oIDAA==# # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

 

If you want to be a guest or just give advise/feedback

Mail: [email protected]@guardiansofthehearth.online

Twitter: @Guardianshearth

DIscord: Algaron#7415

Discord server: https://discord.gg/n9FwTjy

Haven't added anything to the discord but it exists 

Thanks for listening

EP 06: Still alive, blizzcon talk and plans for the show

Algaron starts to talk about his life and the issues that has going on in his life that has made producing shows harder. Got married and were a lot of work before that and after his wife got sick so he has been doing everything at home for a while.

 

He's talking about his guest apperance at The happy Hearthstone (ep144) and that he has decided to focus on deckbuilding for the time being.

Blizzcon talk

Talking about diablo review and the community response.

Warcraft III Reforged

At the end of the show he talks about the new expansion.

 

Next episode should be Mage and a start to his deckbuilding series.

 

If you want to be a guest or just give advise/feedback

Mail: [email protected]@guardiansofthehearth.online

Twitter: @Guardianshearth

DIscord: Algaron#7415

Discord server: https://discord.gg/n9FwTjy

Haven't added anything to the discord but it exists :-)Thanks for listening

Hello,

 

I do know that I have been away for a while now but the summer did not turn out as planned.

There is some issues with the audioquality in this episode but I do think it will be fixed in later episodes.

 

I'm trying out other ways to produce the show so I will try and error for a while and your feedback are important.

 

You are welcome to contact me at [email protected] directly for feedback or if you want to come on the show or help out with anything.

My issues with time commitment will be solved i hope in the next month but I will try to get out my planned shows but the time between can vary and I'm sorry for that.

 

//Algaron

Contact Algaron on mail [email protected] or [email protected]

follow us on twitter @GuardiansHearth

If you want to be a cohost or guest do contact me directly.

Would be awesome to talk with you guys as well.

Contact us with ideas, questions, whatever you like

 

If you are on Dreamhack now and want to be interviewed do contact me.

Would be awesome

Contact Algaron on mail [email protected] or [email protected]

follow us on twitter @GuardiansHearth

If you want to be a cohost or guest do contact me directly.

Would be awesome to talk with you guys as well.

Contact us with ideas, questions, whatever you like

 

Mechanic Discover Taunt, Stone hill defender

Druid 6 , 2 beast, 3 goodChance of a specific classcard 21,43%

Chance of a specific Neutral 5,36%

Crypt lord 3 1/6  gain health with fr summons

Ironwood Golem 4 3/9 can only attack 3+armor

Bewitched Guardian 5 4/1 bc gain health for each card in hand

Gloom stag 5 2/6  bc only odd cost in deck get +2+2 - beast

Grizzled Guardian 8 3/5 . DR recuit 2 minions 4mana or under - beast

Ironbark Protector 8 8/8

 

Hunter and mage 0 classcards

Chance of a specific classcard 0%

Chance of a specific Neutral 9,38%

Paladin 3 and 3 good

Chance of a specific classcard 27,28%

Chance of a specific Neutral 6,82%

Righteos Protector 1 1/1 div shield

Sunkeeper Tarim 6 3/7, set all other minions attack and health to 3

Tirion Fordring 8 6/6 div shield, DR Equip a 5/3 weapon

 

Priest 2 and 2 good

Chance of a specific classcard 30,01%

Chance of a specific Neutral 7,5%

Tortollan Shellraiser 4 2/6 DR give a random fr minion +1+1

Obsidian Statue 9 4/8 lifesteal, DR destroy a rng enemy minion

 

Shaman 7 ,3 elementals , 2 beast, 4 good

Chance of a specific classcard 20%

Chance of a specific Neutral 5%

Witch´s Apprentice 1 0/1 bc add random shaman spell to your hand - beast

Drakkari Defender 3 2/8 overload 3

Hot spring guardian 3 2/4 bc restore 3 health - elemental

Totem cruncher 4 2/3  bc destroy your totems gain +2+2 for each destroyed -beast

Earth Elemental 5 ⅞ overload 3 - elemental

Voodoo Hexxer 5 2/7 freeze any charecter dmg by this minion

Al’Akir the Windlord 8 ⅗ charge, div shield, windfury - elemental

 

Warlock 7 5 demon , 1 elemental, 4 good

Chance of a specific classcard 20%

Chance of a specific Neutral 5%

Voidwalker 1 1/3  , demon

Vulgar Homunculus 2 2/4 bc deal 2 dmg to your hero , demon

Felguard 3 3/5  bc destroy one of your mana crystals , demon

Lakkari Felhound 4 3/8  bc discard two cards , demon

Tar Lurker 5 1/7 Has +3 at during op turn , elemental

Rin. the first disciple 6 3/6 dr add “the first seal” to your hand

Voidlord 9 3/9 DR summon three ⅓ demons with taunt

 

Warrior 5 , 2 beast, 1 elemental , 3 good

Chance of a specific classcard 23,08%

Chance of a specific Neutral 5,77%

Cornered Sentry 2 2/6 BC summon 3 1/1 raptors for your op

Direhorn Hatchling 5 3/6 DR Shuffle a 6/9 Direhorn with taunt into your deck , beast

Gemstudded golem 6 5/9 Can only attack if you have 5 or ,more armor

Ornery Direhorn 6 5/5 BC adapt , beast

Tar Lord 7 1/11 has +4 attack during op turn , Elemental

Neutral 33 , 2 dragon , 3elementals, 5 beast, 1 mech, 1 pirate, 1 demon, 13 good

Goldshire Footman 1 1/2

Shieldbearer 1 0/4

Wax elemental 1 0/2 Div shield , Elemental

Frostwolf grunt 2 2/2

Stubborn gatropod 2 1/2  poisonous

Ironfur grizzly 3 3/3 - beast

Phantom Militia 3 2/4 Echo

Silverback Patriarch 3 1/4 - beast

Stone hill defender 3 ¼ bc disc taunt minion

Tar creeper ⅕ has +2 at during op turn - elemental

Tauren Warrior 3 2/3  has +3 at while damaged

Dread corsair 4 3/3 cost 1 less per attack of your weapon -pirate

Felsoul Inquisitor 4 ⅙ Lifesteal - demon

Mogu’shan warden 4 1/7

Saronite Chain gang 4 2/3  BC summon a copy of this minion

Sen´jin shieldmasta 4 3/5  

Stegodon 4 2/6 - beast

Unpowered Steambot 4 0/9 - mech

Abomination 5 4/4 DR deal 2dmg to ALL char

Booty bay bodyguard 5 5/4

Fen creeper 5 3/6

Rotten Applebaum 5 ⅘ DR restore 4 health to your hero

Trogg Gloomeater 5 1/5  Poisonous

Witchwood grizzly 5 3/12 bc lose 1 health for each card in your op hand - beast

Hungry ettin 6 4/10 BC summon a rng 2cost minion for your op

Lord of the arena 6 6/5

Sunwalker 6 4/5  Div shield

Furious ettin 7 5/9

Primordial Drake 8 4/8 bc deal 2 dmg to all other minions - dragon

The lich king 8 8/8 at end of turn add a rng deatch knight card to your hand

Giant mastodon 9 6/10 - beast

Ozruk 9 5/5 bc gain 5health for each elemental you played last turn - elemental

Sleepy dragon 9 4/12 -Dragon

 

 

Oddly cheap 3140 dust, 1540 without baku

This deck are a bit more aggro focused then the even dude paladin deck we built last week.

Plan here is to get out one of our 1 mana cards the first turn, Acherus veteran we mostly want to wait with just so we don’t waste it's battlecry.

 

Mostly mass out Shr and goes to face or trade when we can get more value from that.

 

We use our 3 cost weapon to keep the board to our advantage and uses the buffs to make trades when that favors us or otherwise goes face.

 

We can often get out a lot of minions quickly so we don’t care that much for board clears.

 

Check the cards you have at the moment, it's better to wait a turn to trade of a lot of our own minions to get on of theirs when we can play stormwind champions next turn.

 

Minions

Acherus Veteran - Cheap minion that can add one attack, works well with Paragon of light that we will see later on

Argent Squire - A cheap 1/1 with taunt that probably will survive until turn 2, synergises well with blood knight that we also will have in next deck

Fire Fly - 1/2 for 1 that gives us another one for our hand, take care of the 1/1 the mirror or other matchups can produce first turns

Questing Adventure - Haven’t seen any playtime at all more or less so it's time to dust him off, can work well in decks were we have a lot of cheaper cards and can drop many cards per turn.

Ironbeak Owl - Tech card that gives us a silence, more or less always useful

Raid Leader - Also a well known benchwarmer but gives us 1 extra attack for our minions and if played at the right time can be hard to remove a does his job well.

Stonehill Defender - Because of the rotation the pool for him are really good so the chance for a Tirion or Sunkeeper Tarim are good.

Fungalmancer - +2/+2 to adjacent minions are good when we want to trade or give our SHR a little more power.

Stormwind Champion - A card that everyone have and we can produce a lot of small dudes in this deck so he shouldn’t be alone on our side.

Card draw

Divine Favor - Draw cards until you have as many as the opponent, we have a lot of cheap cards so a way to get more is awesome.

 

Crowd-control, buffs, weapons

Adaptation - We might have one big minion or just need something extra for offence or defence so here we can get, poison, windfury (awesome with leeroy later), taunt, plus in attack and some other abilities.

Blessing of might - plus 3 attack is what it is, useful for trades or to get Paragon of light starting.

Unidentified Maul - The maul with many abilities, 2 SRH on equip, minions +1 attack, minions taunt, minions divine shield. All of them can be useful but sad that you can’t choose.

 

Oddly affordable 4940 dust, 3340 without baku

Changes

 

2 Firefly

2 Questing adventure

2 Fungalmancer

1 Blessing of might

 

 

 

2 Blood knight - Not used at all since start of Hearthstone but the meta today are using some div shield minions, even to sacrifice one of your own shields for a 6/6 for 3 are awesome, and you can even mess up with the opponents minions and make it bigger so great value and good against control warlocks and mirror.

2 Paragon of light - 2/5 for 3 is well costed and if we buff her she gets taunt and lifesteal, we have a lot of ways to start her so she are rarely in her vanilla state

1 Sword of Justice - We make a lot of small minions and with this we make them bigger, works well with the card above as well

2 Level up - Should be a staple but to expensive for the budget version, +2+2 and taunt to SHR are doing great things and often more value then Fungalmancer that got replaced

 

 

The additions gives us a bit more flexibility and the level up makes a lot for this deck. Otherwise same playstyle as before

 

Oddly Costly 8160 dust, 6560 without baku

Changes

 

1 Blessing of might

2 Raid leader

1 Stormwind Champion

 

 

 

1 Mind Control tech - Tech card, steals one if the op has 4 or more

1 Fungalmancer - Goes in and out of the decks as it wants it seems

1 Harrison Jones - Tech card against weapons and a card draw

1 Leeroy Jenkins - 6 attack and charge, awesome with windfury if the adaptation gods are with us, win condition, Can be replaced but can also win games.

 

Not that much has changed here, just a few tech card options I wanted to show of, the base in this deck are pretty cheap and works well and you can change around  a lot of cards to find your own style.

 

Conclusion

I have had a really good time with all 3 decks and it works and are fun.

It has some flaws against some of the control decks but like control warlock usually dies before they can start all weird stuff.

 

Round 5-6 wins aren't unusual

 

Alternative cards

Basic

Lights justice

Hand of protection

Shattered sun cleric

Frostwolf warlord

 

Common 40dust

Redemption

Noble sacrifice

Repentence

Abusive sergant

Leaper gnome - In a more face variant perhaps

Southsea deckhand - With lights justice and face variant

Wretched tiller - Cool card if you can keep hitting op

young dragonhawk - In a buff based deck perhaps

Blackwald pixie - 7 mana, 4 SHR and a 3/4 minion, could be a replacement for vinecleaver but it's a rare and more value

Flesheating ghoul

Cobalt scalebane - +3 at rng seldom bad

Corrosive sludge - tech card against weapons

 

Rare 100dust

Howling commander - bc draw div minion from deck, with more div minions this could be playable but not at the moment

Blessed champion - Double attack of a minion, win con?

Secretkeeper - In a more secret based deck or as a tech card against secret decks

Vicious fledgling - in a more buff based deck, could snowball nicely

Chief inspector - techcard against secrets

Epic 400dust

Hidden wisdom - Draw two cards if opponent plays 3 cards at the same turn

Witch´s cauldron - Tried but to unstable, fun card though

Bittertide hydra - aggro variant

Corridor creeper

Hungry crab - tech card against murlocs

Gluttonous ooze - tech card against weapon, also gain armor

 

Legendary 1600dust

Bolvar fireblood - +2 attack for each friendly minion loses div shield, with a more focus on div this could work

Lynessa sunsorrow -  Gots all minion buffs you played, with more buffcards this could be good

Last kaleidosaur - Quest, 6 spells on minions, summon a 5/5 and 6adapts, same as the card above, could try and build a deck for that later

Uther of the ebon blade - Should mostly be used for the 5 armor and lifesteal weapon, otherwize no synergies with dude paladin

King mukla - In a more aggro variant

Ep 02 Even paladin

 

Last episode

Introduced myself

Basic coverage of Hearthstone

How do we learn?

What is tilt

Ladder system adaptation

Plans for the future

This episode

Go through adapt

Deckbuilding approach

Mana and manacurve

Build Paladin Even dudes

Tilt, anger regarding emotes and roping

Hearthstone and new expansion from deckbuilding perspective

 

Time between episodes

I want to talk a bit each week about the time between the episodes and it's been hectic for me.

 

Deckbuilding approach

 

I do hope that I can help someone to at least open their minds about deckbuilding and to take a chance to try something new and or crazy. It might actually work.

 

I have tried a lot of approaches to how to do the deckbuilding audio friendly and my first plan of reading through all , most of them at least, cards and discuss if they fit in the deck or not did not work out.

I recorded that and listened myself and its to hard to follow and to keep the interest.

I will try and talk through the generall concept and go through that more in dept so you can do that at home.

 

I will go through the results of my pondering and read through a list of the deck, that's also going to be in the episode notes.

 

And i’m going to talk about the deck, what its focusing on and what's it trying to do, cards to look after. Discuss techcards. Why are they there? And what should they be used on as a priority?

 

I will give around 2-3 different decks for each idea with different dust values.

I will also go through some replacements for cards and a list of cards to try out.

In some decks, especially in control and combo decks some cards will not be able to switch out because the whole deck circulate around them.

 

With odd / even, quest decks I will take away the cost of that card that are mandatory when I compare different deck variants…

 

Were going to go over some mechanics today. How mana and mana curve work. Also going to talk about Adapt and rush mechanics.

 

Mana

Are HS resource system. You start at 1 mana and gain one crystal per turn to  a max of 10 mana,

Compared to Magic the gathering and other C/TCGs were they have “land” system were you have cards that give you resources

 

The problem with that system are that you can either get to much resources on your hand or to little, you can still only put out one per turn so Hearthstones system are better that way were you will always have a good resource gain and only need to focus on you manacurve, how your cards are distributed over the different mana costs.

 

Manacurve

The curve you want depends on your plan with the deck.

Aggro decks are high in the first 3 mana slots then curves out to not being many cards over 5, that's because they want to take control if the board early on and hopefully win there.

 

Control on the other hand tries to mostly have cards that can delay the opponent so you can get to the late game and win there. Card draw, aoe effects, healing, taunts, cards that give you more mana (for druids) or other stall type cards. You will mostly focus on getting “valuable” trades, to use one card to destroy more cards from the opponent to make them run out of ammunition. So they have their highest peak around 8 and some cards under just to be sure to get to the late cards.

 

Midrange have their top peak around 5-6 and are a bit of a compromise between aggro and control.

 

Combo decks varies with their combo. The most decks are using a lot of cheap cards with carddraw and some mechanic to be able to draw a lot of cards, usealy by casting cheap spells. They need to get all the pieces for their combo and focus on getting them and trying to stall enough to get there.

Adapt

We will go over to our mechinics of today.Adapt is a mechanic we are going to use a bit in the deck today so i’m going to talk a bit about it.

You will get 3 choices from the pool of 10 different bonuses. That will enhance the minion a little bit.

If we want something special we have about ⅓ chance of getting that option. Not to shabby.

Adapt is useful because what we need in that moment can be different and it gives us a option to make the best of the situations.

The choices are

Divine shield

Poisionious - kill a minion that took dmg from this one, not working on divine shield

+1/+1

+3 attack

+3 health

Stealth - Can’t be targetet by spells and abilities plus can be attacked.

Can't be targeted by spells or abilities

Windfury - Attacks twize

Deathrattle 2 1/1 plants

Taunt - Needs to die before opponent can target other minions or your hero.

Rush / Charge

Normally minions we summon or play can’t attack at all the first turn. Charge is a mechanic that come with the release of HS and made the minions able to attack directly. That created issues after a while because people created OTK (one turn kill) options and charge started to become a problem for blizzard when creating new cards.

The solution for now is rush, the minions can attack other minions the first turn but not the opponent and that creates a better situation for blizzard and make them less restricted then charge when creating new cards.

 

Paladin even odd

This first week of deckbuilding were going to start with an adaption of a deck of my creation the dude paladin deck and focus on one of the new mechanics from witchwood. Even / odd decks.

 

Even / odd are a new mechanic and it will change your hero power.

Make it stronger with odd and cheeper with even. In some classes this should be better in others but we can always try and find a use of the odd/even effects of the hero power for all classes.

 

Ideally you should go through all cards in the class with your deckplan in focus first.

When you have found your core cards you want to use, you check the cost and see if the majority of those core cards are even or odd you can add the legendary card to utilize the odd / even effect.

 

There are pros and cons for both approaches. The way we just talked about and to decide from the start that you want to go with an odd / even deck.

 

Often with new mechanics people go overboard the first month or so and it usually appears that the decks without the new mechanics work better or as well as with. It's often one or two classes that the new mechanic becomes a staple.

 

Pro side is that you will find cards you wouldn't think of before and it's hard to go from your usual approach and cards. If you have hard to think outside of the box then decide for odd / even first would be better than to find the best cards for your idea and then check if odd/even works for your idea.

 

Paladins hero power is normally 2mana for summoning a 1/1 Silver hand recruit.

With Odd summon 2 1/1 SHR for 2.

With Even Summon 1 1/1 SHR for 1

 

We will do the even deck this episode and the odd one the next.

 

Paladin Even

Staple cards

Drygulch jailor, 3 SHR on death to hand

Lightfused stegodon - adapt shr

Genn Greymane - must for even decks

 

Budget -  2980 dust (1380 without Geen)

Mana amount Name2 1 Acidic Swamp Ooze2 2 Argent Protector2 2 Drygulch Jailor2 2 Equality2 2 Hydrologist2 2 Knife Juggler2 2 Loot Hoarder2 2 Plated Beetle2 2 Sound the bells2 2 Vicious scalehide4 1 Blessing of Kings4 1 Concecration4 2 Cult Master4 2 Lightfused Stegodon4 1 Spellbreaker4 2 Truesilver Champions6 1 Genn Greymane8 1 Silver Sword

The plan with the budget deck is to build a board with you 1 mana hero power and your 2 cost minions. Use buffs to do good trades or create a problem for your opponent to react to.

It’s better to use buffs when you can attack with the minion so you at least gets some value out of your cards.

 

Use your stegodon for at least 2-3 SHR to adapt all of them. You can use them on fewer for emergencies.

 

Comments

I tried to go without Knife Juggler but it's helping the deck so much so it's a staple more or less with equality and the hero power with the deathrattle from the jailor can turn a battle so quick to our advantage.

I had Dire wolf Alpha  before but I think that other minions has more value for my playstyle.

The deck would be better with call to arms, use it if you have it. Battle cry minions loses some value and deathrattle minions gains value.

We can't have secrets because they cost one and the hydrologist can give us an advantage and we can choose what we need for the current game state.

 

I tried this right after the ladder reset and actually went 5-0 with it, from rank 8 to 6, It wasn’t easy wins but hard earned wins and we can’t expect much more for a deck on a slim budget. I Still met control warlock, odd dude paladin, even spell hunter and won.

Minions

Argent protector the bc gives a minion divine shield and it's good for trades or to save knife juggler or Cult master.

Plated beetle are a 2 /3 that gives you armor and will mostly survive the turn if played on curve.

Hydrogologist, ability to get a secret according to the situation, Noble sacrifice, 2/1 to defend instead of the target, or repentance, op next played minion reduced health to 1. Good late game to trade of bigger minions.

Vicious Scalehide - good against 1/1s to get an early advantage with rush and works well with buffs to get life or trade when you play it from your hand.

 

Card draw

As all aggro or midrange, as i would classify this deck,  it's important to draw cards so we don't get out of fuel.

The best card draw for paladin, Divine favor,  is odd costed and can't be used here so we need alternatives and i chose these two.

Loot Hoarder - 2/1 minion with DR draw card

Cultmaster - Draw a card when another of your minions dies. We need to draw cards without divine favor and this works if used correctly, try to only play when you can get a card from it, still a 4/2 minion bit usually dies quickly.

 

Crowd control

We know from the start that most decks will have bigger and stronger minions then us so we need to even out the odds a bit.

Swamp Ooze bc destroy op weapon, good against weapon decks, still a good 2 drop. 3/2 minion

Knife juggler - whenever you summon a friendly minion do one dmg at random enemy.works awesome with Equality and the hero power.

Equality - Reduces all minions to 1 health and it hurts the op more than you, trade with minions or kill off with knife juggler

Consecration - 2 dmg to all enemys, AoE, can be used with equality to kill the entiere op board

Spellbreaker - bc silence, good against taunts or DR minions, a lot of uses but great against control warlock and their 3/9 taunt who spawn 3 new taunts or the minion with deathrattle that puts in a demon from their deck.

Truesilver champions - 4/2 Weapon with 2 health gain per attack for trading of minions and get the board advantage

Sound the bells - 1/2 Buff with echo, can be used to do great trades and get board advantage.

Blessing of kings - 4+4 buff to be used as finisher or trading, or just give a huger question to force the opponent to answer.

 

Business Dudes - 4620 dust, 3020 without Genn

 

Mana amount Name2 1 Argent Protector2 2 Drygulch Jailor2 2 Equality2 2 Hydrologist2 2 Knife Juggler2 2 Loot Hoarder2 2 Plated Beetle2 1 Sound the bells4 1 Concecration4 1 Cult Master4 2 Lightfused Stegodon4 1 Spellbreaker4 2 Truesilver Champions4 2 Call to Arms6 1 Genn Greymane6 2 Crystal Lion6 1 Spikeridge steed8 1 Silver Sword10 2 Sea Gigant

Changes

1 Acidic swamp ooze

1 argent protector

1 sound the bells

2 vicious scalehide

1 Cult master

1 Blessing of kings

2 Crystal Lion - Cheeper with more SHR and have div shield

2 Sea Gigant - Cheeper with more minions on the board and a huge gigant as well. Hard for some classes to do something about.

2 Call to arms - Great value to get out 3 of your 2 costed minions and I cut one protector because I think it’s better to have Deathrattle minions with CtAs.

1 Spikeridge Steed - Good 2/6 buff and gets a stegodon when killed

Going a little bit more for the bigger creatures that we might be able to get out cheaper. Gives us a little bit more questions that the opponent need to answer.

First class even - 6660 dust, 5060 without Genn

Mana amount Name2 2 Drygulch Jailor2 2 Equality2 2 Knife Juggler2 2 Loot Hoarder2 1 Sound the bells2 2 Vicious Scalehide4 2 Concecration4 1 Cult Master4 2 Lightfused Stegodon4 2 Spellbreaker4 1 Truesilver Champions4 1 Call to Arms6 1 Genn Greymane6 2 Crystal Lion6 2 Spikeridge steed6 1 Val'anyr6 1 Sunkeeper Tarim8 1 Silver Sword10 2 Sea Gigant

Changes

1 argent protector

2 Hydrologist

2 plated beetles

1 Call to arms

1 Truesilver Champions

2 Vicious scalehide

1 Consecration

1 Spellbreaker

1 Spikeridge steed

1 Valányr - Leg weapon 4/2 with DR gives rng minion hand +4+2 and DR equip Valányr, can be useful for a long time and the buff can fall on the right minion on hand to make things lighter, the rush minion wouldn’t sadden me if he got that.

1 Sunkeeper Tarim - All other minions becomes 3/3, often buffs yours and nerfes the opponents minions, can be used as a win condition.

This variant are more heavy towards the late game, Val’anyr makes a lot of work and oozes do not really affect it as long as you have a minion on your hand. Silence on the minion is the only thing that makes Val’anyr stop getting value.

 

I iterated some and as I said before your deck need to change depending on what you are facing.

I've seen a lot of control warlocks and think overall for me that 2 consecrate and 2 spellbreakers is the best for where I'm at.

The silence are not dead against other matchups either and the ability to board clear have it's uses against more or less everyone. I took away one bell and one call to arms. The latter because they run out of things to fetch on the second one.

 

Scalehides works really well with Val’anyr and the other buffs.

 

You can try and alter the buffs a bit as well. Dinosize can be good but are a dead card if you don’t have a minion on board and the taunts from Spikeridge steeds are more useful even to use on a SRH to keep you alive against aggro decks.

 

Sea giant works good when it works but against decks with fewer minions on board the Mountain giant could be better because I often have a lot of cards on hand, or one of each.

Matchups 6-4

Got 10 wins from the brawlaseum

 

Replacements or cards that didn't make this cut.

There could be a lot of other cards in the deck. Especially if you are in a budget and don't have the cards I listed.

Here is a list of cards you could try out. Most a budget variants or tech cards and I don't think they would work better overall then the cards I choose.

My play style is more mid range or control based.  You can alter the deck to a more aggro style and cards like dire wolf alpha should be better then.

Basic 0 dust

Hammer of wrath- 4 mana 3 target dmg and draw a card

Novice engineer- 2 mana 1/1 Battlecry draw a card - instead of loot hoarder

Common 40dust

Dire wolf alpha -  gives +1 attack adjecent, good to add some dmg.

Potion of heroism - 2mana spell gives a minion divine shield and draws a card,

fallen sun cleric 2 mana 2/1 bc +1/+1 minion

Lost spirit 2 mana 1/1 Dr your minions gets +1 attack. (Could be hard to setup as youbwoukd like but when it works it can do some value)

Ravasaur runt 2 mana 2/2 if you have 2 other minions adapt this one,  hard to setup and the gain are uneven

Dark iron dwarf 4 mana 4/4 bc add 2 attack on minion this turn.

Bonemare 8 mana 5/5 that give a a minion +4/+4 ant taunt, a bit expensive after the nerf but can be an alternative to valinyr or other buffs.

Rare 100 dust

Sunfury protector - 2 mana 2/3 bc adjacent minions taunt

Defender of argus - 4 mana 2/3 bc adjacent minions +1/+1 and taunt , booth can be good if you feel that you need more taunts.

Mad hatter -

Epic

Dinosize - a minion to 10/10 for 10

Corpsetaker - But need to build deck around it to get use of the stats, perhaps in the future

Avenging Wrath - 6 mana spell 8 dmg to enemy minions, good with equality

Legendary

Tirion - can use but don’t gives any synergies, is more if you have him and want to use instead of Tarim or a weapon

Black knight - Tech card against taunts 6 mana ⅘ battlecry destroy taunt

Tiltsegment Anger in game, card reviews, matchups, deckbuilding

Anger comes a lot of times from lack of knowledge. We talked about the learning curve last time and that we need to learn to control our Emotions to be able to decrese tilt.

Unfortuantly there are things all around us that can trigger our emotions.

In most cases it is we that gets angry at something, not someone or something that makes us angry. I do know that some of you will disagree but anger/irritation is something we create and let it control us.

 

Example, Road rage is a common thing. A lot of people on the roads are morons, we do know that and we are sitting and yelling in our own cars about how stupid everyone else are.

In most cases we get irritated because someone did something we wouldn’t have done. Could be an overtaking, stopping for a pedestrian when it wasn’t “necessary” and other things. We chooses to make that annoy us, for some people that irritation goes with them the whole day.  We can’t control all factors in our lives but hopefully we can agree on that destroying our own day because another person were “stupid” is not reasonable, for us at least.

 

I have a quite silly approach to that specific situation. I think that there are a lot of people going to the maternity ward today. Is that true? Most likely not but it makes me laugh or break my irritation because that could be the case. There could be good reasons for people misbehaving.

 

Back to hearthstone and gaming in general.

We are getting irritated by a lot of things. In my opinion booth fact based and emotion based things.

 

Emotes in game

We can’t talk with our opponent in Hearthstone but we do have emotes. They are built in ways to say something. They have all voice overs and says different things depending on with character you are playing as.

I generally uses the emotes in the same way regardless of character.

Some characters says things a bit more salty and aggresive then others.

The choices are

Thanks

Well played

Greetings

Wow

Oops

Threaten

In the regulars sports we learn to greet our opponents in the start of a match and usually everyone stands on a line and takes each others hand afterwards and thanks for a good game, REGARDLESS of the outcome. If one team gott fully anahlated they still does this out of respect to each other. If someone wins over me I take that as a learning experience and if I win I’m thankful for that.

 

I use Greetings in the start of the game, if I can remember. But I always use Well played after a game, win or loss. I do know that I sometimes had the perfect draw and that the opponent didn’t and sometimes vice versa. I and they can still played the best of their abilities and it's a way to politely thank for the game.

 

Thanks I use in response to a emote from OP during the game, often WP or Oops.

Wow I use seldom but often it's when all MY rng goes in the perfect way possible.

Oops I use to acknowledge my own mistakes in the game or if I see that the OP played things in a bad order. The last one we need to use with heart and mind in the right place because that can be offensive for some. But i think it could be fine to show that someone did a mistake but it need to be based on facts. To play all minions first and then drop a knife juggler that's shots 1 dmg per minion he/she summons are a misplay, if there aren’t any secrets up that the player might play around. To play a card that didn’t had the outcome someone hoped to isn’t a misplay.

 

In general terms I do think that using emotes as little as possible could be good not to step on someone's toes.

Problem I see is that people interpret the emotes as they will and often they are already in tilt or irritated that the lost or of other things and see all things as “evil”.

I have gotten friend requests from people that been yelling at me because it wasn’t well played or that I BM and should take my own life our other not nice things…

 

There are on the other hand a lot of trolls out there, using emotes all the time. Using well played when we fill the board with minions just so they can take them away with an aoe or other things. You will notice quickly if someone actually tries to taunt you with emotes and either you squelch them or you need to learn not to care.

Taunting your opponent has been a part of sports a long time, I’m not saying that's nice or okey but people will do that against you and why? Because it works… :-) We are getting affected, we are getting irritated and we are playing worse, it’s a strategi to try and taunt your competition, to make them lose concentration or just be more aggressive.

 

Once again I will enforce that I don’t like this and I’m not defending this behavior but we need to know that it exist and why are they doing that. Because we makes it worth it ,

 

In hearthstone I analyze my own play all the time, I do miss plays from time to time but I notice them myself so I don’t really care what the other player says to me. If a player wants to spam emotes that’s his/hers problem, I don’t care.

I usually tries to see the best in them and their intentions. Even if I know I’m wrong. You can try that, it's actually fun.

Just try to see all emotes as given with nice intentions and your experience will probably be better. It might be wrong in some cases but as of today I do think that we read in bad intentions were none were given so this will even things out and it don’t make a difference if we are right or wrong in this situation. If we will feel better about it then it is better.

Roping

The rope is a visualisation of the time limit in the round. We have 75 seconds each turn to take our actions. Blizzard changed this time for the first 2 turns recently to around 45 seconds.

When it's around 20 seconds left a rope start to burn to show you that you don’t have that much left of your turn.

 

The expression roping has been a thing for a while. Some players always wait until the rope appears and then play their cards.

One PRO player were famous for this, Lifecoach, or ropecoach as a lot called him and he were really good at the game and made smart decisions etc. He said that he used the time he were given from the game not only to think about this turn but to think 4-5 turns ahead. To try to visualise what his opponent might play and what his best choices can be. Also to remember and calculate RNG effects and possible outcomes, especially bad ones that could destroy for him.

 

This is good and a smart approach if you actually think during this time. A lot of players are playing to quick that they actually miss better, often trickier, plays.

 

Today a lot of “trolls” are doing this intentionally to irritate the opponent and hopefully make them to concede.

Some players has realized that it's more effective to give up and start a new game instead of playing against slow opponents or control decks that takes a long time to play against.

This can be true but the problem with this kind of “min/maxing” is that you have a lot of things to irritate you. As we hopefully know by now, irritation doesn’t help us with winning.

 

I do understand the irritation when people stall just to annoy me but to be irritated is like giving them a win, or put more fuel on their fire.

Everyone don’t do this and it’s more or less the same as the examples above, don’t see trolls everywhere, will just hurt you.

 

I’m often a quick player, I do my turns often in about 10 seconds, I have already thought about the options I have and what might be the best play for me. I do rope sometimes as well when it's a lot to do and it might be hard to alter the time because control and combo decks might be more difficult to play because of this. I read someone give a suggestion of have a lower base timer but add 3s per played card or something like that and that might work better but it needs to be tested a lot.

 

I play hearthstone mostly when I do other stuff at the same time. I like HS because I don’t need to be active every second, I can play a game and if something happends with my son I can check that and still be able to play the rest of the game. I can’t plan when he is going to poop and I can’t always be on alert for that either and not do other things and sometimes I do play HS and change diapers at the same time and the rope might turn up those times but my intention is not to irritate my opponent, it's to solve the issues at home and still be able to play. I think that I can’t be alone with this. I have stopped playing most other games because I “can’t” be sure to have that 30min- 1 hour undisturbed time to play a game. I can always exit the game but then I will damage my teams chances to win and that's not nice either.

Thinking the whole turn might be good if you need the time to think the future turns through but at the same time you are giving your opponent more time to think as well. Depending on your own playstyle and deck to play quick might be advantageous for you because your “slower thinking” opponent gets less time and might be stressed over that you are playing fast. It’s a balance between fast play and strategic play, you shouldn’t play quicker then your own mind can handle.

 

Punishments

I heard that a lot of players want to have punishments in the game for BM, bad manners, which is good. We need to be able to sort out players that are bad for the community but who should be judging?

If it's BM or not is hard to see, it's depending on our own perspective. As I have seen a lot people today throw accusations left and right to everyone that doesn't do the same thing as they would have done, it is not necessary that they broke any rules or had bad intentions with their actions, it's mostly based on like “I do get irritated when the opponent do this action and that's must be my opponents plan”. If you tell someone to stop their behavior and they continue that could be to irritate you but it's impossible to know what would trigger a person if they don’t communicate that. So it can’t be malicious before they are informed of your opinion, if it's regarding common actions, things that are already breaking rules are always wrong.

 

I don’t want to get a system were tilters ban good players because of their own troubles with emotions and “trollvision”.

 

I would rather start to sort out those players that are sending friend requests just to make death threats first and go from there, that should not exist and are not okay regardless of how angry you are.

 

With roping,

Blizzard has put in these times for a reason, and they should alter them if it would be necessary but all players need different amount of time to do their turn. To use the time given from the game shouldn’t be classed as a “crime”, even if I get irritated of that sometimes as well, especially when i'm in a hurry. But that is my own fault for hoping that the game would go faster.

 

When I played magic you had 1 hour to do a Bo3 game and no turn limit. MTG games takes a lot longer than HS because you can do things on the opponent's turn and need to get confirmation that they don’t want to do something before you continue.

 

In theory you could win the first game  in 45 minutes and then stall out the second game and after the hour is up do the last 5 turns and actually get a win or in the worst case a draw because you stalled. That could be an issue, in HS it isn’t because we have a limit that's reasonable. It's our own stress that creates the problem.

Dev shoes - New expansion from a deck building perspective

Blizzard has tried a lot of things with the expansions and I do think that they are getting better and better at it, regardless of the general opinion.

 

We do compare the power level of the cards to much between expansions. The first years we had cards that were played in more or less all classes and types of decks. Best in slot cards. That’s convenient for budget players but it's not fun. We as a community don’t want to have a stale meta, same decks all the time without change.

 

We want to be able to use the new cards and therefore the devs need to try and make cards less “broken” and work more with synergi. That depending on your type of deck, tribe, aggro, spell, minion the best in slot cards changes to ensure more cards being played from the set.

 

A few new mechanics were released in the latest expansion and I want to talk a bit of them

Echo

Cards that can be replayed the same turn for the same cost.

Some cheaper cards have always had a problem with being drawn late in the game that they wouldn’t do anything to the current board state and therefore would be a dead card.

 

Echo gives a new opportunity, some cards have abilities that utilizes playing minion or spells and the echocards will work with them as well.

 

Like the paladins quest to play 6 spells on minions will be at lot easier now to complete because of their echo card, 2mana 1/2 buff an you can repeat that one but you are only using up one card slot in your deck for potentially 5 plays.

The echo cards will not be overpowered by themselves but they gives an option to building decks that didn’t exist before.

 

You trade of a little bit of stats for the possibility to play several copies instead and I think that some echo cards will find a use in decks.

Rush

We talked about this earlier in the episode and charge were becoming a big problem so we haven’t seen any “good” charge cards for a while.

With the option to hit face the first turn blizzard opened a whole new world of options for them when creating new cards.

Blizzard want the game to be about the board control not about getting the right cards in your hand at the right time then play out your cards and win without the opponent being able to counter that in any way. It's not a fun playstyle for the people who lost because they couldn’t do anything to avoid that, except perhaps kill them of before they got the cards.

 

Rush cards with other abilities or regular buff cards might have a better chance of seeing play today then before. It weren’t enough charge cards to build a deck around that mechanic because of the overpowered factor.

 

Rush makes older unplayed cards better, not always in the higher tiers but for the casual players it might open up new cards and types of decks that still will work.

All tribes

Nightmare amalgam is a new card that are unique it that he is all the tribes at the same time.

This is awesome for deckbuilding purpose.

Some tribes has been hard to build decks around because of the low number of synergetic cards for that tribe or class.

With the All tribe we do have one minion that's well stated for it's cost that gives us a great filler to be able to use our tribes. Exceptionally if we would get one more card that are a member of all the tribes.

 

The door that has been opened the most with this new card are the possibility to do multi tribe decks. As an example dragons are often heavy costed and cards that works well with them needs a dragon on our hand. Often we need to have a expensive card just sitting in our hand from the start of the game. Other tribes utilizes minions we have on the board or if we played them last turn as with the elementals.

 

Amalgam gives us an oportunity to combine tribes and lower the amount of tribal cards we need in our deck for it to be worth it. We might be able to build decks like murloc dragon, murloc decks are mostly good in the early game and dragons late game. Combining them might create new decks that aren’t as “one trick pony-like” as many of the tribal decks has been before.

 

We have often used cards we have considered as bad to be able to play a tribe but we might be able to use amalgam and only the value giving cards from different tribes to make decks.

 

I’m not saying that this will be a huge thing now but the ability to make tribes viable exists more now than efter. We might need more tribal cards to be able to combine tribes in top decks but I don’t know.

The option Blizzzard opens for us with this one card is amazing for the future and I hope that we will be able to create new archetypes.            

Even / odd

We have had some other variants from blizzard were they introduced ways to change the rules of the game at a cost or as some people thinks, forces you to build your deck around a card.

 

As I said before, with new mechanics people will flock to them and try to fit them in everywhere but after awhile it will stop. It's the normal process that will happen when we do get new toys to play with.

 

Blizzard added 4 cards, I think, that utilizes the new mechanics and that you more or less need to use even or odd decks to get value from the cards… 6cards including the two legendarys that make this new deckbuilding type to work. That's not that many… So the arguments that Blizzard tries to force us on how to use the cards with the expansions are wrong, in my opinion.

They added a few cards to open a whole new type of decks and that will make the game more versitile then less when you want to buiild new decks.

 

Most decks have standard cards they use for each slot. Card draw then you use theese cards depending on with class you are using and a lot of cards that are doing the same things will not be used because the options are a litle bit better or at least the general opinion of them.

 

The new even / Odd mechanic enables a lot of old cards to be played. It forces the player to think outside of the box because some of their go to cards will not be available anymore and this creates options and new type of variations.

If Even and Odd will be a standard with decks or not will be showed over time but I think that they will die out in the top tiers with a few exceptions and we will see regular decks as well.

 

Overall the way Blizzard are making cards today it seems like we can try and build other types of decks than we are used to and that you can make different decks for each class and still be able to compete.

Next week

Deckbuilding: We will create an odd Dude paladin deck.

Tilt: Elitism and it's problem.

Dev shoes: Elitism and communication.

Who am I, introduction

Welcome to the first episode of Guardians of the hearth where we will try to stop being our own worst enemies.

 

In this episode I will introduce myself, my background and we will also talk about the different segments of the show:

Deck building in general and why I want to do this

tilt-management and a nicer mindset for gamingGo over the stages of learning and what is tilt

Trying on the developers shoes

Plans for the podcast in the future

 

My name is Anders Johansson and my gamer name is Algaron.

I’m living in Jönköping sweden with my fiance, 1 year son and 13y poodle.

 

English isn’t my native language so please have a little bit of understanding if I’m stumbling over pronunciations or using grammar incorrectly. I do think this will get better over time as well.

 

 

 

Podcasting is something that I wanted to do for a long time, but haven’t had the time to set that up and didn’t find a co-host and so on. I really want to be a part of the scene and contribute in the way I can so I thought that I start my pod now because I can set a release date and record sometime in between episodes and I can plan a little bit each day when I’m able and still follow my schedule.

 

I will start with one episode each other week but I start with 3 episodes directly,or close to, so I have something to get feedback on and time to get a good routine.

 

It’s a lot of work outside of the recording and decisions to make so I think going each other week is better now then miss episodes in the start because of time issues. There are a lot of unknowing factors for me with this podcast. Will someone want to listen?, Are the segments okey?, audioediting?, how long time take a episode to produce?, how much time can I spend with podding each week even if things happens?

As we will talk about later this can be frustrating and give performance anxiety or other types of stress so commiting to a lower release rate at the start when a lot of things are new will hopefully lower stress or the chance of being burned out or lose the fun in it.

 

I have probably missed a lot of good information about myself but I will will in stuff as time goes by.

 

Deckbuilding the basics

In the next episodes there will be a deck in here but I do think that we should start to talk about what Hearthstone is and how the deckbuilding segment will work in the future.

 

Today a lot of people find decks from the internet and the ability to adapt or create own decks has faded a lot.

Most of the good decks out there are using expensive cards so the newer players feel that they can’t compete and I would like to change that a bit at least.

For each idea I will create 3 decks with different dust limits to show of more card alternatives.

 

The show will not be for a specific level of player but i will not go through all the basics, I will try to explain specific words but sometimes I will forget so do contact me and I will explain, same with other things in game that you would like to have explained. It’s hard to know what you are interested in before the show is released

 

I will go in depth in a mechanic each week, mostly with RNG elements, to explain why a card could be good to use or not or if it’s a mechanic we will use a lot in the deck of the week.

I will focus the show on deckbuilding, how to think, different approaches to building decks. Sometimes we will fail miserably and other times we will end up with decks that actually works and we will discuss why and what happened and if it's something we need for it to work.

RNG - Stands for (Random number generator) and it’s a common term for cards or things with unpredictable outcome.

Meta a common word in gaming and used for different purposes. It’s short for metagaming and means a game about a game, using the knowledge of with types of decks people will use and try to counter that.

Others use the term for what’s popular because people think its “the best” whether it's true or not.

The meta is always in motion. If one deck is the best one day people will use decks that are favored against the “best” deck and create a new deck to beat.

For deck building purpose we need to know that even if we would lose all games in our testrun of the deck it don’t mean that the deck don’t work, just not today.

Goals/mindset

With over 50 million players we can guess that not all of them plays for the same reasons.A lot of the difficulty we will cover in later episodes are with different perspectives and needs. People get angry or sad when something is added to the game that’s “trash”, or is that in there opinion because its not adding to the part of the game they enjoy.

All additions to the game is good so try to have an open mind. If Blizzard only would create stuff for the pro side we would probably lose the casuals that brings a lot of revenue to the game and on the other side we would lose some of the PR aspects that the E-sport/ Streaming side brings.

I will talk about this more in depth later, we have a lot of core stuff to talk about today.

Deckbuilding

Basics rules

30 cards per deck

2 copies max except legendary cards that you can have just 1.

Choose a Class and use cards for that class and neutral cards

Minions, spells, weapons, Secrets

Inspiration

We can get inspiration to build decks from a lot of different ways.

Seeing someone else have a type of deck

Seeing a card that interest us

Playing Dungeon run/monster hunt

Arena

I got the idea for dude paladin while playing Dungeon run. I had dismissed some cards as bad or never thought of them as good but when I got them in the dungeon run a thought started to emerge and then I started to build.

 

Different ways

We can start to build a deck from a lot of different places and they do have pro and cons. Find you own variant when you are building decks. I will try to show some different methods the first weeks to broaden our minds a bit.

Just some things to wonder about and I will go more in depth later.

Building deck based on:

Class? , Hunter, priest, mage...

Type, aggro, mid range control , comboQuestion and answer, Aggro a lot of questions and Control mostly answers until opponent run out of gas our gives huge questions late game.

Combo solitary

TribesMurlocs

Elementals

Demon

Dragon

Mech

Pirate

Totem

Mechanic, (charge, life steal, divine shield, and so on

Game changing legendary, (Quest/Even/Odd)

Counter another deckLadder or tournament play

Method for building

When we have decided our start approach we need to have a way to continue.

This method can take some time to get used to and takes time to use but has advantages in the long run.

Don’t delete cards after you typed them down. It can be good to have a list of options for future expansions and a comment on what you need to use that card or group of cards.

Define a loose goal for your deck using the points above or other things. Don’t be to precise but an average idea is good.

Go through the collection, be sure to list uncraftable cards and cards you don’t have yet as well.

Type down the cards that can be a possibility for your deck without filtering out cards. Be open minded.Some cards might work if we have enough of cards that works well with that mechanic or style.

Check for synergi cards, the cards you think should be mandatoryCould be defining groups of cards as well. “All” or none approach

Check the “mandatory cards”, seeing any other type of utility?Example: Most of the cards are odd costed so might be able to go with a odd only deck

Techcards- Cards that are good against specific type of cards that you usally have a problem with or see in your games. Example, weapons can be a problem and then you can add different ozes to gain against them.Be aware that techcards can be useless against other decks so don’t use them to much.

Weighing cards against each other and fill up the deck

Testing and reiterating

How do the deck feel?

Problem areas, mana curve, problem late, early?

Adapt over time because of the meta changes or if you want to try out another version

Tilt segment

This will be our first tilt segment and I'm going to talk a little bit about why we tilt.

I will start to say that I’m not a psychologist of any kind. I think a lot about things and the mind and the tricks it can play with us fascinates me and I hope that we all can learn something.

 

All topics we will cover in the podcast could be more in depth as well and I don't know how deep I will go. I think I will talk about the segments a bit more overall first and with time and help from you go back from time to time to go deeper and deeper and iterate. repetition is the mother of all learning and some things might be hard to understand the first times.

Learning has several stages

Unconscious incompetence, don’t know that you don’t know (ignorance) Wrong Intuition

Conscious incompetence, know that you don't know (mistakes, confusion to reach next), Wrong Analysis

Conscious competence, know about it but you have to think about it. , Right analysis

Unconscious competence, Know it so well you don't have to think about it (Mastery), Right Intuition

 

If we would simplify this we can say that you first need to understand that you don’t understand to be able to learn. First it will be confusing and frustrating and we will do mistakes and that's ok.

To be afraid of doing mistakes is more or less the same thing to dont wanting to learn. It's seldom we learn something from succeeding because why? I won :-)

By doing mistakes we know what not to do next time. It’s not a failure, it's a path to finding success.

 

 

So now when we all got confused and learned about learning we will go on to tilt.

I did some research as well so my opinion and reasons that I gathered from logical deduction were not wrong.

I found a article about tilting and poker and it explained it well, Link will be in the shownotes (http://jaredtendlerpoker.com/coaching/about-us/articles-2-2/)

 

 

What is tilt

The brain's way to respond to threats that helped us before to save us from danger. Berserk more or less, more strength and less brain.

But what does this “danger response system” have to do with gaming?

The brain has missed a lot of patches and can’t see the difference. Threat is defined by levels of emotions, after a threshold we get tilted. Games do trigger a lot of emotions in us and we will go through what's the usual causes, at least in my opinion, later.

 

Most people gets frustrated under stress and in a lot of cases it's our own expectations for ourselves or a lack of planning that create stress.

Why are you playing hearthstone or other things?

Do you need to be legend? Do you have the time to commit?

Set reasonable goals for yourself

I Have reached legend but it's not a priority for me. It takes to much of my time and I start to question myself and the use of my time. Which increases the stress for each loss.

Rank 5 (dad legend) suits me perfect. I will get there and be somewhere around 1-5 when I’m testing decks or doing quests and if I would be on a roll and become legend again I would not be sad but it takes time. Before when you started from scratch each month they say that getting to 5 is about middle. You don’t have the win streaks anymore, just wins and losses and that affects your mind a lot more as well. You could be playing for one hour or more and not be getting anywhere, that's how it is sometimes.

We need to focus on having fun and do things that we enjoy. We need to learn as well that legend takes time and that you can still be a good player even if you isn’t there yet.

Developer shoes

This and the tilt segment goes a lot hand in hand. Here we can talk about a lot of different things. This segments is mainly going to be used for:

Reducing tilt in a game from a developers side

Trying to understand devs to reduce our own tilting against them

Go in depth with different parts of game

Outlet for me and guests on the show to go over ideas we have

 

Suggestion for change

I think overall that the new system is way better than before but one problem that still exist is if people take a long break from the game and will eventually find themselves in rank 25 again. The meta might have changed or the card pool but never the less your skill should be at lot better then rank 25.

I would think that a rank floor over seasons could be good. If you sometime achieved Legend you should never be able to get lower then perhaps rank 15, just to make the experience better for the beginners. We could find some kind of a threshold. People over rank 5 should never go against rank 25 persons.

 

Just out of my mind something like:

Rank 10 and above - Never under rank 20

Rank 5 and above - Never under rank 15

 

This shouldn’t change that much for people at all on the negative side but please give me feedback on this thought.

Logotype

The Logo is a beauty, yepp did it myself, with you probably see. I wanted to get one out from the start but I actually like the simplicity of this one. He are the guardian of the hearth as you see on his shield and he has a microphone as a weapon. Old saying that pen is mightier than the sword but I do think that the microphone today has taken the pens place.

He needs a name and suggestions for that would be appreciated.

He can go through some modifications over time as well but I don’t want to bang my head against that design-wall at the moment.

Thoughts about the podcast in the future

Tournaments with dust limits or other fun limitations

Music, write and perform songs at the end around the theme

Guests and interviewsWhen we are rolling and I find people that would be great

Dhs

MonetizingUse money for tournaments or to produce the show.

Gamewisp/patreon / other service?

Tiltjar? Amount per tilt in a month

Information about next episode

In the next episode we will do a quick repetition of this podcast and we will start our deckbuilding segment with even dude Paladin.

Were going to talk about anger in Hearthstone regarding emotes and roping.

Were also going to put on the dev shoes again and look at hearthstone and the new expansion from a pure deckbuilding point of view.

Ending

Thanks for listening and I hope that you enjoyed the show.

I should be up on itunes but can take a few days from the first episode to be found there.

Were using podbean at the moment and we have set up a RSS feed from there so you should be able to find us in your app of choice, otherwize contact us.

 

Vote us up where you can and contact us to make the show better.

I will read the emails and reviews.

Coaching (game or tilt) - [email protected]

Twitter - @GuardiansHearth

Webpage- Guardiansofthehearth.online

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