LOTI 011 – Legend of the Innkeeper – “One Hump Or Two?”

Intro:

Welcome to the Legend of the Innkeeper.  I’m Vastidious and I’m Ariannwyn.  We’re glad you could join us for our eleventh episode.

This week we are talking about…

Updates:

What did you do this week?

Top 3 of the week – Naxx Bosses

Vastidious – The Four Horsemen, Thaddius (Polarity shift) and Gluth (turns all to 1 health)

Ariannwyn: The Four Horsemen, Thaddius, and Maexxna (Return a random enemy minion to the opponents hand)

We also had several listeners send in their top 3 Naxx cards from last week.  We love to hear from you your thoughts.  So send those in.

News

1. Pax2014 story says over 100 cards in next expansion

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/01/pax-prime-2014-hearthstone-eyes-an-expansion/

“But instead of following it up with another solo adventure pack, the team is working on a proper expansion with a new type of pack, over 100 additional cards, and a bigger impact on the game.”

2. Hearthstone Nominated For The Golden Joystick Awards

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/joystick/

Hearthstone has been nominated for the 32nd Golden Joystick Awards in the following categories.  Best Visual Design, Best Online Game, Best Mobile Game, Studio of the Year: Blizzard and Game of the Year.  Go vote for the game and you will be entered to win an iPad Air.

3. Rumors

Getting Better

Part 2

http://hearthstoneplayers.com/beginners-guide-arena-winning-games/

 

As we dig further into the Arena, there are several things that players overlook when drafting cards.  These are having a good understanding of card value, importance of board control and how card advantage will help you win games.  If you are like me, I have problems with bright shiny things.  Those bright shiny things being cool combos, cards that are really cool and large minions.  With our last episode we tried to address the concept of card value.

One of the items we didn’t really dig into much last week was what a good mana curve looks like.  Unfortunately, my answer is “it depends”.  And I know that we’re going to get lots of different opinions on this subject, but let me lay out a basic thought process.

First, what does mana curve mean?  The mana curve is a visual representation of how many cards you have in your deck with each amount of mana.  So on the bottom of the chart is how much mana each card costs from 0 to 7+.  On the side you have how many cards are in your deck with that cost.  The curve is what the top of the bars look like when you’ve finished drafting your deck.  Normally the curve will start out low and rise as you get to 2-3 mana cards.  Then as you progress the curve will move back down.  The mana curve is just a way to represent the cards you have currently in your deck.

Overall, the mana curve changes depending on which class you are playing.  For example, a rush deck tends to have a mana curve that peaks out between 2-3 mana cards, where as the control deck will often peak out between 4-5 mana cards.

However, I’ve heard many discussions about how the mana curve between constructed and arena are different.  With constructed you really focus on the class abilities and dig into what is effective for that particular class.  With Arena you really don’t know what cards you are going to get so it’s often recommend to keep a nice mana curve with peaks between 3-5 mana cards.  The main reason behind this is so that you have a good opening,