Finally hit 6k - feels like I'm getting halfway decent at BG



First time I had played the kitty-cat. Its HP (discover a minion from a player's board when they get eliminated, and keep its buffs) turned out to be more helpful than I had anticipated in the late game, even though I ended up doing a beast mono-build. The downside is that it is pretty much useless in the early-mid game. Probably going to be one of those hit-or-miss heroes.

I think youve gotta play really defensive and not die with the cat. Staying on 2/3 longer trying to get to the power spike. Seems once others start dying the cat becomes super powerful

That sounds right.

In general I've scaled back a bit on leveling up and focused more on surviving the next battle and not losing a lot of health, which seems to have produced better results. And also picking heroes that do well in the early/mid game - which doesn't include the cat but I had to try him at least once just for the fun of it.

I’ve dropped from 9k to like 8.2 lately playing a bunch of off meta stuff and trying to force dumb comps since I’m kinda bored. With that said I picked bigglesworth once and won’t bother doing it again. I’m guessing bottom 5 if not the worst hero. I expect it to have a somewhat high first place rate but like nothing between 6-2 and then a ton of 7-8s.

If you get 8th with Bigglesworth, you get absolutely no value out of the Hero power. Kind of like Alexstrasza, except you don't have much control over when the benefit comes. And when you do get the benefit, you're getting a minion from someone that died, which sounded great at first, but now that I think about it - if they had good minions, they probably wouldn't be dead.

I am guessing it's going to be pretty crappy until you get people dropping in 6th-4th. I can see the hero power giving you just enough to make it from 5th to 4th or 4th to 3rd, which is significant.

I played a game last night where the compositions in the lobby were: Me (beasts), Pirates, Murlocs, Murlocs, Murlocs, Murlocs, Murlocs, and Murlocs. Pirates went out 8th and I ended up taking 3rd. First and second came down to big divine shield poisonous murlocs vs. bigger divine shield poisonous murlocs. I managed to survive until 3rd, and the divine shield poisonous guys wiped out everyone else. Quite compelling.

Think of it this way. In a lobby where everyone is equal skill level, bigglesworth is the most likely to get 8th no matter what other heroes are in the game. If you want 1st places it’s probably an ok pick but if you want to climb it’s terrible.

Cat is fun but no hero can be good if it's not good early. It does snowball surprisingly well though. Surviving till top 4 and getting 3 goldens can make for some entertaining games.

I've decided to give streaming a shot which atm is just me talking to myself so if anyone wants to do coops/dual queues/coaching then pm me. Don't think it would take too much to get a 6k player to 8k or whatever and getting an 8k player to >10k would be fun. https://www.twitch.tv/kirian219

I wish i could get into bg’s but I just can’t. I never have any idea how to get these massive boards people get, no idea what the heroes do, and it seems very rng heavy.

It's definitely rng heavy but no moreso than poker. Regular card games seem super dull in comparison after you've played a bit. Tried an arena run with a friend a while back and we gave up after 2 games. Happy to show you the ropes if you like.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1359...ighlander-mage

This is the deck I made i'm gonna start with

I just can't believe they reprinted innervate. It's like a total **** you to me after years of complaining about it. Even with overload (2) it's still gonna be extremely broken and Kael'thas is still a thing.

Oh **** its live? Lol i wasnt ready.

from the 89 packs:
8 legendaries:
-golden forest warden omu (druid)
-professor slate (hunter)
-mozaki (mage)
-lord barov (paladin/warrior)
-infiltrator lilian (rogue)
-instructor fireheart (shaman)
-golden archwitch willow (warlock)
-sphere of sapience (neutral)

18 epics I think.

Great result imo.

I lasted about 1 hour playing constructed in wild. Didn't see a single new card same old aggro spam. Back to battlegrounds.

I mean, isnt that kind of the point of wild? The most powerful cards from a huge number of sets will be played. The game would really suck if every expansion has progressively more powerful cards. Remember when standard midrange jade shaman was the king of wild? That sucked

yeah just thought i could get a break from constant odd pally and secret mage.

I bet there’s a ton of lurker decks in wild that no one plays but would do really well. Maybe I’ll get back into it. I had a few top 5 legend runs back in the day.

Is res priest with barnes/ysharj still a thing?

No it seems it's a quest mage/aggro meta. If you're not fast enough to beat quest mage you're not gonna do well. Not sure if the new priest legendary will change the meta in any way.

haven't played hearthstone since 2018 (started playing poker professionally soon thereafter and forgot about hearthstone)--came back about a month ago and it's just as easy as it used to be (yes, this post is mostly a brag, sorry)



On a side note, I don't see how the updated Enrage Warrior isn't the strongest deck in the new format, but I need to run it myself soon and get a better sample size. It seems absurdly powerful from when I've faced it.

Druid with Survival (10 mana spell) seems good on paper, but I've beaten it every time I've faced it. The games are always close, but it always seems that the Druid can't quite stabilize before he dies.

For the record, I run Highlander Mage almost exclusively, so take that as a point of reference for where my observations are coming from.

They really should just get rid of any exodia style decks from the game.

Doesn’t ice block shut that down?

Nice. I seem to be getting worse - i got one win from legend last month and fell down to 5. Finished at diamond 1, lol. But I refuse to play decks that bore me.

Its not really an exodia deck it pretty much uses the quest to play a bunch of giants while also going off with flamewaker/sorc apprentice

yeah i don't play stuff i don't like either, really makes no sense in a game that isn't played for money

Highlander mage is pretty damn fun, mostly b/c of the heavy RNG effects involved making almost every game pretty wild. There's also a cool element that reminds me of poker where you sometimes have to sort of estimate the EV of certain plays compared to the alternative "sure thing" play (e.g., "Should I play Dragoncaster into Puzzle Box here, or can I afford to wait?").

I hated that deck. Couldnt seem to win with it. Control warlock is my favorite this last expansion but it loses bad to hunter so I struggled.

Opened the Warlock/Demonhunter Soul Fragment legendary. Decided to try soul fragment handlock and have gone 20-8 from diamond 5 to legend (~1200). Got the deck of vicious syndicate and really digging it so far. Feel like the two legendaries aren't even super necessary. Valdris is something I think can potentially be replaced straight up, and wouldn't craft it just for this deck yet. Soulciologist is definitely very good and can win some games or get us back in it, but I'm not playing it super consistently.



Stats so far:


Deck code here:
https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/dec...ment-handlock/