Heal control shaman does pretty good if you can draw lightning storm early or can hang on until turn 8 with a tidal wave

Heroic duel ridonkulously easy as mage with bread and butter cards. People trying out really dumb strats. I do need to learn a second class though - mage is my only 10+ win.

I could see this mode having prohibitively long queue times though.

Yeah, this deck is pretty good

duels is pretty easy when you're enrage warrior with 3 gromms, rocket backpack, and clone a legendary perk for that easy 2 card 24 damage lethal

https://clips.twitch.tv/PiercingTawdryPeanutDxAbomb

Thanks fellas. That Risky Skipper is liable to make a lot of minions somewhat damaged. I didn't realize the new expansion would be released so soon though - I'll check it out as soon as I have decent internet.

Got my first 12 win with this deck. I had been close at a few 11 win runs in beta, but I didn't play that much.

Here is the deck:



For starting gift I took the 0/3 scepter that gives your hero +1 hero power damage. I took the mana wyrm hero power.

These were the rewards:



I can post the full list if you are interested. Basically I took a lot of burn. I thought my passive power choices were HORRIFIC: my first choice was between death rattle reborns or some other crap you couldn't get to work unless you had your deck designed for it.

I got the "get an extra card at start of turn" passive, which let me tell you, was incredibly broken. Basically every game I won at the end was because my opponent was out of cards and I had 3-5 left still. I went full value - I chose caltrops because the 1 damage to minion is incredible when you are playing for tempo. My basic strat was to control the board and gain value and tempo with my removal while generating mana wyrms, then finishing off with burn.

The loatheb was my addition. He is an incredible tempo card and won so many early games. So much better than antonidas.

Let me know what you think. Mage probably the strongest class by far.

I am very unhappy with the new rewards system. People crunched the numbers on reddit and it seems like the average quest is worth about 30 gold. As someone pointed out, in the first ten levels you gain a lot of gold and after that it levels out severely.

They are making the game more expensive with what I imagine is a shrinking player base. Seems really ****ing stupid.

I am nearly level 20.

F2P games are a social contract between the developer and the players. Most F2P players pay little to no money and get a sub-optimal experience in return (grinding, timers, feelings of frustration at having a lesser experience, etc). But in the devs must give them enough fun and try to minimize the negative feelings. And they should try to at least convert them into casually spending minnows (the battle passes have been doing a good job of this across the industry).

Whales on the other hand are spend most of the money on the game and need to feel like they are getting the full experience, are getting a reasonably good deal for their money, AND to give them the feeling of superiority that there are lots of "plebs" below them that are weaker in power, don't have all the content, don't have all the cosmetics, etc.

With the F2P genre having been around for so long, it's surprising that a company as big as Blizzard messed it up. There should be a textbook at this point as to how to properly manage a F2P game economy and how to run a proper social contract. Though Supercell also recently has pissed off a lot of Clash Royale players with their recent updates, which have been similarly underwhelming and alienated a large portion of the playerbase. Perhaps it is more art than science at this point.

I agree.

Pure paladin is still the strongest deck in the game. Zero new cards. Paladin has been consistently the top performing deck (54-56% winrate) throughout the last two expansions and has received zero ! nerfs outside of a pathetic one mana nerf to libram of hope.

Clown druid can spawn a full board of 8/8’s by like turn 6.

Illidan has an otk that’s fairly simple to pull off. Control is dead.

I’m giving this expansion a D- and it’s only that high because I love duels mode. Otherwise it’d be an F-.

Yea play pure paladin with no new cards for the easiest legend you’ll ever get. I just went from rank 5 0 stars to rank 1 with 1 star and I only have had two losses, each to the mirror. It’s an absolute joke how strong this deck is.

Remember when you thought blessing of kings was good? LOL how about 16 stats for 5 mana! **** you blizzard jfc.

Oh you think 16 stats for 5 mana is good? How about a 9 mana card that without any buffs summons 3 4/4 taunts (equivalent to 27 stats if you include taunt value) and 7 8/8 taunts if you corrupted it with the 10 mana druid card. Oh wait that’s not even a threat to me because I have a 5 mana enemy board clear with libram + consecrate.

El oh ****ing el

Yup. Legend. 18-2 with pure paladin.

Don’t ask me how it got that big....

Not surprisingly, I hate another godawful Druid deck in an expansion.

JFC Ramp/Clown/Suvival Druid is just the drizzling shits to play against, and I had to have seen more than 50% of my games against them today. Im making a ****ing eyesore deck out of spite

I’m playing a guardian clown deck with yogg. I kind of just threw in random cards I liked. I am up to nearly rank 1500 with it from 3000. It is strong - but it can be really hard to fend off aggro decks if you dont ramp into guardians or buffed taunts.

It’s more fun than that god awful pure paladin. That deck is unbeatable. Clown druid seems to be the only deck that can handle it ok.

So I am at about 5k rating in Duels after ~15 runs or so. Here are my thoughts so far. I think I'm pretty good at the mode, my lowest runs are ~5 wins and I'm typically getting 7+ so far. Definitely infinite, I'm up like 1000 gold since I started doing these.

It is a very fun mode but there is definitely gonna be a meta and class archetypes that will consistently pop up. Mage with the ping hero power is definitely the best class. You cannot convince me otherwise. At every point in duels, whether it be the late game or the early game, it puts on a ton of minion pressure and can finish with burn, even at later stages where people have a lot of healing and 40 health.

I would put the second runner up as probably discard zoo or deathrattle hunter. The problem I have with deathrattle hunter is it simply is not very strong in the early stages and relies too heavily on binking good passives. You simply should not rely on getting good passives if you want to make a consistent 6+ win deck. Your goal should be getting 5-8 wins, not 12.

Like yea, some strategies with passives are completely busted. I came up against a death rattle hunter that had reborn deathrattles and they triggered twice. I immediately conceded. No deck in the game can deal with that. Once I came up against a mage who had the 1/1's spawn whenever he lost a minion and all his 2 cost or less minions had poisonous. So I had to face down a board of poisonous 1/1's and mana wyrms the entire game. Yea, if you get something like that, you just automatically get 12 wins. It hasn't happened to me yet, except once I got offered +3 passive spell damage on mage (which I think is one of those "super special" rewards that only happen if you meet special conditions) and that was a total stomping.

Instead, I just go for the basic things. Good, strong curve (most important). Plenty of removal (important in later stages). Board clear. Powerful bombs. Use the same strategies you apply in arena to choose your reward cards. I go for curve first, synergy second sometimes. Sometimes I'll take 2 terrible cards just because the third has a removal card. Every deep run I've had so far has had what (I thought) were garbage passives like caltrops for mage. Turns out caltrops is one of the best mage passives you can get. So don't sleep on stuff because you think it's bad - you'd be surprised what is good.

I can't stress how important it is for late in the run how important removal is. You're gonna be facing 47/47 rush demons with lifesteal (discard warlock) and ****. That crab that eats all the stats of the minion it destroys. Passives that give +1/+1 to minions in your hand. **** gets big QUICK. This is why I struggle with aggro/face decks like enrage warrior - I do great the first 5 games and then I just fall apart. So I started picking executes whenever I could and do a lot better.

I think discardlock is extremely strong. I see a lot of them at 10+ wins. Right out of the gate you get that legendary that is +2/+2 for every card you discard that game. Mash that discard button if you can. It's a 1 mana draw a card basically, super broken.

My favorite decks are probably the mage list I posted earlier, enrage warrior (I don't know why I keep trying it), and discard zoolock. I think druid could probably create a decently powerful guardian/clown deck with a lot of ramp but I'm too afraid to try it. I don't know what the druid strategies are, I only rarely see them and they always try to do janky **** with malygos.

Anyway that's my stream of consciousness review. It's definitely a fun mode, and I recommend playing it more like arena than trying to create a really busted OP deck. Sometimes a deck that just curves strongly is good enough. Everyone else is trying to make the busted, OP decks - they neglect having a strong curve. I see it all the time.

Glad they added a new mode. The game was getting stale for me and I hate BG's. I will admit it is NOT a balanced game mode - if you're looking for a balanced experience, go elsewhere. You're gonna get wafflestomped sometimes and there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes it feels blatantly unfair, but there will also be times where YOU have the unfair deck. I believe the key to going infinite is having decks that can consistently destroy the first 5 games and those are basically the decks I already mentioned. Going deeper than that requires a little luck and good strategy.

Now that im at 5500ish it’s significantly harder to go 6-0 every run. What’s the highest duels rating? I tried to find info and couldnt find any.

I've only done four Duels runs but can confirm it's hella fun. My best was a 6-win run with Demon Hunter. Still getting the hang of it and haven't gone for Mage yet but looking forward to it.

Constructed has gotten pretty wild. That clown card is a joke (yeah I had to go there ).

Duel is not fun when you dusted all your wild cards.
Can't play this.
I did 1 heroic duel, retired at 1 win 2 losses.

You dont really need wild cards honestly. I’ve seen good twelve win decks without them. And the wild cards I’ve seen ran are rarely more than a rare.

Aggro demonhunter is incredibly strong in this standard meta. The aggro that curves out at the top at 3 mana, lol. You’re just looking to get a board to stick in the first two turns and snowball the damage with a mana burn or your minion buff cards. If you dont win by turn 5/6 the game is over. 3-5 minute games, 60% winrate. Only decks designed to beat you really do well against it.

Thank you for the Pure Paladin recommendation. I am something like 8-2 with it so far and it just feels good.

Hit top 500 from 1500 tonight with evolve shaman. It’s very good especially against paladin but i dont quite “get” it yet. There’s times when you need to play for value, other times for tempo, and need to know when to push face. Interesting deck.

Playing secret rogue at high legend on stream today. Strong deck but difficult to pilot. Curious how our resident rogue expert is doing with it

Hovering around top 100 and aggro demonhunter that runs polkelt and skulls of guldan is pretty money.

Here is a truly unstoppable deck that took me to rank 75 yesterday from ~500:

### Slower Aggro
# Class: Demon Hunter
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Phoenix
#
# 2x (1) Battlefiend
# 2x (1) Beaming Sidekick
# 2x (1) Blazing Battlemage
# 2x (1) Demon Companion
# 2x (1) Guardian Augmerchant
# 2x (1) Intrepid Initiate
# 2x (1) Twin Slice
# 2x (2) Bonechewer Brawler
# 2x (2) Cult Neophyte
# 2x (2) Voracious Reader
# 2x (2) Wriggling Horror
# 2x (3) Dreadlord's Bite
# 2x (3) Stiltstepper
# 1x (4) Altruis the Outcast
# 1x (4) Lorekeeper Polkelt
# 2x (6) Skull of Gul'dan
#
AAECAZvoAwLMugP21gMO/acD+a4D4LwD174D3r4D2cYD98gD3MwDgtADxtEDi9UDzd0Dz90 DyuMDAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone


This deck is just absurd. The hot starts it can get are unreal and the pressure it applies before turn 5 is very difficult even for control decks like ETC warrior to deal with sometimes. You should always be looking to secure a victory by turn 5-6 or at the very least taking them down to ~15 health or less by then. If you can't do that, you very likely have lost if your opponent has many cards left.

Lorekeeper Polkelt and the skulls of guldan are an innovation I don't see a ton of people running yet but it is seriously amazing. The game roughly goes like this:

Do a lot of damage with a hot start. Your opponent finally stabilizes but has taken a lot of damage - ideally sitting around 10-12 health. You play polkelt on 5. He spends his next turn removing the polkelt and/or building a board, and you play skull of guldan. He thinks he has finally won - he has the board and you have no way to clear it! Uh oh, nope, here comes a discounted altruis, and your 0 cost 3 mana cards that all do 4 damage a piece.

Then the next turn you either play the second skull to build up your altruis further, or you go in with altruis, clear their board and either kill them outright or take them very low. Then it's typically a concede at that point.

Polkelt + the skulls gives the deck a second wind and a strong finisher that the other DH aggro decks just don't have. I absolutely love it.

Mulligan is too complicated to get into in depth but it's very important. I recommend consulting a mulligan chart, because every matchup is different and you need to play around the various removals. Here's some general guidelines and tricks I've learned:

- Statistically, blazing battlemage is a stronger T1 opener than battlefiend. Don't ask me why, but I've seen the data and my own experience backs this up.

- The strongest possible opening is intrepid initiate + coin + beaming sidekick. This gives you a 3/4 and a 1/2 on turn 1! Follow it up with a wriggling horror and you have the best possible t1/t2 opening and it's basically impossible to lose when you pull it off.

- Intrepid initiate + another 1 drop is about the best mulligan you can have on the coin

- Beaming sidekick is generally great to keep in the mulligan hoping you can get a 1 drop to pair it with

- I keep skull of guldan sometimes if it's outcast on the far left of my hand, especially against warrior and priest

- Lorekeeper polkelt is a borderline keep against warrior and priest, especially on the coin. I've been keeping it more and more, but against priest, be careful of madam lazul if you've built up a big discounted hand..

- Against warrior mulligan extremely aggressively and go for the face as hard as you can

- Against soul DH, you really want buffed 4 health minions to avoid their AOE. Beaming sidekick is really important here. Against most matchups, actually, you wanna try to build a 4 health or divine shield minion to protect against removal. Most removal does 3 damage. Use this to your advantage.

- Voracious reader is a decent keep sometimes against aggro mirror especially when paired with something like augmerchant coined out on turn 2

Um I can think of a ton of other stuff if anyone is interested. General playstyle is to go for the face, push as much damage as possible, but also you need to make strategic trades when it protects a minion or your board. Know that if they are above 20 health and it is turn 8, you have most likely lost the game, so don't waste your time on games you have no chance of winning, just concede if it feels impossible to win because it probably is. You wanna grind volume with this deck. Get in, win, get out.

Also, one last thing - avoid playing polkelt on turn 4 unless you can coin into guldan. That leaves you basically crippled for a turn because you draw 2 skulls in a row. Then you use the skull - it's just way too slow.

I don't have any Stillsteppers or Lorekeeper Polekelt, but I like the idea of having a really solid aggro option in my decklists. I don't play aggro often, but when I do, I like the feeling of, "Oh wow, this is busted"