I had a couple of spots in a few patron games the last few days that I thought were sort of tricky.

First one is early turn Vs a Hunter.





T4, Don't know what the trap is. I saved coin for T3 Deathsbite/Dreadcorsair after playing T2 armor smith. He went Scientist, bow.

Not a huge impact, but notice that the Armosmith is Silenced.

I"m trying Crane's deck (hence the Korkron).


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2nd one is deeper against a Reno lock.




Lock still has 17 cards left.

He already played Feungen so if we kill Stalag Thaddius is coming out. First of all, is there lethal if not what is the play?

Our Hero power is Hunter

Looks like exact lethal on the second hand if I'm not mistaken.
Acolyte
Acolyte
Coin
WW

Death's bite to face
finley into stalagg
inner rage on frothing

Yeah that looks like a lethal I didn't spot, had a blind spot for Patron math once I was like "wait is this lethal". There is another one that I found with Patron's, but unfortunately I rope coached before realizing Finley put it over, a little bit more annoying to find due to patron spawns.

Yours is:
3 from frothing start
4 from DB
10 from 2 5 minion WW's
2 from finley into Stalaag
3 from Inner rage
= 22

With the hunter HP you can switch out coin + acolyte for that also.

I could be a Hunter trap fish, but this is how I'd play it:

I would 100% run the armorsmith into the owl as play #1.


If snake trap, I'd follow up with Acolyte + Whirlwind, run Dread into face.

If freezing trap, I'd probably replay the Armorsmith and run Dread into the ironbeak. (I'm willing to admit this is probably a very weak play).

If no trap triggers I'm running Dread into face.

If Explosive trap, I'm playing Finley + Acolyte
If Bear trap, I'm playing Acolyte, hitting bear with weapon, and playing Finley.

ppl covered the 2nd one so on the 1st...

if he missed t1 drop i suppose its mroe likely to be mid than face which means trap is unlikely to be explosive. he silenced the smith which also makes freeze unlikely. i think you trigger the trap by hitting owl with smith, that always happens. if it's snakes you play acolyte and whirlwind and hold the weapon. if it doesnt t rigger its bear and you go face with corsair then hit bear with weapon and play korkron to the face. if it is freeze id just take it slow and replay the 4 mana smith and clear 2/1 with 3/3 bc he still has to swing bow into the 3/1 which allows you to hold weapon

if it actually IS explosive, it's still fine, once you go face w/ 3/3 you just hold weapon and still just korkron his face.

note that all plays build your board, sometimes creates cycle, also push face damage. all good things. you're in real good shape. reading response above:

No, you cannot play finley on t4 vs hunter until theyve shown themselves to not be face. shield up way too strong against aggro or hybrid to merit swapping, esp bc you have a full 4 mana play (if you had no korkron bigger argument to just gain presence)

even if its midrange hunter i still want armor up, at least right now. you can win by being defensive and just having 1 patron, midrange crumbles hard vs 3/3s.

i dont know the specific patron list that runs finley (seems super weird to me) but this does not seem like the matchup i am happy to swap hero powers

Yeah no way I was playing Finley here against hunter unless it was later and I could get some instant value. FWIW, finley is being played in lots of lists. Saiyan was palying him (which was Cranes #1 EU list modified) and Zalae was also. Seemed fun so I tried Crane's list first. This one is basically sameish as post nerf with Korkron's instead of Shredders, Ghouls not Pyro's and no Rag.

Finley is pretty good because you can still do the big armor plays with Smith for Aggro and Fireblast is just insane in the deck (execute/patrons/acolytes) Life tap is life tap, heal is ok for keeping minions topped with all the WW's. Hard to say this early if it is better with or without, but it is certainly not bad and fun.

Gonna start really using this thread as I start learning new classes.

Is there a clear cut fav play here? I feel like I am messing up these early spots too often and wrecking games before they get started. Playing standard (I think?) Oil Rouge.

Its between dp thalnos and FoK hit. I think I like fan then hit imp best. It means you have thalnos evis for an imp gang boss next turn if you don't draw a 4 drop and if he doesn't do anything you could even pop the egg and eviscerate the 4/4

I punch the flame imp with poison dagger and pass. Feels bad to float 2 mana. But it is the least amount of cards to clear the threat. You could potentially develop Thalnos with that line. He can't pop the egg on Thalnos, and zoo board usually doesn't take much more than a 3 hit flurry to clear with. The worst he could do is implosion Thalnos if you did play it and you already have the answer to Implosion in hand.

That hand is not a hand I like to see on turn 3 btw. I wanna at least drop farseer or something by turn 3.

I don't run farseer. 2 agents, 2 FoK and 1 BGH are all my 3 drops in that deck.

I ended up clearing the imp with poison and playing thalnos. I'm going to get a card out of it at worst almost every time and I'd rather have some presnese on board than not.

Pretty level 1 reasoning but felt decent at the time. Obviously I wasn't confident in it.

Poison and thalnos ezpz

Da hawk, level 1 thinking is best in like 95% of turns

This gotta play Thalnos here

Why not DP, sap the flame imp and hit the egg?

So you get hit for 4 next turn, but he gets hit for 3 when he resummons the imp

You can then run thalnos into FOK or eviscerate+ the second charge of DP should clear most of his plays, whereas if you already have thalnos out then if you leave the egg and cast FOK then you're leaving the 4/4 to hit you anyway

I suppose it drops your life lower than necessary but you do have loetheb for the following turn so it could buy you some time to draw oil or whatnot. It's just that you'll have to kill that 4/4 eventually so why not get it sooner rather than later?

Better sap targets like Void Callers or w/e comes out of one.

Agree DP/Thalnos 100% IMO, you want to find a flurry and your 4 drops and preps. Might save you some face damage too.

Good chance sap and Evics are good next turn. I use sap pretty aggressive against zoo to deny all the battlecry value and keep the board. If he drops VC with coin saving sap might make sense, but you can often kill Mal'ganis w/o much difficulty so hand dependent.

Not 100% sure on this T1 play. I'm playing Maly Miracle. We can clear. Coin will be valuable for a while with this great starting hand.

Obvious clear or not?

This could be confirmation bias on my part, but it seems like way more often than not, I find myself getting punished by not removing something like this when I have the chance, so I coin-bloodmage-prep-fan as you suggest and feel good about it. Yes, it's clunky, but you draw a card from fan, and a card from bloodmage deathrattle, so to me it's worth it. Very interested in the take of others.

would probably clear. its a two for one so not bad. he probably hero powers next, you dagger up, then go from there.

man, using coin prep fan turn one with teacher and si in hand makes my skin crawl

that said, if you dont do it, that shade is pretty much unremovable barring some insane top decks

i prob dont do it and regret it later

what is your other line most likely? druid isnt going to play anything you could coin-SI to kill next turn. probably plays darnassus or wild growth, so youd dagger up on two while the shade gets bigger and his things start hitting you.

Man now that i finally understand whats going on in the hh im totally torn. Everything d104 says is true, everything everyone else says is true as well. Awful spot.

Less awful bc you actually can do something about it. Mages have it easy with coin flamecannon!

more i think about it, it's correct to clear it now

given that he's playing shade, its prob midrange and not aggro, so fan is a really low value card in the match

you're gonna get to cycle 2 cards out of the play, so hopefully some good spells come your way to play with teacher