Hearthstone: One Month into Gadgetzan

So I've been quiet about Hearthstone thanks to real life being busy as all fuck and Pokemon's seventh generation kind of consumes a lot of my gaming/entertainment time. I do log in a couple of games in Hearthstone every day to get rid of my daily quests and stock up on gold, and I do have a large stockpile of gold that went straight into arena runs to get more Gadgetzan packs. Mages, apparently, are nowhere the powerhouse they used to be in Gadgetzan-era Arena, and I feel that I find the best results with Arena Paladin actually this time around... though of course your mileage may vary on that.

"The secret army rises!"

So what have I been doing in Gadgetzan? Well, thankfully the first few packs I cracked open gave me a Dragonfire Potion, the insanely powerful Drakonid Operative (what a well designed card, that one) and a couple of other Priest cards, so I just swapped some cards around in my Dragon Priest deck and that was awesome. What I really wanted to play were the Jade Lotus stuff, so after not encountering much in lieu of the Jade Lotus card I just broke down and crafted Aya Blackpaw. The first Jade Lotus deck I played was actually Jade Rogue, a deck I kind of scoffed at because I don't think it would be as stable as Jade Shaman, nor would it be as powerful as Jade Druid.

I still think Jade Druid is better thanks to its sustainability and generally not fully relying on Jade Golems, while still having ways to buff the board en masse, but Jade Rogue is actually... pretty freaking good! Rogues might need a stronger 1-mana drop than Swashburglar (though the Pirate stuff which I'll talk about later might actually help out) but going from turn 2 Jade Swarmer into turn 3 Unearthed Raptor is phenomenally awesome, and Jade Shuriken is a far, far more awesome card than I give it credit for.

Surprisingly, Rogue survives, and not just the Jade kind either -- Miracle Rogue is still as deadly as ever, and Pirate variants are also incredibly deadly. It's actually Hunter that got hit the hardest and reduced to the class I see the least of, because while Paladin wins out by having Smuggler's Run, as well as the Grimestreet Outfitter and Protector buffing your entire hand at once, while Warriors are just durable so they can afford to play things out more slowly (plus they have a lot of taunts and enrage minions that just benefit from buffs) Hunters just kind of have trouble splitting their buffs between Beasts and non-Beast cards that buff, and that makes the consistency of Grimy Goon Hunter decks kind of suck.

"Golems are a girl's best friend!"

Since I have Aya, the next deck I tried to complete was a version of Jade Druid. I don't have Kun so I can't do the insane end-game combos that some people do, but Jade Druid is awesome -- especially since I already have Fandral, and Fandral allows for some absolutely dirty combos.

Aya herself is pretty freaking awesome, though, because she combos so well with Brann Bronzebeard and N'Zoth the Corrupted.

I soared around with Dragon Priest and Jade Rogue/Druid for a bit until I finally cracked my first Gadgetzan Legendary from a pack... Raza the Chained! Which was a 'will this be an awesome card' moment for me. It's nowhere as terrible-sounding as Herald Volazj, but time will tell if it's actually as good as it seems. As it turns out? Reno Priest is amazing, and the deck that Raza caused me to craft was absolutely insanely fun to play. The strength doesn't lie in Raza alone, but the sheer amounts of heal that Reno Priest now has in its deck -- Greater Healing Potion adds so much more recovery options, and is basically like a second mini-Reno in your deck. Kabal Songstealer is a very powerful silence effect, and frankly probably the only good silencer card in the game. Suddenly Nexus-Champion Saraad is insanely awesome, and Shadowform is actually an amazing card to play in this deck as well thanks to having my hero power be set to zero. I'm waffling at trying to get Auctionmaster Beardo or Garrison Commander in because they allow me to heal or Shadowblast people twice, but they're expensive cards to craft.

"Surrender your will to the Kabal."

Raza is just awesome, because, yeah, there's the potential that just having a 0-mana hero power that heals isn't good enough, but being a Priest means that you can do a lot of fancy stuff by healing high-health minions, and cards like Saraad and Kvaldir Raider really benefit from free Inspire triggers. Turns out that, hey, when you don't have to pay the huge stat discount in summoning them and triggering their effects, Saraad finally reaches the full potential that I knew it could reach. And the single copy of Shadowform almost doesn't matter, since as a Priest you're likely to draw into it anyway since you can sustain yourself.

And the huge keystone to Reno decks nowadays? Kazakus, which gets my vote for the best-designed card of the game. I harped about Kazakus before in my card reviews, but he's just such an insane card with so many things it can do, and so much skill involved in choosing whether you need like a cheap spell, an expensive spell, removal, recovery, whether it's better to summon a stable 5/5 or 8/8 demon or roll the dice to do the Resurrection effect, whether it's better to draw a card or armor up... so yeah, I crafted Kazakus next and I didn't regret it ever since.

"Finally. A worthy disciple."

Demon Warlock was the next deck I tried out, and I don't really have all the demon cards out there so it's not as stable as I hoped it would be... but Crytalweaver is unexpectedly awesome, Abyssal Enforcer is amazing and Bloodfury Potion isn't as horrible as I expected it would be. The problem is that Warlock doesn't have enough demons in the 4 to 6 mana slot, so after the slew of powerful 1 and 2 mana drops, and the 3-drop Imp Gang Boss, you kind of have to wait until turn 7 to drop your Abyssal Enforcer, maybe a Doomguard on 5 (Doomguard's a lot more situational, though). Fearsome Doomguard and Dread Infernal are... interesting options, but I don't feel like they do enough.

I did crack open a Krul the Unshackled, which is... not that good of a card, it turns out, because the one or two time that it works and summons a Doomguard, an Infernal, an Abyssal, a Pit Lord and a couple of Imps is absolutely awesome, and Krul itself has such an awesome artwork and great effects, but the fact that Krul's effect only works on Reno decks means that there's only so many good demons you can put in. Maybe in Wild Krul will someday be awesome, but at this moment he's a cool, but impractical, legendary.

I didn't really mess around with the Goons all that much. As I mentioned above, Hunters kind of suck at the moment, which was surprising. I tried to make a deck, but a combination of not having all the cards (I'm missing Rat Pack and Knuckles) and the deck generally not being consistent enough to reliably buff properly, means that it's a bit of a difficult deck to pilot even if having a 15/15 King Krush slam your enemy's face is awesome as all hell.

"I'm in charrrrge now."

Buff Warrior is decent, but the real power is the Gadgetzan variant of Pirate Warrior. I played Pirate Warrior a bit during Old Gods, but it always lacked early-game power when all you have to play is N'Zoth's First Mate (which is a phenomenal card, but lacks support) on turn one. Well, Gadgetzan raises the deck from weak third-tier deck to easily the most powerful aggro deck in the meta. It's probably not as punishing as Face Hunter from pre-standard, but seeing the Warrior coin a N'Zoth's First Mate, a Southsea Deckhand that summons a Patches... that's a 1/1 body, a 2/1 with Charge, a 1/1 with Charge and a 1/3 weapon on turn one. Patches is seen as an annoyance most of the time, but reliably getting a 1/1 charger body on the first turn or two for free is just insanely powerful, because you suddenly experience a tempo loss, and anything you put out in turn 1 or 2 kind of gets fucked over pretty quickly. Add that to the Warriors able to buff their Fiery War Axes and Arcanite Reapers with things like Upgrade, Bloodsail Cultist, Hobart Grapplehammer and a bunch of others just makes Pirate Warrior so much more powerful. I don't have Patches yet, and even the version of the deck without him is already wrecking house. Mostly because of Small-Time Buccaneer. You get a 1-mana 3/2 that also triggers other Pirate effects like Patches and Bloodsail Cultist and that's really, really powerful. It's a card that no one saw coming, and it's just awesome.

"Seeing double?"
"Seeing triple?"

The version with Patches? It's just murdering everything on the ladder, but yet it's nowhere as oppressive as previous OP decks. You can get around it quickly by playing other aggro decks, Midrange/Jade Shamans can use Maelstrom Portals to take out the initial pirate swarm, Dragon Priests survive by dropping over-statted over-healthed Blackwing Technicians and Twilight Whelps to tank the pirates... it's a powerful deck, but not an overpowered one.

Goon Paladin is an interesting deck that I think requires a lot more refining and probably better buff targets to really excel. Unlike Buff Hunter, who have Dispatch Kodo and Rat Pack to directly benefit from being buffed (except the rest of their Goon kit is kind of unreliable, so poor Hunter), all that I feel happy about when buffing my Paladin cards are, well, other buffing cards. Doppelgangster, Wickerflame and Tirion are like the only others that are good buff targets with synergizing effects, and I feel they're not quite enough. Doppelgangster is very cool, by the way... dude's apparently a Faceless guy and that suddenly makes his replication effect make sense.

"Mrglrglrllglrlglrlglrgl"

One deck I'm having surprising success playing with is Murloc Shaman, which I didn't think was possible... but I just clicked on the 'Murloc Association' deck recipe, filled up the missing holes that was Finja and the second Corrupted Seer with other Murlocs, and mother of all fucks it's just so much power. Yeah, the first few turns might be a gamble, but then come turn four, and you drop Call in the Finishers. You summon four 1/1 Murlocs, maybe drop a 0-mana Murloc Tinyfin, and suddenly Anyfin can Happen gets reduced to zero cost. It's an amazing deck that's a bit tricky to pilot and definitely relies on good draws, but damn, between Anyfin can Happen, Bloodlust and Murloc Warleaders, I've gotten boards that just reduce an enemy's health from 25 to 0 in a turn. Man, Call in the Finishers.... what a great card. Murloc Shaman (and a bit of Reno Priest) single-handedly punted me all the way up to rank 10 this season, and I wasn't even trying at all.

What else is there to talk about? I didn't touch Mage at all this expansion, simply because I didn't get any of the good cards. A lot of the new Mage cards are decent in Arena, but some, like Freezing Potion, are just sub-par cards that kind of bring down Mage's consistency in the Arena and it's a good thing. My old Karazhan-era Tempo Mage list is still performing well with minimal changes, and I have nowhere enough cards (nor do I have Inkmaster Solia) to really make it work.

"Prepare the mech-o-chicken!"

My Legendary haul in this expansion is surprisingly extremely awesome. It's probably the expansion where I got the most legendaries in such a short period of time. Yes, I crafted Aya Blackpaw straight off the bat, and Kazakus a couple of weeks later, but still, I have pretty good luck this time around. I got Raza the Chained within my first 10 packs, and a short while after that I get Krul the Unshackled. Then I get Hobart Grapplehammer (which is surprisingly better than I expected him to be) and then a second Hobart Grapplehammer, who immediately got dusted to provide sustenance to create Kazakus. And then I get Wickerflame Burnbristle, which is a pretty decent dude to have around in a buff paladin deck.

No, I don't have all the Legendaries I want yet. At the very least, I do want Don Han'Cho, Wrathion, Patches and Finja before the expansion is over... and both Solia and Kun sound fun as well. But it's a lot less than the Legendaries I still don't have from older expansions like TGT and WOTOG.

Hell, even where Epics are concerned I also have far better luck than I did during, say, Old Gods. The epic cards I wanted -- Dragonfire Potion, Mana Geode (who's not that good), Meanstreet Marshal... plus a bunch of the less-spectacular neutrals. The only Epic card I don't have and I really want is Kabal Trafficker and Rat Pack, and compared to my Epic wish-list for other expansions it's a surprisingly short list.

I'm not sure if that's simply because I got so many cards early on thanks to a combination of a lot of gold, relatively successful arena runs (I'd like to think I'm a fair bit more skillful than I was a couple of expansions ago) and a bunch of free packs early on, but it's overall been a very fun expansion for me.

Most of my reviews for the cards all end up being more or less correct, which is a nice bit for me personally. I underrated Small-Time Buccaneer and Jade Rogue a little (though I never said Rogue was going to be bad, I didn't expect it to be as stable as Shaman), and I overestimated Buff Hunter, but overall I've been mostly accurate.