[PC] Hearthstone - open beta card game from blizzard

I love when the new season starts, so many idiots to play again.

I just played as Aggro mage (which he should have known by turn 5) against a druid with 2 secrets up (mirror and counterspell, very standard) with a mad scientist and 2x 0/2 taunts on board and fireball in hand. He plays a mountain giant (I know, wtf, especially with 2 taunts on board), I copy it. I fireball his and smash my scientist in it, getting a new mirror entity, which he really should know about now what it is. What does he do, he plays a sea giant... I mean the retards... Gotta love lvl19 noobs. :D

But when!

So the expansion is almost here, it's coming out on the 9th. However they are already making some changes and have added (some of) the cards to Arena.
The changed cards are Flare and Auctioneer, I would advice disenchanting as many as you can miss, as you can just remake them later on.
Both were increased in mana costs, so 2 mana for Flare and 6 for the 4/4 Auctioneer.

Personally I disenchanted all of them, had 6 flares (100 dust a piece) and 2 auctioneers, 1 of them being gold (800 gold), so that was a easy 1500 that normally would have gotten me 240 dust. :D
And yeah, I haven't disenchanted anything since they announced in september that more cards were coming.

I know Miracle players will be pissed. They clearly made that deck pretty hard to win with now (Ofcourse rogues arent the only ones that use that card). I cant wait to see the new cards in action. Maybe this time the Rogue class cards will be useful

I've found my absolute favorite card: Annoy-A-Tron! The name, the art and its function they fit so well together it cracks me up :D

I'm gonna try some Enchance-o Mechano rush decks :) (paladin will be OP)

Haven't been able to get any packs since the shop is still down, but I'm watching quite a bit of Twitch, and there is some crazy stuff in there.

I really have no idea what I'm gonna play yet, so hard to see what's good now, which I guess is great, because the options of different decks increased a lot.

Shaman cards are really strong. Wish they lowered some of the mana costs of the rogue cards (ccomboss can be aannoying)

I think it's great how many more options you'll have for decks. So far it's been pretty boring to see the talk like "he has this deck or that deck", like the different types of decks are so few you can actually name them all.

Yeah there is lots of crazy stuff going on now. I mean sure some of the decks are just variations on older decks, but even so, it still makes it so unpredictable what people will play. Ok so you see a undertaker, what's next? It doesn't mean anymore that it's the standard loot hoarder, leper gnome, haunted creepter etc. There are just so many variations.
You can also so see that they done a lot to make certain niche decks possible, pirates, murlocs, but also things like Demonlock etc.

And then there are just completely new decks, like Mage deck that focusses on spare parts, only to pop Antonidas with a stealth part. Or mill Druid.

Definitely fun to see it all, for now I'm not making any cards, not only am I still hoping they will introduce some nerfs the coming month (which would make sense, since you usually get some 'op cards'), but I really don't want to make a card that I will get from a pack shortly after. :P

PS Got a golden Dr Boombot, pretty cool card. Can't say how good it is, but it's definitely a fun card. :D

- Loving the new cards that buff Rogue weapons.
- I havent received or created the new 2/3 mech that buffs my wep +1, but the Oil (which buffs my wep to +3 and combos to buff the Attack of a random friendly minion by 3) sure helps finishing people off.
- Assassin's Blade + Oil + minion + blade flury is pretty fun :D:
- The Windfury mech + cold blood is fun too; havent tried the new 3 mana taunt/charge card, but it isnt a mech :(:
- Annoy-A-Tron is pretty annoying and that mage 2/3 mech is too (freeze is stupid)

Currently winning by going to the edge (last 10 won games Ive been below 8 health); going need to try and fix that with some taunt monsters and maybe some bulky ones (but then my combos will be even harder to do -.-)

I really love all the new Paladin cards. Like I've said, Paladin was dead in Naxx, Aggro was absolutely shit, simply because other aggro decks had major advantages, either through more synergy with Undertaker (Hunter) or other powerful 1 drops (Mage, Warlock), and with cards like Sludge it just completely killed it. Control Paladin was decent enough, but obviously very expensive, still it was just weaker in most cases than Warrior, where Warrior mulligans for Fiery War Axe against aggro, Paladins could fight back the earliest at 4 with Wild Pyromancer/Equality combo, or if the board was all low health minions, Consecrate. After that you could stabilize in some cases, but the damage was too much in most cases. Warrior just had way more answers, whereas they are similar in strength in lategame.

So that has changed bigtime. There are now so many good early game cards that you could actually go for full aggro again, with Undertaker + Clockwork Gnome + Leper Gnome you got your turn 1, after that there are enough choices.
But even if you don't go that route, you can just go Annoy a Tron, Shielded Minibot, Coghammer etc against aggro, stabilizing a bit and fight back Muster for Battle (later Quartermaster), and if the meta shifts to deathrattles again, well just play a Scarlet Purifier.
So you can go a lot of ways to either go full aggro, beat aggro and go mid range, or just go control with those early defensive drops. In the end you got 3 different kind of builds that are all very strong.

And for those lacking a lot of the legendaries, that's ok, aggro is cheap and mid should be ok, 1 very strong Paladin was shown with only 3 legendaries, Loatheb, Tirion and Dr. Boom (Strifecro's Kinguin Paladin), so for a mid range that's really affordable. Aggro could be made without legendaries for sure.

Personally I'm gonna make a aggro and control one, just busy building it right now, but not sure if I should replace certain cards:

Equality x2
Annoy-o-Tron x2
Ironbeak Owl x1
Shielded Minibot x2
Coghammer x2
Muster for Battle x2
Aldor Peacekeeper x2
Big Game Hunter x1
Truesilver Champion x2
Consecration x2
Enhance-o Mechano x1
Loatheb x1
Quartermaster x2
Sludge Belcher x2
Cairne Bloodhoof x1
The Black Knight x1
Dr. Boom x1
Guardian of Kings x1
Lay on Hands x1
Tirion Fordring x1

I lack some cards, but I can craft them, but I want to use Harrison Jones in this deck as well (got it as well), so I'm considering dropping a Quartermaster. Frankly there is a good chance I will used 1 Muster early on to fight against aggro, possibly in combo with Equality, so combo probably won't happen until turn 8 or 10. Harrison Jones with all the weapons right now is just really good.
I considered cutting other cards, but the lower mana cards are simply needed to fight off aggro, whereas the later cards are just so good, none of them are easy to deal with. And frankly once I go late, I prefer cards like Sludge, Cairne, Black Knight and Guardian over the aggro card Quartermaster.

Holy crap just had the most exciting game ever. My heart is still racing how crazy that was.

Playing my Paladin control vs a Warrior control, his early game was quite strong, at turn 10 I ended up with 1/3 weapon in hand (Muster), a 1/1 on board against Iron Juggernaut (that places a 10 damage mine somewhere in your deck) and a armor smith on the board. Now I drew the mine straight away and dropped to 1, with the warrior at 25+. I had in my hand Tirion, Lay on Hands and 2 non relevant cards. I did the math and basically only had those 2 cards to keep me alive, however since Tirion can be countered to easily, I went for Lay on Hands, hoping to draw 1 of my 2 equalities... and I did. Killed the armor smith with weapon and Iron Juggernaut with dude.
He tried his best after that to take me down, and finally drew his Grommash, but he had no damage, so he went for 4, second equality + dude took that out, Guardian of Kings, Black Knight and others were able to keep me alive, even through 2 Brawls, giving me the win in the end, which actually quite funny, I had 5 dudes + Quartermaster on board, he used the Bouncing Blade, but it obviously only killed one, leaving him out to dry. :D

PS I ended up replacing the Quartermaster with Harrison, not sure how good he really is, Black Knight has given me value in every game, Harrison has definitely not, I guess the 1 mana less makes him ok though, even when the enemy has no weapon, because even though 5/4 is shit, you still need to deal with it.

Currently at 9 wins 3 losses and rank 10. I will try to get Legendary this month, playing this deck feels really good, which is something that I haven't felt for a while, the only deck I enjoyed somewhat was Mage aggro, which had like a 70% winratio over 35 games, but playing more then 3-4 games became boring, because it's just so straight forward, aka boring.


Update: Rank 9, 17 wins 7 losses for a winratio of 71%
Winrate against the following classes:
Mage 50% (4)
Warlock 86% (7) 6 of them handlock btw
Hunter 0% (2)
Warrior 100% (1)
Shaman 67% (3)
Druid (0)
Priest 75% (4)
Paladin 100% (3)
Rogue (0)

While I can deal with some aggro, it's still a very hard match up. Still considering I don't encounter that much aggro atm, which is kind of surprising, since zoo and huntard are still cancer. Once I go late game, it's usually too hard for my enemies to fight back. I guess I just got too many answers for most decks. I mean while handlock does require a lot of thinking, the simple fact is that there is so many answers in Paladin, you just need to be patient, build the board and make sure you have enough to deal with 2 giants and taunts when you put him down low enough.

PS the winratio is consistent, in my last 10 games I won 7 and lost 3.

So it's been released on Android now (though not in our region just yet but very soon). So I'm considering buying a tablet just for Hearthstone but it doesn't feel right so give me some other reasons to justify buying a tablet! :D Also wondering if I should go for one of the lower-end tablets or if I'll find other uses later and then regret I didn't buy a better one.

(A christmas present to myself!?)

Well personally I wouldn't buy a Android tablet, but that's me.

There are quite a few Windows 8 tablets for very lower prices, like 105 euro incl shipping. This would be a full Windows 8 tablet with a Intel Atom (Bay Trail) processor, 2GB memory, 32GB space, slots for microSD, micro HDMI, micro USB and basically everything you need.
A friend of mine has one and I installed Hearthstone on it to try, it works flawlessly on medium settings.

The one he got is: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/VOYO-...971153520.html
There are also larger ones, like 10 inch models with nearly thesame dimensions and same resolution as the latest iPads.