Random ideas

Am I the only one who believe autism and nerd people are the best candidates to lead humanity?

Apparently not,

Guide to mid range decks

Gonna write something like this to new players. I believe this will open up new possibilities for new players, so then they can see that Hearthstone has other ways to reach success (or satisfaction) other than playing zoo herp derp and wonder why the game is so boring.

Legend

Yeah I got legend today

Solely with Handlock, I made a chance by playing Doomsayer and Sunwalker though. I think they are pretty good at dealing with early game rushers (pretty much every class does this), while Sunwalker can temporary stops the incoming faceroll of midrange decks, or at least absorb some burn damages/silences from control decks.

The trip to legend was like, I was at Rank 1 Innkeeper 2 stars, then I meet Massan playing Shaman. I try my best to put pressure on him, instead of going defensive (I think this route is better, if you are the defender, you might risk losing to every Earthshock/Hex). The game comes to a point where I run out of big minions and him run out of Hexes, but ultimately Alex and the last Molten seal the deal. Then I lose to Bebe playing Freeze mage (no giant version). It sucks because I eat 2 Blizzards and 2 Freeze wave(?) (the spell that costs 3 mana). He eventually stalls to turn 10 thanks to 2 Ice Blocks and Pyroblast me though. Then come my next opponent, TidesofTime playing Druid token. I think in my head there comes my loss streak, but he plays Druid, I might stand a chance. I got Doomsayer in starting hand, but no Mountain/Drake. I keep the Doomsayer anyway, and it paid off as it kills the minion from Power of the Wild, and I eventually keep my board under control thanks to back to back Sunwalkers. Alex comes in but I have to heal myself. It's alright as 8/8 is good enough to control the board. I win shortly afterward because he runs out of steam.

I keep going back and forth at my last 2 stars to reach legend, but I do remember well that my last opponent is a Paladin control. I know Equality is a card, so I try my best to put good minions on board, but not enough to guarantee an auto win Equality. The game gets to a point where we both are exhausted of resource, but I game him from 30 to 0 through summoning Alex, battlecry, Power Overwelming on my Earthen Ring, double Soulfires for game (4 cards combo... not happen often but it's nice to know when all giants died, and Leeroy is busy lurking somewhere).

That's it.

Feel free to add me as friend if you want to study Handlock together with me :)

Dzn#1664

Handlock vs ControlWarrior

Tbh, this matchup is pretty bad for Handlock because: your deck has very strong minions (Drakes, Giants), but they are limited in number. I can say, you have to draw at least 2 between 2 Drakes and 2 Mountains to to be able to control the board, but that way isn't optimal because Shield Slam and Execute exist. 2 Molten are out of the picture here, because you are in Gromash's range if you risk your life too low to be able to summon Molten.

And then today? It was just a troll game in casual mode, but I was able to play something fancy like this to end the game, while he was at 26 HP:

Leeroy + PO + PO (6mana, 14 dmg)

Coin

Faceless (5mana, 14dmg)

GG O_0

I was keeping coin because I want to do a strong play like summoning Mountain + Siphon Soul something big. But it turned out to be better than expected. Yeah, why should I bother try Mountain+Siphon? Because, the turn you play Siphon is generally a weak turn, you kill something (in my case, I killed an Ysera), but you develop nothing on board, so your opponent can again play something big on board next turn, and you have to catch up with him again. Playing Mountain/Molten along with Siphon will dismiss that poor outcome.

Another way to win vs ControlWarrior is to play a Cairne. Just one is enough to draw out almost all of his removals. But atm ControlWarrior isnt as popular as Miracle Rogue, so Cairne just doesn't make the cut.

Sense Demons, illidan and friends?

First, I would like you guys to take a look at this deck: 

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/54115-sense-demons-handlock-w-analysis-mulligan-guide (credit to SirFunchalot_Hearthpwn)

Basically, it's a deck that has the skeleton of standard handlock, but instead of playing optional burst (Leeroy + Faceless), he plays Sense Demons and Illidan. Well people may say Illidan is pretty bad (or rather, not fit) in this meta, but Sense Demons is something worth taking attention. I was from an Yugioh background, so I value searcher quite high. In general, searchers make your deck:

- easier to get to your needed pieces of combo/key cards.

- more linear (bad thing, because you are now more vulnerable to anti meta cards).

We may suppose that if the card you need to get from Sense Demons is strong enough, we would run it anyway. Jaraxxus is the case here. Very annoying, but sadly in this meta it doesn't fare well because almost all top tier decks have a way to make a huge burst at turn 9-10.

Another card to take attention is Void Terror. This thing actually gives benefit from comboing with Curse of Narasmaxx's cards.

Lesson learned: Don't disenchant your golden Sense Demons :)

How to play against Hunter as Handlock

Alright, the mid range hunter hype has finally died, but face hunter (or aggro hunter, the one that runs Abusive sergeant and Leper gnome) is still there. This short article helps you understand how to defeat hunter using a very risky style (lol, since when Handlock isn't risky?)

You know, hunter is quite weak in term of defense, the face hunter typically doesn't run any taunts or hp restorers, so every attack is worth calculating. The general rule of thumb is to summon every spare minion as possible to damage his face, save Argus/Sunfury because you need them to wrap big bosses like Drakes, giants.

Don't waste soulfires and power overwhelming! For example, if they have Companion into Misha, and you have Soulfire + Drake/Mountain in hand, don't Soulfire that Misha! It sucks if next turn your Drake will eat a Hunter's Mark, but that's it, better let hunter mark your early game minions than your last defense minions like Moltens.

Bait out Marks and Kill commands as soon as possible (preferably turn 4 or 5). You don't want to lose to 2x Kill commands turn 7 or 8 when you are having a nice field of giants/drakes taunted.

Do I need to clear their weenies? (Leper, Abusive etc, even Arcane Golem and Wolf rider) If you don't have taunted big dudes, you must clear them. Else, you can go to his face instead. If he's greedy and use Mark on taunted Watcher, that's a good thing for you.

Always calculate to secure a way to have lethal next turn. Generally this involves some crazy early calculation like how many times you have to tap + predict the amount of damage he could deal in order to bring yourself to molten giant's range. Usually the best I could pull off is a play that lead me to lethal next turn, unless he has leeroy. Well Leeroy is leeroy, you can't play around everything.

So yeah, typically, it comes down to this (tl;dr):
- You win thanks to double Moltens
or
- You win thanks to multiple mountain/drake
or
- You win thanks to Leeroy burst

These methods all require you to be brave a hit hunter's face a few times, ignoring his board. Let me quote a famous yugioh phrase "Life Point is nice, but I only need 1 to beat you". Probably I get used to play vs hunter so now I actually enjoy getting paired against them (don't even need any specific build). But damn mage is still lurking around and their burst damage is so damn cheap and effective. Lol you can't always assume that he's having Frost Bolt, Lance, Lance, Fireball=17 dmg at 8 mana, so after clearing the early rush of Juggler/Apprentice/Wyrm, you mustn't tap! That sounds very stupid because if you don't tap, you can't win: no burst, no out to Water Elemental, no taunt etc. Well I will leave the anti mage discussion to the next article.

Until then, hf laddering.

Miracle Gurubashi Priest OTK

Yes, you aren't mistaken, I actually typed Priest OTK. No, I don't want to talk about the clumsy Light Well Inner Fire Divine Spirit OTK here.

It all started from weeks ago, where Miracle Rogue was dominant. I know the scary thing that makes that deck work isn't the deadly Shadowstep+Leeroy, but Gadgetzan and its synergy with many 0 or 1 mana spells in rogue. I thought if I could abuse Gadgetzan in other decks, something fun could happen as well!

Then it comes to Priest. Priest has a lot of cheap spells, but generally, they are used solely for Wild Pyromancer to clear board. How about combining them with Gadgetzan? The initial brute Gadgetzan Priest is based on that idea and runs Mountain Giant et Molten Giant to abuse the drawing power, while Molten can defend myself from aggressive decks. If I throw away my Giants, I feel like my deck is really weak as it has no real way to deal damage.

Then a few days ago, I accidentally watched this: 

Brilliant! I don't know whether Sharthstone (the owner of this awesome video) ran Gadgetzan or not, but as for myself, I think Gurubashi Berserker is the perfect missing piece for this particular Priest deck.

Unfortunately, I have only enjoyed some casual games with this deck in NA server. Let's see if there is any room to improve this ^^

Alternate version, for those who love giants like me:

So now the deck has everything it needs to be able to compete:
- mass field sweeper: Pyro + spells, or Circle of Healing + Auchenai Soulpriest
- good counter/comeback from aggro rushes: Molten giant + sunfury, or Alexstraza
- game ender/finisher: Gurubashi Berserker
- mid game advantage: Gadgetzan + any spell, or Thoughtsteal alone
- exclusive goodies: 0 mana Silence!

New meta (or pseudo new)

It seems like the hunter fever has gone down, because of 2 reasons:
- UTH nerf
- Miracle rogue

IMO I still believe the nerf isn't as fatal as people may think, because the other value of midrange hunter coming from 2 Savanah Highmanes, 2 Houndmasters are still there. No I don't want to list Hyena because it's 1 turn slower now, and Hyena is very vulnerable to all sorts of removal/silence. You may still find it useful in the druid matchup.

Miracle rogue is pretty much the kryptonite of midrange hunter because turn 6 highmane is too slow, and Sap x2 is too crazy to remove any buffed target from Houndmaster or highmane.

So before the nerf of UTH to 3 mana, it seems like the best deck to rank up is: Miracle rogue.

But right after the nerf becomes effective, we are seeing a small shift in favor: Shaman and Handlock. Both of these decks were struggling under Hunter's reign, but now come back really strong because they can beat Miracle rogue easily, especially Shaman with correct mulligan/draw can destroy Handlock and Zoo easily too. Shaman can also wreak unexperienced handlock players really hard if handlock players don't usually estimate the burst damage that shaman can do next turn. But shaman may also have hard time if they can't stick anything on board after turn 4. That's the turn where handlock really shines.

I do believe because of that reason, laddering with shaman seems to be the safe choice by now. You have little to no bad matchups, and some bad matchups can turn out to be ok for you if you mulligan correctly.

As for me, I still want to laddering with handlock simply because this is my favorite deck, and it's a deck that rewards you with sweet wins (or even more, win from very tight situation) if you time your timing and anticipate your opponent's moves correctly.

I'm rank 9 atm, tbh today I haven't done extensive ladder, and I was a little shocked seeing so many shamans in ladder after patch. I'm working on a new handlock build that can see "shaman as free win", will post it here when I can consistently beat shaman with it :)

See ya.

My handlock

Handlock is a very well known deck in Hearthstone. The deck is pretty scary as it can utilize both Mountain giant and Molten giant effectively. A few hits from these giants can end the game very fast. You also have to worry about the turn 10 3-card-combo Leeroy+Power Overwhelming+Faceless that can deal 20 damages. If the game goes long enough, the Handlock player can also play Lord Jaraxxus. Its ability to summon 6/6 token every turn will also outlast any late game deck.

However, the deck has a very hard time to survive against Hunter. That's why this deck is seeing lesser uses in this 1st Official Season. My deck has some unorthodox techs to combat this Hunter heavy meta, while not sacrifice the good parts in other popular matchups (Druid, Zoo, Tempo Rogue).

The Felguards are probably the main star of this deck. Felguard can bait out Hunter's Mark, Kill Command very often. It also doesn't die to Misha. Against Zoo, Felguards can absorb 2 attacks before dying, but I would recommend to play it after you have cleared the initial swarm of potatoes with Hellfire/Shadowflame. Theorically it should be like this:
- Turn 4 (3 with coin): you play Hellfire/Shadowflame
- Turn 5: you play Felguard
- Turn 6 (now you have 5 mana): play Earthen Ring Farseer/Drake etc

The deck is created when I was being in full retard mode and used Priest to offer free wins to my opponents. Then this idea of using Felguard and Senjin comes to mind. Feel free to try it and tell me what you think.