Goblins V.S Gnomes

[BaII]

Any thoughts of the new card expansion? Personally I'm really excited to experiment with all the new deck possibilities like mill decks.

[v8mark]

Yarrrrrrr! With a side order of ogre. The first time in a long time I've cackled while playing Hearthstone. Needs Greenskin to be complete, but I don't have him.

[SevenSpirits]

Been having a lot of fun with various versions of this mage control deck.



I've had the most trouble against priest with all the fancy stuff they got from GvG. Warlock decks are probably the next-worst matchup. Everything else I am happy to see. Still not up to high ranks though so take that with a grain of salt.

*** Secrets ***
One duplicate is enough. (It's for control matchups and you can usually set it up to copy something really strong.) I used to have another ice barrier in there but I haven't been seeing much hunter so I took it out. Counterspell used to be in there too, but I don't know, I thought that it wasn't pulling its weight. Four secrets is the minimum for the mad scientists and kirin tor mages to work right.

*** Other cheap stuff ***
The rest of your early game is the mana wyrms, frostbolts, and unstable portals. You could try adding a flamecannon as a third frostbolt, but I haven't found that to be necessary. I mulligan for scientists, wyrms, and portals, and sometimes (matchup-dependent) frostbolts. Mirror entity might also be worth keeping vs handlock or in combination with a kirin tor. I am really not sure how I feel about unstable portal. It might just not be worth the risk of getting something like murloc raider or (sigh) anima golem. For now, I'm keeping it since it's such a good turn 2 play on average and it even buffs mana wyrms and triggers antonidas.

*** Four drops ***
There are three minions and two removal spells here. I think the water elementals are the best, but when I got rid of counterspell I decided to add a third four-cost minion, and the shredder is pretty good. For removal spells, I am happy to have them split 1 and 1. You really want a polymorph for long control matchups, but you don't need 2, and the fireball is better early game and vs faster decks. Also, sylvanas + fireball is sometimes a valuable combo.

*** Sweeps ***
For a while I had just 1 blizzard and 1 flamestrike. I later added the second flamestrike and it's been great. If I were to cut one again I think I'd cut the second flamestrike back out... but right now all three seems ideal.

*** Expensive guys ***
I used to have 2 azure drakes, but I was rarely running out of cards and was losing too often to spells, so I swapped in a loatheb. I would not add the second drake back in. Maybe there is even a card that works better than the remaining drake, but it is nice to have at least a little card draw. 2 belchers is key and makes duplicate good vs aggressive decks. Alex is really versatile, it can just win the game vs hunter if you make it that far, and it can protect you even from e.g. warrior control decks, and it can of course also do a ton of damage to your opponent. I think it's pretty good, and if I cut it for another legendary I might want to couple that with adding the second ice barrier back in. Antonidas I just crafted a couple days ago and he is incredible. Sylvanas is a great 6 drop and also really strong to duplicate, and I am trying the sky golem where I used to have cairne filling a similar role. Seems good so far. Being able to hit for 6 is a big benefit compared to cairne. And cairne's 4 attack no longer makes him a trump card vs priest - in fact he is vulnerable to shrink+cabal now. So I'm really skeptical that cairne is very good anymore. Ragnaros might be good here (not that I own him) but without him, BGH has no targets, which seems relevant to me.

[Kuro]

I'm going to link to HearthStats instead of posting a decklist here so you guys can all see any relevant stats to it, though none of these three have been adequately tested yet due to GvG's newness. I'll also post my two old decks which have been enhanced with GvG cards later.

http://hearthstats.net/decks/magitech-inc?locale=en

The first deck I used was the Midrange Mech Mage I've always wanted to use, which I gave the name MagiTech Inc, which I used predominately in my rise from Rank 13~ or so to my current Rank 6 along with the other decks. This deck has not changed much since it's inception: I'm currently testing only one Soot Spewer to put in a Spellbreaker and am considering adding in a Big Game Hunter due to the fact one of the few bad matchups for this deck is Handlock.

The core of this deck is to have a solid early curve with potential reduction on top of it to have a strong midgame, backed up by the very potent Goblin Blastmage: Blastmage is VERY strong here and in general, especially wiping out Zoo and Hunter boards with ease and usually allowing value trades with your 2 and 3 drops or clearing, for example, Belcher's slime away. Or even four to the face when you need it. Shredder is has tested great for stickness and Mechanical Yeti is like normal Yeti, but better. Snowchugger helps shut down weapon classes though this deck is not the ideal deck for protecting it, but it is still a solid Mech that helps in all MUs such as slowing down aggro. Tinkertown Technician is a VERY good card because 3 mana 4/4 isn't hard to get and it actually is not that hard to get some value out of the free spare part. Flamestrike for board wipes and Ysera pushes inevitably at the end game.

One thing I am looking for here is to increase the availability of 2-drop Mechs somehow: I'm thinking Annoy-o-Tron, as I haven't seen Micro Machine test well but I have seen Annoy-o-Tron test well in Mech decks. It'd also further increase the Hunter MU, which while I feel is good (The games I've lost have been either close or just the ocassional bad hand), and help the stickiness of the board. This deck's biggest weakness is to Control Warrior and Handlock, as they are extremely heavy late game decks that have enough early game that you usually can't get a big enough advantage to kill them first, the new Shieldmaiden is especially effective. And vs. Handlock, you usually win if they either don't have 2x Molten (You can usually handle 1 Molten, but not 2) or and not 2x Mountain Giant AND don't get hugely shadowflamed...yeah.

http://hearthstats.net/decks/d4c?locale=en

Next is my Gazlowe Priest, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (or "D4C"). This one is probably the most shaky of the 3 new Decks and despite being called Gazlowe Priest, it is more a standard Priest with Gazlowe in it due to the high # of 1-cost spells. Currently I am testing -1 Shrinkmeister, -1 Cabal Shadow Priest for +1 Spellbreaker, +1 Thoughtsteal, as I found myself running low on cards a bit too early and this one needed a silence.

This basically plays like your normal Priest deck, but with additional strong combos: Gazlowe works well with the Priest's various 1-cost spells, including the new and very good Light of the Naaru which opens up a ton of strong plays with things like Injured Blademaster, Northshire Cleric and Auchenai Soulpriest (If you kill a minion or the minion is alive but still damaged after Light of the Naaru, you get a Lightwarden still! Also, 1 mana deal 3 damage). The best card in this deck is Vol'jin and you could probably make an entirely different, also extremely good Priest deck here, though I will say I feel Priest is a bit overrated ATM. Not much to say here.

http://hearthstats.net/decks/sacred-land?locale=en

And finally, the deck I've tested least, an even bigger ramp Druid called Sacred Land. Grove Tender is a great card and here is used to cut down on the early game even more and go even bigger: I'm actually thinking I may want to go slightly bigger, perhaps by cutting an Ancient of Lore or even a 2nd Shredder and leaving me with two 4-drops. This has the same basic gameplan as your usual Ramp Druid, ramp into big guys, with a bit of a Taunt theme to help aggro, including Cenarius. Deathwing serves as the ultimate finisher vs. Control decks and a panic button otherwise. The Force Savage combo is not here because it is rather unnecessary and clunky in the deck: The sheer amount of big guys and acceleration you have should negate the need for the finisher, as you win games that go that far to begin with. I used to have 2 Shredder, but I cut one for an Antique Healbot to help my aggro MU with a body still.

This hasn't been played enough for me to say what matchups are bad here.

[Jowy]

I have 4k dust but no idea what deck to build Rolling with a mage rush deck atm because I only needed to craft a few cards for that.

[Jowy]

Unstable Portal is pretty cool.



That's 37 damage on turn 7.

[uberfish]

Just spent most of my hoarded gold and opened 50 packs, getting the following epics:

Druid - dark whispers, tree of life
Mage - echo of medivh
Priest - lightbomb x2
Shaman - siltfin spiritwalker x2
Warlock - anima golem
Warrior - bouncing blade, shield maiden, crush x2
Neutral - recombobulator (gold), hobgoblin x2, junkbot

Legendaries: Blingtron 3000, Flame Leviathan, Iron Juggernaut

I guess the game wants me to play control priest and warrior? I also have 12k dust to craft things I'm missing...

[Gustaran]

Just spent most of my hoarded gold and opened 50 packs, getting the following epics:

I did the same thing, got 3 legendaries total. Here is my favourite booster pack:

[pindicator]

I'm hearing great things about Echo of Medivh in control mage. Have you tried using that?

[uberfish]

I haven't had much time to get into constructed yet, although I have 12k dust to craft stuff. The nice thing about GvG being out is I can safely craft missing cards from the core set without worrying about getting duplicates in packs. I'd be able to make about 6 epics and 6 legendaries.

the big neutral ones i'm missing from core are Cairne, Black Knight, Alexstrasza, Ysera, although Cairne and Ysera seem out of favour these days. I think I'll get Jaraxxus for my warlock decks, and I could probably start playing control warrior if I made Grommash too.

and new set cards that look promising are Vol'jin, Mal'ganis and Dr Boom. Decisions...