Just in case I needed a little more motivation in my climb up the ladder:
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/15955974/hearthside-chat-youre-better-than-you-think-9-18-2014
If what they are saying is accurate then I am consistently in the top 2% of Hearthstone players. I still want to be in that top 0.5% though.
Cheers,
Simon
Monday, October 13, 2014
Return of the Red Deck
Tom the Boss Ross is at it again:
18 Mountain
4 Foundry Street Denizen
4 Akroan Crusader
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Firedrinker Satyr
3 Frenzied Goblin
1 Arena Athlete
18 Mountain
4 Foundry Street Denizen
4 Akroan Crusader
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Firedrinker Satyr
3 Frenzied Goblin
1 Arena Athlete
2 Hordeling Outburst
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Lightning Strike
4 Titan's Strength
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Hammerhand
1 Coordinated Assault
1 Hall of Triumph
SB: 3 Peak Eruption
SB: 2 Lightning Strike
SB: 4 Searing Blood
SB: 4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
SB: 2 Magma Spray
Another hyper aggressive red deck that attempts to run under everybody. With all the current spot removal in the format this deck seems relatively well positioned.
I have been wanting to test out something like the below for a while now but I just haven't had the time to test.
10 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Mana Confluence
4 Foundry Street Denizen
4 Akroan Crusader
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Firedrinker Satyr
3 Frenzied Goblin
1 Satyr Hoplite
-Cheers-
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Lightning Strike
4 Titan's Strength
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Hammerhand
1 Coordinated Assault
1 Hall of Triumph
SB: 3 Peak Eruption
SB: 2 Lightning Strike
SB: 4 Searing Blood
SB: 4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
SB: 2 Magma Spray
Another hyper aggressive red deck that attempts to run under everybody. With all the current spot removal in the format this deck seems relatively well positioned.
I have been wanting to test out something like the below for a while now but I just haven't had the time to test.
10 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Mana Confluence
4 Foundry Street Denizen
4 Akroan Crusader
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Firedrinker Satyr
3 Frenzied Goblin
1 Satyr Hoplite
2 Hordeling Outburst
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Lightning Strike
4 Titan's Strength
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Hammerhand
1 Coordinated Assault
1 Hall of Triumph
SB: 1 Forest
SB: 3 Destructive Revelry
SB: 2 Lightning Strike
SB: 4 Searing Blood
SB: 3 Eidolon of the Great Revel
SB: 2 Magma Spray
I would love to fit a forge devil or two in the sideboard or main if the mirror match becomes more common. I would also think about running one scouring sands if this or the Jeskai tokens decks become super popular.
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Lightning Strike
4 Titan's Strength
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Hammerhand
1 Coordinated Assault
1 Hall of Triumph
SB: 1 Forest
SB: 3 Destructive Revelry
SB: 2 Lightning Strike
SB: 4 Searing Blood
SB: 3 Eidolon of the Great Revel
SB: 2 Magma Spray
I would love to fit a forge devil or two in the sideboard or main if the mirror match becomes more common. I would also think about running one scouring sands if this or the Jeskai tokens decks become super popular.
-Cheers-
Friday, October 3, 2014
Hearthstone Ladder - October 2014
I have been playing Hearthstone on and off for the past several months as a way to kill time, to make up for a lack of Magic and just as something to do while I cook and/or watch TV (multitasking is great!).
The monthly cycle has been me willy nilly jamming games and getting to level 5-10 before I get bored, frustrated and/or busy and end up shelving the grind in exchange for more arena or another activity. The timing this month seems good to try and make a push for Hearthstone legend. My collection is small and my time is short so it is going to be a challenge but I am going to try and mini-grind every day (we shall see) to try and achieve the rank of totally irrelevant Legend! To add further complications and time constraints my wife and I will also be having a baby this month...don't worry though the hospital has Wi-Fi (my wife asked not me)!
So for better or for worse, I am going to try and update this little guy day-to-day to let you guys know how it goes.
Oct 1 - The new season resets and I am a whopping rank 20/21, I cannot remember the exact rank but it doesn't really matter. I think I ended the last season at rank 9/10 since I had put the game down and only picked it up during the last week or so of September.
The decks that I will be playing with:
Aggro Mage
Aggro Zoo
Aggro Hunter
See a pattern here? Just like in Magic, the aggro decks are much cheaper (or free) than the mid-range and control decks. The good thing is that you generally win or lose the games relatively quickly, so you can grind a little quicker. First day and I just play a couple of games and move up to rank 19. Oh yeah, guess who gets a new card back at the end of the month....
Start - 20/21
Finish - 19
Oct 2 - It is Day 2 and Thursday night legacy is going to get in the way of playing Hearthstone! Oh no, well good thing the game store has Wi-Fi and I have an I-pad. I play 3 games while I am waiting for legacy to start (2-1 record). I don't have the time to play any games in between rounds so my plan doesn't exactly go as planned. I end up 3-0-1 in legacy which is good for top 4 and $35 of store credit (BUG with lots of Scavenging Ooze). Instead of going straight to bed I jam a couple more games and end up with a little run to push me ahead a couple of levels.
Start - 19
Finish - 16
Oct 3 - Half day Friday, so that should give me some time to jam some games in the afternoon before the wife gets home. I do also need to walk the dog and do some other adult/household shit. I played for about 2 hours on Friday and it was a long, slow, miserable grind. My deck just seemed poorly positioned against everything and winning games seemed nigh impossible. I was going 50/50 until I managed to finally break through the lull and win a string of games to make a little progress for the afternoon. I may have also played Arena for a little while to take a break. My arena didn't go great, 7 wins but I did open a pack with a golden Epic which was good for 1600 dust.When the wife got home we went and ate some Italian food (Giacomo's Cibo e Vino) which was delicious. We wound down the night with a little TV and I played a couple more games to round out the day.
Start - 16
Finish - 14
Oct 4 - I started the morning off with a cup of tea, a pumpkin scone and my first game of Hearthstone. Then it was off to walk the dog. Then to the supermarket to grab some food...I try to play Legacy every Saturday if I can but it starts at 1pm and goes for 4/5 hours, so it really fucks my day up for doing anything productive. The weather was 100% beautiful and I really wanted to be outside but I am trying to cram as much pre-baby Magic in as possible, so I decide to go play. I played a game or two of Hearthstone before I started Magic, just like I did on Thursday, the in-between round games never happened (still nice in theory). That night we went out for Mexican food (and Margaritas), I ate way too much and drank way too many margaritas. When I got home I played a couple more games and managed to level up a little. At this point I was pretty much just jamming zoo, as I couldn't get Hunter to beat anything and Aggro Mage just seemed awful in theory so I couldn't bring myself to even play it.
Start - 14
Finish - 12
Oct 5 - Similar to yesterday, a cup of tea and hearthstone to start the day. Then off to take the dog for his walk. We then went for crepes at my favorite breakfast spot, which is a crepe strand. The weather was lovely, though it started to get a tad warm. The middle of the day was consumed by grabbing some last minute baby stuff, building some baby stuff and cleaning! After that, I got to start playing some games, the games were going pretty poorly again and I was dropping some games because I was screwing up while multi-tasking, washing/cooking dinner, etc. I took some short breaks to watch some of the coverage from GP Orlando. I also watched some of the Hearthstone streams for a little bit. I watched one of my friends (ThatsAdmirable and Here) get crushed in the big Hearthstone tournament. His opponent (Ant) crushed him with a zoo deck, I went to look for his zoo list with Loatheb but couldn't find it.
I did however find a pretty sweet Hunter list:
I had everything for the deck except Black Knight which I replaced with this:
Go go budget deck! It is a Beast which is relevant for the deck (Kill Command), it is also good on curve, etc. The main negative is that it is really poor against Sludge Belcher. Whereas Black Knight is very good. I went on a tear and beat a bunch of people with the deck. The deck had some pretty nutty draws as long as my hand didn't get clogged with too many Traps. I was pretty happy to end the weekend under level 10. I wish I knew a little more info than just my level though: How long had I played?, How many games?, how many wins and how many losses?, etc. Maybe I need to start tracking this info. I would still like to get Ants zoo list with Loatheb since I am interested to see what he cut for that.
As the grind gets a little harder and as I get closer to Legend (which is still far, far away) I may start putting the stars next to my rank so tracking progress is a little easier.
Random Thought - It seems like every single deck right now is playing Loatheb, is it just too good?
Start - 12
Finish - 9
Oct 6 - Monday... I considered bringing my ipad to work so that I could jam a few games at work (during lunch) but decided against it since I needed to re-charge my ipad and presumably get some actual work done. I am not ruling it out for the future though. I did play some https://geoguessr.com/ during the day which wasn't entirely productive, so maybe I should just jam some Hearthstone. Tonight I will start with the Aggro/Mid-Range Hunter deck against which hopefully hasn't spawned all over the place. Well I did get to play a few games but it was a struggle all night. I seemed to draw secrets in every opening hand and would just mulligan into more secrets...sometimes you just cannot win for trying. I also made a couple of subtle mistakes that cost me at least 1 or 2 games. The most interesting game of the night was against Warlock zoo where I make an interesting attack to make sure all of his guys die to explosive trap but then he doesn't attack into the trap so we just sort of stare at one another for multiple turns. 'Twas a pretty interesting stalemate to say the least.
Random Thought - I cannot imagine playing Hearthstone on a real laptop since I have only ever played on an ipad. I wonder if I am missing any functionality?
Start - 9 (2 stars)
Finish - 9 (4 stars)
Oct 7 - I played one singular game when I woke up and won...100% win record...I thought I might have a new baby in my hands today but that ended up not coming to fruition, so I am back to being on standby for that. Roasted Chile Pesto marinated pork for dinner should give me some time to jam some games while the meat cooks. :)
Another night of hitting my head against the wall...It seems like every deck I played against was a bad matchup. I made it all the up to 8 and all the way down to 11 then managed to stabilize back to almost where I started.
Random Thought - I wonder if there is a best time of the day to jam games? When do the best players play? When do the worst players play? Which category do I fall into?
Start - 9 (4 stars)
Finish - 9 (2 stars)
Oct 8 - After the trials of yesterday, I think I need to switch gears and jam some zoo for a little bit. There are a few hyper aggressive Hunter decks which I may also try out. I only played 3 games tonight going (2-1).
Random Thought - Why doesn't Hearthstone have the equivalent of sideboard games? Only playing one game is quite frustrating and not having any deck flexibility can be annoying when you are in a Rock - Paper - Scissors metagame.
Start - 9 (2 stars)
Finish - 9 (3 stars)
Oct 9 -12 - A busy couple of days prepping the house for the impending baby (could be here any minute now) means I skip my Thursday and Saturday Magic but this does allow me a few more Hearthstone games that normal on those days. In between moving furniture, cleaning and eating I make some major progress with an insanely aggressive Hunter deck capping out at 3 mana spells on the top end. Knife Juggler + Release the Hounds is insanely fun.
I also tweak a couple of Zoo lists. I finally find ANT's Zoo list with Loatheb (as I spoke about above). In Zoo I am currently utilizing power overwhelming as another way to trigger some of the deathrattle effects and for a last minute damage burst.
Quick note - I did make it all the way up to Level 4 but then got paired against the same Warrior 3 times in a row (lost all 3 games) and kind of went on super tilt and crashed back down to level 5. Warrior is basically an unwinnable matchup for both Hunter and Zoo. I have gotten to the point that I see if I can god hand them in 4-5 turns and if they have managed to gain any control at that point (unless they are super low on life) then you may as well disconnect. The matchup is that bad. Just thinking about it makes me sad.
Start - 9 (3 stars)
Finish - 5 (3 stars)
Oct 13 - Busy night so I only had time to play two games and I lost both...I did sell some crappy furniture that I needed to get rid of on Craigslist. I also listed and sold some more Magic cards to help pay for me completing my full 40 of Russian fetchlands.
Start - 5 (3 stars)
Finish - 5 (1 stars)
Oct 14-15 - The time is flying by at the moment and I haven't played any games over the last couple of days. We are at the middle of the month and I really need to step up my game if I want to get to Legend this month.
Start - 5 (1 stars)
Finish - 5 (1 stars)
Oct 16-19 - The mid month lull. It seems like the other slow people have finally caught up and I am stuck playing against mirror matches and those seem to give me a win % of roughly 50/50 depending on play or draw and who gets the superior draw. I lost several games where I was 1 point short or they had exactly enough damage to push through when they were dead on the counter swing. To be fair though I probably only played maybe 10 games over these several days...
Start - 5 (1 stars)
Finish - 5 (0 stars)
Oct 20-25 - Lots of time in the hospital while my little (or not so little) baby boy is born. The Wifi at the hospital keeps dropping my connection so I give up on playing ranked matches as losing when you are super far ahead is the worst. I decide to just jam some arena as losing doesn't matter as much but I eventually stop playing arena as well when my connection starts dropping. I finally drafted what I think should have been an easy 12 victory deck and losing games to a dropped connection is just the feel worst.
Start - 5 (1 stars)
Finish - 5 (4 stars)
Oct 26-31 - Finally back home with the wee man. I don't get much game time in until the last 2 days of the season and I manage to make it all the way up to rank 2 and then I just don't have the time to make the push to rank 1.
Start - 5 (3 stars)
Finish - 3 (4 stars)
It was a fun experiment and I got pretty close(ish). Losing around 5 days of playing time was no ideal ,though it was not a foregone conclusion that those days would have helped me make the push all the way to Legend. I am not sure if I will try again unless I have an easy month ahead of me (which seems unlikely with a newborn). I think jamming lots of arena games in order to increase my collection will be the goal for the next couple of months. I really want to flesh out my collection before the next expansion comes out that will have around 100 new cards.
Cheers,
Simon
The monthly cycle has been me willy nilly jamming games and getting to level 5-10 before I get bored, frustrated and/or busy and end up shelving the grind in exchange for more arena or another activity. The timing this month seems good to try and make a push for Hearthstone legend. My collection is small and my time is short so it is going to be a challenge but I am going to try and mini-grind every day (we shall see) to try and achieve the rank of totally irrelevant Legend! To add further complications and time constraints my wife and I will also be having a baby this month...don't worry though the hospital has Wi-Fi (my wife asked not me)!
So for better or for worse, I am going to try and update this little guy day-to-day to let you guys know how it goes.
Oct 1 - The new season resets and I am a whopping rank 20/21, I cannot remember the exact rank but it doesn't really matter. I think I ended the last season at rank 9/10 since I had put the game down and only picked it up during the last week or so of September.
The decks that I will be playing with:
Aggro Mage
Aggro Zoo
Aggro Hunter
See a pattern here? Just like in Magic, the aggro decks are much cheaper (or free) than the mid-range and control decks. The good thing is that you generally win or lose the games relatively quickly, so you can grind a little quicker. First day and I just play a couple of games and move up to rank 19. Oh yeah, guess who gets a new card back at the end of the month....
Start - 20/21
Finish - 19
Oct 2 - It is Day 2 and Thursday night legacy is going to get in the way of playing Hearthstone! Oh no, well good thing the game store has Wi-Fi and I have an I-pad. I play 3 games while I am waiting for legacy to start (2-1 record). I don't have the time to play any games in between rounds so my plan doesn't exactly go as planned. I end up 3-0-1 in legacy which is good for top 4 and $35 of store credit (BUG with lots of Scavenging Ooze). Instead of going straight to bed I jam a couple more games and end up with a little run to push me ahead a couple of levels.
Start - 19
Finish - 16
Oct 3 - Half day Friday, so that should give me some time to jam some games in the afternoon before the wife gets home. I do also need to walk the dog and do some other adult/household shit. I played for about 2 hours on Friday and it was a long, slow, miserable grind. My deck just seemed poorly positioned against everything and winning games seemed nigh impossible. I was going 50/50 until I managed to finally break through the lull and win a string of games to make a little progress for the afternoon. I may have also played Arena for a little while to take a break. My arena didn't go great, 7 wins but I did open a pack with a golden Epic which was good for 1600 dust.When the wife got home we went and ate some Italian food (Giacomo's Cibo e Vino) which was delicious. We wound down the night with a little TV and I played a couple more games to round out the day.
Start - 16
Finish - 14
Oct 4 - I started the morning off with a cup of tea, a pumpkin scone and my first game of Hearthstone. Then it was off to walk the dog. Then to the supermarket to grab some food...I try to play Legacy every Saturday if I can but it starts at 1pm and goes for 4/5 hours, so it really fucks my day up for doing anything productive. The weather was 100% beautiful and I really wanted to be outside but I am trying to cram as much pre-baby Magic in as possible, so I decide to go play. I played a game or two of Hearthstone before I started Magic, just like I did on Thursday, the in-between round games never happened (still nice in theory). That night we went out for Mexican food (and Margaritas), I ate way too much and drank way too many margaritas. When I got home I played a couple more games and managed to level up a little. At this point I was pretty much just jamming zoo, as I couldn't get Hunter to beat anything and Aggro Mage just seemed awful in theory so I couldn't bring myself to even play it.
Start - 14
Finish - 12
Oct 5 - Similar to yesterday, a cup of tea and hearthstone to start the day. Then off to take the dog for his walk. We then went for crepes at my favorite breakfast spot, which is a crepe strand. The weather was lovely, though it started to get a tad warm. The middle of the day was consumed by grabbing some last minute baby stuff, building some baby stuff and cleaning! After that, I got to start playing some games, the games were going pretty poorly again and I was dropping some games because I was screwing up while multi-tasking, washing/cooking dinner, etc. I took some short breaks to watch some of the coverage from GP Orlando. I also watched some of the Hearthstone streams for a little bit. I watched one of my friends (ThatsAdmirable and Here) get crushed in the big Hearthstone tournament. His opponent (Ant) crushed him with a zoo deck, I went to look for his zoo list with Loatheb but couldn't find it.
I did however find a pretty sweet Hunter list:
I had everything for the deck except Black Knight which I replaced with this:
Go go budget deck! It is a Beast which is relevant for the deck (Kill Command), it is also good on curve, etc. The main negative is that it is really poor against Sludge Belcher. Whereas Black Knight is very good. I went on a tear and beat a bunch of people with the deck. The deck had some pretty nutty draws as long as my hand didn't get clogged with too many Traps. I was pretty happy to end the weekend under level 10. I wish I knew a little more info than just my level though: How long had I played?, How many games?, how many wins and how many losses?, etc. Maybe I need to start tracking this info. I would still like to get Ants zoo list with Loatheb since I am interested to see what he cut for that.
As the grind gets a little harder and as I get closer to Legend (which is still far, far away) I may start putting the stars next to my rank so tracking progress is a little easier.
Random Thought - It seems like every single deck right now is playing Loatheb, is it just too good?
Start - 12
Finish - 9
Oct 6 - Monday... I considered bringing my ipad to work so that I could jam a few games at work (during lunch) but decided against it since I needed to re-charge my ipad and presumably get some actual work done. I am not ruling it out for the future though. I did play some https://geoguessr.com/ during the day which wasn't entirely productive, so maybe I should just jam some Hearthstone. Tonight I will start with the Aggro/Mid-Range Hunter deck against which hopefully hasn't spawned all over the place. Well I did get to play a few games but it was a struggle all night. I seemed to draw secrets in every opening hand and would just mulligan into more secrets...sometimes you just cannot win for trying. I also made a couple of subtle mistakes that cost me at least 1 or 2 games. The most interesting game of the night was against Warlock zoo where I make an interesting attack to make sure all of his guys die to explosive trap but then he doesn't attack into the trap so we just sort of stare at one another for multiple turns. 'Twas a pretty interesting stalemate to say the least.
Random Thought - I cannot imagine playing Hearthstone on a real laptop since I have only ever played on an ipad. I wonder if I am missing any functionality?
Start - 9 (2 stars)
Finish - 9 (4 stars)
Oct 7 - I played one singular game when I woke up and won...100% win record...I thought I might have a new baby in my hands today but that ended up not coming to fruition, so I am back to being on standby for that. Roasted Chile Pesto marinated pork for dinner should give me some time to jam some games while the meat cooks. :)
Another night of hitting my head against the wall...It seems like every deck I played against was a bad matchup. I made it all the up to 8 and all the way down to 11 then managed to stabilize back to almost where I started.
Random Thought - I wonder if there is a best time of the day to jam games? When do the best players play? When do the worst players play? Which category do I fall into?
Start - 9 (4 stars)
Finish - 9 (2 stars)
Oct 8 - After the trials of yesterday, I think I need to switch gears and jam some zoo for a little bit. There are a few hyper aggressive Hunter decks which I may also try out. I only played 3 games tonight going (2-1).
Random Thought - Why doesn't Hearthstone have the equivalent of sideboard games? Only playing one game is quite frustrating and not having any deck flexibility can be annoying when you are in a Rock - Paper - Scissors metagame.
Start - 9 (2 stars)
Finish - 9 (3 stars)
Oct 9 -12 - A busy couple of days prepping the house for the impending baby (could be here any minute now) means I skip my Thursday and Saturday Magic but this does allow me a few more Hearthstone games that normal on those days. In between moving furniture, cleaning and eating I make some major progress with an insanely aggressive Hunter deck capping out at 3 mana spells on the top end. Knife Juggler + Release the Hounds is insanely fun.
I also tweak a couple of Zoo lists. I finally find ANT's Zoo list with Loatheb (as I spoke about above). In Zoo I am currently utilizing power overwhelming as another way to trigger some of the deathrattle effects and for a last minute damage burst.
Quick note - I did make it all the way up to Level 4 but then got paired against the same Warrior 3 times in a row (lost all 3 games) and kind of went on super tilt and crashed back down to level 5. Warrior is basically an unwinnable matchup for both Hunter and Zoo. I have gotten to the point that I see if I can god hand them in 4-5 turns and if they have managed to gain any control at that point (unless they are super low on life) then you may as well disconnect. The matchup is that bad. Just thinking about it makes me sad.
Start - 9 (3 stars)
Finish - 5 (3 stars)
Oct 13 - Busy night so I only had time to play two games and I lost both...I did sell some crappy furniture that I needed to get rid of on Craigslist. I also listed and sold some more Magic cards to help pay for me completing my full 40 of Russian fetchlands.
Start - 5 (3 stars)
Finish - 5 (1 stars)
Oct 14-15 - The time is flying by at the moment and I haven't played any games over the last couple of days. We are at the middle of the month and I really need to step up my game if I want to get to Legend this month.
Start - 5 (1 stars)
Finish - 5 (1 stars)
Oct 16-19 - The mid month lull. It seems like the other slow people have finally caught up and I am stuck playing against mirror matches and those seem to give me a win % of roughly 50/50 depending on play or draw and who gets the superior draw. I lost several games where I was 1 point short or they had exactly enough damage to push through when they were dead on the counter swing. To be fair though I probably only played maybe 10 games over these several days...
Start - 5 (1 stars)
Finish - 5 (0 stars)
Oct 20-25 - Lots of time in the hospital while my little (or not so little) baby boy is born. The Wifi at the hospital keeps dropping my connection so I give up on playing ranked matches as losing when you are super far ahead is the worst. I decide to just jam some arena as losing doesn't matter as much but I eventually stop playing arena as well when my connection starts dropping. I finally drafted what I think should have been an easy 12 victory deck and losing games to a dropped connection is just the feel worst.
Start - 5 (1 stars)
Finish - 5 (4 stars)
Oct 26-31 - Finally back home with the wee man. I don't get much game time in until the last 2 days of the season and I manage to make it all the way up to rank 2 and then I just don't have the time to make the push to rank 1.
Start - 5 (3 stars)
Finish - 3 (4 stars)
It was a fun experiment and I got pretty close(ish). Losing around 5 days of playing time was no ideal ,though it was not a foregone conclusion that those days would have helped me make the push all the way to Legend. I am not sure if I will try again unless I have an easy month ahead of me (which seems unlikely with a newborn). I think jamming lots of arena games in order to increase my collection will be the goal for the next couple of months. I really want to flesh out my collection before the next expansion comes out that will have around 100 new cards.
Cheers,
Simon
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