Happy Delayed Xmas and New Year!

I took off for the whole of Xmas and New Year which is a first since I graduated from Law School. It was nice spending time with the family for a couple of weeks and getting to lounge around on the sofa and play some Hearthstone. The original plan was actually to play mostly MODO and some Hearthstone but Blizzards timing of getting me to sign in to Hearthstone for a few free packs of Goblins vs. Gnomes (GVG) was shockingly well times. (Aside - Why doesn't Magic online have more free things for its players. I feel like MODO is one step away from charging you to log in. Which is already an ordeal since it seems like MODO has to update something every time I want to log in.)

So Hearthstone it is! I did cave in and buy 40 packs of GVG, since I would need some of the cards and I wasn't interested in wasting dust or grinding Arena day in and day out. I got most of what I wanted and disenchanted some unusable legends to create everyone's favorite Dr. Boom!

When the new season reset for January the Battle.net servers were either not ready for the number of people that were logging on, or were crapping out for some other reason. This is the first time I have had a major issues with Hearthstone compared to MODO...When I finally did log on I managed to expand my built decks to Zoo, Hunter, Mage and Handlock. It feels good to have a couple more options to play. The season restart was brutal with "everyone" being off work. The quality of play felt very high at the season restart and watching streamers struggle was quite interesting. I am not sure how much the skill level matters when you just need to grind 25 games (or whatever it is up to level 5 before skill really matters in order to make legend).
 
With a lack of high level tournaments in MTG or even people playing on twitch it was pretty amazing that there was basically no MTG to watch over the holidays. I did manage to play legacy a couple of times but I really wanted to watch some high level MTG.
 

Creatures

4 Young Pyromancer

4 Deathrite Shaman

4 Delver of Secrets

Instant

1 Spell Pierce

4 Brainstorm

3 Daze

4 Force of Will

4 Lightning Bolt

3 Stifle

 

Sorcery

1 Forked Bolt

3 Gitaxian Probe

4 Ponder

3 Treasure Cruise

Land

4 Scalding Tarn

1 Badlands

1 Tropical Island

2 Underground Sea

2 Volcanic Island

4 Polluted Delta

4 Wasteland

 
The above list is what I have been playing and it feels pretty great. There are very few people currently playing Stifle/Wasteland to punish your manabase
and even though there are a ton of Young Pyromancer's out there there are nowhere near enough - Golgari Charms, Electrickery's, etc.

The sideboard is still in flux but currently looks like this:

Sideboard

2 Grafdigger's Cage

1 Ancient Grudge

1 Abrupt Decay

1 Submerge

1 Hydroblast

2 Pyroblast

1 Envelop

1 Forsaken Wastes

1 Sudden Demise

1 Forked Bolt

3 Cabal Therapy

 

The Forsaken wastes is one that many of you may not have seen before. It is slightly weaker than sulfuric vortex in pure damage but it does have a couple up sides:

 

1. Only B to case vs. RR

2. Cannot be hydroblasted

3. Wear/Tear & Disenchant on Forsaken Wastes is pretty painful

 

The rest of the sideboard is pretty stock thugh I do want to mention that Sudden Demise could easily be Electrikery (which would be much better vs. UR). The sudden demise is much better though vs. Death and Taxes which can be a tough matchup.

 

All I know is that it feels good to be stifling people again.

-Cheers-