Dies to Removal

and the best laid plans can change overnight

As a person who spent a good used car in money on four shiny pieces of cardboard, Magic isn't important. It's a hobby and a distraction from real life (re: khaos). If you find your real life is so tilted by your distraction from real life, it may be time to give the things that actually matter a hand in getting resolved.
If you spend more time and energy on tournament prep than you do socializing or meeting friends or working out or putting out your latest mixtape, but receive negative happiness from it, put your fucking cards down and watch The Big Lebowski

You also need to ask yourself why you're unhappy playing the game. Managing expectations is very important in playing any game. You want to be confident that you can win, but you also need to realistically expect that you're not going to win every match.

And keep in mind that you're an adult playing a card game based around monsters and magic spells. You can't take it too seriously.

Put Your Fucking Cards on the Ground // Make Some Fucking Progress

Put Your Fucking Cards on the Ground // Make Some Fucking Progress

As of two days ago, I now play Hearthstone. 5 wins and 7 wins in my first two Arena runs, both playing Hunter. Then I read somewhere that Hunter isn't very good in arena, so I'm confused. Do any of you guys have a link to a good article or thread that breaks down the heroes and what kind of decks you should be aiming to build with each of them? I feel like it's pretty obvious which are better off playing control/aggro, but maybe I'm missing something. Thanks.

I know nothing about HS but I thought Hunter was like the best and most unfun

The thing I read said that certain heroes are hands down better than others in Arena. In particular, those that can affect the board (Mage, Paladin, Priest etc) are better than those that can't. I guess Hunter should be better than Warrior at least since protecting yourself is usually worse than hitting the opponent, but other than that I have no idea who is considered "best". Need to read more.

Or just play more and not worry about it.

Hunter is fine if you draft a good deck. It's just that Hunter is so curve oriented and has such payout for good beast synergy, that is you fail at one or both you're kind of boned.

Mage and Paladin are the most autopilot classes because their class commons are ridiculously good.
I haven't had much luck with Druid since GVG came out. Warrior and Warlock are both pretty close to avoid at all costs. I've had the most luck during arena with Priest, but whether your angle lines up against your opponent is a major factor. Shaman can have some busted or terrible decks, but the class cards are so disparate that I tend to avoid it.

Yeah, I didn't go for beasts in either of my Hunter decks, just a good curve. I guess I succeeded well enough. Thanks for the advice on the Warrior and Warlock. Warrior's obviously pretty bad, but why is Warlock so bad? Seems like I do run out of cards in at least half my games.

I'm on a Mage deck right now, currently 5-1. Her ability is good, but not great against an opposing Priest. Might try to grab Priest next time around, he seems powerful. Mage has good removal though and the burn to the face is nice.

Shota top 8d the legacy gp playing omni-tell... Dude is god

Warlock is bad because a lot of the class cards are just terrible/worse versions of other class cards/their drawbacks are more pronounced in Arena (though Flame Imp is far and away the best 1-drop in Arena)/swing wildly toward aggro or control so your lucky may firmly build you a mediocre sludge of an Arena deck.

I'm on a Mage deck right now, currently 5-1. Her ability is good, but not great against an opposing Priest. Might try to grab Priest next time around, he seems powerful. Mage has good removal though and the burn to the face is nice.

That's not really the way to think about the ability "X v Y isn't good..." because the Mage ability is essentially a +1 attack to any minion you use to attack an opponent's minion or +1 damage (which still messes with Priest math).

Priest has the best common and epic class cards in the game and a lot of cool combos (Circle of Healing + Cleric, Circle + Auchenai, Auchenai + Light of Naru, etc) and surprising amounts of CA. You have trouble against 4-attack minions and taking down really large minions without Shadow Word Death or Mind Control, the latter of which time walks you in the process.

Priest in arena beats mage consistently. Valen's chosen is really strong against mages.

That's not really the way to think about the ability "X v Y isn't good..."

Yeah, I guess that's true, but I don't know the cards well enough to make decisions based on that. Suppose I should look into the cards themselves when I get a minute. Still winning in the meantime, so...

New question: What's a good curve look like? Both my Hunter decks were heavy in the 2-drop section, scaling down from there. Sort of a standard mana curve for Magic aggro (surprise! I'm a newbie!). My current Mage is kind of a mish-mash with quite a few 2-drops, not a lot of 3-drops, several solid 5-drops, plus four cards 6 and 7. It feels more powerful with these big cards, obviously, but I'd be interested to hear some optimum strategy if such a thing exists.

Josh has some giant catalogue in google docs with his opinions on all the classes I believe and it's fairly accurate.

The only class that's strictly terrible in arena imo is warrior because of the unplayable hero power while Priest, Mage, and Paladin are much better then everything else based on a combination of great hero powers and op class commons.

This is my basic Hearthstone guide for MTG players.

This is my Arena guide updated at GvG. I'll probably revisit after Blackrock in the next month.

Warrior is shit tier. Think Avacyn black, but with even worse rarity disparities to fuck you over. Warlock has also steadily gotten worse as people have adjusted to a more aggressive and tempo based Arena. It went from middle of the road to pretty bad because the class cards are 2/3rds bad, 1/3 great and you can't just jam the draw cards button half as much as you could in Classic.

You could be me and get lucky enough to jam exclusively mage.

^^

I haven't even played arena for a month or more. I just buy classic packs and pretend I go 4-3, but end up with a few useful cards rather than 40 dust

But yeah. Mage is my shit. Always has been.

Shaman was occasionally really good for the first few weeks of gvg as well. A lot of high power cards that people didn't know how to deal with.

Oh jack, I forgot you sent me a friend request while I was at my families this weekend and accidently deleted it cause I thought you where some salty random.

Haha no problem. I'll get you later.

That's perfect. Thanks jsilv.

Currently 9-1 with that same Mage deck, and I can see now that this deck did stumble into a lot of what you're recommending in those docs. Very cool.

So what new archtype overlords are we going to see to counter all the new Esper decks?

BrAggro.

making me blood red mad

Congrats on being one year closer to death Dax!

I broke the thread.

It was dead already

/spam

just wait til friday when people get excited to do some high-impact standard-format testing against the strongest of players.

Random question. Did the RG dragons deck fall off the face of the earth?

every deck falls off the face of the earth every week

standard sucks

You've been a great help.

it's a legitimate criticism

a legiticism if you will

Hailed as one of the best Standard formats of all time.

"Standard sucks".