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Hearthstone
Righteous Aggression: Hybrid Paladin
While talking to my friend Iksar (who also happens to be a balance designer on the Hearthstone team) about how to tweak my Paladin, he suggested trying a more aggressive Paladin deck. Now I am generally averse to aggressive play, but there is still a heavy garnish of control in this deck. One of the concepts I have had to get my head around lately is that aggro decks have the potential to control. Since minions can attack other minions in Hearthstone, any deck can flip on the control switch should the situation call for it and start trading to help gain board control.
The entire goal of this deck is to mulligan aggressively for 2 and 3-drops. There are 18 cards in this deck under 4 mana. Excluding both Equality’s, the , and the Big Game Hunter that we would prefer not to have in our opening hand that leaves 14 potentially great cards to open the game with. Exceptions to this are Priests and Warriors. Should you find yourself going up against either Anduin or Garrosh, hold onto Truesilver Champion in your opening hand to help remove their high-health early minions.
Hearthstone
Control Freak: Control Warrior is Still Here
If my fascination with the Midrange Warlock deck last week was any indication, I do not prefer the popular aggressive decks that are seen so often in Hearthstone. I like adapting to my opponent and feeling like I have options. Don’t get me wrong, I cackle maniacally as much as the next person when I get a perfect opening. But I have always leaned towards control play. Shaman and Paladin were my first loves when it came to control decks. For whatever reason, maybe the crafting cost or what seemed like a boring Hero Power, Warrior was the class that took me the longest time to warm up to. But now, like an album I love or a good sandwich
shop, Control Warrior is a deck I keep coming back to.
Pro players Sjow and Kitkatz are probably the most well known for making Control Warrior popular and innovating upon it. Both players hit #1 Legend rank with pre-GvG Control Warrior decks. The thing that made the deck so good back then was that there really wasn’t a bad matchup for it, and that is still more or less true today. Really the worst thing that could happen to you as a Control Warrior player was to go up against another Control Warrior. Heaven forbid you needed to be somewhere by a certain time, the length of a mirror match up guarantees fashionably late arrival.
Continue Reading for the rest of the article!
Hearthstone
Warlock Goes Midrange
Since I first read what did in early beta, I was drawn to Warlock. Like many others I have spent a lot of time in Hearthstone inciting fury with Zoolock, and balancing on the edge of being killed playing Handlock. Lately however, I have been getting burnt out on these two archetypes. Goblins VS Gnomes was supposed to usher in a massive change in the way we play Hearthstone, yet these two ways of playing Warlock haven’t shown any sign of retirement. But maybe the change in Warlock just has not been discovered yet. This is why I paid a little more attention to a deck that made it to the top of the Hearthstone subreddit than I usually would have.
The Midrange Warlock. Redditor
TeslaEUNE
posted this deck, and I am in love. The first Warlock deck I gravitated towards in the Hearthstone beta was the buff-lock that was very popular in early tournaments. For those who may have missed beta if a minion gave another minions any stats, they were played. , , and were considered required minions in most decks and they were the backbone of this variation of Warlock (and were all nerfed as a result). While this midrange Warlock deck only has the Dark Iron in it, it seems to have captured the feel of ye olde BetaLock.
Continue Reading for more deck strategy!
Hearthstone
A Game of Minions
Goblins VS Gnomes brought a lot of changes to Hearthstone. One of the more noticeable overarching shifts is extremely minion-heavy play. In early vanilla Hearthstone, spells and board clears ruled the roost. Every class had only one class-specific Legendary minion. The sheer number of answers at the disposal of nearly every class made playing powerful minions an exercise in reciting Dirty Harry quotes. But minion-heavy decks are no longer reserved just for the Warlock’s own personal zoo.
Post-GvG every class has two Legendary minions (most of which are seeing Ranked play, sorry Mages,) and there has been a huge uptick in the selection of powerful minions. This means that the game is not decided by one good Flamestrike or Hex. You can play , have him silenced or removed, and still grin as you play on Turn 8 knowing his chances of survival have just drastically improved.
Piloted Shredders are a great Neutral example of GvG’s minion-centric shift. With , , and , there is now the potential for any deck to have five minions that summon other minions upon death spread across the mana curve. Cards like and were so widely played in vanilla Hearthstone because of the insurance they gave players in the face of wrath effects like (honorable mention for Harvest Golem still being amazing and now enjoying Mech synergy.) Now, there are just so many more choices to capitalize on these types of minions.
Class-specific cards received some much needed attention as well on the minion front. Paladin has had it’s issues with early turns ironed out and it’s all minions all the time. is one of the best 2-drops in the game and can throw down with the best of any other class’s early game. ’s tokens are happily disposable if you aren't fortunate enough to have a . Combined with the synergy Bolvar receives for trading away s, Paladin matches are now full of minions trading with other minions instead of relying on well-timed s.
There are also more creative ways to accomplish similar goals using minions. Waiting until Turn 10 to steal a minion as a Priest is old news. Now Priests can gain control of a plethora of minions earlier in the game thanks to the combination of and old favorite . Even the Spare Part spells have made the previously underutilized a rock star.
With many minions that survive board clears, leave other minions behind as a Deathrattle, or come in to play with a posse ( sends his regards), the puzzle of each turn in a game of Hearthstone is becoming more varied and fostering more creative plays. Less and less the correct play is a removal spell. The future of this game is very bright, thanks to the explosive tendencies of Azeroth’s smallest denizens, and the surface has only just been scratched.
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