Legion sounds awesome!

Okay, for once I got to watch BlizzCon streams at home in real time!  All in all, I'm excited about a lot of the stuff they talked about.  I'm not super-stoked about playing Marksman without a pet, but it's for sentimental reasons, not mechanical ones, so I figure I'll just swap over to Beast Mastery when I want to visit my pets.

But what I am looking forward to...  (If you don't have livestream access, try Blizzard Watch for info and lots of pictures!)

Prot Warrior Deck

So the caveat with anything Hearthstone is that I'm not that good - the best I've done is rank 15, once, and I did that on the back of Oil Rogue and Mech Mage decks.  That said, I do enjoy playing around with random decks.

This warrior deck is okay - it works well enough for quests, but you're unlikely to get anywhere on the ladder with it.  It's all weapons and armor for the most part, with some warrior spells thrown in to flesh it out.

The problems I've run into most frequently with this deck is the card draw hitting a patch of all weapons, or getting stuck with a freezing minion in a mage deck with no removal or minions.  When it works out, though, it can be quite fun - build up armor, smash things with axes.

Card list:

• Inner Rage x1
• Execute x2
• Shield Slam x1
• Upgrade! x1
• Whirlwind x1
• Fiery War Axe x2
• Cleave x1
• Slam  x2
• Armorsmith x1
• Ogre Warmaul x2
• Bouncing Blade x1
• Shield Block x2
• Death's Bite x2
• Mortal Strike x1
• Arathi Weaponsmith x2
• Defender of Argus x1
• Arcanite Reaper x2
• Brawl x1
• Siege Engine x1
• Shieldmaiden x2
• Gorehowl x1

Hearthstone Interlude: Daily Quests

So today's daily quest popped up, and it's "Destroy them all" - you know, the destroy 40 minions quest.  And immediately I thought: mage quest.

I'm not great at Hearthstone - I hover around rank 19 or 20, occasionally flirting with 18, but I don't play enough to get that good at it.  I am starting to favor particular classes for particular quests, though.

Seven of the daily quests don't have a class requirement, so you can complete them with whichever deck you want to play.  Here are the ones I like for each; if the first class seems to be having bad luck that day, I'll switch to one of the ones down the list.

3 Victories!: Win 3 games with any class.

1. Hunter
2. Warrior
3. Mage

Beat Down: Deal 100 damage to enemy heroes.

1. Mage
2. Warrior

Destroy them All: Destroy 40 minions.

1. Mage
2. Warlock
3. Warrior

Only the Mighty: Play 20 minions that cost 5 or more.

1. Priest (customized for high-cost minions)

Spell Master: Cast 40 spells.

1. Druid
2. Mage
3. Warlock

The Meek Shall Inherit: Play 30 minions that cost 2 or less.

1. Rogue (my murloc deck)
2. Paladin
3. Priest (customized for low-cost minions)
4. Hunter

Total Dominance: Win 7 games in any mode.

1. Hunter
2. Warrior
3. Mage 

For the "X or Y class wins" quests, I basically have a priority:

1. Hunter
2. Warrior
3. Warlock
4. Mage
5. Rogue
6. Priest
7. Shaman
8. Paladin
9. Druid

The priority lists aren't necessarily which deck is the strongest, but a mix of how much I enjoy the class and how like the deck's playstyle and how likely I am to win with it.  It's not a perfect mirror of my WoW class preferences - my WoW #2 is priests, and mage is one of the three I don't have at 90 (yet).  Hearthstone Jaina plays like Jaina from the books, though, and I appreciate that quite a bit.

Do you have different deck preferences for the quests?

Hearthstone

Once upon a time, I played M:TG.  Back when, you know, I still lived around other people I knew who play.  So getting into Hearthstone hasn't been terribly hard.  I have a hunter deck I like, a rogue/murloc deck that works for the quests (and murloc swarming is always hilarious), a warlock deck that's fun (and not just because getting screwed over by your own demons is awesome), and a priest deck I made for the daily quest to summon something like 30 minions that cost 5 or more... that turned out to be fairly decent for casual play, as well.  And of course the mage deck with Archmage Antonidas and his endless fireballs never fails to disappoint for the "deal 100 damage to enemy characters" daily quest.

So why am I playing Garrosh, damn it?

I set the deck up thus, with a Gorehowl at the bottom that's below the scroll:

I wanted to make a deck that would play off the Knife Juggler, Violet Teacher, and Imp Master, which meant also pulling in the Frothing Berserker, Cult Master, and Flesheating Ghoul to play off the deaths of all those little minions you're hopefully summoning.  Questing Adventurer got thrown in because, well, why not?  It's a fairly light deck mana-wise, and it's easy to bump him up fast.

Warrior decks seem okay for buffing minions if they can survive a little damage.  And a Frothing Berserker hitting for 20 points in round 5 is just... impressive.  A bad draft means you lose pretty fast, but if a couple cards come out in combo and your opponent doesn't or can't knock off the dangerous ones (mainly the Berserker, Ghoul, and Adventurer) in a timely manner, they can quickly become overwhelming.  The Warsong Commander to give them charge when they first come out, the Cruel Taskmaster and Rampage to quickly ramp them up even more...

It's not a perfect deck, but it's making the non-class-specific dailies go pretty fast.