For the Swarm update

I saved up 700 more gold and cracked open a few more packets and was lucky enough to pull Leeroy Jenkins who will make a fine addition to my Druid Swarm deck.
Other than filling in some general holes in my collection there was nothing else of note in the packs.
Here's the deck in it's current iteration:

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The overall principle hasn't changed. Swarm the board with little guys, Swipe or Starfall away taunters that try to stem the tide, and punch through with Savage Roar.

Hearthstone: Opening 40 Packs

I've been having a fair bit of fun so far, so decided to fill out my commons and hopefully a fair chunk of the rares by buying some packs, here's the results.




I don't know what the odds are of getting 2 legends, and having both of them be Cho ... blegh. But, it's still +400 dust for ditching the second one, so not an absolute loss I guess, better than no second legendary at all.

Probably my favourite thing in there was the gold Kirin-Tor Mage, which just looks amazing in gold, and will probably inspire a Mage Secret deck (not that a lot of help was needed in that). Although if I now don't go and make a second gold one I'll be disappointed every time I draw the plain one.

Overall I did wind up with some solid cards that should fill out a few decks I'd like to try, and look forward to making them up and taking them for a spin.

Constructed fun, the unexpected roar

I've been tinkering with my Druid Swarm deck a little. I was going for rush, but it just wasn't feeling as quick as it could be. There needed to be some oomph in the way of some chargers.

Initial swapouts have the Ooze's and Shattered Sun Cleric's out. They're both great cards, but not quick enough. In comes Bluegill Warrior and Wolfrider. Technically weaker on their own, but the charge is what I need.
Starfire is out, it's just too expensive. Starfall is in. It's still 5 damage, but costs 5 instead of 6, and, I can alternatively choose to have a 2 damage AoE. The additional card draw is gone, and it can't be aimed at the enemies head, but I'm not sure how relevant either of those things has been to date.
A few other minor jumbles around, and I squeezed a knife juggler in there to see how he plays out. Just a 3/2 for 2 is pretty solid, but the random knives may occasionally allow me to scrape out something extra.

Here's a clip of my first play with the modified deck:



I feel like the Shaman thought he had held off the rush deck and was regaining the board.
Clearly mistaken.

Arena Quest 1: Continuing the Paladining

Hi Everyone,

So I managed to get around to completing my first arena run. As you might guess from the hour and twenty runtime, it went better than expected. I hope you enjoy.







** Spoilers **
Overall, I was extremely  happy with the draft. Picking up double consecrate and double humility allowed me to pull out that combo several times to great effect. Even the secrets I picked up pulled their weight significantly harder than I expected they would.

Several of the games I made some fairly horrific mistakes as you might note (and I noted several times immediately after making them), but hopefully we can all learn from these mistakes, which has the added bonus of not costing you guys an arena run.
That last game though was an exceptional showing by the rogue player, thoroughly impressed by how badly it destroyed me.

Druid Swarm results

So I played a few matches with the Druid Swarm deck from the previous post. I'm not sure it's explosive enough to get overly high in the rankings, but it certainly seems to go adequately, and could certainly get you some wins if your card pool isn't very large.

Commons Deck: The Druid Swarm

Recently my dailies asked me to win 5 times as a Druid, which is a class I haven't really played with yet. My card pool still isn't terribly expansive, so I decided to see what I could do with a commons only deck. I ended up with the below:

Click here for larger

The principle is fairly simple.
> Drop lots of guys, the more the better (Murloc Tidehunter and Razorfen Hunter shine here since they bring a friend)
> Swing with them when you can to plink down the enemies health a little.
> Drop Savage Roar, give everyone +2 attack (including yourself) and strike hard before the enemy knows what happened.
And, hope to beat any AOE spells, but that's the life a rush deck leads.

Key Druid specific cards:
Power of the Wild: Either gives you a 3/2 for 2, or, +1/+1 permanently to your minions. Either option is solid depending on how many guys you currently have, can be like a mini Savage Roar.
Swipe: One of only 2 cards that cost 4 or more in the deck, AOE of your own to help your little guys punch through (you need to level your druid to at least 8 to unlock).
Starfire: 5 damage + draws a card. Similar to swipe, intended to smack an offending threat such as a taunter out of the way.

Other cards that tend to be especially useful (but not quite "essential"):
Abusive Sergeant: a 2/1 for 1, and gives something else +2 attack when he enters the field. That boost can regularly help a single small unit trade with a much larger threat.
Razorfen Hunter/Murloc Tidehunter: Since they bring a friend, they gain twice the benefit from a Savage Roar.
Argent Squire/Scarlet Crusader: Divine shield tends to make these units more time consuming to kill, and all going to plan time is something your opponent doesn't have. It of course also lets them eat a threat without dying themselves.

Outside of that, whatever you have should work fine. Just so long as they are aggressively costed/stat allocated. Don't bother with taunts, or creatures with a heavy emphasis on defence, it will only slow you down.
Faerie Dragons would probably go nicely, their non-targeting ability will make spot removal harder, but won't impact your buffs ability to beef them up.
Knife Juggler could also earn his keep nicely.

The deck has initially shown itself to go alright, although almost certainly not something you could go all the way up to legendary with. I'll take some video of a few games and upload.

Arena Quest 1: The Paladining

After a few weeks of getting to know things in constructed, it's time to take the dive into Arena.
I decided to go with Paladin, I've heard them to be a strong pick, and here's a link to the deck I ended up with (Hearthpwn.com)

The deck appears to have a reasonably good curve, with a mix of creatures and spells all the way up, 2 consecrations and 1 hammer of wrath should help keep the board clear, and there's some fairly solid taunts in there with 3x Fen Creeper and 1x Sunwalker towards the top of the curve.

Here's how match 1 played out.

** Spoilers **
In the end this one went rather well. My opponent used up his quality removal early on to get rid of creatures which just didn't matter all that much while trying to go all out, and ran out of steam much too soon. By the time I dropped Fen Creeper, he was already in topdeck mode, and didn't appear to have any significant way to fight back any further.