Watch pros make tough plays at the World Championship
It’s happened to all of us. We sit there and watch the pro player du jour make an odd play, or one that will outright cost him the game, and we think “how can this guy be a pro? I could have made the right play there!”. Well, this is your chance to prove it.
With the recent meta shake up that was the warsong-commander ban, the world championship is poised to bring us all sorts of interesting and different decks. No longer will we see the same Druid-Warrior-Warlock line up everywhere, although Purple did still bring the old pre-nerf trifecta. I have made a special effort to bring a decent variety of decks and not to bring to your attention any secret paladin matches because god knows we have enough of those on the ladder.
I’d recommend to take a minute or two to think about the pro’s and con’s of each play if you want to get the most out of this. Are you ready to see if you can make the right calls?
Purple vs Pinpingho
Lets jump right into it a Druid vs Hunter match.
Pinpingho has the dream start, but Purple has a plethora of options. What’s the best option here? Ramping is always good, but what good is mana if you take a bunch of face damage and die to the hunter’s hero power? How urgently does Purple need to remove the double leper-gnome start? Luckily innervate allows Purple to match Pinpingho’s blazing fast start with his own.
[spoiler]
These are the options Purple has thanks to innervate:
- keeper-of-the-grove
- wrath + hero power
- wild-growth + wrath
- wild-growth + hero power
The first two plays are aggressive board control plays, recognizing that it is vital to hold the board against hunters early to get into the mid game with a decently sized health pool. However, both of the lines of play above suffer from having lacklustre turn 3 plays. You can follow up your keeper with a wrath
Given that we want to play wild-growth, is it better to wrath or to hero power? Well wrath saves you 1 health and lets you see one more card, but you can get a wrath to kill something with more than 2 attack later on (I’m looking at you huffer). Also, saving wrath lets you kill a 2 health minion later on and still draw a card with wrath by using it in conjunction with your hero power.  So the answer here is #4, which is what Purple goes for.
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I’ve had to make the play in ladder all the time, show me something exotic Modorra! This is the world championship!
Thijs vs No Tomorrow
Alright alright, how about this: Thijs’ Midrange Patron Warrior against No Tomorrow’s Druid.
Thijs should be pretty happy that he landed this match up. The grim-patron flood was always the better win condition against Druid and Blizzard’s balance team taking warsong-commander back to the shed and putting it down doesn’t change that.
Thijs can clear with deaths-bite and whirlwind, but then he loses the ability to make 4 grim-patrons next turn. He can go for a big card draw turn with acolyte-of-pain, whirlwind and battle-rage, clearing the shade and drawing 4 cards.  So many options! What will Thijs choose?!
[spoiler]
He chooses to take 10 face damage? Doesn’t he know he is up against a druid? With a bunch of discounted cards no less? Does he want to die to combo? Because that’s how you die to combo.
Hold up. Alright, so Thijs ends up taking 5 more damage from the ancient-of-lore than he needs to because he wants to set up the big grim-patron turn. Once he floods, the druid needs to blow either swipe + wrath + wrath or force-of-nature + savage-roar to clear the board. The only other option is grim-patrons take over and No Tomorrow scrambles for the concede button.
Why not swing face with the deaths-bite? If Thijs insists on taking 5 extra damage he can do it next turn. Well, maybe No Tomorrow will play something else he wants to hit. Thijs can slap the ancient-of-lore and still be over 20 when the ancient-of-lore takes its revenge. You also have the dread-corsair and your hero power to push you out of lethal range when your grim-patrons take over the board.
This line of play gives Thijs a primed deaths-bite and an execute to deal with No Tomorrows board, as well a guarantee that he can make many grim-patrons get in there next turn.
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The solution to the last example was literally play the two most overpowered cards in the deck. Can you show us something hard?
Fine.
Lifecoach vs Kranich
Lifecoach was in hot water against this zoo deck and then Kranich dropped dr-boom.
justicar-trueheart survived a turn! Its a small consolation given the board though. Lifecoach’s hand is really awkward because he has 3 ways to deal 6 damage and none to deal 7+. On the bright side the upgraded hero power can keep him in the game even if he can clean up a bit.
[spoiler]
Going face with the justicar-trueheart!? What happened to dragging out the game and using the super hero power?
It was a ruse, sorry reader. Lifecoach cannot clean up that board.
If you are staring down an awful board state you need to ask yourself: How can I win this game? In Lifecoach’s situation his answers are: brawl into a series of great top decks or, if he goes face with justicar-trueheart, draw grommash-hellscream + cruel-taskmaster or deaths-bite. The latter sequence seems a bit more likely.
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Suggest a match!
If you saw a great game, a clever play or an interesting board state, leave a comment with a link to it and I’ll visit it in the next issue of this series.
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I hope you enjoyed this article! Please upvote or leave a comment below to tell me if you’d like to see another for rest of the World Championship matches!
Check out my other stuff here: The Trap of the Best Case Scenario and Planning to Win or my YouTube channel Enter the Hearth.
