The BRM Nuba Report #1

Introduction

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeello Hearthstone Players, and this was a fun week! With just the first wing of Blackrock Mountain (BRM) released, we already had a big meta shake: Probably all the decks changed and we’re having a great time testing different decks, cards and strategies.

The BRM Nuba Report is going to be the series that will substitute CFWS until the whole BRM release event is over! This is going to be a 5 episodes series, that will be released every week and on these series I will be making a Weekly report of the Metagame, talking about new decks that pop up, card impact, and some more fun stuff that comes to mind during the week.

Just another thing, before starting this article I would just like to tell you guys that whenever I mean “burn” spells I mean stuff that deals direct damage to the face, also known as “Reach”.

Another add, is that the website is still updating with BRM’s cards, and the cards are still missing in the Deck Editor, so the images of the deck will have to do for now.

The Weekly Report

Well, we had quite some different stuff happening this week, lets talk about them in order.

Blackrock Mountain finally released in time! And not only that, we finally had a big Blizzard release event without a massive lag and server instability!! And I am not even making fun of this, since it’s probably the first time this has happened in Hearthstone (anyone remember Naxxramas release craze?).

Then everyone completed the normal wings, but how about the Heroic ones?

With the massive number of nice Cardbacks added to the game, Blackrock Mountain’s Heroic modes were ignored by a lot of players that did not ignored Naxxramas’ Heroic, me being one of them. Regardless of that, the number of people doing the Heroic modes were still great.

The fights were slightly harder than the ones of Naxx’s first week, and a lot more fun as well! Who didn’t laughed hard at the He-man reference – “By the power of  Greyskull Ragnaros, I have the power!”?

And how about the Arena fight against an all-legendary deck? BLIZZ PLS NERF P2W BOSSZ!!!!!

The Class challenges were fun as hell as well, an all Unstable Portal deck? WOAH!! To make things even more fun, on my first fight I had the Boss play Millhouse Manastorm against me, which led me to an instant win! 😀

Oh, I know some of you are looking for Deck Lists to beat the Heroic modes, I haven’t played so I asked a friend of mine to pass me the best lists to beat each boss. The only problem is that the lists are in Portuguese, not in english, but I still think you guys are able to recognize the cards by their images, here’s the link of the big image with all the 3 decks: http://imgur.com/wDOu8RB.

Card Impact

Basically everything we predicted was going to happen ended up happening.

• emperor-thaurissan is a Powerhouse, everyone wants to run this in their Mid-range, Control and Combo decks. I can’t even begin to explain how needed this card was to the game. This also is the first all-star legend added to the game that do not benefit aggro (both dr-boom and loatheb were also additions to aggro) which is currently the dominant archetype in the game.
• resurrect ended up being better than we expected, and it actually made Priests a lot stronger.
• Some weak gang-up lists popped up, mostly because a famous 4fun streamer posted a list that runs this, but as I told you guys: The card is terrible!!! All the lists being played that run this card are simply bad lists, and usually tend on a lot more losses than wins, and usually the wins won’t happen because of this card anyway.
•  grim-patron surprised us a little. While we knew people were going to try weird weak combo decks that don’t work (most of the times) with this, we didn’t expect it to be added to Control Warrior lists as a substitute to sludge-belcher. While this is much weaker in both the Aggro and Mid-range matchups, the Control matchup becomes slightly better with this change because we’re adding another win-condition to the deck. However I don’t think this is going to be a lasting change, since Aggro will always exist on this game regardless of how strong Control becomes and that this is just a temporary change, just for the sake of playtesting.
• quick-shot went inside every single Hunter archetype. The card is just that good. What did happened that we didn’t expect is that some Hunter lists are actually cutting knife-juggler to put this card instead. This happens because outside of unleash-the-hounds combo there isn’t much use for Jugglers since they don’t have instant impact on the board, while Quick Shot fits more into the “burn” archetype.
• dragons-breath had the initial small impact we imagined, and was only ran into decks that actually wanted the third or fourth Fireball, such as Mage Burn decks. We could actually see a few lists here and there running this card combined with stuff like leper-gnome.

Still, this is the first week, but all the cards have stand-alone effects that don’t need other cards to be evaluated, therefore the cards that saw play this week are likely to still see play after it, and the ones that didn’t are very likely to continue not seeing any play when the further wings are released.

Notable Deck Lists

There were quite some notable deck lists, let us focus on the five “best” decks played this week.

The first one is the revamped Face Hunter list, that swapped a few minions in an out for instant effect such as the new Quick Shot. I was discussing with some deck builders friend of mine, and we came up with this list.

Obviously, since it’s still very early in the expansion we can’t tell for sure this is the best list, therefore keep an eye out for updated lists that will be posted on this website in one of our various guides.

This list should be played just like any other Face Hunter, but this time you have instant answer to zombie-chow with Quick Shot as well as a late game cycle effect, therefore I suggest you keeping Quick Shot against decks that do run Chows on their early game arsenal such as Shamans and Paladins, but mulligan it out against Decks that don’t, since you are likely to want it later in the game rather than early.

Then we move on to the Updated Fast Druid list.

Basically Fast Druid is one of the decks that got buffed with the addition of emperor-thaurissan. But not only that: Fast Druid actually is the deck that got buffed with the addition of this card.

Fast Druid’s strategy is to generate value with strong and fast minions added to the board ahead of the curve with both wild-growth and innervate, and Thaurissan is simply everything the deck stands for, making it more consistent and stronger than ever.

As a 6-drop, you never want Thaurissan in your starting Hand, and the rest of the mulligan is just the standard Fast Druid mulligan you all already know: Always keep Wrath and Shade, keep 4-drops only if you have Innervate and/or Wild Growth, mulligan everything else looking for these Ramp cards.

Malygos Rogue is something people have been re-testing with Thaurissan. Even gadgetzan-auctioneer is being tested once again in the deck. A lot of rogue players like the idea and are playing it, however, since we only had 1 week to test the decks, I have no idea how good the current deck is(neither have played it), therefore I don’t have much to talk about it.

I believe the Mulligan is still the same: Keep everything below 3-cost in your hand outside of sap. I still don’t know why the current deck won’t run violet-teachers or piloted-shredder, but this is the list that has been passed to me, therefore I am just passing it to you guys. I aim sorry D:

Oh! I almost forgot this one.

resurrect actually resurrected Competitive priests this week. Being the main choice done by me and my teammates, it is the deck that performed the best in tournaments, simply because Resurrect made the deck a lot more consistent by adding another way to “activate” the Blademaster as well a cheap “Unstable Portal” that has less chances of getting crap minions.

Using this deck I won every single match but one in this weekend’s ESL (I actually lost in my last round, on the top 8, against a Handlock with it). The deck is just that consistent.

I loved the way it went, but I am still unsure of the future of the class since everyone is getting new buffs but Priests in the coming weeks.

As for the mulligan, the same as before except you actually want to keep your Resurrects in your starting hand in case you already have a 3-drop or Auchenai.

The Burn Mage is real!!!

The main idea of this deck is to rush down the opponent while throwing a lot of burn spells in their face. dire-wolf-alpha is there both to deal more damage as well as to trade in the mirror-images for both value and to reduce dragons-breath mana cost.

The mulligan here is self-explanatory, just get everything below 2 mana.

We still don’t know if this list is good enough, but playtesting this was fun!

SMOrc Mage Confirmed!!

A List for Tomorrow!

Woah!!! Well, the second wing is just around the corner, and I know everyone wants a nice list to play.

Well, first, we are still unable to use the super power of blackwing-technician since there is no real Dragon being added to the game. Then, all the other cards but imp-gang-boss and druid-of-the-flame being added to the game this week are terrible. Therefore, the main deck I see us playing is Demonlock, since DoTF (Druid of the Flame) isn’t as hype-worthy as Imp Gang Boss!

But but, how about the list? Give us the list!

MAD…PAINT…SKILLS!

Basically, just swap voidwalker for imp-gang-boss, puff!

Well, sorry to dissapoint I am not really imaginative today, but I believe Demonlock is on a very good position, therefore changing much outside of it might be a mistake, which means I believe the list I just posted is the ideal starting playtest point.

The idea about imp-gang-boss is that the card is good by itself, and trying to “combo” it is a mistake, rather just generate value with it during the game.

By this point, everyone already knows how Demonlock works, but in case you still don’t there are 2 (sligthly outdated) guides on this website that focus on Demonlock, a Premium one, written by Shudogin, and a Free one, written by Joseph (that also happens to have a gameplay video on it).

Conclusion

So this is it for this small report, I hope you guys enjoyed reading this. This friday I’ll be making the report for this week, so keep an eye out for the next BRM Nuba Report!

On a final note, I know you guys have been complaining that we haven’t been publishing much content lately, and as I said on the comments of that other post – It’s just that BRM is still coming out, and there is no value in adding new guides about decks that either didn’t come out or are still getting buffed. Therefore, you should expect a lot of theorycrafting in the coming weeks as well as Meta Reports like this until BRM is over, then (and only then) you’ll start to see a lot of new Deck Guides as well as the return of the Countering the Flavor of the Week Series.

See you guys later,

Very Much Loves!

 /BudaBudie

 @TheNubaHS

 /TheNubaHS

 /TheNubaHS