Coin Concede - Episode 179

Hat * Botticus * Appa* Guest*

Intro (~10 min)

Welcome to Episode 179 of Coin Concede, a Hearthstone podcast dedicated to making the competitive side of the game more accessible to you.

Joining us from Gadgetzan, New York, it’s RidiculousHat!

Also joining us - from Karazhan, California it’s Botticus!

Joining you all from the Maelstrom, Louisiana, it’s Appa!

And now live from Undercity, Pennsylvania it's Edelweiss!

Coin Concede is supported in large part by you, the listener. If you’d like to find out how you can support us and receive rewards in return, head to patreon.com/coinconcede

Thanks to kresh for being our newest patron!

You can also support us by leaving an iTunes review!

How's life and ladder? -

Hat -

Appa -
Botticus -

Edelweiss -

News Highlights -

• RISE OF SHADOWS!

• Pre-release April 5th, Release April 9th
• League of Evil - Priest (Madame Lazul the Fortune Teller), Rogue (King Togwaggle), Shaman (Hagatha the Witch), Warrior (Dr Boom), and Warlock (Arch-Villain Rafaam)
• Dalaran Defenders - Mage, Druid, Hunter, Paladin (Alphabetical split!)
• Two bundles - a $50 and an $80, 1 pack per dollar, the preorder cardback, and a golden legendary. The random legendary from the mega bundle is golden and you also get Madame Lazul in that bundle, the currently available new Priest hero. You can buy both and get both legendaries.
• During the first week of the expansion, a special 9 pack bundle will be available for $10. It will also include an Arena Ticket.
• New Mechanic: Twinspell - Casting this adds another copy of the card (without Twinspell) to your hand.
  Example: The Forest's Aid - 8 mana Druid spell with twinspell that makes 5 2/2 Treants
• Lackeys - Special token minions which are generated through other cards. They are 1 mana 1/1 minions with "devious" battlecries: Discover a spell, summon a random 2-cost minion, give a friendly minion +1 attack and rush, deal 2 damage, evolve one minion.
  Generated by multiple cards including EVIL Miscreant, revealed 3 mana 1/5 Rogue card that gives you two lackeys if you combo. There will be more lackeys added over the course of the year per Kosak's video
• Schemes - Cards which grow in power as they sit in your hand each turn. Example: Hagatha's Scheme - 5 mana Shaman spell that deals 1 damage to all minions and upgrades by 1 at the end of every turn. No limit per Peter Whalen on twitter
• We will see some old mechanics return! Example: Forbidden Words - 0 mana Priest spell that spends all your mana and kills a minion with that attack or less
• No hero cards per Peter Whalen on twitter. Also confirmed 2 class legendaries and 5 neutrals
• 9 cards revealed! (Here's where we'll go into our spiel about card review season - we will not be calling cards "good" or "bad" because that's entirely context driven, we will not be going over every revealed card, and we discuss cards that we feel are interesting given what we know so far or are just objectively interesting)
• We can take this time to do hot takes on cards if we want, though we should definitely discuss the mechanics so far
• Cards worthy of discussion imo:

• Arch-Villain Rafaam
• Chef Nomi APPA SOAPBOX
• Hagatha's Scheme and Togwaggle's Scheme
• Kalecgos

• Easter egg from website! (reddit)

• "FROM: ArchVillainRafaam14@leaguemail.evl
  TO: xXx_BLASTMASTERBOOM_xXx@leaguemail.evl
  SUBJECT: Rockets
  I have collected artifacts from hundreds of worlds, but those rockets you are building are beyond anything I've ever seen! This design will suit our schemes quite well. Proceed with your tests. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
  Kind Regards,
  Rafaam
  sent from my henchphone

• Mammoth Send-Off

• Log in March 25th through April 2 to receive 3 free card packs! (1 each from Journey to Un’Goro, The Knights of the Frozen Throne, and Kobolds & Catacombs)
• The Tavern Brawl starting March 25 invites you to take those free cards and build decks using only expansions from the Year of the Mammoth.
• The Tavern Brawl starting April 1 gives you an opportunity to earn a Rise of Shadows pack that you can open once the expansion is released.

• 13.4 patch notes

• Pre-patch for Rise
• Optimized Hearthstone's app size
• Optimized reconnecting
• Reroll legendary quests if you really want to
• Random card back selector
• Golden heroes count Arena wins
• Smart deckbuilder is in

• OldGuardian wrote an article for HS TopDecks about it that's pretty rad (HSTopDecks)
• No Wild support right now. It's coming, but it's not done

• "Trigger updates" - "We're updating the rules regarding how Poisonous, Lifesteal, and Overkill keywords work in specific cases, to make cards behave in a more intuitive way."

• Basically this fixed weirdo edge cases where you would lose one of those three abilities midway through an interaction. As explained by Whalen: "Quick version - if you have one of those keywords when you damage something you always get the bonus. Before, if you had a Stubborn Gastropod hit Acolyte of Pain which draws Scroll of Wonder which Silences the Gastropod, then the Poisonous would be gone, so wouldn't fire.  Now it would and the Acolyte will die."

• Whalen Wild Tweets

• I thought these were cool:
• Peter doesn't want to unnerf Yogg because of the card making the rest of the game feel irrelevant and that's dangerous as a neutral
• Barnes is the top card to watch in Wild but there are no currently planned changes pre-ROS
• Team 5 has to deal with the divide between wild players where some want a crazy world where everything is legal and others want a balanced stable format with minimal change

• It's the 5 year anniversary of Hearthstone! Here's a video about the innkeeper and his voice actor (Youtube)

Tournament Results -

High Level Recap

Woah wait a second - things are different now and we've had a WHOLE BUNCH of Masters Qualifiers! Let's talk about that, because we've got info. 44 qualifiers have completed!

Tournament Meta

Two twitter accounts have really stood out in their data collection:

https://twitter.com/ShangHighHS

https://twitter.com/ecoutepasca_HS

You can also check out Yaytears' battlefy scraper here: https://www.yaytears.com/battlefy and it's super cool because it has decks AND differences

Both are providing daily updates - ShangHigh is more data aggregation where ecoutepasca is more live updates and winning decklists/tournament intel

The meta on 3/14:

34 of the 48 top 8 decks between 6 tournaments were Hunter. 29 of those were midrange.

Rogue was the second most popular class, with 5 miracle Rogues. This was the same representation as the second most popular Hunter deck - cube Hunter. Every other class except Shaman had 1-2 deck that was represented. Winners were 3x Miracle Rogue, 2x Mid Hunter, and an Odd Warrior.

Day before on 3/13 - Nearly identical, except only 30 hunters out of 48 and Priest was in second place with 5 players representing, 3 on control with 1 combo and 1 Zerek. No Druid or Shaman. Winners were 3x Mid Hunter, Odd Warrior, Miracle Rogue, Combo Priest.

One more, day before on 03/10 - 28/48 hunters and 7 control priests, with 6 warlocks (4 cube/2 even) and 4 rogues (miracle). No druid, no mage, no shaman, no warrior. 17 of the hunters were midrange, 11 were cube. Winners were 3x Midrange, 2x Cube, 1x Even Warlock.

QUIK HITZ Anecdotes

• Stay close to your computer :(
• Don't sign up for multiple events in the same day - you'll get dropped
• The tournaments are not capping - many of them have 200 or less players playing in round 1 despite a cap of 224
• Prepare to beat Mid Hunter
• Lorinda has player stats, not tournament stats - https://twitter.com/LorindaGames/status/1106165420007063555

• There is a player who has played in 23 qualifiers
• Multiple people have more than one top 8, including 6 people with three top 8s who have not qualified

Coming Soon

More qualifiers!

KR vs CN invitational!

World cyber games! International online olympics equivalent, signups are on http://wcg.com/ 
Wesg finals!

CC Not-League 2!

Decksplanations - Mammoth Memories

Okay, so Rise of Shadows is coming… and that means we have less than a month with Year of the Mammoth. Let's remember what these sets brought us.

UN'GORO

• Mechanics: Quests, Elementals (new creature type), Adapt, DINOSAURS
• Meta: Super balanced overall, but this was def the Mage era of Hearthstone, and Burn

Mage was the poster child. Token Shaman and Token Druid were both good, Quest Rogue was a spoiler but not a great meta deck except at high legend, Hunter and Warlock were trash and Priest wasn't much better. Jade Druid picked up significantly after the Rogue nerf… a grim omen of things to come.

• Nerfs: Caverns Below is it

KFT

• Mechanics: Death Knights, Lifesteal, Freeze Shaman :(, the Princes
• Meta: Pre-nerf, Druid broke the game. Raza, Pirate Warrior, and Murloc Paladin were the only other decks. Post-nerf, Druid was still very good but Raza Priest, Tempo Rogue, and Zoo all picked up. Mid Hunter had signs of life, Mage was good but not dominant, and Warrior was dead with Paladin not that far ahead of it. Shaman had one deck - Bloodlust tokens.
• Nerfs: Innervate, Fiery War Axe, Hex, Murloc Warleader, Spreading Plague
• Other note: The start of non-adventure PvE as we know it

KNC

• Mechanics: Recruit, Legendary Weapons, Spellstones, Unidentified stuff, Rogue secrets
• Meta: The time when Priest was everywhere. Raza, Dragon, and Big were all good. Control Warlock was strong pre-nerf and Cube was just getting discovered. Aggro Paladin and Tempo Rogue were quite good because of free 5/5s, and Druid really fell hard. Warrior and Shaman were dead. Post-nerf, Cube Warlock had been refined and was very powerful, Dude Paladin was becoming quite strong and Murloc came back with a vengeance, Secret Mage was good and Spell Hunter was oddly playable, and Rogue declined in relevance after Bonemare and Creeper went away. Druid was bad, Shaman and Warrior stayed lifeless.
• Nerfs: Bonemare, Corridor Creeper, Patches, Raza (also probably worth mentioning that 4 KNC cards were nerfed a month into the next year)
• Other note: Dungeon Run
• Feral Gibberer: ~gibberer noise~
• Scorp-o-Matic: ~kills gibberer~

Hosts, for the year, name a card that:

You wish was added to classic so it would stay in standard:

You like but you're ready for it to go:

You wanted to be good but it just wasn't:

You are ready to kick out of standard:

You wish had never been printed:

APPA

You wish was added to classic so it would stay in standard: Hooked Reaver (Volcano)

You like but you're ready for it to go: Carnivorous Cube (Tarim)

You wanted to be good but it just wasn't: Benevolent Djinn (Arfus)

You are ready to kick out of standard: Rexxar (Vicious Fledgling)

You wish had never been printed: Eternal Servitude (Kingsbane)

BOTT

You wish was added to classic so it would stay in standard: Lyra, Runner up Fire Fly

You like but you're ready for it to go: The Caverns Below

You wanted to be good but it just wasn't: Lesser Pearl Spellstone, Dragon Soul, Leyline Manipulator

You are ready to kick out of standard:Cube, Priest Spellstone

You wish had never been printed: UI

HAT

You wish was added to classic so it would stay in standard: Shadow Ascendant (Blood Razor runner up)

You like but you're ready for it to go: Glacial Shard (Primordial Glyph runner up)

You wanted to be good but it just wasn't: Valeera the Hollow (Plague Scientist runner up)

You are ready to kick out of standard: Shadow Visions (Fungalmancer runner up)

You wish had never been printed: Keleseth (Priest Spellstone runner up) also Divine Favor

Outro (~5min)

Thanks and contact!

We have many folks we'd like to thank - check out our THANKS! section on the website at www.coinconcede.com, where you can also find our contact info, our show notes, and our Patreon information!

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SPOTIFY

BIG THANKS to our producers VIRIATUS, RYAN, DONALD, and JOSHUA!!!

Coin Concedes (Shout Outs):

- 

Hat- Slightly Tilted, Kite, Kyle Knudson, ecoutepasca, yaytears, shanghigh

Botticus- Caketality

Appa - Ungoro, Magnechu, oh yeah the admins are insane

Edelweiss -

Keep Calm and !

And if you see us on ladder…

“Coin Concede” Hat

“Coin Concede” Bott

“Coin Concede” Appa

“Coin Concede” Edelweiss