G'day, friends, it's Blister Guy, and this is episode 1328, I think. I've walked to work a mobile hostel in podcast, and we're talking about the warlock reveals today, which I guess sort of continues on from the last episode, where I talked about how to reveal, but not about the cards. But of course, there are other warlock casts to talk about, too, and I know, look, mostly I'm just distracted because there must be a cafe nearby that's just cooked up some bacon. Oh, my gosh. Even if I was vegetarian, I think the smell of bacon would be... Ah, it'd be a bit alluring to me. I don't know. I don't... I think actually... I've heard people say once they decide to be vegetarian, which, to be fair, I can completely understand that and support anyone's decision to do that. They start to find things like the smell of cooking bacon to be abhorrent. Not me. Not me. Well, I'm not vegetarian, so maybe I would if I did, but right now... Oh, gosh, I think I could smell eggs along with it. Oh, my gosh. Anyway, just dropped mongers at school, so we're about to cross the motorway. I really should open my phone so we can look at A, wallock reveal cards, and B, actually what the episode number is, so I can remind myself. Pretty sure it is. Look, you know, it is. I can be a little disorganized sometimes, and that's fine. I want to give shout outs to one John McIntyre. You might know him as one of the senior devs on Hearthstone. Yes. Apparently he listens to the podcast sometimes. I suspect not this one. I assume he's been hand-picking. Like basically saw when I posted it about twist and then decided to listen to them. I know this because I cued into John last night in the letter. Didn't notice it was him. We were just happily playing along. And at the end of the match, I'm like, "Oh, my opponent says John McIntyre." And, you know, when you can see your previous opponent, I was like, "Well, you know, sometimes people have numbers "after their name, it's like five." And I'm like, "Well, that might be a fake guy." This one had four, and they were low, and I'm like, "This might actually be the real John McIntyre." And so I added him, and he immediately said, "I didn't realize it was you." I'm like, "Meany there." And so we had a champ. I was like, "I had you up quite early." He's like, "Yeah, I've got a six-month-old." Just rocking him to sleep. And I was like, "I know the feeling too well." And so we had a chat, and he said about how he had been listening for the episodes for my takes on twist, and he thanked me for the feedback, which was very nice. And so shout out to John McIntyre, who's probably not listening to this one because I'm not talking about twist. Or, "Well, I think I will be in the coming episodes." So I guess we're getting this one out of the way, before it's too embarrassing for him and I. But I'll talk about twist again because we have a new month for twist, and there are new heroes to use. And I know there might be some scuttlebutt that it's maybe not as fun for some people, but I've been having a lot of fun. Anyway, that's beside the point. There are actually other things to talk about other than wall-lock heroes. Hang on, I'm in the phone. Let's get the details out of here, while we're letting the loud traffic heading towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge screed by behind me. I've just realized I've never taken a picture from this bridge. It's not very enticing. You know, like, a bridge over a motorway has lots of barriers and fancy things, so it's not like it's a very nice picture. You know what I'm gonna do anyway? It's just for the idea. So, this is a picture. It's a cloudy day, you can see it. And I don't know if you're gonna be able to see very well through this fencing, but it's a picture that includes the Sydney Harbour Bridge, obscured by a building slightly, and the Sydney Opera House. Like, it's easy to forget sometimes that I'm pretty blessed to be living in that kind of magical place of the world. Kind of explains my memory rent so high. Ha, ha, ha! Anyway, where were we? This discord here, that's my discord work. Keep these patron channels. This is what I posted in class. And I guess it was 1328, and I did say the wall-lock reveal, so that makes sense. Apparently, anomalies are back this week in standard and wild. Not everyone's happy about that. I really enjoyed anomalies the last time they were in. I kind of think that, and this is an odd way to put it, anomalies are faster and as Garfield intended. Now, that makes no sense. What big puddles? Jump over that. No, no, no. Anyway, Richard Garfield designed Magic and Gathering. And the whole premise of the thing was that when you sit down to play a game of Magic and Gathering, and you get someone else, each game would be different because you would bring a deck to the table. They would bring a deck to the table, and then the next person would bring a deck to the table. It would be different every time. Which is a nice idea. And obviously, as Magic has continued on for nearly 30 years now, the game has evolved to such and the information age with the internet, because Magic predated the internet, believe it or not, has meant that it doesn't always work like that. You have established meta games, people are always playing the same kind of thing. And that's true of Hearthstone as well. It's, you know, you go on to the standard layer. You're gonna face some pretty expected stuff, and sometimes there'll be some unusual stuff. But it normally has changed that up a little bit there, an uncertainty factor to the whole thing. There's some bit of chaos there. I would say that is most definitely a Hearthstone as Garfield intended Magic to be, and I'm pretty sure at the heart, Magic Wishtik could do this kind of thing in real life as well. Kind of always get away with it, and we have a lot of entrenched behavior in both games where people go, look, I know this is a game with a lot of randomness, but I don't want too much randomness, that's okay, okay. Actually, I'm gonna say something mean. I shouldn't say mean things. We know that I don't like to say mean things anymore, and maybe past me might say mean things, but let's just assume that if I was still the kind of person to say mean things, this would be something I would say, but I'm not gonna say this, but I'm gonna say it. Is obviously a lot of people are complaining about anomalies, and that's fine. I can understand why people don't necessarily like it. I've talked before about the psychological side of things where we allow the randomness of Hearthstone into our lives because the rest of our lives are unpredictable, and this gives us something we can feel we can control. And anomalies, it suddenly does this extra icing on the cake that we didn't expect, and we don't like it just the same way. We don't like unexpected high power build, that kind of thing, right? So I can understand why people don't like it, but meaty. Well-known British Hearthstone pro, I would say. Previously, the streaming hasn't streamed very much. We'll also AGP, an also a professional Twitter troll. Now, I say this because I'm pretty sure he knows exactly what he's doing. He will make Twitter threads about how as a GP, he's been utilising chat GPT to diagnose people. I'm pretty sure he's doing this to wind people up because I don't think that is a very ethical way to handle diagnosing patients. I'm hoping he's using it with a grain of salt. Like, takes what it says and goes, "Ah yeah, I think I've just condensed "what's out there on the internet and doing things." Zeddi posted about anomalies, did a poll. He said, "Let's just sort this out "even though my followers have a bias. "Do you like anomalies?" It looks like 33% like it, which I, I clicked. At 66% didn't give him the Zeddi bias, that's probably about right. And meaty responded to Zeddi and said, "Why did they bring these back? "I experienced genuine Stockholm syndrome "last time anomalies were in." Now, I didn't want to tweet this because remember I don't want to be mean anymore. But I did respond to, to meaty saying, "Sorry, so in this genuine Stockholm syndrome situation, "were you the captive and anomalies were the captive?" Yeah, you were the hostage, they were the captive, and you were developing an empathy towards anomalies? 'Cause that's what Stockholm syndrome is, right? What I didn't post, which is what I wanted to post, was like, "I think I can see why you wanted "to use chat GPT to diagnose things "if this is what you think Stockholm syndrome is." Anyway, I also didn't want to post, by the way, posting things like this, equating anomalies to genuine Stockholm syndrome is going to water down your chat GPT results, just a little bit, making it less reliable. But again, I kind of feel like maybe meaty knows exactly what he's doing and kind of knows what Stockholm syndrome is. So let's assume that I didn't say any of that because I wouldn't 'cause it's mean, and I'm above that, I'm a professional, but if I wasn't, that might be the kind of things I would say in post. Anyway, some people aren't liking your anomalies. They're only here for a week. I mean, it was a couple of days ago, they came out yesterday, maybe. So five or six days to go, not so bad. Lots of other things to do, including the new twist format, of course, and lots of reveals to look at. And also looking for this new expansion coming, there's nothing wrong with taking a little bit of time off playing one game just to enjoy a different one, while you wait for the new expansion stuff to come out. That's also fine too. Now, where were we, Warlock reveals? Someone sent me a DM in Discord. Is it important? Nope, great, yes. It's just a listener who, incidentally, picked up on something I said an episode or two ago, and was like, are you talking about this? And I'm like, yes, I am, but don't tell anyone. And so they've continued that conversation, and of course, I'm not gonna tell you what we were talking about, because I said don't tell anyone to them, which I think also extends to me. Oh my God, work ramp time. I probably shouldn't talk about this, but I deal with research and research-related contracts at work. Someone had been given a deed poll, which is generally like a kind of an agreement that says I abide too, acknowledge about this. We don't like our individual researchers to sign deep polls in general with external agencies. We, as their employees and affiliates of the university, we like to enter into the agreement on their behalf, 'cause it helps protect them. And clearly, they're doing the work on our behalf, then that makes sense, right? Anyway, that wasn't the issue. They were very stubborn. They wanted the external party wanted us to use their deed poll. I'm like, well, I don't really like your thing. There's some issues with it. I think you should use our template, which is much better. It is mutual as opposed to one way. In other words, their information was protected in that house. We would like it so it's both ways, you know, that kind of thing. But one of the best things about their template is they had listed under confidential information that should be covered under this confidentiality agreement, things that had been patented and published. I don't know about you, dear listener, but I'm pretty sure that things that had been patented and published are now public information and are certainly not confidential. Anyway, sorry, people are not understanding how things work, get my goat. Anyway, where was I? Warlock stuff, I'll find them. Where are we? I was like, no, confidentiality, 'cause I didn't want to talk about those. Anyway, warlock cards, great, okay. So I'm gonna try and talk a little bit about the cards that I didn't reveal first. And, you know, we're gonna run out of time if we're not careful. But there's an interaction between the cards I didn't reveal and the cards I did reveal, one of the cards I did reveal, that I think is pretty sweet. Anyway, the first card that we saw from the other reveal, which I believe came out earlier, was supposed to come out after mine, but was accidentally released by Blizzard early, is a party fiend, it is a one mana common one one demon, battle cry, summon two one one fell beasts, deal three damage to your hero. That's three one ones for one mana, pretty good deal up front, just three damage to you, so a bit like a flame imp, we remember that one. You know, it's a classic card. Similar to that, it does damage to you, I guess if you want damage done to you, this is a reasonable way to do it. I do think three one ones is a bit of a cost though, because before you know it, you're gonna run out of board space. And sometimes that's a good problem to have, but I don't know, I would rather have a flame imp, even though there's only two health on the flame imp, rather than three lots of one health. Still, reasonable card, if you need more ways to damage yourself. The next card they revealed is cursed souvenir, two mana shadow spell epic, give a minion plus three plus three, and at the start of your turn deal, three damage to your hero. That's not just, that's not just once. It's plus three plus three once, but the three damage to your hero is gonna be every turn. That'll add up a lot, but again, if you wanna be a pain wallock, and you wanna get molten giants into play and stuff, I mean, this'll do it. And two mana plus three plus three is not nothing, it is a fair amount. Now, moving on, fearless flame juggler layer. To demon, two mana one one, battle crygate stats, equal to the damage your hero has taken this turn. All right, I can see where this is going. You could play something on turn one. Well, I would say a party fiend, but let's assume we're holding that. You can play something on turn one. On turn two, you play the curse souvenir, giving it plus three plus three. On turn two, a four four, that suddenly attacking is a four four is a lot, so that's not nothing. Next turn, out you take three damage fair enough. You've got three mana, you play the party fiend, you take another three damage, you're taking six damage to turn and the last two mana, you play fearless flame juggler and it's a seven seven. Not out of the realm of possibility, especially given the party fiend could be replaced with a flame in there and you'd get much the same effect. Like, this is just additional pain warlock shenanigans, that is probably quite good. Now, let's move on to, well, actually we'll talk briefly about fell fire bond fire, which was one other one of the cards revealed. Four mana fell spell, rare deal four damage to a minion. So four mana to deal four damage to a minion, not exactly the kind of cost you happy with. If it dies, your next death rattle minion costs three less. All right, so it's not that we're paying four mana for four damage here. Actually, we're looking to cheat some mana on the following turn. Like, when we're playing an eight drop on turn five with death rattle, you've got my attention, you know what I mean? And this is just a set up card. You're like, I don't care what I'm killing, as long as I'm killing something, and it has to be a minion over there. Maybe even it's one of my minions, if my opponent is not cooperating playing stuff, but I will use fell fire bond fire to cheat something out on turn five and that, that is scary for your opponent, and quite good. Anyway, moving on to the legendary I didn't reveal, and that is party planner Vona. Party planner Vona is a legendary six mana for four, obviously stats, not great, battle cry. If you've taken eight damage on your turns, summon Auribos, oh, we'll get to that in a moment, but eight damaging turns is a lot, given your opponent might also try to be damaging you, but is, what is Auribos? So for six mana, what are we getting for Auribos? And I think I have that here in this image, there it is, Auribos World Serpent is an eight mana, eight eight with taunt. Okay, so if we take an eight damage on our turns, leading up to our turn six play, getting an eight eight with taunt is pretty good. A four, four and an eight with taunt, that's what you want. So you need to take eight damage during your turns, not impossible for a warlock, I trust you'll agree, we've all seen that, it's pretty good. Auribos is a beast and has death rattle, give a minion in your hand, death rattle summon Auribos. Ooh, so the minion from hand has to die before Auribos comes back, right? So that's sort of a shields down moment, but you can play the minion from your hand and then you get an Auribos once it dies, which might take a while, and of course, because you've been taking damage, you know, I'll lay there some tension there, right? Where you're like, okay, okay. Maybe I can get them in between their Auribos. But let's table Auribos for a second and go onto the cards that I've revealed, because I think they're pretty special. Let's do them in the order in which I revealed them. So announce darkness, we started with that because I couldn't see how thematically offended with everything else, other than the fact that it had a green drink and that didn't help drinks, but announce darkness is an epic shadow spell for two mana, replace your hero power and non-wall art cards with wall art ones, they cost one less. This is a reference to renounced darkness, which was an old spell which didn't see play, which was replace your, I think it was your class cards and your hero power with a different class than they cost one less. And it's not very good because A, you have to spend a card to do it, and B, you're getting rid of the best hero power in the game for a worse one. So it was a meme card that no one ever played. This is like that, but it's kind of better. This has some upside to it too that you might not necessarily see. For example, your non-wall art cards with wall art ones. Got plagues, not anymore. Got anything you've shuffled in there that you didn't want, not anymore. They're all wall art cards now. I got cards from another class that you've gotten there for some reason. Nope, they're wall art ones now. And the hero power you get is now one mana. One mana hero power is very powerful. It being random, that's not exciting. Overall, I don't know that this card is great, but still, nice, flavourable, flavourful, reference to an old card, which is cool. So moving on to the next card we talked about was health drinks. Oh, it's just health drink, but it is drinks because there's three of them. I did suggest that I might have a drink card, right? Anyway, health drink is rare. It's three mana. It's three damage to a minion with a life steal. Three mana for three damage to a minion is okay. Life steal makes it a little better, but it's still a lot to be paying for some removal. And like, generally when you're spending mana on minions, you want to be getting ahead of that cost on stat, so you're getting more on play. So if you're responding to someone's three mana, three four with a three damage spell, it's not going to take out the minion, right? The life steal does kind of make up for that. The fact that what you do get here, though, is three spells that do three damage with a life steal. If you have nine mana, that's a nine health swing. Like, you can start stacking health drinks together to take out a bigger minion, and gaining a heck of a lot of health, which will kind of make up for the fact that you've been damaging yourself, maybe. I don't know where we play this exactly, but as expansive as health drinks are, there is a lot of value in this. Three different spells that deal three damage with a life steal to a minion. That adds up. Like, let's say you make it to turn six against an aggro deck in wild, right? Now, they play a lot of small minions, and they've got you very low. In turn six, you're like, okay, health drink that one, health drink that one. I've just gained six life through two minions, and you're going to play some more minions, obviously, trying to finish me off, except the fact that I've gained six life already. I still have one more health drink in hand to take out one more minion, and you're going to be like, "Oh, I don't feel very good, Mr. What's it, Iron Man?" Mr. Stark, "I don't feel very good." You know, the aggro player's out of there, when you start health drinking things. In fact, have you just health drink something on turn three? You're still behind on board, but you know you can health drink something else the next turn, and then something else to turn after that, and the other player's going to be like, "Ah, I thought this was going to be easy." It's not nothing, this allowed up. I don't think you could make this two mana, 'cause at two mana, I think it would be way too good. Anyway, moving on from health drinks, we revealed someone who looked like they've been having lots of health drinks, and it was the sacrificial amp demon token. So sacrificial amp is a three mana demon one six. Stats are a bit weird. Death's right, lift your turn, summon is six, six, input, taunt. I mean, the fun thing here is that it's really hard to trade off a one six on your turn when you want to, and your opponent, of course, is very much incentivized to kill on their turn, so you don't get a six-six amp. So you need a way to kill it. But like there's tension there, there's an interesting thing. There's a, you want to, I mean, also one six on three is hard for your opponent to kill off, so if they try and kill off half of it on their turn and they don't finish it, then you get to trade away your end of it. And, you know, admittedly, it doesn't take much off the board. But for three mana, having ending up with a six-six taunt is pretty good. Anyway, moving on from there, because I posed the question and revealed how are we going to pull that off? We had eat the imp. The punctuation is important. It's eat, apostrophe. Oh, exclamation mark, sorry. Eat exclamation mark, the exclamation mark. Imp, exclamation mark. Two mana fire spell. Destroy a friendly minion to draw three cards. Now, drawing three cards for two mana is a very good deal. Warlock has definitely in-wild even played spells that deal three damage to them and cost three mana and draw three cards. Now, the damage to them is obviously part of it, but like two mana to draw three cards, very good. All you have to do is destroy a friendly minion. Like, we looked at the, what are they called? The party fiend? That's three one ones for one mana. You could destroy one of those to eat the imp. It's an imp, probably. Drawing three cards for this is probably pretty easy. In fact, you know, Warlock doesn't really struggle with the drawing cards, but this is a lot of cards. So quite a powerful thing there. And of course, you could combo it with your sacrificial and maybe, that kind of stuff. Anyway, someone else would be happy to eat the imp was our legendary card, which was, can I remember the name? Yes, someone in a dark mirror. I was like, I've forgotten the name, but when I saw it, I was like, how did I forget that? I've heard that name said dozens, if not a hundred times in the last couple of weeks, as I'm editing recordings. Some of the dark mirror, it was a four mana, four four, undead, death knight, tourist. Now, those are words I've heard said many times, but most of my daughter was saying them. So it just isn't aside on that, by the way. I realized after putting the video together, that a lot of the punch lines and jokes in the video are delivered by me and not my daughter. That wasn't intentional, by the way. And nobody's mentioned it, but I kind of feel like somebody might be like, yeah, why does the daughter not get all the funny one liners? We like it when she's sassy. It wasn't intentional. Basically, as I described last episode, I counted with a narrative on how we were getting through each of the cards, and then I started fleshing out a script around it. In retrospect, if I had realized that all of the punch lines were in my hands, I could have tried to juggle it around, so that maybe the, I could be introducing the health drink saying, oh, it's green, right? And it's healthy because it's green. And you'd be like, and then my daughter could be, you'd be like pretending like I'm pitching this to her. She could be like, nah man, 'cause vision was a green, and they've gone off. Like she could be telling that joke instead of me. So there were probably ways I could have turned around where she gets the snappy rejoinders, but this time she didn't, and it was not intentional, I promise you. But nobody's complained about it yet, other than me. Obviously, I'm my biggest critic. Anyway, four mana, four, four, legendary Death Knight, undead tourist. Your death rattle's trigger twice, after you play a death rattle minion destroyed. Now, when I first saw this card, I was like, I don't know what we're doing with this, but it's gonna break something somewhere. We can play a sacrificial imp and immediately have it die, and that's what we did in the reveal video, 'cause why print out extra cards when we're in talking about the cards? I've got a card I can do that. Well, right now it's a sacrificial imp. We play dark marrow, we play the sacrificial imp, suddenly we've got a couple of six sixs of taunt. That's pretty good on turn seven, a four, four, and a couple of six six taunts, right? That's baseline just amongst the cards of revealed. We already have a nice little combo there. Somewhere in wild, this is gonna be broken. I don't know why, but a wall of deck that can also run Death Knight cards, and a four, minus four, four is pretty easy to play. It's not too expensive for you to suddenly be playing something alongside this and have that go off. Now, dark marrow needs to be in play for it to happen, so it is a combo, it isn't something you play, and then for the rest of the game, death rattles trigger twice, 'cause that would be absurd, and would probably cost 10 mana to set up anyway. I did mention before I wanted to table one of the other cards I didn't reveal to talk about with this. I'm kind of glad I didn't get it to reveal with this one, but Auraboss, the one that comes out of Vona. Auraboss, the one that you summon, the 8/8 taunt that you summon after you've taken eight damage on your turns with Vona, has the death rattle of given me in your hand, death rattle summon Auraboss. Now, Vona summons the Auraboss, so you don't, you're not playing it from hand, so that summon of dark marrow is not killing Auraboss when you play it, but it's in play, and when Auraboss dies, and I guess possesses a minion in your hand, assuming the minion in your hand is cheaper, and if we're trying to damage ourselves, we're gonna have party fiends and flame imps. Gosh, now they think about party fiend, let's read that again. Two Felbies, thank goodness, no copies of it. Could you imagine if party fiend was copies of itself, and they've had Aurabosses on them? No, that wouldn't be good, but anyway, the point here is that you play a minion that has been haunted or possessed by Auraboss alongside you summon a dark marrow, that thing will die immediately summoning two Auraboss because your death rattle is triggering twice, now you have two Auraboss in play, and that Auraboss, each of those Aurabosses will possess slash haunt something in your hand as well. Like, depending how many times you can pull that off, it's probably not that many, but at the very least having two Aurabosses cycling around can get nasty very quickly, and I think that's a combo right there, and that is perhaps worth building around a standard, and it's kind of exciting. Anyway, this is why I want to talk about the Warlock reveals today, and why, when I talked about Araville, last episode, I was like, I don't know that I'm gonna have time to talk about the actual cards themselves, because once I saw Vona, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a combo here. Now, how easy is it gonna be to pull all this together? I don't know, Warlock is good at drawing cards, but not necessarily good at tutoring for specific things, the way I say druid and pre-style with pendant of earth, stuff like that. Don't know whether that's gonna come together, but that's a little bit exciting. I don't mind saying. Anyway, it's time for me to unmute the phone and turn up the game, play some hassle. We're already past the point where I should be starting, so let's just get it open, and load up the game, see how we go. I am gonna play a game of standard today. I haven't played any standard yet this month, because I've been playing twist, but there are anomalies. I talked about anomalies briefly. We should dive in and see an anomaly, and see how it plays out. I know that there'll be some people out there who'll be like, "Welcome to my game." Morning, huh? I know that there'll be some people out there who are like, "I'm gonna take the week off Hearthstone, "actually, 'cause of the anomalies." 'Cause apparently they gave me a genuine Stockholm syndrome. Turn up a little of your experience, or your emotional response, 'cause those are all very valid. But I'm gonna play a game for you today, so that you don't have to, and we'll see how the anomaly feels. Did it help us, did it hinder us? Was it fun, that kind of thing? The flavor apparently is that these anomalies are designed to speed things up. So the deck we're gonna play comes from the Gymenator, follows the podcast, has been doing really well with a Crystal Cove, that's the rogue location, Metro deck. Now, this has kind of flown under the radar, 'cause I don't think anyone feels like playing Metro. Talked about this for months. Just don't know, oh yeah, nobody wants to play that. Turns out it's actually good. Crystal Cove makes it good. And the Gymenator, last I saw, like got legend on day one, like ranked 39 or something, like clearly killing it. So we're gonna try that today, and see how that flies along with an anomaly. Okay, where are we? Coming into the queue, maybe I should have clicked that earlier. Gymenator, no, we're not playing in casual. Why was I in casual? Oh yes, I know. 'Cause I had an event quest to play miniaturized minions, and I think we all know the only real way, effective way to play miniaturized minions, is just to build the deck with as many miniaturized cards as possible, and go into casual, and completely didn't want to go. Anyway, the Gymenator's Crystal Cove macro, let's go on the standard level, and let's see what these anomalies are like. It's kind of fun 'cause I like anomalies. I want to play twist this week. I also kind of want to play a standard while there's anomalies. Anyway, that's us. That's them, it's the Demon Hunter. I'm getting, probably just straight up, Demon Hunter with the umpires, brass, and the- Shoppers. We have a terrible opening hand, I don't mind telling you. It's got two lab constructors, which if you remember, we're nerfed to five mana, we don't want those, and a pit stop. Pit stop's a great top deck later, once we know what we want. We want a hard man looking all that stuff, and get some early plays, get out in front of these demons before they get in play. Both kit card number three might be irrelevant. We've got back a dubious purpose, which is expensive, and two bargain bin buccaneers, which are combo cards, and we don't have anything to combo with, that's not great for us. Oh, apparently, what is the anomaly? Both players' hero powers cost one less. Well, for the Demon Hunter, that means their hero power is zero mana, 'cause it's pretty good, but ours is one mana, and a total dagger. We're gonna attack with this turn, 'cause we have nothing else to play, and because we probably have to dagger for the next turn, so we might as well attack now. They're gonna attack with this every turn. This game cannot go past 30 turns, unless I get taunts, because their hero power is zero. There's a miracle salesman, not terribly surprising. - Problem. - And let's see if they remember. They didn't, they didn't notice that their hero power is zero mana, they didn't do it. I'm not gonna lie, I've done that before too. Anyway, we're just drawn our second dubious purchase. So we've got a couple of three mana, a couple of four mana combo cards, and nothing to combo with. We also, last time drew a sandbox scoundrel, which is a five mana card, which will help combo some of these things. Like at the release, we can play sandbox scoundrel on turn five, and a couple of dubious plucking ears. We don't have that yet. We're just going face with their dagger, and re-daggering. I could dagger into the, what's that thing called the miracle salesman, and then dagger into it again next turn, but really what's going to happen there is they'll play something else, and I'll want a dagger there, and I won't be able to keep up with daggering all this stuff. Instrument tag, I didn't see where that came from in the hand. I should've noticed that that was what they kept in their hand, or whether the miracle salesman's what they kept in their hand, but I bet it was there. Now they've figured out they have a zero mana hero card, so they missed one damage. But they all have an umpire's grasp in hand, which they can point out next turn, which is not great for us. Okay, we have drawn pit stop. Now we have something to do with this. I didn't want to keep it in my hand, because I'd rather get a one and two drop, which of course I've got none of. At the release next turn, I can play a dubious purchase, which is draw three cards combo, destroy a random enemy minion, and when I get into combo it, but will we play it for... I mean, all we can also play this turn is a... - Oh god. - Is a bugging bin buccane, which is a three mana, three, three rush combo, so I'm going to copy this, we don't have combo. But I think at the release, we're going to get some combos off of this with the scoundrel on turn five, so we can afford to... I mean, maybe it is a bit chancey, but we're going to pit stop this turn, and we're looking for a one drop. We didn't get one. Spider, that's a three mana card. Lamb constructor is five mana, and Voltron. I think we have to take the spider. Now let's take Voltron. And then we attack face with our dagger and redagger. So Voltron is a big card. It's powerful, we took it because there's other cards just weren't going to do very much. And if we wait until like turn five or six to be playing either of them, then it may as well just be Voltron. But right now, we're behind. There's the coin, and here comes the empire's grasp which is drawn by instrument tech. And even if they attack me down to 21, it's not looking good for us ladies and gents, and anyone who doesn't define themselves as either of those things. 20, no to 20. Oh yes, because they're here at power zero. All right, so we've drawn frequency oscillator, which we'll do. It's a one mana mech, battle cry. The next mech you play costs one less. That's whenever we play that now. And that'll give us a bargain bin buccaneer, which means we can take out two of their minions at the cost of one of ours, better than nothing. And then we can play this scoundrel next turn and the other buccane bin buccaneer. And, right, I didn't attack with the dagger, which is probably fine. Maybe I should have. But next time I am definitely playing this sandbox scoundrel, so I think that's all right. And the turn after I'm probably paying Voltron, so yeah, I think not attacking with the dagger, this turn is fine. Anyway, they're here are paying for zero, so figure the doubt. I'm on 20, they're going face for four, putting me to 16. This will draw them a shopper. It'll cost two less. They'll be able to play, it's been created for a minute on the shopper. There it is. They'll give them one mana to play the miniature one if they want, but not the one they've discovered. So we're still a little bit ahead of them here at least. We can attack, there's a one mana mini to the discovering a one mana thing as well. They've already used their coin, so they shouldn't be able to play any more than that. At the very least we can play the scoundrel next turn and another bargain bin buccaneer. Ooh, through felon flames is making the one mana one one. It's trading into the three two, that's fine. I have a three one, sorry. I was going to trade the three one and the two one into the shopper. I'll just trade one of my three twos into the shopper. We were still going to be happy with that. We're just drawing a frequency oscillator. Might as well play it. This makes the next mech one chip which we're already at and this one's free, so I can play Voltron. Voltron's five mana this turn. What does Voltron do to us? Game plus one plus two deal, four damage to a random enemy. So I could face tank the shopper, it'll fall for 10, I don't know like that. Game plus one plus two draw a card, that's not going to help. Game plus three health and loosen note. I don't think we can afford to do that. I think we need to play sandbox scoundrel. That's going to play us. The second bargain bin buccaneer. A little bit of a copy of it. And then I guess we also play our frequency oscillator. We trade our existing frequency oscillator and one of the bargain bin buccaneer for the shopper 'cause we don't want it to attack us in the face of six. And I guess next turn we can probably play the miniature sandbox scoundrel into Voltron and get some value out of it. We have a couple of dubious purchases as well. We'll get two-jurabed in the dagger. At the very least, we don't have to dagger up next turn, we can still use it so we attack now. So we've put them down to 26. We have a 4-3, a 3-2 and a 2-1 with a symmetry there. 4-3, 3-2, 2-1. There's a one mana mag Theradon. That's going to clear my body in turn and two damage to me, not happy about that, but that is what it is. They've still got four mana left so they can play the big demon they've got as well, whatever that is. Let's hope it's not a second mag Theradon. I think there's largely no coming back from that. There's a spirit of the team. A second spirit of the team. Oh my, that's giving them four attack. I'm now going to hero power zero. So they attack me for five. Mag Theradon is going to put me to eight. I don't mind saying we're in a lot of trouble here. Voltron is going to deal four damage randomly to one of their minions. Ooh, Zili X 2000 deluxe. This is one less for each minion and play. I like to advance your trot there, I mean, it's good. There's nothing it can actually rush into because the two spirit of the team have stealth. So what's going to happen here is we're going to play Voltron and a miniature sandbox scoundrel. Actually, we've played miniature sandbox scoundrel and dubious purchase. I don't know what we'll draw to make that worth it. Either way, either it's that or Voltron, we're going to be killing one of the, what does Voltron do with the four damage? Plus two plus one deal randomers and the miniature scoundrel, your discard is turning across three lists. So I just wouldn't be playing anything if we play the scoundrel. So scoundrel. One mana, dubious purchase. I think we have to draw three cards because either way, we're killing one of those spirits. All right, great. There's a Meg 3rd on, I remember on, sorry, there's a prep. Ooh, great, a prep does second, dubious purchase. Takes out the second spirit of the team. We're still in a lot of trouble here. Great. I think we played them, hmm. (indistinct) I'm just playing a couple of these things. You get a taunt, magnetic rush, divine shield, they're a little, run out of time. I, what are these called? Drone deconstructors, I drew a couple of those and I tried to play those, run out of time. Okay, there's an illudary inquisitor for three minutes or six, five. They get to go face with the Harry power on that, putting me to one, a Meg 3rd on finishes me. So nevermind. So we are dead. Now, if we talk about this match up in particular, I think we don't do too badly in this match up. Obviously, we lost this time, but we had a terrible opening hand. We hardened everything in the hope of finding some low drops, which we have. They're drone deconstructors, they're frequency oscillators, all that stuff, and it all helps ramp in the good things. You can get an early mech, drop a spider on it. You've got a lot of tempo on your opponent. A lot of stuff in play early on. Our opponent played a miracle salesman turn one and this one we take on turn two, coin, unwise, grasp one, turn three. That's their dream draw, right? But we can contend with that if we are bigger on board than them early. It's kind of hard to do if they have the miracle salesman on one, but it's not impossible. And then, you know, I'm biased grasp one three into a shopper on four. It's hard to overcome, we can do it, but I don't think we can do it with the draw we had, which was very slow. And, you know, it didn't help that in that last turn. I was struggling a little bit to figure out what I was doing. These things happen sometimes. You get a poor drawer and it doesn't work. This deck, I think, is good because it is good against druid and everyone's playing a lot of druid right now. The other thing that's good against druid, that other deck there, that unwise, grasp demon hunter, is very good against druid as well. So I'm not surprised my opponent was playing it. If we were banking on our opponents playing druid when we queued this deck, I think it was the correct choice. But it's not always going to turn out the way you want. And sometimes your opponent is going to be playing another deck that you can go toe to toe with, but you get the awkward draw. I mean, like we weren't on the coin and we drew two bargain bin buccaneers and two dubious purchase. Clearly, we don't play more copies than that. That's all of those. There are a lot of ways you can get combo active for that with those things early on, even just a prep. Happily just prep out the bargain bin buccaneers on turn three without actually playing a spell. And now you've got two, three, two's of the Russian play. One of them can trade with the miracle salesman, the other one can take out the instrument tech. We got a little bit fortunate, and I only say a little bit fortunate because we're already terribly unlucky to be in that position, but a little bit fortunate to draw the frequency oscillator on turn four to actually enable a combo there. So they gave us something, but that Demon Hunter had the dream draw. They got their shopper reduced by three. The miniature version of the shopper got them in Meg third on. Then they had a couple of spare of the team to go with it. I guess we should talk about whether the anomaly had much impact. Demon Hunter having his hair power reduced to one from one to zero is pretty good for them. I'm not gonna lie. But our hair power being one minor is also reasonable for us. We're actually pretty happy to have it one minor because you can squeeze it in wherever. The thing that cost us there was not the anomaly. It was just the fact that I mulliganed into most of the most expensive cards in the deck. And that's unfortunate. That's all right. I might try this deck again. It's not usually the kind of deck I like to play, but I do like to try and pick something that is good against the big enemy in the format. The big enemy at the moment is the dragon deck I played last week, last month to get to legend. Then I'm okay to come for that. Whether it's umpire, Demon Hunter, or this macro, I think I'd rather play this macro. That'll be fun. Anyway, there's a train coming. I should get on this one. I'll keep forgetting. I haven't apologized for the terrible sound quality of the end of last week. I'll talk about that next week. But basically, the dial got bumped way up when I hadn't noticed and so it was loud and stored. And I'm sorry. But anyway, look, follow me on Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube, @plstagai. Follow the podcast, walk to her, catch us on Twitter, and come hang out and just go to Discord. Dot me slash @plstagai. It is always a pleasure to have you join me for my walk to work. Good luck, everyone. And everything you do because you're all absolute bloody legends you are. And I love you all. Ah, I'm all over it. Dry throat. Hey, I didn't put this on hold. Oh, well, we're lucky nothing happened there. We're still recording. And the train's not too full. It's all coming up, blister. Actually, that sounds a bad thing. It's not, it's good. This station is Milson's point. (indistinct) (eerie music) (eerie music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
