(clears throat) G'day, friends, it's Blister Guy, and for Thursday, the 12th of September, it's episode 1358 to walk to work on "Worke and Worke Western Podcast." One day at the traveling agency. Oh, that was seamless, that was good. I did hear that with the dates and everything. That, whoa, I'm getting good at this. I mean, you should hope so, it's nearly eight years. Is it eight years? I don't know how long have we been doing this, I guess. I should keep an eye on when maybe is like the 10-year anniversary, I guess? Maybe something, anyway, look. One day at the traveling agency, the mini-set, the traveling travel agency launched yesterday, and what a day it's been. So, I guess, before we get too far, we should talk about the meta before that, and of course, I have gotten legend and standard. Now, the last episode we did a full mini-set review, and overall, it didn't take too long. Only a little bit over. I was already legend and standard at that point, but I forgot to even mention it. And I was like, oh gosh, I've gotten legend and standard before the mini-set. Oh, like, how am I gonna fit that in content-wise? 'Cause I wanna do a full-set mini-review. Obviously, day one of the expansion, the mini-set, we should be talking about that today. Oh, man, like, legend, story time tomorrow. I think I got legend like Saturday, or Friday night last week, like, it's nearly a week ago. Awkward, and I hadn't really talked about it. I did play a ramp druid deck with tsunami. So, obviously, what's the turret? Oh, yeah, Mr. Vista. Mr. Vista lets you play mage things in druid, and so I was playing Mr. Vista, who allowed me to play king tide, and a couple of tsunami. And other than that, it's just ramp druid, and it was a really good deck. Tsunami, the heck of a card. Spoiler alert for what we're talking about today. Well, after that, I did keep playing a lot of legend. I've been playing fair amount of Hearthstone at legend, and both wild and standard. It's, I've been really enjoying it. It's safe to say that the meta-game pre-mini-set was actually pretty good, and there was a lot of scope for a lot of different things, but obviously, there's some really strong stuff, pain wall, or consenting wall, or a can buff pellet, and those things are just really, really, some of the best decks in the format, and people don't really mind is what it is. They're really good, you run into them, you probably lose, there's a lot of stuff going on. I was playing a lot of pipsy painthoof paladin. Did I get the name right this time? I think so, which had a bit of an infuse of power before the mini-set because of buffs to metal detector. That's a deck, which basically is a paladin deck touristing into rogue, thanks to Linessa. And you get seashell and metal detector, which is the 3-2 weapon that got buffed from 2-2 to 3-2. If you attack and kill a minion with it, you get a coin. Basically, that deck cheats out big paladin stuff and uses conniving con man to replay big paladin stuff. So you're just like, I'm gonna play, I can't remember what the titan's called, paladin titan, whatever her name is. I'm gonna play that, you worked really hard to remove it because remember, once it's in play, the minions can't take more than two damage at a time. So, hi, you worked really hard to remove it. Okay, next time I'm gonna play conniving con man, which just replays the titan. And a while, look at the, I've got some mana left, I'll play other stuff as well. I was just gonna give her everything plus two, plus two. Or even worse, if they didn't kill the titan, now you have a second titan. They're all buffing each other, it's ridiculous. Anyway, it's a lot of fun, I was playing there, I was enjoying it. And one of the things that makes that deck pop is the fact that it can play these rogue cards. Metal detector, seashell, conniving con man, and no manager. Like lots of extra coins, replaying big paladin stuff, it's really strong. Along comes the mini set, it's a good meta game. What could possibly go wrong? One card, one card has gone wrong. And the worst part about it is, it's really even hard, actually, I've just realized I'm supposed to do a patron. Thank you. So before we get too far, too carried away. Patreon.com/ supposed to go, if you even afford to support the work we do, it goes a long way and it's greatly appreciated. And I've, you know, I've started doing this thing, I'm doing it for a while now, where we thank one patron each episode. And today we are thinking Drimsdale. I don't know why I tried to roll an R and then back out of rolling an R, perhaps 'cause he's from New Zealand. And in New Zealand, we were at Mighty Language, we roll our R's a little bit. Drimsdale. A long time friend of mine from the North Island region, which we might hold against him. New him through magic, a long time ago. Anyway, thanks to Drimsdale and all the other patrons who support the work we do here. Now, one card, and I have the name of it in front of me, 'cause as you can see, we're gonna play the deck today. One card has suddenly made big mage playable. Now, this is the strange bit, right? A mini set brings three cards for each class and a handful of neutral cards. It shouldn't be too much, right? It shouldn't be too much of an injection to anyone deck. One card can't really change things too much. Big spell mage before the mini set was struggling. And they saw some buffs. They made tsunami from an eight mana spell that summoned three water elementals to a ten mana spell that summoned four. Still not good enough, right? They've improved various things to try and make a big spell mage, but they made the water cooler elemental. Is that what it's called? I can't remember what it's called, but it was a four mana four four that drew a frost spell at the side of each turn, reduced to cosplay one, they made it a three mana three three. All right, maybe you draw your tsunami and you make it cheaper sooner. Okay, cool. The buffs there that just still didn't really come together to make big spell mage any better. The existence of king tide didn't really help it, but one card in the mini set was printed. And you think, it can't just be one card. And it's Portal Mansa Skyler. Now this is the legendary mage minion from the traveling travel agency. But how does this one card change? And just before we get too much further, this card is good in the deck on its own, but I don't think you want to keep it in the mulligan unless you have a lot of other support. It's good in the mulligan, but it existing in the deck is why the deck is so much better. And the reason that is, it's a rogue tourist. And what that means is now big spell mage can play the stuff that Paladin was playing and Paladin was playing it in the way that was largely fair. Big spell mage is now playing it in the way that is entirely unfair. Now, big spell mage generally doesn't want to have small spells. I did see that World 8 had a version which also had small spells. So they also get to play O manager. When you're also playing small spells, it means you're probably not playing King Tide as much. No, well, I think he was still playing King Tide, but he wasn't playing Surflipod. Now, Surflipod was the five man of five, six. The next spell you draw is cast when drawn. So if you're playing small spells, you're not playing Surflipod. And if you're not playing Surflipod, you're also not playing under the sea, which is six man spell, which is draw a spell and then summon around a million of that cost. Like those, obviously that's a strong combo together. You want to play Surflipod on turn five. And then on turn six, you draw either your sunset volley, which costs nine, which deals 10 damage randomly to all enemies and summons a 10 drop or tsunami, which is now 10 mana summon for water elementals that immediately attack things. Clearly you want to draw one of those 'cause then you get to random 10 drop from under the sea. And then if you'd played the Surflipod first that's cast when drawn. So you didn't even spend any mana on this turn and you got like ridiculous combos. I think that's quite slow, right? And if you're doing that, you don't want to be running O manager, but Seashill Metal Detector and conniving con man are totally fine for it. Seashill and Metal Detector in particular because Surflipod's a bit slow, right? Turn five is a little late, especially when we're talking about those are for me to buff paladin in Sanity Rogue, even pirate demon hunter fatigue. And Sanity walk in the same thing, pain wall at those things, right? Those things can really get under the radar. So suddenly having Seashill, which is a three mana, three, two rogue card, your next non rogue card or card from another class, non rogue class, it costs two less. So if you're running Seashill out on turn three, you can play Surflipod on turn four. Or if you run out of Metal Detector on turn three and you attack and kill Dominion, you can play Surflipod on turn four. Or if you had the coin to begin with and you coin out the Metal Detector and attack and kill Dominion, and then on turn three attack and kill Dominion again, you play Surflipod on turn three. Like these rogue cards, thanks to portal mancer Skyler, are suddenly making big spell mage a lot faster than it was before. So the interesting thing here is that portal mancer Skyler itself, which is a five mana, four, five, battle cry, swap the costs of the most expensive and least expensive spells in your hand. So that's where you're Metal Detector, giving you a coin or a greedy partner, giving you a coin or even some decks are playing the Miracle Salesman, 'cause that gives you a snake oil, swapping snake oil with a tsunami or a sunset volley in your hand, then death things either zero or I guess one mana in the case of the snake oil. Like that's a really strong thing. But the problem with the portal mancer Skyler is that you have to already have a zero amount of spell in hand and it can't be a coin that you've already used, obviously. The problem with Miracle Salesman, which is why the list we're playing today doesn't have it, I think, is that you don't ever want to trade your snake oil because once you trade your snake oil, it potentially turns off your circle of pods and under the seas and things. So you need to keep it in your hand, that doesn't feel very good. Miracle Salesman just being one mana, two, two, that basically puts a spell in your hand that you can't possibly ever trade. That seems a bit awkward. But overall, the deck is suddenly very explosive and powerful. I don't think I've adequately addressed how powerful and popular this is suddenly. Like I've talked about how one card has meant big spell mages now a thing and people are playing like donkey posted pro into bed last night. So we're talking, I don't know, 15 hours, maybe 18 hours after the expansion went live. Popularity in the top 1,000 legend of big spell mage is 49.9%. That means almost or exactly half the games played at legend were played with big spell mage in top 1,000 legend. Like, that's unheard of. Now it's a new thing, right? It's a new thing. It has road cards that make it fancy. There's some thinking you go to. You can see why people in top legend are attracted to playing this. Also, it's incredibly powerful. Like it's a complex of things that make everyone go, "Well, okay, guess this is what we're playing." We have Diamond to Legend, the popularity is only 37.7%. That means only one third of every game every person is playing big spell mage. It's still off the charts. Now, I don't want to be chicken little and the sky is falling here, but like, it is still only day one of the expansion. We're now just at the point where, as I record, we're after 24 hours, I thought, "Oh my gosh, I've just remembered." I forgot, I was supposed to miss it at the start. This is going to help a lot of people. I'm going to post it in Discord. But, Blizzard have very nice, very helpful. I've now got a sneeze. Why would the sneeze turn up in the middle of this? Hang on. So rude sneeze, whatever. Anyway, Blizzard have given me three standard codes for the mini set. Now, I know that a lot of you listening are engaged and such, and by the time you hear this, we're talking 36 hours after the expansion has gone away. You've probably already bought the expansion in gold. But, if you are someone who has, I don't know if you're falling off the horse a little, or is it falling off the wagon? I don't know, one of those things. You know, it hasn't had the means to actually buy the mini set yet. I got a code that you could use to get the mini set for free. I got three of them, and I could give them away on Discord. So, Discord.me/ was to go. There'll be a W2W contest channel. By the time you go in there, there'll be instructions on how to do it. I'm basically going to draw this 24 hours after I post this episode. And I know that this episode will be live for a lot of people when they wake up, which means when you see this, maybe you've only got 12 to 18 hours left, right? So, get in there, enter, and you could win. And that's all good. And also, if you were wanting a code to use on an alternate region, 'cause you plan to regions, I don't mind that either, 'cause I know there are, you know, most people who are listening to this who are engaged enough to be in on time on this, probably already have it. Three codes. Thanks, Blizzard. Basically, one of the EU community managers has been getting involved a lot in the content creator discord, along with Hat. I know that the Blizzard NZ CM is currently on leave, so she wasn't available there. So, this EU CM is like, ah, all right, okay. I got some extra codes. Anyone who wants them, just let me know. I said, you know what? I'm sure my listeners could do with the code. And they're like, here's three. And I was like, oh, she's amazing. All of the community managers that I've worked with at Blizzard seem to be amazing. Anyway, big to bell, Mage, big problem. But it is only very early in the expansion, like, and this isn't an entirely unbeatable deck. It's just, it's a desirable deck for people who think they're good to play, because there's shenanigans, there's trickiness. I'm playing a seashell, I'm playing a cheap this. I'm getting my cards in the right order. It does fancy stuff and it does very big powerful things, like putting tsunami into play on turn three, four, five or six or whatever. Those are very powerful, big, swingy things. It's very attractive to competitive players to be playing that. I've played the deck a bunch. I think I've lost a few ranks with it. I've won a bunch of games too, don't get me wrong. And I've played a heck of a lot of mirrors. That's sometimes gonna inform things. But also a bunch of people are now playing aggro. So this is kind of similar to what was happening in wild with the air quotes problem deck there, with the charge druid, is that, okay, well, it's a problem deck, but it loses to aggro. If it aggro is fast enough, then everyone just plays aggro. And so there's a lot of that going around. And I guess when we play the deck today, maybe we'll see that. We'll probably cue into, I'm guessing either a mirror or an aggro deck, potentially a control deck. And like some control decks can do right against this too. This deck is not unbeatable by any stretch of the imagination, but it is strong. It is powerful. And a lot of people are playing it right now. The only thing we just have to do is wait and see over the next few days as to whether it gets even better, as maybe somebody streamlines and improves the deck further, or everyone just starts hating it into oblivion or discover something else to do. But right now, a lot of people are playing things like speakerstomper and cult neophyte, just because it's good against this deck. Like the version we're playing today from LVGE, who got ranked one legend in NA with it. And there was someone else who got ranked one legend in Asia, like Sol deck. LVGE's version has dirty rat, because the disruption's pretty good in the mirror. I mean, other things to keep in mind in the mirror, you don't want to play king tide. If you don't remember king tide, king tide mate. I've just realized it. When I revealed that, well, I didn't reveal that guy. When I reviewed that card, I was so excited to say king tide mate. 'Cause it kind of sounds like I'm swearing. 'Cause anyway. I was so excited that I was going to get to pronounce that card loudly again. I was even excited to play it in my druid deck to legend, 'cause it's going to get set. And we just spent half an episode not saying it. Not being excited about king tide mate. Boy, it's king tide. Anyway, that card in the mirror, what it is, is a four-man of four-four, and it says, until the end of your next turn spells cost five, what's really good in the major mirror is, if you play this one turn four, your opponent cannot use it, 'cause they now have four mana. Oh, they're right over the coin. Yeah, that coin cost five, they can't play it. So they don't get to take advantage of it. So the only time it's safe to play it is on the play, which means when you don't have the coin, on turn four. You play that on turn five, your opponent's like, well, actually, I got one of the expensive spells in my hand, but didn't have any good way of playing it. So thank you for playing the king tide. I will now play something big. And then you have your turn. And I mean, you're probably already dead. Like the thing is, the mirror comes down to whoever gets to play their big stuff first or twice. You can't king tide the mirror unless it's on turn four on the play. Anyway, it's a strong and powerful and hugely swingy deck. It's just, it's ridiculous. And I guess all we can do now is play it and find out. So let's talk about what happens from here. At some point, something needs to be nerfed. This is the hard part because Portalman's a Skyler itself is not such an overpowering. Look, it's a strong card. But you can make it seven mana, and that one card in the deck is worse now, becomes like a Ginn Greymane or a Baku the Moon Eater in the deck. You don't wanna draw it, but it still does the thing. The fact that Portalman's a Skyler is a rogue tourist, gives you seashell, it gives you metal detector, the deck works. Making one card worse might make the deck a bit worse. But like, whoa, it's gross. Anyway, part of me is like, you know the way you fix this? Send Skyler on a different vacation. Ah, you wear a rogue tourist. I'm glad you liked that. I look, the problem here is clearly she's a rogue tourist so that big smell mage can get coins and things and, ah, but she needs to be a tourist to another class. That's what I'm saying. That's the way you fix it, and I doubt they'll do that. Because that was, ground up is what that card was built to do, was to base, ah, anyway. Who knows how they're gonna fix it? The other side is like, we are. We've had emergency bans and nerfs right after many sets and out the sets before. Yes, we have, but from Perils and Paradise, they seem like they're drawing a new thing, and ridiculous hat has been saying in Discord's, like, I wouldn't hold your breath. We're gonna gather as much data as we can and see how it's going. But I don't think we're gonna have a change before two weeks from now. That aiming to do a bell has changed two weeks after the mini set. The same way they did it with Perils and Paradise. And with Perils and Paradise, it really did work out. It seemed that the meta was mostly fine. There was some early chicken little skies falling stuff, but it kind of worked out, and then after some buffs and a few nerfs, we had a really, really, really good meta, which I really enjoyed, and it played a lot of Hearthstone. Waiting two weeks now doesn't seem as good. It seems like Portal Manza Skyler has really, thrown a fox in the hen hoop. Hen hoop, head, chicken hoop, hen hoop, chicken hoop. Like, and when you look at Portal Manza Skyler, she's a Volckera, like a fox, and it looks frighteningly demonic, so the big mouth, grin, ugh. Really has thrown something in. I'm not entirely sure how Hearthstone does over the next two weeks waiting for a change to this. Is everyone just playing aggro in this time? Is everyone playing some battlegrounds instead? Ugh, we shall see. But my goodness, wow, what a change. Oh, it's a shame, because the pre-mini set meta game seemed really great. Be interesting to see what they do, because as I say, just nerfing Portal Manza Skyler does not change very much. The fact that we've, and this is the thing with tourists, the fact that this mini set gave everyone three cards, except for Mage, it gave them one card that also gave them three other cards that they didn't have access to before. Mage made out like a bandit, and of course, you could say, Charmin has now got access to Hunter cards too, and maybe that's good, but, ooh, gosh. What Mage took away from this mini set, because there was a tourist in this mini set, cannot be understated, and that's, ooh! Crikey, my goodness, that's all to say about that, really. I think it's time we got into the game and played with some of this big spell Mage, LVG version, I've played a lot of different versions. There were a lot of people playing different versions yesterday that I played a bunch of games with last night, but I figured we might as well use LVG, like we're talking masters to a level player and rank on LVG in A is nothing too sneezed out, right? Oop, gotta close the game. I have got the volume up in game, so I'm not doing a half impersonation this morning. Apologies to those of you who really love it. But anyway, let's get in there, play some big spell Mage. The game might be over quite quickly, but I've had games spiral out of control. Like, pal levels of things are quite high right now. I've had games where I've gotten, I turn for a tsunami and still not one, and I don't mean just in like a mage mirror. - You're ready to soak up the sun, but look out for pirates! - Ooh, that's a, that's a pair of some paradise. No, I haven't heard that greeting before. That's really cool. It's a bit cloudy today actually here in Sydney, but it is spring and the weather has been particularly warm, so I think it's apt. Must be a little on the nose for everyone and the northern hemisphere is going into autumn. It's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Anyway, let's get in there and play LVG's version of big spell Mage, where are we? Here, that one, 2551 legend, not terrific. I have been as high as like 1,400 in the last week. So I've definitely fallen some, and some of that is going to be as other people get into legend and overtaken. I am in pretty good spot in wild though. They're going to like top 200 in wild. I'm not playing the druid deck anymore by the way, 'cause this is so much aggro. They've been playing the questline mage that I was playing last month. Seems to be working alright. I am a little bit like, do I want to keep trying to play too much in wild? If, like, do I want to jeopardize my rank? I mean, I don't know. Do I want to jeopardize my rank? I was like, I just want to play more standard, and I was, I mean, now I'm like, do I want to play more standard? Maybe I'll play more wild. - Yes. - Okay. - What is this? - Jana. - So we're AFK, which is a mage, and Jana is clearly a mage, so you made your mage. We are going first, so we don't have the coin. We have a conniving con man. Obviously a great card to replay a big spell that we've played. We have an instrument tech. Clearly a great card to find us a middle detector. We have a cult near fight. Now it's not as straightforward as it sounds. Cult near fight is great, obviously. Instrument tech is fantastic, 'cause it gets us one of the things that work in the mirror, but the problem is giving an instrument tech our opponent something to attack with their metal detector could backfire on us. But also it finds us a metal detector. I don't like keeping the instrument tech. There's only one in the deck. I think we have to keep it. I think obviously we get rid of conniving con man and cult near fight. Cult near fight's a fantastic top deck. Totally fine thing to get back from the mulligan, but we obviously want something that's going to get this to work. And I think instrument tech finding some metal detector, which hopefully we get to trade in some minions, and we want a surferly pod in an under the sea or a water cooler elemental just to get fast. That's what we want. Instrument tech. The opponent tech card number four, try and keep an eye on that if I can. We got back a tsunami and a metal detector, awkward. There's an under the sea. Ah, okay. The tsunami in hand means we really want to find Skyler now or King's hide on turn four. So turn two, there's a, ooh, okay. So we're just run a greedy partner. If we play the instrument tech now and draw a second metal detector, which we don't really need 'cause we have the first one, then the greedy partner doesn't give us coins. So let's just run out the greedy partner now. Now if they coin out a metal detector, they're going to get to kill the greedy partner. They would have gotten to do that with the instrument tech anyway. The worst part about that is then they're not also giving us a minion. Oh, great. They've given us a minion. Their own greedy partner. So now we get to attack into this and have a coin and we'll draw a dirty rat. Dirty rats awkward here. We're not going to pull a king tight out of their hand because they clearly can't keep it on the coin, but we do want to pull out like a surferly pod or even a water cooler elemental. So we play metal detector, we face tank their greedy partner and we go face with that greedy partner. We now have two coins in hand. We can coin out a dirty rat right now, but I don't know how good that is for us because like maybe we just pull out a surferly pod and they just now have a bigger minion in play than us. We could coin out under the sea next turn. We'll have four mana next turn and we'll have two coins in hand, draw a different spell, summon a random minion that goes, we're just going to get a random 9 out of 10 drop. There's a sea shield from our opponent, so they're going to get another coin. It's pretty good. I think we can't need to do any rat this time. We just draw another under the sea. We cannot do any rat and under the sea. Under the sea gets us a 10 drop release there. Well, the sea shield is going to die. It'll let them play a surferly pod. Now, once you play the surferly pod, it's too late to stop it. Once they play the surferly pod, then all they have to do is draw a spell and there's a tsunami in play or a thing. So we can't need to do any rat this time, but they have seven cards in hand, one which is a coin and another two drop of some form. So it's not even like duty rat is going to be showed to do. You think so the proactive thing for us to do here is just coin out under the sea and hope that they can't like surferly pod and get us. So coin coin under the sea has drawn us a second tsunami. Oh, great. It's given us a rush minion, a banjo saw. We get to attack with the banjo saw. It's going to draw us a scary key chain. That's less good. We go faced with our thing. So it's going to say it's going to draw a surferly pod, but it's not because we have a scary key chains, which are also beasts. Still we have a six, four banjo saw and we have a scary key chain hand. There's their three minus surferly pod. So it's like, well, it feels like maybe you needed to do any rat, I don't know, there's a coin. Another coin, oh dear, we are toast. 'Cause now they get, yep, there it is watercolor artist that what it's called. That's drawn the misunami 'cause that's what watercolor artist does. And surferly pod means that they have, you know, they now get four water elementals. There goes the greedy partner, one's attacked into the banjo saw, two of them on my face. When I'm 28, they have two, three, sixes, a three, four, a three, three, and a five, six. They've got to heck a lot of stuff and play, and I don't have anything like that. So we're in a lot of trouble. We've got five men on this turn. We can't attack anything with our metal detector because we are frozen. We've got five men. There's not a lot we can do that. We can trade a, what's it called, speaker stumper that we've just drawn. They'll leave us four men left and like, I don't really know what we're hoping for. I think the best we can do here is hope for a king tide and that they can't sunset volley us next turn, and then we get to snare me then the following turn. I don't like the chances. So let's trade the speaker stumper first. It's a surfle pod, and when one man is sure to be able to do anything about it. So let's have a look at the scarab key chain. I don't use anything we can discover for two months. Greedy partner, flint firearm, get a random quick draw card if you play this turn, repeat this. I mean, that's probably going to do something next turn, maybe. And that is dirty rat. (grunts) We pulled out a one maker. All right, so they're playing one maker. But we are dead basically. They've got a five, six and four, three attack minions. They're here repairing the banjo saw 'cause it was on one health. Don't get middle detector. Watercolor artist and middle detector attacking to the dirty rat. This was since 25. Then they get to go face for 14, putting me to six. Or is it eight? It needs eight. Doesn't really matter. We don't have anything we do next turn. We need to play flint firearm and flint firearm. I don't know. They've detected six. And there's a cop near flight. Flint firearm has to give us something to clear the board for mana, which can't do. We can also play it under the sea, but all that's going to do is give us a random 10 drop, which is also probably not good enough. Also, it wouldn't be a 10 drop. We've got two tsunamis in hand. It'll be a nine drop, which is, I don't know, flight master dunga. Anyway, flint firearm. What have we got? (indistinct radio chatter) Sunspot dragon. We're dead. All right, let's continue to go again. Because I guess, just like in wild, some of these games are fast. So, as you can see, we had a totally good start. We had the metal detector, but we had no way to do, to close it out. We needed a surfle pod. Should I have mulliganed the instrument tech to try and get surfle pod? 'Cause it's that important. Quite possibly. I'm not entirely sure about that. The fact that we drew a second metal detector off our mulligan to leave us with two metal detectors and no way to combo out, that's a bit awkward. And we got a tsunami in our opening hand. It's not, not great. But as you can see, incredibly swinging. Our opponent was behind. We had the metal detector. They didn't, and yet still, they got to play three mana surfle pod, coin coin, watercolor artist on turn four. And suddenly they had four, four sixes that are attacking immediately in their feet. Like, not much with Dan's there. I'd say it's a high roll in their part, but still, whoa, gross. So, one of the points from the opening hand, the other one's from the greedy part of the pen turn two. Yep. Seashield turn three makes the surfle pod three mana. Yep. All it easily was greedy. Greedy partner with the two drop on hand. Seashield, surfle pod, watercolor artist. It's a lot of cards, I guess. It's pretty easy to pull together. I'm guessing I have to hard mulligan for surfle pod, actually. I did see a version, the other, the Asian rank one, so the legend version had a cattle roster. The five mana three four, which was a beef mix at three left. It's a bit slow, though, I think. Can this weight? Okay, so we have a major opponent again. We have an opening hand with instrument tech, Seashield, greedy partner, Scarab Cheechain. I want to throw everything away to find the surfle pod, but we have Seashield and we have instrument tech, and that's going to get us the stuff we want. But I know, I think after asking, we have to hard mulligan everything. We're going to find Seashields and metal detectors. We're going to find something like that to get us what we want. We need to have the surfle pod. So it's hard mulligan. We've got the coin as well, which means they can king tide us. They get card number three. I didn't see which card it was they played, which one they kept last time. Anyway, we've got back to Seashield and a surfle pod and a tsunami and a conniving conman. I mean, the tsunami is not great in hand, but it could be worse. So we can coin out Seashield on turn two. There's a Scarab Cheechain from them. So maybe the LVD version, like we're playing. Well, we've just drawn a Scarab Cheechain, we take it. So we can coin out Seashield on turn two. We can play surfle pod on turn three. And then we just have to naturally draw a big spell or what a color artist draw thing or under the sea and so on. So anyway, Scarab Cheechain of our own. We see Watcher of the Sun, that we see Narubian egg. We see Shale Spider, Bell Cry. If you played an elemental last turn, draw a card. Spider is a beast. I think we take the Watcher of the Sun. Like, it gives us a chance maybe at getting something that might save us, perhaps. I think there's a gold panel and they're trading their Scarab Cheechain for hours. I mean, look, gold panel is really good. Ooh, apparently they're doing the cut great. We've drawn an under the sea. So this is awkward. It's a little awkward. We're going to play Seashield to reduce the surfle pod to three mana. We can coin Seashield this turn to it, then we'll have surfle pod in turn three. But under the sea, it's turn six. That's a long way away. If we play Seashield on turn three and then surfle pod on turn four, then we can coin under the sea on turn five and maybe that's fast enough. Given they haven't done anything to accelerate here, I think we just play out the Watcher of the Sun. We don't need to forge it. We don't need to heal. We're on 30. Let's see what Holy spell has given us. Hand of a dial. That might be important. More importantly, we're threatening the gold panel. There's a metal detector. Oh, no, we've given them something to attack into. That happens. I mean, we're going to do that anyway this turn. So more coins for them. To a play Seashield this turn, we only hope that they don't play surfle pod next turn. There's a dirty rat. I mean, we could do a dirty rat instead of Seashield, but I think we really need to Seashield. Because if we Seashield, we get surfle pod next turn and under the sea the turn after. If we do any rat this turn, we don't get to do that. So Seashield and Hog. Apparently, we can now play hand of a dial. Zero mana on Seashield. I don't think I will. It would make it, what, a 5'3" and they can still make a little detector into it. There's a greedy partner. Fantastic. Apparently, that was created by the scare of keychain. This dirty partner on turn three, turn four, means not a surfle pod. I mean, admittedly, they do have five points, three coins in hand right now, so they could coin out the surfle pod, but cult neophyte. Oh, that stops our coin for the turn. Oh, we don't need the coin. The coin is next turn. The surfle pod is cheap. Great. Oh, and we're just drawing a watercolor artist. Now, we can't play both in one turn, but we can play surfle pod, which we should do. They have a three, two, three, and a one, two, and play. We're playing surfle pod. Next turn, we can play watercolor artist, which will draw us a tsunami. Or we can play under the sea, which will maybe draw us a tsunami, but probably draw us a sunset volley. I think we need the tsunami more than we need the sunset volley, so it's probably going to be watercolor artist next turn. Also, we can play duty rat first, without using the coin, so we're even safer if they speak a stomper us or another cult neophyte us. And I think duty rat and then a tsunami seems pretty good. There's their surfle pod. They can do similar things to us next turn. I guess they're now thinking about trading all their minions into my surfle pod. If they do that, maybe sunset volley is better. Like under the sea and the sunset volley seems pretty reasonable. I'm thinking about conniving con man here. And I think con man's going to repeat a big thing that we play. Watercolor elemental surfle pod means we didn't play it. Oh, they've attacked. They're playing it. OK. All right, so they attacked. They attacked their cult neophyte into our surfle pod. And then played two points to play another-- oh, I see. Two points to play-- oh, my gosh. Two points to play a second gold panel. The first gold panel drew the tsunami. They don't have board space for one for three of the water element, so they miss one. But I'm on 16 now. Ooh. Portalman to Skyler. So we can technically not quite play two big spells now. But we can play two big spells over coming to us at the sea. If we place an army here, they have three 3/6s, a 5/6, a couple of 1/2s and 2/3. Those 1/2s and the 2/3 could soak up water elemental hits, which means we do take water element hits to the face. Now, we're on 16. The thing the responsible thing here to do is to get a tsunami, play the dirty rat, which is not going to do much because their board space is full, but maybe dirty rat buys us time as well. The other option, of course, is coin under the sea. But if we do that, then Skyler doesn't do anything next time. And I think we want to be able to skyler out the second tsunami next time if we're still alive, of which there is no guarantee we are. So what a color artist. Dirty rat, obviously, kept on the train station. Is it too late to see what the animations do? The rucks burning off and kill both gold panners. We've hit two water elementals. We put a watercolor artist in play. Oh, I did the other-- this is the-- OK, so they still have a watercolor artist, a surfilopod, and a water elemental that can attack. And I have a 2/6 taunt, so that helps there. We're on 16. We just drew-- what do we draw at the end of turn? Why do we draw a card? Oh, I know. We played under the sea and it drew a spell. But then it was cast and drawn. So that made I drew another card, and now I've drawn a king tide. Next turn, we can play a bottle manter, Skyler, that'll swap the other tsunami in our hand for the coin, so we get to play another tsunami. Our board is currently full, so we want to trade a bunch of stuff. But they're on 25. We're on 16. Hopefully, we can make that work. They have six mana, eight cards in hand, two frozen water elementals, an unfrozen watercolor artist, and an unfrozen water elemental, and an undamaged, unfrozen 5/6 surplus pod. There's a cult near fight. I mean, making the coin to make the tsunami one mana still fine, I have six mana next turn. The hair are powering down the surplus pod. Looks like they've attacked into water elementals. The reason they're going to face with the surplus pod. OK. Sunset volley. So we're going to play a bottle manter, Skyler here. She's going to swap. I'm thinking of the tsunami with the coin. That's one board space taken up by her, which means we only want two more minions in play. And we have in play a couple of frozen water elementals, which means we need to proactively trade away the two 3/5s we have, which I guess means into the surplus pod, and the 3/3 watercolor artist we have, which I guess means into another one of their water elementals. I then hope that the remaining tsunami takes everything out. So two, 3/5 water elementals into their surplus pod, so they die. Our watercolor artist into another one of their water elementals. So now they have a 3/2, a 3/4, a 3/3, a 3/1. Portal manter, Skyler, swaps the coin with the tsunami. Wait. What? Oh, no. We're dead. OK, so here's the thing. Cult neophyte made the coin cost 1, and the tsunami cost 11. So they swapped those stats. The coin is now 11. The tsunami is now 1. I've just died, by the way, because I was in 11. They had 12 attack with minions in play. So the tsunami came 1, the coin became 11, because it swapped those two costs. And then the fact that they had played a cult neophyte made the coin now cost 12, and the tsunami now cost 2. So that didn't work how I wanted it to at all. So, oh dear, we died, because we were on 11, and they had 12 attack in play. So as you can see, incredibly swingy games from big smell age. Very capable of powering things out. I am now of the opinion that you are probably supposed to hard mulligan for surplus bod in this deck, which means that the cattle rustler thing that maybe draws a surf a surfpod seems pretty enticing. I mean, it's a neutral 5 mana 3/4. The only time you're cheating that out of play on the Asia server and on the Chinese server and stuff tend to play more out there interesting stuff, which is fun, but also it's probably a little less consistent. People in the NA and EU servers tend to be more conservative about things and keep it safe. Well, it's got to be the perfect 30. Whereas the Chinese players are like, no, I want flair and panache in my deck, which I don't know. I think it's actually kind of cool. So the version that was running a cattle rustler clearly can't run any scarab keychains. But also can draw an extra surfle pod, and maybe that's worth it? I don't know, worth a shot. Anyway, look, I don't want to say the format is broken, but it's in an interesting way in a way that it wasn't before the mini set, if you know what I mean. If you want to beat the mage, I just place a magro, call it near fight, speak stompers. I think insanity rogue, pain-- I'm sorry, insanity wallock and pain wallock and the hand of a pal, and they're just still the best decks, pirate, Demon Hunter as well. There's a train here I should get on this, but still, my goodness. Portalman to Skylar, what have you done? So time for you to sign off. Follow me on Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube. Atlas DIY. Follow the podcast, walk to workHS on Twitter, and come hang out and discord. Discord.me/mystiguy. 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 a absolute bloody legend, Zua. And I love you all. Oh, it's not 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, stand. It's not bad, but yeah. Do that. This station is Milton's Point. Please find the deck when getting on or off the train. Do as close as you please stand, please. [MUSIC PLAYING] (air whooshing) [BLANK_AUDIO]
