Because the deck has a lot of great Barnes targets.

There are 16 minions in the deck in total and only four of them are “vanilla”, without any effects when you get them from Barnes – Kobold Librarians, Ooze and N’Zoth.

There are 2x Mistress of Mixtures and 2x Plated Beetle for extra healing, Rolling Tainted Zealot is like playing one – it’s a 1/1 anyway. Tar Creepers are 3/1 Taunts (on your opponent’s turn), and that’s only just beginning. Possessed Lackey can obviously summon a Voidlord, Rin is great roll in the slow matchups for the Deathrattle, and rolling Voidlord is amazing, as it Deathrattles into 3x 1/3 Taunts.

You have 75% chance to roll something with an effect and ~30% to roll something with an amazing effect. Maybe even higher given that you always want to mulligan for the Kobolds and they’re basically an auto-keep in every matchup.

But this is just not true. Wild is a cheaper format in the long run and I don’t get why people can’t see it. Yes, GETTING into the Wild is more expensive, but the maintenance cost is much, much lower. It will be more apparent with time, but the thing is, Wild meta doesn’t change that much. E.g. Dude Paladin is a solid deck for the last few expansions. You only had to add 1 or 2 cards with each expansion and you had a completely viable deck. Same for RenoLock, the list I’ve been playing a year ago in the Wild is almost the same as the list I could be playing right now, with maybe 3-4 cards changed.

Keeping up with the Wild meta is much cheaper. You just need to make a bigger initial investment, either money or dust. I think that they should totally introduce Wild packs you can buy with gold to the store, but that’s the thing – they actually don’t want people to play Wild, because it’s cheaper in the long run. Instead of 100 packs from a new expansion, you need 2 or 3 times less to keep up in the Wild.

It’s a way for the Wild players to test their strength in a more competitive environment with better rewards. It’s a bit like the Heroic Tavern Brawl, but with lower risk/reward. It’s like saying that tournaments don’t make sense – it’s just playing the same decks but to get rewarded more than usual. See?

But yes, I think that a lot of Standard players will try themselves in the event too. And that’s cool. Your previous point about Standard players not having Wild cards is not exactly correct too, because from what I’ve gathered, most of the players are keeping their Wild cards and not disenchanting them (at least the good cards, I’ve heard about some players getting rid of the bad/meme cards). I’m playing Standard 99% of the time and I didn’t disenchant any of the Wild cards, because I might want to play the mode in the future (or in the events like that). So did most of my friends, even though we could all obviously use some extra Dust.

But anyway, I again fail to see the problem. It’s just a Tavern Brawl, you can just ignore it. You don’t even miss your weekly pack, because you get one entry for free – if you retire immediately you get rewards for 0 wins, which include a pack (and some extra dust/gold), even easier than your normal Tavern Brawl.

Alleycat will be gone from Standard with the next expansion, so it’s still over a month until then.

And we will have all of our budget decks updated when the expansion hits. It’s impossible to say right now, because we don’t know what new cards will get printed 🙂

Prince Taldaram is good, because of its flexibility. You can copy a Taunt if you need one (Voidlord in particular is amazing, but copying your opponent’s Righteous Protector ain’t that bad), you can get a 3/3 Charge with Doomguard in case you need to kill something right away or deal more damage, you can copy Mistress of Mixtures for more healing, but the best use is to copy the Cube once you’ve eaten something big. For example, if you Cube the Doomguard, and then copy it, you have a 3 mana 3/3 which Deathrattles into two freakin’ Doomguards.

Of course, the card is not absolutely necessary, you can run the deck without it. But it is a really good card in this deck.

About that matchup, I think you’re talking about Big Priest, right? In that case, with this deck you should try to win through the aggression, not outlast them (because you won’t be able to). The best way to kill them is through an early Mountain Giant (assuming they can’t answer it) or multiple Doomguards. Cube is great, as you can duplicate your big threat. Turn 10 Bloodreaver Gul’dan is also a great way to finish off the game, especially if you’ve managed to get a few Doomguards onto the board before that – charging 3 or 4 of them at your opponent is usually a good way to close the game.

It’s not a good matchup and the deck will often start reviving stuff as early as Turn 4-5, meaning that some of the games simply can’t be won. On the other hand, sometimes they draw really poorly and don’t do anything for the first 6-7 turns, and those games are auto-wins.

But yes, N’Zoth would make that matchup better, because if your initial aggression failed, you could always have another big board refill that they absolutely have to answer.

Yes, it is, BUT you can’t play it in the same list as Taldaram 🙂

If you don’t own those cards, it is ALWAYS better to craft the Golden version.

If you ALREADY OWN the cards, crafting Golden version of any of them won’t make a difference. So if you have 2 copies of every of those cards, just leave it as it is.

The only, although small, Dust gain is from crafting Golden Commons even if you own the regular version. But in this case, there are no Commons rotating to Hall of Fame, so it doesn’t matter.

That’s actually a good question, but I don’t think it was answered yet. You might try asking that question during the Friday Q&A session with Ben Brode & Yong Woo 🙂

You craft Golden Epics IF you don’t have the normal version already. If you have the normal version, crafting Golden ones won’t give you anything extra.

No, they are not. You should be able to craft all of them. Could you make a screenshot of your issue and post it here?

I’ve posted some of the speculations I’ve found online, and readers posted theirs in the comments in my quick analysis article: http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/year-of-the-raven-impact-changes-hall-of-fame-rotation/

Depends, I won’t miss either of those two decks. For me, they were some of the most annoying lists to play against.

And you will still be able to enjoy them in the Wild. HoF rotation doesn’t mean that the card gets removed from the game completely 🙂

That’s right!

Crafting Golden Epic costs 1,600 Dust, but dusting it gives only +400.

So yes, you get 3.2k dust from the Hall of Fame rotation, but only 800 more if you want to disenchant them.

I don’t really see a connection here.

If you didn’t disenchant your Wild cards, it doesn’t mean that you have enough Dust. It just means that you want to play Wild.

Not to mention that even if someone owns most of the cards, extra Dust is always useful – a new expansion is coming soon.

The event is obviously targeted at Wild players, and there’s nothing wrong with it. We didn’t have any Wild events for a long while, and that’s the point of Wildfest.

What are you talking about? Spell Hunter does not run Cloaked Huntress, it’s not a good card in the deck.

Maybe you’re thinking about Secret Hunter?

Spiteful Priest was mislabeled as Dragon Priest is this guide and it looked at the win rates for Dragon Priest instead. Sorry, it should be alright now.

Harrison is a really bad card in slow Warlock decks. Not only it’s pretty expensive, but those draws are often bad – by drawing 3 cards you risk milling yourself.

Weapon destruction is definitely a viable tech in the deck, but if anything, you want to go for the good old Acidic Swamp Ooze and not Harrison.

To be fair, I really don’t think you make the deck better by cutting Vilefin Inquisitor and Gentle Megasaur. Those are some of the best cards in your deck. Of course you CAN cut them, just like you CAN cut Voidlord from Control Warlock and play with only one, but it’s just not optimal.

Finja I can understand, it’s pretty good in the Murloc Paladin. But The Curator, while cool, also does not fit into the deck. It’s aggressive and Divine Favor is your refill, The Curator is too slow and will mess up with your Divine Favor. Not to mention that with just a single Megasaur, The Curator will often end up drawing just a single card, as you don’t have any other Dragons or Beasts. If you really, really want to go for a slower build with The Curator, you NEED to play 2 Megasaurs and probably something like Cobalt Scalebane too to get maximum value. But in that case, you probably also want to switch a bunch of different cards and go for a more Midrange deck, not an Aggro.

Same goes for Primalfin Lookout – you don’t need more “value” cards, because the more cards you draw through other ways, the weaker your Divine Favor will be. Even in Midrange build it’s not good enough, because in the early game (Turn 3) you aren’t looking to draw more cards, and in the late game you’d rather drop a Murloc Warleader (which are also obviously missing) to finish off the game than get a random Murloc.

And Sunkeeper Tarim is an auto-include, the card is almost broken. If you have it of course.

So I’m afraid that you made the deck significantly weaker. If those were budget cuts, I understand, but I would not recommend doing similar changes for people who do own the right cards.

That’s true, but it’s like a “win more” scenario. If you get Skull of the Man'ari and pull out a big Demon, you’re already on a good way to win. Not to mention that you often want to Carnivorous Cube it right away and not use Zola the Gorgon on it.

Prince Taldaram is more flexible, in a way that you can copy a Righteous Protector to get a 3/3 Taunt with Divine Shield, you can copy Mistress of Mixtures if you need healing, you can copy opponent’s Possessed Lackey in the mirror if you don’t get your own, and copying a Cube is a crazy good play.

So I’d rather play Tar Creeper, or maybe Stonehill Defender. But if you want to be a little bit greedy, then I guess that Zola might also work.