Hearthstone Change my mind

Change my mind
So... Every Wednesday without fail for the last year my father has sent me a " its Wednesday my dudes" meme. He did quite well with today. ��
I will probably NEVER be that lucky again in my entire life!
The only way to make someone agree Silverback Patriarch is not useless
Serpentshrine portal is not discounted in the brawl
I chose Trick Totem in my Arena run for fun...
This has to be the best worst pack I’ve ever gotten
The Tech Card Trap
When it all comes together
this video took me exactly 14 minutes
Tavern Brawl this week is... "Party Portals!" (Aug. 19, 2020)
I made a Mana Tide Totem mask
Is he worth keeping? I know he's really good in theory, but how does he do in practice ?
Haha Rattlegore go RATTLEGOOOO-
NA Grandmaster (Eddie) has been penalized $500 for a "late" check-in. The only reason his check-in time was so early was because another NA Grandmaster (Firebat) missed check-in as well.
Don't know if i should laugh or cry.
Kitties...Assemble! (I took the bait)
Interesting Classic Pack
Big warrior looks like a lot of fun!
Shoutout to Edwin Van Leaf
Celestalon: Nearly *every* card worries someone. The problem isn't identifying *potentially* problematic cards. It's identifying *actually* problematic ones.
Me and the boys celebrating Megasaur's long awaited farwell

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 07:39 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Gryllodea
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So... Every Wednesday without fail for the last year my father has sent me a " its Wednesday my dudes" meme. He did quite well with today. ��

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 11:20 AM PDT

submitted by /u/WikkadGaming
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I will probably NEVER be that lucky again in my entire life!

Posted: 18 Aug 2020 06:31 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Gardenghi16
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The only way to make someone agree Silverback Patriarch is not useless

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 11:35 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Rornir
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Serpentshrine portal is not discounted in the brawl

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 11:54 AM PDT

submitted by /u/the_Plague_knight
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I chose Trick Totem in my Arena run for fun...

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 04:27 AM PDT

submitted by /u/4br4c4d4br49
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This has to be the best worst pack I’ve ever gotten

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 02:28 PM PDT

submitted by /u/JC5ive
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The Tech Card Trap

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 06:53 AM PDT

Hey all, J_Alexander_HS back again today to talk about tech cards: what they are, what role they serve in the game broadly, and why you should (almost) always avoid putting them into your decks.

What are tech cards?

Broadly speaking, Tech cards are those which exist to counter specific, opposing strategies, rather than directly advance your own plan. The more narrow the counter, the more of a tech we might consider a card to be. Usually cards like The Black Knight, Acidic Swamp Ooze, or Hungry Crab fit the bill. Their purpose is in targeting/destroying a specific type of thing that your opponents might be playing (Taunt minions, Weapons, and Murlocs, respectively). These are not cards you want to include in your deck because they're solid on their own; their purpose is the disruption of some part of an opposing plan.

Why do tech cards exist?

The reason these cards exist is to provide counter-play to strategies and create interaction between threats and answers. If a player is losing to a specific type of thing, it can feel good psychologically to know there are cards in the collection that can beat them. Losing to Murlocs? Slam those Hungry Crabs in your deck and your matches can flip.

Additionally, tech cards can act as safety valves against certain cards or strategies spiraling out of control. If a new weapon is so good it starts breaking the meta, having the tools in game to directly combat that is good from a balance perspective. It can help make the oppressive things less oppressive before any balance changes.

Why you shouldn't include them

With all that in mind, you should almost never include these cards into your decks if your goal is to win. The reality is that they tend to drag win rates down statistically, which is a great justification for thinking twice before dropping them into a deck.

Sure, if your goal is to feel good about blowing something up, or it brings you pleasure to not lose to a specific deck you're teched against, knock yourself out. That's a great reason to play them. But if you goal is to win? You're usually better off doing other things.

Almost every time I've checked the stats on tech cards, they're among (or actually) the worst cards in the decks including them, as measured by their drawn win rate. Decks with tech cards tend to get outperformed by decks not playing them. The larger and more reliable the sample size of the data, the more these points tend to hold true. They hold true in Highlander Decks as much as it does for those running duplicates. Indeed, if tech cards are usually among the worst cards in decks that have to play 30 unique cards, that should set off some alarm bells.

There are three common cases I have encountered that other, non-tech cards in decks tend to have worse drawn win rates than the tech cards:

(1) The deck somehow plays even worse cards, in which case the tech is often still bad, but not even the worst thing about the deck. Core hound is unplayable, and so if you have that card in your list tech choices look better by comparison.
(2) The deck contains cards it's not looking to naturally draw, like how Phase Stalker wants your secrets in deck, rather than in hand.
(3) The deck plays expensive, late-game cards that end up not able to be played in many games, making the cheaper tech card perform relatively better. An Ooze that could be played since turn 2 has more time to help a player win compared to a 10-drop that is literally unplayable for most of the game.

On a basic, statistical level, you generally shouldn't include tech cards if you want to win games. That's the best argument against their inclusion: reality tends to say they're bad. Not always, but well into the majority of times

But that might not be wholly satisfying as an explanation. So let's dive a little deeper into why they seem to under-perform, the circumstances under which they might look good, and why they're probably still not even good then.

Tech cards are never "Good Enough

In discussions with many players about why they include tech cards in their lists, one of the most common justifications involves a focus on the perceived upsides. A typically conversation might go something like, "Why have you included Acidic Swamp Ooze in your deck?" and the reply is, "I need Ooze to help my deck beat Bomb Warrior (as an example deck)." That sounds reasonable on the face of it, but the issue is that plausible-sounding justifications do not always acknowledge the downsides of tech.

Sure, that Ooze may help you beat Bomb Warrior, but what about all the games it will lose you that aren't against Bomb Warrior? This is tricky question to answer because when tech cards are good, they are loudly good. A tech card that hits its target is an above-curve play and, in some cases, even game winning. However, when a tech card misses, it's pretty quiet about it. It sucks, but it's subtle in its sucking.

Indeed, how many times have you heard/thought some variant of the following: "Even when the Ooze misses a weapon, it's still a 2-mana 3/2, and that's fine"?

Personally I've heard that a bunch, but there's a glaring issue: a 2-mana 3/2 has never been fine. Bloodfen Raptor is not a card any successful deck has ever felt good about playing. This is because it's not only low power, but you're playing it over something else your deck naturally wants more. There are opportunity costs here of what you had to cut for your tech. Or, in this case, what you cut for your Bloodfen Raptor.

Remember: every single time your Ooze misses a weapon, your deck actually contained a Bloodfen Raptor (without the sweet beast synergy). This is a card that does not advance your own game plan and, accordingly, doesn't win you games.

Fundamentally, this is the core issue with tech cards. They are designed around what your opponent wants to do, rather than what you want to do, but they're in your deck all the time; even when they're awful. You're better off advancing your game in predictable ways each match than trying to counter some small percent of opponents.

As Bloodfen Raptor should be expected to make your win rate go down, this means you need to hit the matches you teched against a lot for the choice to be worth it and the tech needs to be incredibly impactful when it hits before your win rate stabilizes or improves. The tech card can't just be "good" when it hits; it needs to be "outstanding". If you tech against 20% of the field, your tech needs to be so good in those matches it more than makes up for the 80% of the time it's a bad card.

So, until people start seriously thinking about how many games they will lose because their tech choice, a fixation on only the upsides will degrade deck performance.

If you've ever included a tech card into your deck to beat match X, and then suddenly notice that match X seems to all but vanished from the ladder, you've experienced the feeling of your perceptions hitting reality. You were imaging too much of an upside and the matches probably weren't as common as you thought they were.

But what if the matches you're teching against really are that common?

Common Matches often still fail to justify tech choices

If those matches are common then we hit another issue: If a deck, say Bomb Warriors, are frequent enough that you want to include cards in your deck to beat them, then might you just be better off playing a different deck that naturally does better against the Warriors?

If your really face a lot Bomb Warrior, the correct, win-rate-increasing response is probably not to start playing 2 Oozes and hurting your other matches, but rather to just play a different deck entirely that doesn't have such a poor match-up. You can counter the meta more effectively with deck choices than tech cards.

(If you're too poor to afford another deck that works or don't want to swap for emotional reasons, then tech cards are different story, but we're assuming that your collection is complete enough to play whatever cards you want)

Then again, if these matches truly are that common, perhaps you should be playing a deck that is naturally good against what you're trying to counter and then tech it even further. Go all in on polarizing your matches, under the assumption that the deck you're trying to beat will be sufficiently common and all you have to do is win that match to do well.

That's a pretty quick way to tank a win rate, but it's something you could do.

Sometimes explicit tech is worse than implicit tech

There's a related point to think about here, before you start reaching for the explicit tech cards, like Ooze or Crab that targets specific things: are there cards that improve the match up you're targeting without being terrible elsewhere?. Rather than teching in an Ooze - which is good in one match, or against one threat, and awful in others - do other cards exist that might fit your game plan naturally also performs against the match or threat you're targeting?

Perhaps instead of Oozing a weapon, you're better of playing a Taunt that can absorb those same weapon hits or hits from other threats while also being more useful than Ooze in other matches. While this isn't always the case, it's at least always worth thinking about.

Just because a tech card hits something specific your opponents play, it might not be the best, most-impactful tool for winning that match. The explicit tech might be better than the implicit tech for that one threat, but not better enough to justify the inclusion when thinking about what other matches you will see. Implicit but broad tech choices can work better than the narrower, explicit ones.

When are tech cards good

To include a tech card in a justifiable way from the perspective of winning the game, a few things need to hold true: (1) the match you're teching against is excessively common, (2) but not too common that you're better off switching to a different deck/build entirely, and (3) that there are no other cards you might include which could improve the match without harming others as much. Ideally, it's also the case that (4) the tech card you are including is back-breaking when it hits the target in order to make up for how bad it is elsewhere.

These are high bars to reach. If they can be reached - if tech cards are truly that good - there is even a risk of them becoming self-defeating. That is, if everyone plays a tech card to fight a truly oppressive and common threat, they can quickly push the thing they're targeting out of the meta. As soon as the frequency of the target is reduced, the inclusion of tech becomes bad again. Tech that is good today may not be good tomorrow.

It's not impossible that some tech cards are worth including at one time or another. It's just rarely the case that it's true. To avoid the trap of dragging your win rate down, you should always focus on what percent of the meta a tech card is bad against, how good it really is even when it hits, and whether other decks or cards can fill a similar role without being too narrow elsewhere.

submitted by /u/Popsychblog
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When it all comes together

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 10:32 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Ross1232
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this video took me exactly 14 minutes

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 03:09 AM PDT

submitted by /u/loaf_of_bean
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Tavern Brawl this week is... "Party Portals!" (Aug. 19, 2020)

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 09:16 AM PDT

Description: "The Medivas are putting on a special show, and you're the star! Summon minions with various portals to create a most excellent performance."

Chalkboard

Format: Randomized -- both players come in as Mage

Reward: one Classic pack for your first win

History: This is the third time we've seen this format, though the last time we saw this format was early 2017. Here's the Gamepedia article about this format.

Good luck & have fun!

submitted by /u/AintEverLucky
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I made a Mana Tide Totem mask

Posted: 19 Aug 2020 01:41 AM PDT