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Author Topic: Best 30-of deck?  (Read 24850 times)

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blueblimp

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Best 30-of deck?
« on: June 29, 2014, 05:01:12 pm »
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Hypothetically, if you had 30 of the same card in a deck, what would be the best deck? Or would there be no one best deck because of a rock-paper-scissors effect? I'm sure this has been discussed on other Hearthstone forums but it's a fun puzzle.

Here's the all-around strongest I can think of:

30 Soulfires.

Because of life tap, starting turn 2 you can draw soulfire, play soulfire, draw soulfire, play soulfire, for 8 damage every turn.

As player 1, on turn 1 you have 4 soulfires in hand and can play 2 of them, so every turn of the game you do 8 damage. As player 2, on turn 1 you have 5 soulfires and 1 coin, so on turn 1 you can: coin, soulfire, soulfire, soulfire, tap, soulfire, to do 16 damage. Then 8 damage on each subsequent turn.

Absent opponent healing, that gives player 1 lethal on turn 4 and player 2 lethal on turn 3.

Counters: Because the soulfire deck has a per-turn damage cap, decks focusing on healing have hope, but they need to be very fast.

Healing touch is a certain counter, because beginning on player 1 turn 3 or player 2 turn 2, you can restore 8 health once per turn, completely negating the soulfires. If the warlock chooses not to soulfire then you win easily via hero power plus fatigue. If the warlock collects soulfires in hand, the most burst possible is playing 6 soulfires in a turn for 24 damage, not enough.
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Twistedarcher

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2014, 06:01:19 pm »
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I think soulfire will win almost every matchup, but I think it would lose to lightwells (which in turn would lose to most other decks, which in turn would lose to soulfire
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nkirbit

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2014, 06:14:33 pm »
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On the play, soulfire barely outraces claw, with the warlock player tapping down to 2 for the last soulfire needed for lethal.
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nkirbit

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2014, 06:19:06 pm »
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Soulfire on the play mindlessly going to face doesn't outrace timberwolves, either.  Not 100% sure who wins if the soulfire player knows what he's up against and plays optimally... May be the wolves, though.
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blueblimp

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2014, 07:17:04 pm »
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I think soulfire will win almost every matchup, but I think it would lose to lightwells (which in turn would lose to most other decks, which in turn would lose to soulfire

Interestingly, from the P1 seat, lightwells are too slow to counter the soulfire deck, but they work from the P2 seat.

P1: Lightwell
P2: Soulfire

P1T1: pass
P2T1: does 16 damage; P1 -> 14, P2 -> 28
P1T2: play lightwell
P2T2: does 8 damage; P1 -> 6, P2 -> 26
P1T3: lightwell heals; play lightwell; P1 -> 9
P2T3: does 8 damage; P1 -> 1, P2 -> 24
P1T4: lightwell heals x2; play lightwell x2; P1 -> 7
P2T4: does 8 damage; P1 -> -1, P2 -> 22
P2 wins.

The direct to-face soulfiring below is clearly too slow.

P1: Soulfire
P2: Lightwell

P1T1: does 8 damage: P2 -> 22
P2T1: play lightwell
P1T2: does 8 damage; P2 -> 14, P1 -> 28
P2T2: lightwell heals; play lightwell; P2 -> 17
P1T3: does 8 damage; P2 -> 9, P1 -> 26
P2T3: lightwell heals x2; play lightwell; P2 -> 15
P1T4: does 8 damage; P2 -> 7, P1 -> 24
From this point on, P2 is healing 9 or more per turn, which more than negates the soulfiring.

Soulfiring the lightwells can give you a chance to do slightly better. There's no point trying to kill the lightwells, because you need to spend your whole turn to kill one, but if you hit it once, then it may (depending on RNG) soak up two lightwell procs, denying 6 points of face healing for your 4 damage soulfire, for 2 points net damage improvement. It's not enough to give any chance to win, though.
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markusin

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2014, 02:27:16 pm »
+1

Big necro, but I just realized that Voodoo Doctor beats Soulfire both in first player seat and second player seat. How come nobody brought that up? I expect Voodoo Doctor can win a much broader set of matchups because it fights back. It also beats Healing Touch and Lightwell for example.
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blueblimp

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2014, 09:58:58 pm »
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Big necro, but I just realized that Voodoo Doctor beats Soulfire both in first player seat and second player seat. How come nobody brought that up? I expect Voodoo Doctor can win a much broader set of matchups because it fights back. It also beats Healing Touch and Lightwell for example.
Neat. Checks out. I tried it on paper and it seems to work for both P1 and P2, assuming the Soulfire player doesn't kill any of the Voodoo Doctors, which I think is correct play if the doctor player is warlock. If the doctor player _isn't_ warlock, maybe it can work to kill the doctors to run them out of cards for certain classes, not sure. I guess the intuition for why the voodoo doctors work well is that a single doctor only needs to get in a single attack to match the health differential of a Soulfire, and playing a doctor doesn't discard a card.

A hard counter to that: Elven Archers. It's not even necessary to calculate it out: archer costs the same as doctor, but easily 2-for-1s it, with the battlecry allowing an archer to reactively remove a doctor. Just use the battlecry until you have 7 archers on board, then for subsequent turns you can trade the 7th archer to make room and play another for the battlecry. The doctor player will never even be able to hit your face, while your archer army deals 6 damage per turn, which the healing doesn't match. You also won't need to tap as much because of the card efficiency.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2014, 10:04:32 pm by blueblimp »
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Grujah

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #7 on: November 16, 2014, 12:32:27 pm »
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Against Voodoo and Archer: Weblord ? or Ghoul ?
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markusin

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #8 on: November 16, 2014, 12:35:59 pm »
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Against Voodoo and Archer: Weblord ? or Ghoul ?
Some crazy rock-paper-scissors action going on here.
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KingZog3

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #9 on: November 16, 2014, 03:18:23 pm »
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What about a deck of all Young Priestess? It would beat the archer or voodoo only I think, but not the soulfire deck.
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #10 on: November 29, 2014, 05:36:09 pm »
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The new Healbot 3000, used by a priest, has a 50/50 matchup against Soulfire and beats Archer and Weblord and Healing Touch.  Yay priest/warrior
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markusin

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #11 on: November 29, 2014, 06:46:31 pm »
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The new Healbot 3000, used by a priest, has a 50/50 matchup against Soulfire and beats Archer and Weblord and Healing Touch.  Yay priest/warrior

Do you mean Antique healbot. If so, how does that beat Weblord when Weblord's effect stacks.
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #12 on: November 29, 2014, 06:56:59 pm »
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It doesn't, I just forgot what the card did
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #13 on: December 02, 2014, 02:36:42 pm »
+2

But at least my matchup got buffed above 50/50 against Soulfire!
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nkirbit

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #14 on: December 02, 2014, 04:18:27 pm »
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Light of the Naaru has a lot of good matchups. 
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ycz6

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #15 on: December 02, 2014, 04:50:14 pm »
+1

The Soulfire nerf definitely makes the metagame a lot more interesting.

Annoy-o-Tron, Micro Machine, Mistress of Pain, and Seal of Light all seem playable, though I think they all still lose to Soulfire.

Light of the Naaru loses to any minion with 5 or more attack, because the other player can just not attack until they have a full board. It does probably win against almost anything else, though...
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #16 on: December 02, 2014, 05:55:07 pm »
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How would Mistress of Pain be anything but utter garbage in the format?  A 1 mana 1/4 isn't going to get you much board position against anything besides voodoo doctor
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ycz6

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #17 on: December 02, 2014, 06:07:20 pm »
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That's true. I guess I was imagining it getting to turn 5 and being able to heal for 4+ health every turn while also doing damage, but most decks will be able to remove or outright kill the Mistresses without losing much.

Is Unstable Portal any good? What percentage of the time does it win against, say, Bloodfen Raptor?
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #18 on: December 03, 2014, 10:23:34 am »
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That's true. I guess I was imagining it getting to turn 5 and being able to heal for 4+ health every turn while also doing damage, but most decks will be able to remove or outright kill the Mistresses without losing much.

Is Unstable Portal any good? What percentage of the time does it win against, say, Bloodfen Raptor?
I think it would beat Bloodfen Raptor, but I think that's only because Bloodfen Raptor is susceptible to Mage hero power.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #19 on: December 03, 2014, 03:19:32 pm »
+6

The Soulfire nerf definitely makes the metagame a lot more interesting.

I think the nerf must have been targeted at the 30-of metagame.
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #20 on: December 03, 2014, 03:24:01 pm »
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Was flare too strong against 30 ice armor too?
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #21 on: December 03, 2014, 03:27:40 pm »
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Hm, that explanation doesn't work, Hunter beats Ice armor by default.
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markusin

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #22 on: December 03, 2014, 06:03:52 pm »
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The Soulfire nerf definitely makes the metagame a lot more interesting.

I think the nerf must have been targeted at the 30-of metagame.
I don't think it even beats eye-for-an-eye anymore. There are more Silver Hand Recruits than Soulfires.
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popsofctown

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #23 on: December 03, 2014, 10:15:05 pm »
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The Soulfire nerf definitely makes the metagame a lot more interesting.

I think the nerf must have been targeted at the 30-of metagame.
I don't think it even beats eye-for-an-eye anymore. There are more Silver Hand Recruits than Soulfires.

If you hoard them in hand the right way I lean towards Soulfire but it seems unclear without doing the calculations
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heron

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Re: Best 30-of deck?
« Reply #24 on: December 03, 2014, 10:43:40 pm »
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Ice Block seems pretty good against non-healing decks.
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