What the hell, suddenly I'm streaming games. No sound, no talk, play your own music, Arena inc...
http://www.twitch.tv/kirian42/profile
...and a highly successful 2-3. Wherein I make a big fuckup in the last turn of Game 3, and another in the third-to-last (?) of Game 5. Well at least I can point to where I screwed up!
Anyway, happy for tips or whatever. Other than the obvious "don't forget that your Truesilver heals you for two points" thing.
...also, apparently I didn't actually link the stream.
I watched the first 3 games. Game 1 was an easy win, but there are still some things that would matter in a closer game.
Game 1:On turn 6, you have a frozen 5/3 cult master + 1/2 SoJ vs 5/5. Play your ogre!
Instead you play Argent Protector on the Cult master and Hammer the 5/5. This is a common mistake: wanting to protect the Cult Master to get more value from it, at the expense of making other good plays. Once the Cult Master has drawn a card, it has done its job. If it gets more, great, but don't waste resources to preserve it instead of spending them om doing something constructive.
5/3 divine and 3/3 is much less scary than 7/8 and 5/3. And the 3 damage to his Frost Elemntal matter very little.
He's able to respond by trading his 5/2 and playing Argent Commander to kill your Cult Master, leaving him with 4/2 vs your 3/3. If you had instead played the Ogre, he'd have to kill that instead, allowing you to draw a card, and keep the 5/3 Cult Master on the board as well as the Hammer and Argent Protector in your hand. (Ironically, the better defense for your Cult Master is just putting out a bigger threat.)
This is another important point: You played 2 cards which can essentially function as removal, but didn't remove anything. The Argent Protector shield should be used to allow a minion to deal its damage without taking damage. If you just put a shield on something that won't attack, it's a ~1 mana value (Silvermoon vs 3/3), but if you get a free attack out of a minion with say 3 damage, that's a 2~4 mana value (between Wrath and Hammer of Wrath).
It's much better to instead put a body on the board. That way, in the next turn, you can get impact from both the body AND the "removal". If you play the removal first, you can't really get impact from either next turn.
Immediately on the next turn, you make the same mistake. You play a Truesilver and face hit him from 28 to 24, which is pretty inconsequential in terms of life total. It's much better to put a minion on board (in this case Cleric, bumping your Aldor to 5/5 to survive Flamestrike). That way, next turn you can potentially attack with the Minion AND the weapon.
A couple turns later, on a clear board, you play Azure Drake and Earthen Ring Far Seer instead of Ogre and Faerie. You've wasted a good battlecry in the heal (not quite removal, but still..) and again failed to put scarier minions on the board.
You win the game easily, so you may not recognize these things as mistakes, but they still are. And they'll show up again in the games you lose (see game 3).
Game 2:On turn 5, you're looking at an empty board vs a 3/2. I would play the Smith. You instead play Harvest Golem + hero power. Now sometimes as Paladin, you want to gain card advantage by putting out a weaker card along with a token, so you can build up the tokens to trade for cards. This is not one of those times. You don't have enough real board presence to deal with whatever he can play on turn 6. It turns out that it's a Lord of the Arena. If you had the Smith, you could kill it with the Smith and a charge off of a Sword of Justice, healing back some of the life with the Farseer. But with only a Harvest Golem, you can't kill it.
On Turn 7 you're at 20 HP with a 1/3 SoJ vs a 3/1 and 6/3 taunt.
Give up the SoJ. You have to remove the 6/3. Just play a 2/2 token, then Truesilver the 6/3. You lose 2 sword charges, but you have to cut your losses. If you don't remove the 6/3, you run the major risk of it hitting you in the face twice or more, and then you're in a world of trouble. You opt to play a 5/7 Smith instead of Truesilver, which can theoretically kill the 6/3 next turn if he can't deal wtih it, but if he can, or if he can buff the 6/3, then you lose.
Turn 8, with 1/2 SoJ vs 3/2 + 6/3 taunt, you should play MC Tech instead of Cult Master. 4/4 lives vs 4/2, and 5/3 doesn't. You're dead anyway it turns out, but again I think this is the wrong play.
Game 3:You should throw the Sword of Justice away on the Mulligan. It's too slow of a card. You don't want it early game. Instead, you coin it out turn 2, when you should just play Amani Berzerker -- especially when you have a Truesilver in hand. You're either going to have to waste Sword charges or not want to play the Truesilver, which is one of the biggest game breakers. If you had played the Amani, you'd be able to remove the Mirror Images by turn 4, and killed the Demo with the Truesilver. Instead, by turn 4, you're already overwhelmed and have to play a Defender on a single target.
Then on turn 5, you make the same type of mistake you made in the first game. You can play a 5/7 Spiteful Smith, with 2-charge weapon remaining, threatening to turn into a 3/2 if his Demo hits it. Instead you play Faerie Dragon and cast Argent Protector on a 3/4 that already attacked.
And on turn 6, you have 3/4 divine, 3/1, and 1/1 sword vs 4/2, Demo, and 2/4. You should kill the 4/2 with the divine shield and Demo with the 3/1 and sword, and then play your Ogre. Instead you Hammer the 4/2, kill the Demo with the minions and play a token. So his board is the same (2/4), but you have a 2/2 + 3/4 instead of 6/7 + 3/4. Yeah you drew a card and saved 1 HP, but that's nothing compared to the stats you're failing to put on the board.
Turn 7, the secret is probably Mirror Entity, so you should probably play the Faerie Dragon instead of Harvest Golem. Even if it's not, the body isn't a whole lot smaller. Turn 8 again, just play a small minion first. You want to test the secret asap. You could have killed the Faerie Dragon instead of the 2/2 if you triggered the secret before attacking.
Turn 10, you should play Smith instead of Cult Master. No reason to play 4/2 when you have a 4/6.
Then turn 11, I think this is the "f---up" you're referring to, you have to kill his minions when he has lethal on board. I don't know if you counted wrong or what. Also, you have the Cult Master out, so you should do all the trading first, to see what you draw.
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So the overall big takeaways are:
1. Don't focus so much on getting the most value out of a single card. You went out of your way to make bad plays to get use out of your Sword of Justice (and your Cult Master) at the expense of making a bigger impact on the board. No individual card should be valued that highly in arena.
2. Play your Ogres! Big minions don't do anything in your hand. They need to be on the board. You should be trying to play them at any reasonable opportunity rather than playing cantrips to dig for more cards.
3. Argent Protector should be used for removal. Don't just put a divine shield on something at the end of your turn.
4. Weapons should not hit face until you're trying to race, which shouldn't be when they're at 28 life.
5. Respect your opponent's board. If your opponent has a 6+ attack minion that you can kill, you need to kill it. Don't just set up to kill it next turn, even if that would be "more efficient". You don't know what he can do from his hand, and it's just too big of a risk to leave something that can deal that much damage to you.