I remember reading about this in an interview, basically, they just had the expansion all finished already and decided to push it sooner. Super weird reason to break the norm, but I'm going to remain optimistic about everything.
Could also be that they are making more of a gap between this and the mini-expansion to not have them be incredibly cramped.
I've never been that great with Enrage Warrior but I'll definitely let try out the list and let you know how it feels for me. A couple games in and the Studies do feel pretty nice, although most the times it's fetched Krastinov to give Livewires an extra durability. Once I finish my climb the next 1-2 days, I'll have to try swapping in a Cache and see how it feels in comparison.
As for the rampage comparison, having the two Shields makes so much more sense than running a Rampage since it just lines up combos more easily due to being cheaper.
Thanks for the two breakdowns as to why you chose Studies over the two more 'mainstream' cards!
If there are anyways of getting this onto the field without paying the 7 mana for it or Oblivitron, this card could be pretty decent but as of now it's just missing some support and looks really bad when hard casting it on its own.
Pretty interesting card. The first thing that comes to mind is that it reminds me of Kathrena Winterwisp, but significantly more aggressive. The issue comes with the fact this card doesn't have some form of criteria you can build around as easily. Either you shaft your early game by running no creatures (which might be possible given enough support), or you risk this card not hitting for a high amount, which I'd consider to be anything above 5 damage, which means you also miss out on running the suite of strong early game cards that Hunter is currently having fun with.
All that said, I don't think we can write this card off yet, there's tons of potential still and it'll be interesting to see if anything comes from it.
Oh, any of the big deathrattle/reborn minions are hilarious with this. 6 mana 4/4 with Battlecry deal 10 summon a 10/1 divine shield is pretty silly.
Congrats on hitting legend with that high of a winrate!
The DH list looks fairly standard but I have some questions for the Enrage Warrior list. How did the Athletic Studies compare to the 'standard' replacements of the 2nd Corsair Cache and Rampage? It's felt to me that Warrior has been somewhat dependent on Cache to help stabilize while the Rampage usually ends up being to stabilize a board or get a bit of extra burst.
Completely miscounted that, thanks for counting that.
As for the whole spending the first 3 turns of the game ramping as opposed to this new combo only taking one turn, I'm not exactly sold on it still. As of right now, Druid does not have many great ways of spending their early mana hence why it's been relinquished to being ramp turns, I don't think its inherently bad to spend the first couple of turns where you typically cannot do anything great to accelerate to swing turns faster. As for the line you suggest, it does accelerate faster, but you'd only get to 7 mana on the next turn to try and recover the board. This is totally possible given that Exotic Mountseller and the 0 mana spells still exist, but it doesn't give that much larger of an advantage in my opinion since at the 1 extra mana crystal doesn't translate to a whole lot more action.
All that said, both lines still look pretty good and I don't see one becoming strictly better while Ramp Druid still does not have much stuff to do for the first 3 turns besides just Hero Power and possibly Wrath something.
Druid ramping have always been a problem in standard, and that's usually because there's no end of stuff they can do to recover back the disadvantaged first few turns. From Overflow to recover health and card advantage (usually at turn 5), to just plain mountseller on turn 5 with something like Ironbark or even simpler things like Innervate into Crystal Power to keep tempo with one massive taunt minion. Let's not even talk about how stupid facing down both Twilight Runner and Lake Thresher on 5-6 feels like.
The problem is that druid pulls its stunts a little too consistently, and when they do, it feels unfair like the bank teller closing for lunch the minute its your turn after a long queue. It never feel like you're in control of the game. Either they draw them cards and you lower your weapon Ben Kenobi style, or you beat them to kingdom come because they just played shit cards for the first 6 turns.
I don't think overgrowth's too major a problem to be honest. Cult neophyte properly punishes it hard enough. The real culprit is Lightning Bloom, and the proper way to fix it was to simply make it so it refreshes mana instead of giving it out.
As someone who plays a lot of a format where early game ramping dictates the entire game, I full heartedly agree that Druid's ramp can make it feel unfair to play against. Hell, I'm not sure how often you use the OOC discord, but I'm probably the biggest anti-Druid fanatic there to the point where I made a brand new account just to show how brain dead the class could be before Guardian Animals got nerfed. There is definitely something inherently toxic with how Druid plays, being probably the biggest Feast or Famine class in the game, where either they roll all over you close the game out turn 6 with a massive board of dudes, or they go all the way to turn 7 playing 3 cards and then die whimpering in the corner, which is something you also mentioned yourself.
As for Lightning Bloom, I also just don't like the card, yet unfortunately they've pigeonholed the class into relying on the card to be playable. Taking a quick glance at HSreplay and you see that most of the well performing decks have two copies of it because OG innervate is still a really good card. Nerfing the card would make the card feel more fair to play against while still making it decent in a lot of circumstances, but there's also a solid chance it throws Druid further into the dumpster, hence why the card is fine for now.
The class just doesn't feel good to play right now to say the least. For every time you curb stomp someone and make them consider quitting Hearthstone, there are other games where you draw into your ramp payoffs and want to just concede turn 4 and there is not much inbetween. I'm really hoping that Darkmoon Faire fixes that.
That or Druid just gets deleted, Hearthstone only needs 9 classes in the game.
Mirrodin and the Phyrexians are easily my favorite stories in all of MTG's lore. Literally every bit of lore in the plane is amazing to me and I'm dying for a return to set to give a reason to cover the lore of the plane. The Nicol Bolas arc started off great but started falling down towards the end of it, especially with what Weisman did to it.
I can totally understand quitting the game because of the price, especially recently with so many sets featuring pushed cards that you have to get to stay competitive. You might be able to find a playgroup that won't mind you using proxies if you search.
Also, Lorwyn and Ravnica are both amazing planes as well! Lorwyn is without a doubt my 2nd favorite plane (since nothing is beating Mirrodin) and I want to return to it asap as well.
Honestly, I don't see Overgrowth as that much of an issue right now. Druid already has a 3 card combo to get to 7 mana on turn 4 (used to say 8 but I cannot count apparently) in Nature Studies -> Wild Growth on 2 -> Overgrowth. The issue in my opinion comes from how quickly Druid can recover the board after spending the first 3-4 turns ramping. The class is incredibly reliant on hitting their powerful 7 drops to actually start using all their extra mana because otherwise they are just dead in the water.
If they continue to make cards reliant on druid getting to 7 mana, maybe Overgrowth will get touched? The card is still around all of next year after all and that is a pretty long time to just let issues fester. On top of that, Overgrowth is pretty much the only thing keeping the class from being actual trash tier and so I don't think breaking its legs even more would be a great fix.
Malakir Rebirth is already in the deck! I'd totally agree though that its a great card, especially in a deck where removing creatures can already be somewhat of a pain for the opponent.
Don't see why it would be rude to ask hints lol, especially since a lot of people have done that for the MTG hints already. If you still need help with the tentacle one...
Show Spoiler
make sure to check out the MTG lore guide as it was recently updated since some idiot forgot to include the big climatic villain of the plane somehow >_>.
As for the card that makes you scream or be happy...
Show Spoiler
If it played a trick on me, I'd be pretty upset but luckily I have creatures in my graveyard so it is a treat instead.
A planeswalker from Zendikar Rising who's recently picked up another color in their casting cost.
For the second one...
Show Spoiler
If you dont mind checking out this guide, you might pick up some clues about who this card is.
For the third one...
Show Spoiler
Another Zendikar Rising card, lets just say MTGA doesnt handle exponential growth on creatures that well.
For the fourth one...
Show Spoiler
Werewolves are also known for hating artifacts. So much infact that sometimes they come back from the grave to smash them.
For the fifth one...
Show Spoiler
This maniac loves seeimg you draw cards from an empty library, but unfortunately has been shelfed since somebody's oracle does the same job but better.
For the last one...
Show Spoiler
Its a spooky alternate name for the holiday at the end of the month.
As for covering the Eldrazi Titans and the members of the Gatewatch, both play prominent roles in Zendikar's lore, and given that I've written a lore guide for that plane, you can read up a bit more about them. Issue with the Gatewatch is that it's a group of planeswalkers that all have a rich backstory before they come together as a team, which is something that I would never really get around to doing unless I completely cover the character in a guide of their own. As for the Eldrazi, we know very little about them despite the fact they are a fan favorite creature type as well as prominent villains.
That being said, I will probably continue the Gatewatch Arc given that it's the most recent overarching story and establishes a ton of reoccurring characters, as well as being a great segue into the future magic story line when they finally announce Return to Phyrexia (which if they don't do soon then I'm very upset).
Yeah, Magic has some amazing lore, it's just always a pain when it comes to actually find it since it feels like WotC goes out of their way to make it hard to decipher it. They've done books in the past, they have these 'story spotlight cards', which are cards specifically designed to tell you apart of the story, and then they just started doing articles online, which is probably the best form.
For a little behind the scenes on this article, I knew the basics of Innistrad's story for the first block (this being everything leading up to Avacyn going insane), yet I wanted to still dig around to see if I could find any more details. This led me to spend 3-4 hours digging around in WotC's article archive trying to find all the relevant articles, which is frankly pretty stupid, especially when it is for probably the 2nd most popular plane in the history of the game, which you'd expect information to be readily acceptable for.
However, part of me also likes how difficult the lore is to find since it makes finding the smaller stories all the better. Things like the Delver of Secrets subplot, the Tuktuk one from Zendikar, and the recently made Toggo are all cases of great world-building that since it is so easy to overlook, it makes finding them feel special.
Oh and some of the books are actually pretty decent as well, though the recent ones have been somewhat questionable for sure. Greg Weisman did a pretty good job of making the entire Nicol Bolas arc end awfully.
Liliana also existed before Innistrad, coming from a set from 2007. I remember when KFT came out and I saw Voss be revealed, I got really curious because there's no way that the two's names being so close is a coincidence. Surprisingly enough, the names are completely coincidental and have nothing to do with each other despite being so similar to each other.
This character is well-known for stitching together bodies, as well as being incredibly petty with his sister
For the second one...
Show Spoiler
A lesser known name for a holiday, as well as being arguably one of the weirdest sorceries ever printed. If i'm being honest, this card is super hard to come up hints for so hopefully this won't be a dead giveaway
Face Collector has collected the faces of all the 9 original classes, and with the inception of DH, he has to find one more. It's a little bit sketchy given that the flavor text hints he might not have all the original 9 anyway.
Assuming you take 5 seconds per card and keep at that pace for a while, it only takes like 3 days to go through every single card so better get on that sooner than later.
In all seriousness, I understand your pain given that I've kept LoR away from me with a 10 foot pole. These scavenger hunts aren't as fun when it becomes a chore of just clicking everything. Luckily, there is something on it's way soon that should help with about half of them. So if you do continue trying to go for the last 16, good luck but if you don't, 3/4ths of all the riddles is still really good!
I remember reading about this in an interview, basically, they just had the expansion all finished already and decided to push it sooner. Super weird reason to break the norm, but I'm going to remain optimistic about everything.
Could also be that they are making more of a gap between this and the mini-expansion to not have them be incredibly cramped.
I've never been that great with Enrage Warrior but I'll definitely let try out the list and let you know how it feels for me. A couple games in and the Studies do feel pretty nice, although most the times it's fetched Krastinov to give Livewires an extra durability. Once I finish my climb the next 1-2 days, I'll have to try swapping in a Cache and see how it feels in comparison.
As for the rampage comparison, having the two Shields makes so much more sense than running a Rampage since it just lines up combos more easily due to being cheaper.
Thanks for the two breakdowns as to why you chose Studies over the two more 'mainstream' cards!
If there are anyways of getting this onto the field without paying the 7 mana for it or Oblivitron, this card could be pretty decent but as of now it's just missing some support and looks really bad when hard casting it on its own.
Pretty interesting card. The first thing that comes to mind is that it reminds me of Kathrena Winterwisp, but significantly more aggressive. The issue comes with the fact this card doesn't have some form of criteria you can build around as easily. Either you shaft your early game by running no creatures (which might be possible given enough support), or you risk this card not hitting for a high amount, which I'd consider to be anything above 5 damage, which means you also miss out on running the suite of strong early game cards that Hunter is currently having fun with.
All that said, I don't think we can write this card off yet, there's tons of potential still and it'll be interesting to see if anything comes from it.
Oh, any of the big deathrattle/reborn minions are hilarious with this. 6 mana 4/4 with Battlecry deal 10 summon a 10/1 divine shield is pretty silly.
Congrats on hitting legend with that high of a winrate!
The DH list looks fairly standard but I have some questions for the Enrage Warrior list. How did the Athletic Studies compare to the 'standard' replacements of the 2nd Corsair Cache and Rampage? It's felt to me that Warrior has been somewhat dependent on Cache to help stabilize while the Rampage usually ends up being to stabilize a board or get a bit of extra burst.
Completely miscounted that, thanks for counting that.
As for the whole spending the first 3 turns of the game ramping as opposed to this new combo only taking one turn, I'm not exactly sold on it still. As of right now, Druid does not have many great ways of spending their early mana hence why it's been relinquished to being ramp turns, I don't think its inherently bad to spend the first couple of turns where you typically cannot do anything great to accelerate to swing turns faster. As for the line you suggest, it does accelerate faster, but you'd only get to 7 mana on the next turn to try and recover the board. This is totally possible given that Exotic Mountseller and the 0 mana spells still exist, but it doesn't give that much larger of an advantage in my opinion since at the 1 extra mana crystal doesn't translate to a whole lot more action.
All that said, both lines still look pretty good and I don't see one becoming strictly better while Ramp Druid still does not have much stuff to do for the first 3 turns besides just Hero Power and possibly Wrath something.
As someone who plays a lot of a format where early game ramping dictates the entire game, I full heartedly agree that Druid's ramp can make it feel unfair to play against. Hell, I'm not sure how often you use the OOC discord, but I'm probably the biggest anti-Druid fanatic there to the point where I made a brand new account just to show how brain dead the class could be before Guardian Animals got nerfed. There is definitely something inherently toxic with how Druid plays, being probably the biggest Feast or Famine class in the game, where either they roll all over you close the game out turn 6 with a massive board of dudes, or they go all the way to turn 7 playing 3 cards and then die whimpering in the corner, which is something you also mentioned yourself.
As for Lightning Bloom, I also just don't like the card, yet unfortunately they've pigeonholed the class into relying on the card to be playable. Taking a quick glance at HSreplay and you see that most of the well performing decks have two copies of it because OG innervate is still a really good card. Nerfing the card would make the card feel more fair to play against while still making it decent in a lot of circumstances, but there's also a solid chance it throws Druid further into the dumpster, hence why the card is fine for now.
The class just doesn't feel good to play right now to say the least. For every time you curb stomp someone and make them consider quitting Hearthstone, there are other games where you draw into your ramp payoffs and want to just concede turn 4 and there is not much inbetween. I'm really hoping that Darkmoon Faire fixes that.
That or Druid just gets deleted, Hearthstone only needs 9 classes in the game.
Mirrodin and the Phyrexians are easily my favorite stories in all of MTG's lore. Literally every bit of lore in the plane is amazing to me and I'm dying for a return to set to give a reason to cover the lore of the plane. The Nicol Bolas arc started off great but started falling down towards the end of it, especially with what Weisman did to it.
I can totally understand quitting the game because of the price, especially recently with so many sets featuring pushed cards that you have to get to stay competitive. You might be able to find a playgroup that won't mind you using proxies if you search.
Also, Lorwyn and Ravnica are both amazing planes as well! Lorwyn is without a doubt my 2nd favorite plane (since nothing is beating Mirrodin) and I want to return to it asap as well.
Honestly, I don't see Overgrowth as that much of an issue right now. Druid already has a 3 card combo to get to 7 mana on turn 4 (used to say 8 but I cannot count apparently) in Nature Studies -> Wild Growth on 2 -> Overgrowth. The issue in my opinion comes from how quickly Druid can recover the board after spending the first 3-4 turns ramping. The class is incredibly reliant on hitting their powerful 7 drops to actually start using all their extra mana because otherwise they are just dead in the water.
If they continue to make cards reliant on druid getting to 7 mana, maybe Overgrowth will get touched? The card is still around all of next year after all and that is a pretty long time to just let issues fester. On top of that, Overgrowth is pretty much the only thing keeping the class from being actual trash tier and so I don't think breaking its legs even more would be a great fix.
Malakir Rebirth is already in the deck! I'd totally agree though that its a great card, especially in a deck where removing creatures can already be somewhat of a pain for the opponent.
Don't see why it would be rude to ask hints lol, especially since a lot of people have done that for the MTG hints already. If you still need help with the tentacle one...
As for the card that makes you scream or be happy...
For the first one...
For the second one...
For the third one...
For the fourth one...
For the fifth one...
For the last one...
Glad you enjoyed it!
As for covering the Eldrazi Titans and the members of the Gatewatch, both play prominent roles in Zendikar's lore, and given that I've written a lore guide for that plane, you can read up a bit more about them. Issue with the Gatewatch is that it's a group of planeswalkers that all have a rich backstory before they come together as a team, which is something that I would never really get around to doing unless I completely cover the character in a guide of their own. As for the Eldrazi, we know very little about them despite the fact they are a fan favorite creature type as well as prominent villains.
That being said, I will probably continue the Gatewatch Arc given that it's the most recent overarching story and establishes a ton of reoccurring characters, as well as being a great segue into the future magic story line when they finally announce Return to Phyrexia (which if they don't do soon then I'm very upset).
Don't worry he's clearly just jealous of all the Pen Flinger value we are getting.
Which ones do you have remaining? Might be able to drop a hint or 7 to help you try getting them.
Yeah, Magic has some amazing lore, it's just always a pain when it comes to actually find it since it feels like WotC goes out of their way to make it hard to decipher it. They've done books in the past, they have these 'story spotlight cards', which are cards specifically designed to tell you apart of the story, and then they just started doing articles online, which is probably the best form.
For a little behind the scenes on this article, I knew the basics of Innistrad's story for the first block (this being everything leading up to Avacyn going insane), yet I wanted to still dig around to see if I could find any more details. This led me to spend 3-4 hours digging around in WotC's article archive trying to find all the relevant articles, which is frankly pretty stupid, especially when it is for probably the 2nd most popular plane in the history of the game, which you'd expect information to be readily acceptable for.
However, part of me also likes how difficult the lore is to find since it makes finding the smaller stories all the better. Things like the Delver of Secrets subplot, the Tuktuk one from Zendikar, and the recently made Toggo are all cases of great world-building that since it is so easy to overlook, it makes finding them feel special.
Oh and some of the books are actually pretty decent as well, though the recent ones have been somewhat questionable for sure. Greg Weisman did a pretty good job of making the entire Nicol Bolas arc end awfully.
Sorry for giving you trouble with this word search.
Liliana also existed before Innistrad, coming from a set from 2007. I remember when KFT came out and I saw Voss be revealed, I got really curious because there's no way that the two's names being so close is a coincidence. Surprisingly enough, the names are completely coincidental and have nothing to do with each other despite being so similar to each other.
Hint time!
For the first one...
For the second one...
Assuming you take 5 seconds per card and keep at that pace for a while, it only takes like 3 days to go through every single card so better get on that sooner than later.
In all seriousness, I understand your pain given that I've kept LoR away from me with a 10 foot pole. These scavenger hunts aren't as fun when it becomes a chore of just clicking everything. Luckily, there is something on it's way soon that should help with about half of them. So if you do continue trying to go for the last 16, good luck but if you don't, 3/4ths of all the riddles is still really good!