I have mixed feelings about this battle because it was both hard and easy. It was easy in the sense that Baron Geddon was not overpowered and cheap – you could play around it. But it was hard because you had to play strategically in order to win. There were 4 things working against you:

1. He had 100 hp (50 health, 50 armor) compared to your 30.
2. If you don’t use up all your mana each turn, then he will do 10 damage to you
3. He summoned reasonable but many minions, so you needed board presence and to trade effectively
4. He has a spell which will do 10 damage to all your minions and your hero if the targeted minion doesn’t die before his next turn. The spell is always on your own minion. Oh, and he has more than 2 copies in his deck.

The last one was most annoying because sometimes you didn’t have any enemies to trade into, so I based my deck around countering that spell (silences and returning minions to hand). The remainder of the deck was built on cheap cards & drawing cards so that I would have cards to play (and would not take 10 damage). Here’s my Shaman deck:

• Earth Shock x 2
• Clockwork Gnome x 2
• Dust Devil x 2
• Zombie Chow
• Ancestral Knowledge x 2
• Ironbeak Owl x 2
• Totem Golem x 2
• Vitality Totem
• Whirling Zap-o-matic x 2
• Youthful Brewmaster x 2
• Feral Spirit
• Hex
• Lightning Storm
• Harvest Golem x 2
• Mana Tide Totem
• Ancient Brewmaster x 2
• Spellbreaker x 2
• Bloodlust
• Chromaggus

I had to play a couple of games (~10?) before I won, but it was challenging and fun. In my winning game, I had to do some weird stuff: I had to use Bloodlust to clear his board, had to Hex my own minion to prevent my board from being cleared, and played roulette with my Brewmasters. That eventually allowed me to win because at that point I had board control and was able to do 10+ damage a turn. I had to keep rotating my Brewmasters because the AI would target it with the 10 dmg spell (at 5 attack, it was the most dangerous minion), and because I ended up with too many 0/x totems on the board (although I had Vitality Totem out for a long time, which almost healed me to full health), so I couldn’t do damage fast enough. I had to swap those into my hand for Windfury minions.

The AI also spent a couple of turns doing nothing, which I later found out was because he had 2 Molten Giants in his hand but his health was too high. In the end, I played to fatigue and won a fulfilling match.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: games, hearthstone