If you have an extra $4.99 (plus applicable taxes) lying around then I recommend you purchase the Welcome Bundle. Whether you’re new to the game or you’ve been playing for years, it’s hard to beat this deal. The best price for a pack, if you buy 60 packs, is $1.167. The Welcome Bundle packs are 16.9 cents cheaper per pack! Value!
So why is it worth 16.9 cents? The guaranteed Classic Class-Legendary minion. A lot of analysis has been done into the nature of card pack statistics. The general consensus is that you’ll get a Legendary card once every 100 packs or so. That’s a lot of money. Blizzard is giving you one practically for free!
Even if you don’t need the class Legendary that you get, you can still probably make use of 400 dust. There’s supposedly an average of 98.25 arcane dust per pack. That’s strange because all my packs come with four commons and one rare which is 40 dust. But, averaging in the epics, legends, and gold variants you pull over time it averages up to 98.25.
400 free dust, depending on your luck, is somewhere between the value of 4 and 10 packs. If it’s 4 packs, that’s still getting 14 packs for $4.99, and if it’s 10, you’re getting 20 packs for $4.99! How can you say no?
I bought it, and got Cenarius, so next month I think I’ll see how high I can take the Classic Druid recipe up the ladder, but I’m going to add in cards from Wrath of the Old Gods and One Night in Karazhan. Other than that I got ten packs worth of dust which I used to craft a lot of the cards needed for the Classic recipes. So hopefully I’ll be able to work up to building another Classic deck for November. I think you can see where this is going.
September Ladder
As soon as I finished unlocking the last wing of Karazhan I knew I was going to update my Zoolock deck into a Disco deck.
The synergy here is with Malchezaar’s Imp, which turns your discard effects into draw effects. If you have an Imp in play and fire off Soulfire it’s fun. Have two Imps in play and you’re getting serious value.
The magical Christmas-land for this deck is to have both of your Imps in play and summon Doomguard with two Silverware Golems in your hand. Put both Golems into play and draw four cards.
You might have noticed a few odd inclusions. I have a confession to make: I never played League of Explorers or Blackrock Mountain. I’m saving up some gold now to unlock them for future ladder climbs, but for now I’m stuck without access to Dark Peddler or Imp Gang Boss.
To replace them I added Succubus and Knife Juggler to try to get maximum value off of all the card advantage that Malchezaar’s Imp provides. I admit I would much rather have Dark Peddler than Succubus, but I also really enjoy playing Imp on turn one into Succubus and discard Silverware Golem turn two. What’s not to love?
I mulligan pretty aggressively with this deck because hands that have Malchezaar’s Imp are just much, much better than hands without. Generating massive card advantage off the bat is where you want to be with this deck because you need to close out games early. If you end up getting to the point where your opponent can start playing Arcane Golems, Twin Emperors, or worse, you’re going to lose.
One change I might make for next week is to swap out Succubus for Forbidden Ritual. The synergy between Ritual and Knife Juggler/Darkshire Councilman is one of the only ways to recover in the middle-to-late game, and as I move up the ladder there are more control decks staying alive through my early onslaughts.
I’m currently at rank 15, so check back next week to see if I can climb up to rank 10. Maybe I’ll manage to get enough gold to unlock the Temple of Osiris and finally swap in Dark Peddler.
Rich has been playing Hearthstone on and off since the closed beta and has a golden E.T.C. to prove it. He enjoys playing Zoolock on the ladder and wishes he could figure out how to get more than five wins in the Arena. He’s really looking forward to playing Silence-Aggro Priest once Karazhan is live.