The Grand Pursuivant

Yeah I steered clear of wolves for that reason. Think Jimenez is guaranteed to start, but taking a quick look at your team, i would be wildcarding during the international break. Def too much value on the bench. Ive had a pretty good start, but find myself in a bit of a pickle. 3 of my players have dropped in value already and only one has gone up! Wood, Perez and Wilson. I’m fine keeping two of them for a while longer yet, so I guess I have to hope they start getting points, punish the knee jerkers and go back up again. Ive also avoided the pukki train. If he scores against Chelsea I might have to hop on myself. I’m telling myself his fixtures aren’t worth getting him in yet, but you can’t get left behind when a cheap player like that bursts on to the scene. Going to be hiding behind the sofa for that Norwich game.

So I went to preinstall the Classic version of the game to see if I could replicate my old Orc Warlocks look and have the character ready to go before the game comes out. Turns out, that my Mac is too old to play a game that is twice its age. When the Metal API came out, Blizzard moved to it, and Macs bought before 2012 simply can't run the game because the graphics cards they came with can't support the API. Or something. Not quite sure on the technicalities but having a browse through the Blizz forums it seems this happened a year ago, and there is no workaround. I have a 2011 Mac that does literally everything else I need it to, so that basically rules me out of playing a game that came in out 2004. Not going to drop a bunch of money on a new computer to play a game I might give up playing in a month. I'm actually surprisingly disappointed. Oh well.

I think it's been at least a decade since I last played WoW. I reinstalled it a few years ago to see what Pandas were like but lasted about 30 minutes. I'm seriously interested in this though. I remember walking in to Virgin Megastore and seeing this being lined up on the shelves with no idea what it was, other than it was Warcraft. And thinking 'I love Warcraft'. So I bought it, installed it, and was annoyed I couldn't play it straight away, because unbeknownst to me, the servers weren't up yet, and I'd managed to buy it a full 2 days before the game was actually released. This was my first ever online game. I had no idea. So I was there for the server start. The mad rush at the beginning to get in to the game. The hundreds of people in the starting area. Finally levelling up my Orc Warlock enough to get him out of the starting area and being sent up to Orgrimmar. And I remember thinking that the game was pretty good. And that it was incredible just how big it was. That it had taken me several hours to get to level 10 and that I should probably go to bed. But before I did, I decided on one last quest. Go to this place called The Crossroads in some area called The Barrens. And the moment I crossed the border from Durotar, I was in. I have so many fond memories of the game. Levelling up in the Muk guild with everyone. Taking that first Zeppelin ride. The first time I saw an Alliance on my backwater RP-PVE server, toggled my PvP and got my arse kicked. The Muk battle royale that we organised, where about 20 people turned up from Horde and Alliance to have a massive ruckus. My first Molten Core raid (at level 58, because there weren't enough 60s on the realm yet to do one). The week long running battle at Tarren Mill when PvP ranks came out for the first time. The first ever Alterac Valley battle, that I think lasted 36 full hours, with people going to sleep, waking up, logging on and rejoining the same fight because Blizzard had screwed up the win conditions so badly. Coming second in the race to be the first on the server to kill Nefarian (we lost that one by about 20 minutes). Dominating Warsong Gulch with my PvP team. I know that coming back won't be the same. And I definitely won't have the time to grind like I did when I was 18. But I'd love to come back to it and play with a group of forumites again. I kind of want to retread my steps, so I'll want to go Horde. With discord, going out and doing quests will be so much more enjoyable as well. Even if it's just a small group of us, rerunning things like Ragefire Chasm and Wailing Caverns again is an idea I'm definitely drawn to. I've organised Rllmuk guilds in Wow more than once. I'd definitely be up for doing it again now Classic is back. So is anyone in for resurrecting Muk?

88 all out for me. Incredibly happy with that. The only mistake I made was going Trossard over Zinchenko. Not bad for gw1! In the last 3 years I’ve finished 2nd, 2nd and 5th in the rllmuk league. I’m gunning hard for 1st this year. No doubt this means next week is going to be a complete disaster.

I'm pretty sure nobody plays this game on the forum, but I just reached a ridiculously high rank in Teamfight Tactics. And I have to brag about it to someone, because it's easily the most impressive gaming feat I've ever achieved. TFT is the Autochess mode from the guys who made League of Legends. The ranks go Iron/Bronze/Gold/Plat/Diamond/Master/Challenger. There are about 1 million ranked players in Europe alone, and the vast majority of them are Iron, Bronze and Silver (70% of playerbase). I had wanted to get Platinum rank, which would put me around the top 7% of players. Getting to platinum turned out to be way easier than I had thought, and I got there pretty much straight away. So I figured I'd go for Diamond which was a much more difficult challenge. I've been bouncing around between Plat 2 and 3 for a while, but all of a sudden something clicked, and I went on a really good run of games to get promoted to Diamond 4. That means I'm (almost) top 0.5% in the world.

I enjoyed that episode more than the entirety of season two. Bodes well for a strong finish. And this show really deserves one of those.

The pricing of players this year is making it really hard to make a balanced team. I want a core of Kane/Stirling/Salah but it’s impossible to get an acceptable team to go with them. Looks like switching around premium players is going to be even more important this year than it has been before.

Has anyone read any NK Jemisin? I've just finished the Fifth Season and it was absolutely fantastic. Really unique writing style for a fantasy, consistent and logical worldbuilding, interesting characters and a really well realised world. About to start the sequel and would thoroughly recommend for anyone looking for a new read.

Can we leave Ozil as well?

The thread has been anything but active. I'm really enjoying the new expansion though. I've played the game more in the last couple of weeks than I probably have in the last year. Ranked is actually interesting and there are still loads of decks about. The Arena changes are just fantastic and the whole game is just generally much more fun to play than it has been for a long, long time. I also got 5 packs from picking the winner. Randomly clicking on a name for the win!

If you have Togwaggle then don't bother with the Priest deck, it's just a slightly worse miracle deck. Although there are some Rogue lists that run Nomi, because of its insane synergy with Myras and Scheme, so if you do craft it then you will have another deck to try out. A few tips on playing rogue, because it's probably the most difficult class to play in Hearthstone (and also probably the strongest historically, along with Warlock), and that comes down to one simple reason. It is the class that has the most decisions to make with the cards it plays. In a game like HS, the more correct decisions you make, the likelier you are to win the game, but the more decisions you take, the more mistakes you can make. With most classes, your decisions are often limited. If you are playing aggro/tempo, you play minions on curve, you trade, them or you hit face. That's about the extent of the decision making. If you are playing a control deck then you destroy all your opponents minions until you can play big stuff and win. Both of these kinds of decks often play themselves. Rogue is completely different. Because of cards like prep, shadowstep, sap and other value cards, Rogue has the ability to make insane tempo swings both late and early in the game that no other class can really accomplish. Very few rogue games will involve you playing minions on curve. Often you will have gamechanging decisions to make in the first few turns that you don't even know are gamechanging yet. I lost a game against a Hunter recently where I chose to dagger up and hit a 1/1 with my face instead of use coin SI:7 on turn 2. The last turn of the game he had no cards in hand and no minions on board and I was set up for lethal the next turn unless he killed me. He topdecked kill command. The SI was still in my hand and I didn't need it for lethal. That turn 2 decision literally cost me the game. It made sense at the time with the cards I had, as I expected to be able to kill him before he could kill me. Against almost any other class, a turn 2 weapon in to kill a minion would have been absolutely fine. But because it's hunter, I didn't think enough about the value of that 1HP. This is an extreme example, but I think it highlights just how much you need to think about when playing a Rogue deck. To get good at one you need to really analyse what it is you might have done wrong when you lose. Sometimes there was nothing you could have done, but most of the time rogues lose because of something the player did. The versatility Rogue has is its greatest strength though. I was thinking about linking a couple of decks, but honestly, instead of you crafting some netdeck and spending unnecessary dust, I think you making your own deck would probably help more. There are a lot of variants at the moment, but most of the core cards are still in the basic and classic set, and are 80% common and and rare cards, so you almost definitely have them in your collection. Let me know the following: Do you want to play the super-aggresive Wagglepick rogue that is going around, or the Lackey rogue that focuses on doing crazy stuff with Togwaggle, Scheme and Shadowsteps (and also sometimes plays Wagglepick)? Which of the following legendaries do you have? - Bloodmage Thalnos, Leeroy, Edwin, Captain Greenskin, Ziliax, Myras Unstable Element, Chef Nomi

Strangely enough, I don't think there are any particularly must have Legendaries in the new set. The neutrals are all very situational, and only really fit in a few decks. Ziliax is pretty much the only neutral Legendary in rotation at the moment that is played in a lot of decks, but it is also not the kind of card that you build a deck around. It's definitely worth crafting, but expect to have to craft other cards to get a good deck. This is also possibly the most balanced expansion in HS history. It looks like Blizzard learnt a lot from Baku and Genn. There isn't really a deck that's overly oppressive, and whilst there are a couple of decks that are really strong at the moment, I get the feeling that other decks will be better finetuned to either counter them or surpass them later on. The meta doesn't look particularly set in stone at the moment. That said, there are definitely certain decks and archetypes emerging. In terms of Legendaries, this is what you'll need to play certain decks. Druid - Token Druid is a strong deck, and the most popular on ladder at the moment. It's a super aggro deck that just floods the board. It probably overwhelms bad players, but I find that it's not particularly consistent, and it's also very predictable so a mediocre player with an average deck shouldn't have too many problems beating it. Lots of lists run Keeper Stalladris, and whilst the card is strong, I don't think it's essential. The other Druid deck that I think might be sleeper OP, but nobody has made a good version yet, is Heal Druid. You will definitely need Lucentbark for that, but nobody has figured it out properly yet so beast to avoid for now. Mage - Conjuror Mage is probably the second strongest deck right now. It doesn't need Kalecgos, I know because it took me from rank 10 to 4 without it. It definitely needs Khadgar though. It also needs quite a few epic spells and minions, so is very expensive in dust terms even if you don't run Kalecgos. It's also a very skill intensive deck to play, so if you haven't played for a while expect to lose a lot until you figure the deck out. It is amazingly fun to play though. Just look at my post above yours for proof of that! Hunter - Mech Hunter is strong, so Oblivitron is worth a craft if you want to play that. I haven't played the deck though so can't say much more. @RJames has played a lot of it I think so if you are interested he can probably help. Vereesa is just rubbish at the moment. Other than that, Secret Hunter and Mid-Range hunter are still solid decks, and relatively cheap to craft. Paladin - Secret Paladin is bad. Heal Paladin is bad. Both the legendaries are not worth the dust. Poor Paladin. Priest - Silence priest is a thing but it's decidedly average. Both of the Legendaries are strong but there aren't any decks yet that make them worth having. Funnily enough, the best Priest deck at the moment is Chef Nomi priest. It's a miracle deck that plays Gadgetzans, a whole bunch of low cost spells and card draw, and basically draws through the entire deck to get to Chef Nomi as soon as possible. It's maybe the cheapest deck in the meta as it only runs Nomi as its sole legendary. Worth checking out if you are strapped for dust. Rogue - Rogue is probably the most powerful class right now. There are loads of variants as well. They are all fairly expensive, but there is a lot of variety, and a lot of them run classic legendaries you probably have (Leeroy, Edwin etc). They all, however, run Heistbaron Togwaggle. You can do some ridiculous stuff with that card and Togwaggles scheme. I had a game where I played 7 Leeroys for 0 mana for lethal against a warrior. I played a game where I put 12 Ziliax in my deck after playing Myras Unstable Portal against a Hunter and had them autoconcede. Again though, these decks are all incredibly hard to pilot. They will take a while to learn but are so worth it once you understand how they work. Shaman - Murloc Shaman is your classic Murloc deck. If they can't remove your key cards you win, if they can, you lose. You can run Scargill, but it's by no means necessary, and you often get it from Underbelly Angler anyway so why bother? Swampqueen Hagath is good for Control Shaman, but the deck looks super boring to play so I have no idea if it needs it or not. Warlock - Arch-Mage Rafaam is a meme card. You can put it in any deck and it'll do what it says. If you want to turn you deck in to random legendaries then craft it. If you don't care, then don't. The other warlock legendary is trash. I think Warlock is the second weakest class after Paladin. Zoo still works, but I don't think it's very strong when Rogue, Mage and Warrior are all over the ladder. Warrior - The most powerful Legendary in the game at the moment is definitely the Dr. Boom, Mad Genius. It's carrying control and bomb warrior at the moment. With the other DK cards being rotated out it's just absurdly strong. The Hagatha DK is the second most powerful legendary in the game but it pales in comparison to Dr Boom. If you want to play Warrior, definitely get this. If you want to play Bomb Warrior then Blastmaster Boom is good, but also not particularly necessary. Boom Reaver isn't worth it when you can just discover it from omega assembly and Dr. Booms hero power. If you've played a Control Warrior deck before than nothing has changed. You stall out the game forever and overwhelm them with ridiculous value cards. Same as it ever was. Bomb Warrior is very by the numbers. I've played a few games with both of them and they are strong, but they aren't particularly fun. I can link to any of the decks I've mentioned if you're interested. I would thoroughly recommend investing in Rogue or Mage if you can.

If you haven't seen the final match of this years World Championship I would highly recommend watching it. Easily the craziest ending to a world finals there has ever been.

Just your average, run of the mill, bog-standard turn 4 play.

There’s no chance I’m going to catch you in our league, but I’m 2nd in another league by about 40 points, so I’m taking the risk of Duffy captain in my quest for glory. Cheeks are firmly clenched right now.