Playing With Brann Bronzebeard.

What does this button do?

I have finished all that has been released for The League of Explorers adventure, and am playing with a few of the cards. Both Reno Jackson and Brann Bronzebeard seem to be used a lot on the ladder.  I don't want to commit to not getting the tools I need to play successfully, so that means Reno is not my kind of card. Brann, however, is my kind of man. I reevaluated my Dragon Priest deck to include him and the Jeweled Scarab, and I like how it is working. Here is my revised deck list.

Not a typical dragon priest.

To add the scarabs and Brann, I removed two Dark Cultists and a Northshire Cleric. During my play before the change, I had noticed I usually didn't get any value from the cultists, and I already had Power Word:Shield and Azure Drake for card draw.

Maybe I'll discover another Brann Bronzebeard, or a murloc.

The strategy here is to get keep a dragon and hope to get a whelp and/or a technician in your opening draw. Other cards worth keeping on opening are the Twilight Drake and Power Word:Shield, though I have been known to toss back the latter, depending on who I am facing.

Brann gave me health, but Earth Shock killed me.

In my opinion, this is a control priest deck. Big bodies that can clear early drops, with late game solutions like Shadow Word:Death, Rend Blackhand, and Vol'jin/Holy Smite. Board clear for swarm decks with Holy Nova, and taunts from Defender of Argus to hold back the tide while you recover. Oh, and there is the fun factor of the Jeweled Scarab and Ysera.

My work is paramount. Leave me alone!

What does Brann offer? First, know that if you drop him on turn three he will be removed. Turns three and four for most players have something that does at least that much damage. For best result, pair him up in a turn to get at least one charge out of him. Turn seven with a nice sized hand can net you a Twilight Drake with quite a bit of health, or turn six a tech with 4/6. Even turn five can give you a whelp with 2/5, which isn't horrible. Other things that are fun are if you already have your whelp and tech up and slap Brann down on turn 7 with your defender to give your minions 2/2 and taunt. Turn 8 with Azure drake gets you two cards. Turn five with the scarab lets you choose a card, then from a new set choose another card.

The only combo I can see as being bad is Vol'jin, as he will swap health twice with the same target, negating the combo with Holy Smite. I have yet to try Brann out with the Corruptor or Rend. I'm sure with Rend he will just work on one Legendary (I'm taking volunteers to test him out!). With the Corruptor, I imagine it will have him shoot twice, but not sure if I will have the chance to target a different target after the first charge.

What other fun cards could I use? Keeping with the dragon theme, I could use the Wyrmrest Agent on turn five, making him 3/4 with taunt. I could use Nefarian to gain 4 random spells from the opponent (but Brann would have to have already been played and still active). If I had the Twilight Guardian (one of the reasons my dragon priest is so different) turn seven would make him a 4/6 with taunt. There are, of course, the vanilla cards like Abusive Sergeant, Shattered Sun Cleric, and Dark Iron Dwarf that could buff up the damage. How about Stampeding Kodo for those annoying Paladin token murloc decks? I think I'll keep my deck as is for now, but I am having some thoughts on pirates capturing Brann, especially after being killed by a charging 24 damage Bloodsail Raider the other night.

Have you been playing around with Brann? What's your favorite combo? I'd love to hear about it. See you in the tavern!

My Adventures in the Temple of Orsis.

I bought the new solo adventure for Hearthstone today, and I have managed to work my way through the Temple of Orsis pretty quickly.

He rubbed the lamp. *sigh*

This was pretty easy to beat with my current favorite mage deck. I'm not good at telling what kind of mage it is (I know it's not a freeze mage!), so I'll just show you my deck list and you can tell me what type it is, ok?

Maybe a new name is in order. One shredder?

Anyhow, I managed to pump up one worm to 7 damage before he finally destroyed it. I got another worm out a couple turns later and finished out his last 11 health with the small spells I had saved up. What a maroon! Giving me gifts as I was stuffing him back in his lamp was clearly a bad idea.

Kill him and take the staff.  No sweat.

The whole idea here is to take the staff and keep it. I decided the best person for the job was Andy Wrynn. I pulled out all the stealing spells and minions I could find, added some dragons for good measure, and started swinging.

I'll take that minion, and that minion, and that minion!

I ended the game with using Inner Fire to smack him with the artifact piece before I turned it in to the team. Fitting end, to be destroyed by the very thing you were dying to keep (cough cough).

Run Away, little girl, run away.

I decided that Andy needed another go at this one, but this time because of his healing prowess. Here's the final revision I made to the deck. I did have to run this three times to get it right, but I learned from my mistakes!

More like rev.5, but I got lazy.

Healing and taking the least of the risks seemed to be key. One try I converted the 7/7 that spits out 1/1 taunts and used it on the same turn ( I didn't win that round), which might have been a good idea if I had more health, which brings me back to healing. You still need removal, be it spell or minion, so that is why I added a bit of draconic flavor to the mix. Any spell that steals from cards not seen won't work, as this one has no deck or hand.

I'm so excited to work my new cards into my decks. I think I'll wait until tomorrow to venture into Uldaman. The last expedition was very tiring and I think I caught an ancient bug (cough cough)!

Uhhh, Hi There.

I've been gone a while. Sorry about that. I'm tired, in pain, stressed out, and worried. My house is destroyed, plumbing is breaking, appliances on the fritz, flooring worn out, paint peeling, and the yard is overgrown with weeds. There are too many bodies in this teeny house, and many of them are not contributing at a meaningful level, monetarily or through routine maintenance. My body is broken, too tired from fighting an illness I did not know I had to take care of the myriad things needed to fix the problems in this household. Hubby is working odd hours and contributes when he can. I'm playing hooky from work today, because even though  I could have probably managed to put away all the stock coming in today and serve a holiday meal, it would have laid me out for the rest of the day. (Yes, I wrote this last month, so sue me.)

So great!

I had big plans for going to Blizzcon and meeting up with people I only talk to in game, but life yanked that out from under me. I told the guy I sold the ticket to that I needed a new washer, which was part true. I would have gone anyway, packed pb&j and other cheap foodstuffs and refilled water bottles and such, but I was given some rough news a few weeks ago and rethought the intelligence of exposing myself to exotic strains of crud from all over the planet. So, I took the lighter risk of attending the Con Before the Storm (which was a bunch of fun!) after I sold my ticket, then went home and got a little sleep before putting in a day at work.I talked to Freckleface from Hearthcast for a bit before their show, said hi to Rewt, and I ran into Scott Johnson as he was leaving the WoWhead party, trying to find a faster way back to the other party to do his cast. Words were exchanged, but no selfies were taken. I also ran into Lilulicious (if you twitter with WoW players, you probably know her!) and again, no selfies. Maybe I should put hubby in charge of them, because I forget I have a camera.

Old lanyard, so I would blend in, sorta? But look at that arm candy!

Anyhow, I'm logged into WoW with my alliance banker sitting in the middle of the Exodar auction house. I just remembered that I logged her in to process a bunch of garbage from Halinka's sight seeing tour in the Ahn'Qiraj raids, plus some extra material from her bank. If I remember to run both bankers regularly, I might be able to get ahead enough to help friends out with game time. I've got a 2 month cushion now, with enough gold on my horde server to buy at least 2 more. If it weren't for the friends, I wouldn't play at all. I am bored to tears of my garrison, even festooned in webs and the air heavy with ghosts and spiders crunching underfoot.

Tuesday I meet with a surgeon to find out when I'll be having a thyroidectomy and how long I'll be out for. Timing is pretty clever, as it seems to be falling over Thanksgiving and possibly Christmas breaks. Good for the paycheck, bad for the festivities.

I keep putting this off, so I'm hitting the post button now. Mispellings, grammatical errors, and punctuation be damned, if I don't do it now noone will know, and I'll post some goofy story instead that makes people think I'm having plumbing problems  (which for once I am having, but that is a story for another day).