by JR Cook - 11 years ago     show comments

Collecting gold cards is arguably the “heroic raid reward” equivalent for very dedicated Hearthstone players. With the exception of Gelbin Mekkatorque, there will be gold versions of every card available to craft or randomly earn with pack purchases when the game goes live. Naturally, the possibility exists to create an all-gold version of your favorite deck.

Curious, I asked on Twitter if anyone had already attempted to collect enough gold cards to build an all-gold deck. Someone had. Meet Gopherstick:

@HearthProShow I captain the Shitty Gold. Sails the Hearthstone seas she does, with more minions than Noah’s Ark. pic.twitter.com/Yd8CC1Piwi

— gopherstick (@gopherstick) August 25, 2013

Naturally, I had some questions, which Gopherstick was kind enough to answer:

What gave you the idea to construct an all-gold deck, and what made you follow through with it?

It came up in talking with a buddy at work. I checked out my collection and discovered I had exactly 30 gold cards if I used a warlock, so that was that. It was an instant build. It’s a shiny, goofy, slot machine minion factory, how could I not?

How did the deck come together? Was it mostly crafting, or did you find a surprising number of gold cards in packs to get you started?

Every gold card was pack pulled (Gelbin excepting). I bought a small, embarrassing mountain of packs during alpha and was able to just get enough to toss this together. For now I want to keep it pack-pulled;  as funny as it’d be to go and craft a proper pirate crew, I want to stay pure, stay gold. Hearthstone Ponyboy.

Given the cost of crafting golden versions of cards, have you figured out how much more arcane dust you would have spent crafting the gold versions instead of the regular versions?

It looks to be about double the cost to craft a gold version of a card.

I’ve never actually crafted a gold card. Given the considerable price jump, I’ve only crafted regular versions so I could try to round out my favorite builds and complete as much of my neutral base as possible. 3200 for a legendary craft will drain your gold real quick, no matter how perfectly a Leeroy Jenkins might fit in.

Is this deck build around a specific hero or a specific strategy?

Warlock was the only class with enough gold cards to make a playable build, so I had no choice. Turns out they make decent pirates because their card-draw hero power helps churn through the deck. As for ‘strategy’, the plan is to essentially strangle the board with loads of minions and hope to God I get out in front and can peck my opponent to death before they blow me up for playing such a silly build.

Do you consider it a viable deck?

No. It’s a vanity deck with 27 minions, it’s really terrible. It’s also the most fun to play. I generally don’t use gold cards in my other builds. To have a solid gold deck is borderline offensive to me, so the idea of playing this wildly unbalanced, theme-less deck just trying to cannonball other players with glitter and fear is massively appealing.

Have you taken it for a spin against other players? How did it go?

Brutal. I’m 2-7 in two-star diamond (which helps explain why I’m not moving to 3-star anytime soon), and I’m probably 1-5 against friends. Even the loses are fun, though. The deck has a random, almost arena-type feel to it. Never really knowing what’s gonna pop up next and how it might affect the other oddball things in hand makes it chaos. Trying to rank up is stressful, so to be able to roll this Frankendeck out there now and again and just have stupid fun is sweet. Makes me wish each deck had individual rankings or lifetime win / loss stats so I could better track battles…oh, and that we had an animated board flip / ragequit option, because Hearthrage is real.

Are you planning on making it a more viable deck for regular play, or is this as far as you are going to take it at this point?

I’ll slowly continue to hone the deck should I pull a gold card I’d consider an upgrade. If the pack-busting gods of 1994 have mercy on me, I imagine it’ll gradually round into a decent, viable deck, but I’m in no big hurry.

When the game goes live, do you plan on becoming a serious gold card collector and eventually build a “real” all-gold deck?

I prefer slow, long-term collecting, so I could see putting together a crafted competitive gold deck at some point (maybe a rogue, their gaudiness lends itself well). So many gold cards have amazing animations too, so there’s a few I’ll want in my collection just because. I’ll definitely be building an all-gold deck again. Can’t wait for launch to find out who the crew of the Shitty Gold will be…