by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

The Broke Gamer Chronicle is the story of one gamer’s quest to reach the highest heights of ranked Hearthstone play with the lowest of low budgets: nothing.  Nada.  $0.  Armed with nothing but his Free-to-Play (F2P) Shaman deck, can our hero do it?  Tune in to our hero’s stream and check back here regularly to find out!

Night #1: The Beginning of It All

The first night is now in the books, as they say.

If you joined me late last night, I jumped into my Broke Gamer run with my Shaman deck. As I mentioned yesterday, I didn’t have a decklist prior to starting the stream last night.  I did what any new player would have to do: I opened my collection, selected “Shaman”, and started debating card choices.

It’s a process, not just an end-result, and in this case, we started out with a rough list.  I think it changed four or five times over the course of the night, and at one point, I even took the advice of folks in the chat and added in a card that I’m not really a big fan of: Bloodlust.

Also, we had a minor rule change. Instead of using all of my initial gold for arena runs (as I said in yesterday’s intro article), I realized that between the free arena run you get when you first start playing and the gold rewards I’d acquired already, I had 600 spare gold sitting in my account.  Since I simply don’t have the time to put into running enough arenas to use all of that up (before I get more gold through quests and whatnot), I made a “command decision” to go ahead and purchase six packs.

So, the way these “diary updates” are generally going to work: I’m going to talk about changes to my collection (and what I did to acquire those cards) and how we did, game-wise, for the night.  Basically, I’m going to use this to summarize my progress while providing “lessons learned,” for, you see, I actually have a confession. I’ve never been good at playing with Shamans in constructed.  I know that the decks are good, as I’ve even taken to trying to copy other Legends’ decklists to see if I can win and I still have trouble.  This means that something in my playstyle is not conducive to being successful with Shamans.

That’s going to change this month, and we’re going to chronicle that change here, on stream, and on YouTube.

Collection Changes

Last night, we acquired the following cards from our priority list:

2 Lightning Bolt

2 Earth Shock

1 Stormforged Axe

2 Harvest Golem

2 Lightning Storm

2 Feral Spirit

We also acquired a Dire Wolf Alpha that we’re currently using as a “Flametongue Totem #3.”  We acquired these cards by opening 10 packs on the night. These packs were acquired the following ways:

– Two of them were “new player” rewards.

– Two of them came from my 6 win arena run (the pack from the run and the 160 gold; I put the gold into another pack).

– The six packs we opened with our extra gold.

Nothing too crazy in terms of what we were able to do, but we did acquire the first two rares that are really important to our success as Shaman players.  Here’s the list of prioritized cards that we have yet to acquire:

2 Unbound Elemental

2 Azure Drake

2 Defender of Argus

Though, again, I’m not 100% certain I want/need the Defenders.  My plan currently is to get them, but I think I have a new card that I’m interested in acquiring for this deck:

With the cheap cards available in Shaman decks, Auctioneer can do some work. I know because one owned me in a mirror match last night.  While I want Azure Drake before I even think about Auctioneer, it’s on my radar.  It also gives me more incentive to run a card I’ve been wanting to run: Ancestral Healing.  Right now, it’s card disadvantage, but if I can play an Auctioneer into Healing, it’s a pretty big swing without losing cards.

As for the deck itself, we have two distinct directions we can go: Windfury or Bloodlust.  Basically, we can either play out a game where we keep the board at parity until we can drop a big fat fatty and give it the ability to attack so nice, I let it do it twice or we can totem, totem, totem, totem, BloodluLOLOL and hope to get there.  While Bloodlust did win me a game last night, the more we played (and the more real decks we saw), the less effective Bloodlust became.

I’d like it if people left my totems alone, but, as they’re good players, they don’t.

On the flipside of that, our late-game plan of Fire Elemental/Boulderfist Ogre + Windfury pales in comparison to a lot of other decks, unfortunately.  When we play the Windfury game, we’re trying to extend the game out into the late game.  Other decks have Azure Drakes, Auctioneers, Defenders of Argus, and legendaries to make their mid/late games much better.  We just need a way to close games out…

So that’s why we have the Bloodlust in our deck.  Let’s call it a necessary evil for now; I want to take you out, but I just can’t quit you, Bloodlust.

If you want the list, I’ll have the video posted to my YouTube Channel hopefully tonight (again, super busy, so I might not have the time, but I’m going to try to have that knocked out).

What I Learned

First, I learned that this isn’t going to be easy. Between my issues playing Shamans and the F2P restriction, this is going to be quite the grind.

Second, I learned that I need to end games. While I sort of understood this, the fact that Lord Jaraxxus made an appearance and lasted for several turns showed me that I need something to push through the last bit of damage. Perhaps Argent Commanders are a good investment.

YOU FACE JARAXXUS, EREDAR-ENDER OF WINNING STREAKS

Also, while I currently have Bloodlust in the deck, there might be an argument to be made for Stormwind Champion. There are times where Bloodlust does absolutely nothing, but Stormwind Champion will give you a 6/6 body at least.  Also, the Champion helps against Explosive Trap and also “heals” minions (in that, if the champion dies, your minion that had taken damage retains the toughness “buff” that the champion provided).  While it’s not as game-ending in some scenarios, I think it’s a more solid card.  It also goes well with the deck I have in mind: one that wants to totem, totem, totem while still having the Windfury end game. (The 6/6 body is pretty decent for a Windfury target.)

Third, I learned that exhaustion is a b****. I was extremely tired last night after a full work day, class, three hours in traffic (both on my way to work and home), and taking care of my kids, and it showed.  Hopefully, we can get some coffee in us the next time.

Lastly, I learned that there are truly people who are genuinely interested in seeing me succeed in this.  You people are the ones driving me to keep going, as I really don’t want to let you down!  Let’s keep this going.

Admin Notes

I didn’t have VoD (Video on Demand) set up last night on the stream, but that should be up and running for the next stream.  I want to make sure to edit my videos before posting them, but, as busy as I am, this may not be as timely as some might want.  I’ll try to be as fast as possible.

The YouTube video from last night, when it does get posted, will have an echo for about an hour. I had an internet browser open in the background that I was unaware of running my stream, meaning it was all getting recycled back into the recorded video.  My apologies; I did get it rectified eventually, but it is slightly annoying.  I’m still posting the video, as I want to have the run entirely recorded, but know that the echo’s coming when you open it.

Some people were asking about my “Stream Schedule”; I don’t have one yet.  The dead horse that I’ve been beating about being super busy applies here. I don’t know when I’ll have time to actually do streaming.  Follow me on Twitter and Twitch to find out when I’m going live. I’ll always post on Twitter when I do go live.

I’ll try to iron out a set stream schedule starting next week. (I have a big Magic: the Gathering tournament this weekend in Richmond, VA that’ll prevent me from streaming unless I scrub out of that tournament.) I know that getting a solid schedule is paramount, since if you don’t know if you’re able to catch the stream all the time, you might not want to even start watching.  I’m working on it, I promise!

If you watched last night, what did you think?  I was thinking about having music going. If you’d like that, what type of music are you guys into?  (I’ll have the sound turned down on my computer, so it doesn’t matter to me.)  What can I do to make your experience better?

I’ll see you all on the tabletops of Azeroth!
Michael “Shoctologist” Martin
The Broke Gamer
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