What Would DKMR Do? #8
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
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Written by [DKMR]Varranis
Welcome to this week’s “What Would DKMR Do?” Each week we’ll present an in-game situation and discuss the possible lines of play. Here’s the scenario for this week:
So what would you do?
Cosmeagol would play:
Loatheb: you drop a decent body on the field while locking potential spell answers.
This play deploys our strongest threat available for the turn while, as Cosmeagol says, protecting us from any nasty spells.
Stolen Prayers agrees, saying:
Drop Loatheb. You get a 5/5 on the board and you’re baiting him into playing more minions and going face, thus improving future equality / pyromancer. He can alternatively trade 2 for 1 or pay 5 mana for a hunters mark, effectively wasting his turn.
Tiago said he would:
Aldor the Spider > suicide the recruit into the Spider > Hero Power > Pass.
Tiago wishes to prevent the Haunted Creeper from trading up for the Aldor Peacekeeper while minimizing the impact of Unleash the Hounds.
Nuclein and Ciaranirl would opt to have the Houndmaster stand down instead:
Probably peacekeeper the houndmaster, then guy + suicide the guy there into the spider.
So what would DKMR do?
We would play Loatheb. As mentioned previously, Loatheb is the strongest threat we can deploy this turn. Not only does he serve as a formidable threat, but he constricts your opponent’s defensive and offensive options on the following turn. Loatheb prevents you from being blown out by Unleash the Hounds or Kill Command and encourages your opponent to play minions into your Wild Pyromancer/Equality combo. Playing Loatheb also allows you to save your Silver Hand Recruit as you don’t have to fear Unleash the Hounds on the following turn. Also worth noting is that your opponent cannot efficiently trade with the 5/5 without using another card from his (better not be a spell!).
Playing Aldor Peacekeeper is really your only other option. Playing Gnomish Inventor does not progress your board well and you don’t get enough value to want to play Wild Pyromancer and Equality. If you decide to play the Aldor Peacekeeper, we like using his ability on the Haunted Creeper for the reasons Tiago gave.
Next week we’ll be talking about the scenario below. What would you do? Let us know in the comments!
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Not exactly a ton of options in-hand….I think we’d get the most value by playing the Berserker, then going all-in to take out the enemy Taunt. That gives us a ridiculously large berserker and some armor. He’ll probably run the Mad Scientist into the Berserker next turn to either put him in range of an arcane shot or praying for an explosive trap or misdirection. I would take the risk for the offense/defense trade-off, since our hand is basically making us play defensively for a couple more turns, depending on what we draw.
I will agree here. The board threat need to be dealt with. Berserker then taskmaster followed by smith into Misha gives you +2 armor, +4 berserker, and no beast on board to allow a big kill command.
Card draw is nice, but I can’t see allowing the board to advance much without having a solid threat down.
I think Acolyte here, then remove Misha with the two minions. Although it’s a 2 for 1 for the opponent on Misha, unless he has an owl you should be able to draw 2 cards and take out his scientist which is good value for the acolyte. Again as long as it isn’t silenced or he doesn’t remove it with another card next turn, you’d be able to play the berserker on turn 4, then kill the scientist with the acolyte and get +2 on your berserker and have a 4-4 on the board which would stick if he drew explosive off the scientist. Maybe it gets sent back with a freezing trap, but in that case you still got 2 cards (more options for controlling the board on future turns), didn’t lose the bigger 6-2 berserker to explosive trap, lose a bigger buff with freezing, and potentially limits the damage to your own face with misdirection. This delays his free trap for one turn, and gives you more flexibility while still not being vulnerable to any of his big threats.
How is the acolyte killing the scientist? The hunter isn’t going to run his scientist into it and the acolyte is only a 1/3.
Yeah sorry I guess that wasn’t clear. He either attacks the Acolyte with the scientist and leaves it at 1 health, or you bang away at it over the next 2 turns, either way getting +2 at least on the berserker on turn 4 (at which point he kills his scientist into your berserker, or acolyte as it’s at 2-1 after you hit it once.) In any case, 2 cards off the acolyte was the main point I think haha.
taskmaster then armorsmith into taunt, then armor up,pass turn
trading the taskmaster and armorsmith into Misha is a must, its not great value-wise, but we cant afford to gamble on anything else. Besides that we have 3 plays:
1) armoring up, which i consider a poor play, its too passive, and its not like we have a superior play on turn 4.
2) droping Acolyte, which is a bit passive, but considering the board it should probably net 2 cards and its not like we are in a huge hurry, so drawing cards to develope our hand is a strong strategy at this point in the game.
3) droping Frothing Berserker, which is puting a 6/4 body in play. The hunter probably has many ways to deal with it, even the mad scientist in itself can deal with it with the summoned trap (since hunters mostly run Frozen and Explosive and nothing else atm), but in any case we get a decent value out of it
Im veering towards Frothing Berserker right now, because it seems unlikely that we could get a better value from it in the near future with the cards we have in hand, whereas the acolyte can be just as impactful in the future.
Play the Acolyte, and trade into Misha with Taskmaster then Armor smith to gain 2 armor as well.
Acolyte because he doesn’t get scientist and scientist can’t kill him. Hunter’s generally only run one silence with owl and most likely won’t use it on the acolyte, and they can’t buff scientist with hound master either to kill the acolyte, and you most likely will get 2 draws out of it while also keeping your own board clear vs unleash. The only way the most common hunter decks can kill the acolyte and only give one card draw or no card draw on turn 4 is:
Hunters mark into scientist: Still efficient as it leaves scientist on the board, however you generally don’t want to waste a hunter’s mark on an acolyte vs control warrior.
Deadly Shot: Again, somewhat wasted vs acolyte.
2nd Animal companion and hope for Misha or Huffer: Probably the best option.
you are forgeting about Kill Command (which still somewhat good for us) and more importantly, Eaglehorn Bow
You’re right, I don’t play hunter at all (I just hate the class, I never play hunter or warlock). Kill command is fine though still as it makes your loatheb stronger later. Berserker is still bad though, as scienstist + bow would completely nullify it while giving him an extra durability on the bow.
I actually think after considering those 2 the correct play would be kill misha after playing berserker.
At best it resets the board vs a hand of yours which is more towards late game anyway, and at worst he starts developing a board brawl is going to be good on the turn after.