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Jesus Take The Wheel - Hitting Legend with Burgle Rogue
Hey all! I’m Kay and I’ve been a burgle rogue aficionado since Witchwood. Being home for the holidays this month has finally given me the time to push to legend for the first time ever with this Wild homebrew Cutlass deck. I think this deck has the chops to hit high legend if a better player with more time was able to pilot it. I had a lot of fun playing this list and got to learn it fairly well. I would love to see more Burgle Rogues in Hearthstone, and am writing this guide to hopefully inspire some of you to give it a whirl. While I play on mobile without a deck tracker, here is my proof of Legend. The Deck: Margaret Thatcher Class: Rogue Format: Wild # 2x (1) Deadly Poison # 2x (1) Dragon's Hoard # 1x (1) Patches the Pirate # 2x (1) Secret Passage # 2x (1) Swashburglar # 2x (1) Wand Thief # 2x (2) Cavern Shinyfinder # 2x (2) Clever Disguise # 2x (2) Sap # 1x (2) Swindle # 2x (2) Underbelly Fence # 1x (3) Beneath the Grounds # 2x (4) Spectral Cutlass # 2x (4) Tinker's Sharpsword Oil # 2x (4) Vendetta # 2x (5) Cutting Class # 1x (6) Vanish AAEBAYO6AgTEAZsUkbwC590DDcsDzQOvEJK2AuXRAurzAvuaA/6aA62oA7euA6rLA6TRA/fUAwA= Why is a burgle rogue deck called Margret Thatcher? My first Burgle Rogue deck ever was named “I will steal your shit.” Then I listened to Robin WIlliams last standup album, and it included this bit about the Falklands War. “I will sink your shit” sounded similar to “I will steal your shit” and thus Margret Thatcher has been the name of all of my burgle rogue decks since. It makes sense in my head, I promise. Why Cutlass Rogue? I love playing Burgle Rogue and finally decided to put my time towards making a truly viable list and hitting legend. Playing Burgle Rogue gives you three paths. You can play it with the quest, which simply delays your demise against aggro decks (Rogue lacks both taunts and ways to heal) and doesn’t put combo or control decks on any kind of timer. If there were a hardcore midrange meta for some reason, the quest might be worth a look. But until then it’s on the back burner. Another tack you can take is a deck I affectionately refer to as Cheese Rogue. Put your normal burgles, Academic Espionage, Tess Graymane, both Yoggs, and anything that helps you not die, and you have a deck that will either pull out glorious wins out of nothing or draw three Totemic Mights in a row and sputter. The other problem is that when you run an Tesspionage based list, you’re totally punting aggro matchups. While a phenomenally fun deck, Tesspionage Rogue suffers from the simple problem of being very bad (it’s hovering around a 30% winrate on HSReplay) which makes it a poor choice to actually win games with. Cutlass Rogue instead plays more like Kingsbane Rogue on mushrooms. You’re still trying to build an enormous weapon with lifesteal that lets you outheal aggro and chip decks as well as put slow decks on a clock with heavy damage every turn, but instead of doing it with normal cards, we do it by thieving random things from other classes. How We Win: By getting a Spectral Cutlass with 6+ Attack and using burgled cards to disrupt our opponent’s gameplan and pump up our weapon’s durability. Occasionally, we also pull off wins with hilariously bullshit burgle synergies. Our ideal line of early play is something along the lines of: T1: Swashburglar (and Patches) T2: Cavern Shinyfinder or Underbelly Fence T3: Shinyfinder or Fence with a 1 mana burgle card, or just coin Cutlass T4: Cutlass or a barrage of burgling T5: Deadly Poison and Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil T6+: Imagination and RNG! Strengths and Weaknesses of This List: This deck outputs ridiculous amounts of healing. Once your weapon is at ten plus attack, you will eventually escape the range of any deck trying to burn you down. The weapon also gives us decent single-target board control, essentially allowing us to take out any must-kill minion while still gaining health. Fence and Vendetta give us efficient small removal. Value is easy to find despite the low curve of the deck, with burgles adding lots of stuff to your hand and Secret Passage and Cutting Class allowing you to find more cards whenever you’d like. Sap is a phenomenal card against the meta right now and will singlehandedly win you games. This deck heavily struggles to clear wide boards. Occasionally your burgles will help you out a bit here, but the Odd Paladins and Even Shamans of the world will simply build another one and another one and another one until you can’t clear it. Weapon hate cards also give us fits, including Zephyrs the Great who is the single biggest reason that you’ll rage at your screen. It’s also a fairly draw-dependant deck. You need your weapon, your buffs, and your burgles. If you don’t find one of these, you will lose the game. I found myself doing okay on this front (thank God for Secret Passage) but sometimes both Shinyfinders and both Cutlasses will be the bottom four cards of your deck and you will lose. Card Choices: Weapon Package: (2x) Deadly Poison (2x) Cavern Shinyfinder (2x) Spectral Cutlass (2x) Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil (2x) Cutting Class The two Shinyfinders (and to a lesser extent Secret Passage) help us hit our win condition of Cutlass as soon as possible. Once we have a cutlass equipped, Deadly Poison and Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil give the weapon enough attack to kill any threat, put our opponent on a clock, and restore massive amounts of health at the same time. Because we’re aiming to equip a big weapon every game, Cutting Class is nearly always a 0 mana draw 2 in the mid to late game which is obviously phenomenal. Burgle Package: (2x) Dragon’s Hoard (1x) Patches the Pirate (2x) Swashburglar (2x) Wand Thief (2x) Clever Disguise (2x) Underbelly Fence (2x) Vendetta Swashburglar is the only one mana burgle card with a body in the game. It thus gives us a free card that activates our synergies while also contesting the board on turn one. The inclusion of Patches thins the deck and allows us to play on even footing early with even board-centric aggro decks. An important note is if you’re against another rogue (I saw very few during my climb) Swashburglar will take a random rogue card, which won’t activate your Underbelly Fence or Vendetta, nor will it add durability to your cutlass. I originally included only one Wand Thief but it turns out Mage has some very good tools for our purposes. The wide variety of AOE effects, card draw, and freezes were nice, but the strongest part of Wand Thief is that Mage has so much shit that costs 0, 1, or 2 mana. While burgling Flamestrike is fun and can be the correct choice in some matchups, most of the time I’ll find that I’d much rather have a Freezing Potion that I can squeeze on top of other cards than a big spell that will take up my whole turn. While Mage does have some dud spells (Glacial Mysteries anyone?), the discover aspect means that you can almost always find something that will serve your purposes. This deck generally wants spells over minions because spells tend to have initiative and we rarely need to build a board to win the game. All of these aspects raised Wand Thief from a fringe inclusion to one of the strongest cards in the deck. Beware of picking Brain Freeze or Potion of Illusion as dual-class cards will NOT activate your burgle synergies or add durability to your Cutlass. Dragon’s Hoard was another card that I didn’t originally include two of. In fact, I didn’t have it at all in the deck’s first iteration. On the surface, it doesn’t make much sense. Hoard doesn’t help fight for board and gives us a minion not a spell. And not only a minion which might not have initiative, but legendary minions tend to be more expensive than average. So what was I thinking? Turns out legendary minions are powerful enough to justify the card. From Inara Stormcrash to Archmage Antonidas to Lucentbark, Dragon’s Hoard can simply win you the game off of one highroll. Just like with Wand Thief, there are plenty of terrible legendaries, but the discover aspect tends to offer at least one decent choice. Also, the card is damn fun and slamming down a King Krush for lethal as a rogue will never get old. Clever Disguise is simply a volume burgle. You need enough cards from other classes to pump your Cutlass up with enough durability to kill your opponent, and Disguise gets you two of them for two mana. I don’t love this card but it’s sheer efficiency makes it impossible to drop. Along with Cutlass, we use shockingly efficient removal tools Vendetta and Underbelly Fence as our burgle payoffs. Against board-centric decks like aggro druid, and decks with must-remove threats like Big Priest, these cards make a load of difference. Vendetta being zero mana nearly always gives it more flexibility as a combo activator for Wand Thief and Tinker’s. Fence is also a phenomenal play with Tinker’s - the six attack Rush minion will clear midgame threats while allowing your buffed weapon to swing face. Other Stuff: (2x) Secret Passage (2x) Sap (1x) Swindle (1x) Beneath The Grounds (1x) Vanish Secret Passage is broken and should be in every rogue deck ever. In a draw-centric deck like this, it’s even better. Can't find Cutlass? Secret Passage got you. Don’t have weapon buffs? Secret Passage got you. Don’t have enough burgles? Secret Passage got you. Need Vanish immediately? Secret Passage has motherfucking got you. Sap is our carry against Big Priest and any other deck that cheats out massive threats. Not killing the Blood of Ghuun, Walking Fountain, or Voidlord means that it can’t be rezzed and your opponent has to play it when they reach the appropriate turn. By which point, we hope that they’re dead. Sap also makes us one of the few classes that can deal with an early Edwin. Swindle is a true 30th card. When I cut Fan of Knives (More on that below) I needed one more card to fill the deck, and Swindle felt like a generic good rogue card that would make my draws marginally more consistent. Beneath The Grounds is my middle finger to highlander decks, especially Zephyrs the Great who gets his own section later. If you’re against a Reno Warlock or Machine Gun Priest, having this card will likely win you the game. If you aren’t, it’s probably a dead card unless you’re floating three mana for some reason. It says something about the Wild meta that I felt like this was a very worthy tradeoff and seriously considering putting two in. Vanish is a last hail mary against a deck that does manage to build a board against you. It pulls its weight especially against Big Priest, Evolve Shaman, and any kind of Deathrattle deck that tries to build an impenetrable board. But it also costs six mana, which makes it a very expensive and very dead card a lot of the time. I’ve had one copy since the beginning and it feels like the perfect number. A thing to note is that Vanish can bounce your own cards too - make sure to play your Swashburglars and Wand Thieves before Vanishing if you have hand space and mana to do so. Another point to remember is that if your opponent has more minions than they have hand space, Vanish will return the cards to your opponent’s hand in the order they were played. When your opponent hits ten cards, any remaining minions will be destroyed and their deathrattles WILL be activated. This is especially important for Scrapyard Colossus and Voidlord, who deathrattle into more taunts which block your weapon swing into the face of your opponent. Either destroy the original bodies so Vanish kills the deathrattle spawns or kill enough minions played before that the deathrattle taunts are safely returned to your opponent’s hand. Didn’t Make The Cut: I included two copies of Fan of Knives once I realized how terribly I was doing against Aggro Druid and Odd Paladin. For a while, they felt decent. A boardwide ping is nice, and Fan also cycles itself so it doesn’t even take up a valuable card slot. But then I realized two things about these decks. Odd Paladin has infinite minion generation potential with their hero power. Killing a board of 1/1’s might delay their buffs a turn, but doesn’t run them out of board refills because they can generate dudes without using cards. And aggro druid would either have a board buffed out of Fan range by turn three (and I would be dead) or they would run out of steam and awkwardly flop. In neither case was Fan drastically changing the game, even if it felt nice to kill a board of dudes. So out the door they went. Replaced with BTG because I was facing Reno Priest every game and Swindle because it just seemed good. It really hurt to cut Tess Graymane. She’s one of the most fun cards ever printed and slamming down waves of burgled shit never gets old. But as I transitioned to a spell-centric burgle deck, her random nature became more and more annoying. When Tess is slamming 8/8’s and 12/12’s, she’s phenomenal. When she Ice Lances your face, Fireballs herself, and gives your opponent’s minion a Blessing of Authority, she’s much less useful. Her cost of 8 mana simply made her far too expensive for the minimal number of times she was remotely useful. One thing I was consistently wanting in this deck was more weapon buffs. I experimented with Goblin Auto-Barber and Vulpera Toxinblade but neither ended up making the cut. Auto-Barber was too minimal a buff to feel particularly useful, and Toxinblade’s temporary status made her not worth the slot. This deck doesn’t exactly run minion threats, so Toxinblade was always eating my opponent’s removal and never really surviving more than a turn, which she needed to in order to be a strong inclusion. Of the other Burgle options, Hallucination and Blink Fox are the other ones that are even vaguely worth running. Hallucination would be a reasonable choice to experiment more with (potentially two over the Dragon’s Hoards) but I found them underwhelming due to the sheer number of dud or synergy-dependant cards in many classes. Oftentimes, I would have only one decent pick off a Hallucination with an expensive spell and an understated minion taking up the other two discover options. Blink Fox was too expensive for a Swashburglar effect and a 3/3 on turn 3 doesn’t cut it as a body in Wild. Both also suffer from the Swashburglar problem of being utterly cucked against Rogues. I also briefly considered replacing Beneath the Grounds with Bad Luck Albatross in order to mess Big Priest up. However, I wasn’t having a huge Big Priest problem, and the only way to kill Albatross in the deck is with Vendetta, which is often better used to kill the minions the priest is cheating. The Zeph Rules Zephyrs The Great is a phenomenally powerful card and a staple in two of the best decks in Wild - Reno Priest and Renolock. It also utterly destroys this deck by generating an Acidic Swamp Ooze on command to send your weapon to an ignominious and oozy demise. While there’s no denying that Zeph really sucks for this deck, there’s a couple of things we can try. Tactic 1: The Great Zeph Bait. If you’re able to draw into both cutlasses fairly early (not an uncommon occurrence), you can go for this strategy. Play a cutlass, drop a Tinker’s or a Deadly Poison, and potentially play a Burgled card or two. If I’m trying to force Zeph specifically, I will usually follow this by skipping my next swing. Essentially, you’re trying to make your weapon look as threatening as possible without committing many resources to it. When your opponent plays Zeph and subsequently Ooze, you can play your second Cutlass and fearlessly toss all of your buffs on it. If you go for the Great Zeph Bait, make sure to kill both minions before developing your second weapon, as a fair number of Reno decks run either bounce or copy effects. If they’re simply able to add another ooze to their hand and save it for your second weapon, you will be sad. Tactic 2: Make Zeph Whiff. Zephyrs is a phenomenal card, but his inability to understand card text can be his downfall. While he understands that Spectral Cutlass is a big weapon, he doesn’t realize that it can gain infinite durability. He doesn’t generally seem to value Lifesteal as highly as he should either. He also can’t look at decks, so he doesn’t realize that our only win condition is to buff the weapon. My point is that while Zeph is strong, he doesn’t value killing Spectral Cutlass nearly as highly as he should (a priority above all else except avoiding direct lethal). But because Zeph is still a discover and offers three cards, it isn’t easy to get him to not offer weapon hate at all. Essentially, you have get Zeph to value three other things more highly than destroying your weapon. If you can do this, he will not offer Ooze, even when a cutlass is active on your side. Many opponents don’t recognize these whiff factors, and won’t take measures to maximize their likelihood of hitting an Ooze (like playing Zeph with exactly two mana remaining). There are a few things you can do to maximize your chances of Zeph whiffing. These tips are roughly in order of effectiveness.
Keep your weapon as small as possible, both in Attack and Durability. Decreases the likelihood that Zeph will value weapon removal.
Build a board of minions. Increases the likelihood that Zeph will value AoE spells.
Play a Secret or two. Increases the likelihood that Zeph will offer Flare.
Play one large/must-kill minion. Increases the likelihood that Zeph will value removal.
Lower your opponent’s health. Increases the likelihood that Zeph will value healing.
Keep your opponent low on cards. Increases the likelihood that Zeph will offer draw. Careful about doing this if your weapon durability is more than one at 7+ mana as Zeph is more likely to offer Harrison Jones.
Niche cases. Keep an eye out for any conditions in the game that synergize perfectly with a basic/classic card that Zeph can offer. For example, if your opponent has a 1/10 minion, keep it alive as Zeph is more likely to offer Inner Fire. If they have three murlocs, Zeph is more likely to offer Coldlight Seer.
If you can create a game state where Zeph simply doesn’t offer ooze, you will be treated to a beautiful sight. Sex is great and all but a baffled opponent slowly mousing over each discover option before emoting and conceding is arguably the best feeling in the world. Tactic 3: Fuck it. Go balls to the wall and play like they don’t have Zeph. Throw all of your buffs on the weapon and come to terms with the fact that if they have him, you will lose. I will sometimes opt for this strategy if any of the following conditions are met.
At least two Beneath the Grounds Ambushes are still in the deck.
I have tried to bait Zeph and my opponent didn’t play him.
My opponent has played Lorekeeper Polkelt.
My opponent has very few cards or is topdecking.
If I don’t commit to the weapon now, I will definitely lose.
Zephyrs The Great is going to lose you a fair amount of games. But if you can pull off any of these strategies, you might sneak by him with some wins. Matchups: Odd Demon Hunter: This deck is weird. The best builds seem to be made up of a glut of the best-statted one-cost minions, Stiltsteppers, Acrobatics, Leeroy, and Baku. Our early game generally lines up well against these minions, and Odd DH generally lacks the burst to power through our healing once Cutlass gets to a threatening size. However, if we don’t draw into our early answers or fail to burgle fairly well, Odd DH is a phenomenally consistent deck and will always run us over if they get any room to do so. Even matchup. Soul DH: This deck seemed to be mostly piloted by standard players trying to climb in Wild. The burst of a Soul DH that hits all of its pieces can be impressive. But these combos often come online late enough that our cutlass is healing us for 8+ health every turn. Find something to deal with a full Soulciologist board, look to burgle taunts and freezes to stop the huge attacks from going face, and you’re cruising. Favored matchup. Aggro Druid: By cutting Fan of Knives I was essentially conceding the matchup if the Druid drew well. This has held true - if Aggro Druid has an explosive opener, you will lose the game. If they don’t, the deck is fairly easy to run out of resources. Voracious Readers can refill once or twice, but if I’m not dead by turn four I can frequently use removals efficiently and prevent them from ever building a threatening board. A card that deserves special mention is Bloodsail Corsair. If you’re careless against Aggro Druid and leave your weapon at one durability, a well-timed Corsair can snipe it and lose you the game on the spot. Unfavored matchup. Combo/Maly Druid: They can’t really do anything about us loading our weapon up and killing them. I only faced a couple of druids that weren’t aggressive and none of them put up much of a fight. Favored matchup, not much to say here. Hunter: I think I faced fewer than five hunters my entire climb, and they were all hyper aggro or janky deathrattle decks. We can generally prevent aggro Hunter from building a board, and their hero powers, Kill Commands, and such generally aren’t enough burst to beat through our healing. Deathrattle Hunter with plenty of taunts could potentially be a problem but it’s rezzes are much slower than Big Priest and it gets arguably even more destroyed by a well-timed Sap or Vanish. It’s a good idea to play around Zephyrs in this matchup until you know you’re not facing a Reno Hunter. I honestly didn’t find enough hunters to even say what might be favorable or not. Poor Rexxar. Quest Mage: Quest Mage is an annoying matchup for one reason and one reason only. They can generate a lot of freezes, which keep us from swinging our weapon for a turn. The amount of Freezing Potions, Ice Lances, and Frostbolts that seem to come out of Evocation, Magic Trick, and Mana Cyclone makes me want to tear my hair out. Our healing is rarely relevant against the OTK potential this deck brings. Otherwise, save Vendetta or another removal for your opponent’s Flamewankers and bring them down to low health as quickly as possible. Quick note on this matchup - Hitting your opponent in the face for lethal damage while they have Ice Block active will NOT heal you for any health. This interaction is consistent with other Lifesteal effects but still annoying and you will sometimes have to choose between setting off Ice Block and healing for 12. Even matchup. Secret Mage: I think before this expansion, Secret Mage would’ve been a much worse matchup for us. The switch to Rigged Faire Game as a main draw engine has a serious downside against a deck that is able to hit your face with an infinite weapon every turn. I won a significant amount of games by chipping away at my opponent every turn and denying them the all-important three cards. Play around Counterspell and Explosive Runes whenever possible as most decks run two copies and cheat them early. If we can get our weapon big enough, or run them out of face damage, we can safely heal out of the deck’s damage range. However, a Secret Mage firing on all cylinders is one of the best decks in the game and will win with a combination of well-statted minions, free secrets, and burn. Slightly unfavorable matchup. Odd Paladin: We struggle the most against decks that can build wide boards without committing many resources. Odd Pally is the unquestioned king of this strategy and thus tailor-made to bork us. I was able to win against this deck a couple of times when they filled up their board with 1/1’s and had no way to buff them, which was funny but not a particularly consistent win-con. Play around Oh My Yogg and Never Surrender, try to burgle AoEs, and accept that this is probably a 20-80 matchup or worse for us. Very heavily unfavored, and the bogeyman of climbing ladder with this deck. Not Odd Paladin: I ran into a couple of Even Paladins here and there which seemed like Odd Pally but slightly worse, a few Pure Paladins which got defeated by timely saps, and a single Mech Paladin who blew me out on turn four. They were so drowned out by the sea of Odd Pally however that I can’t write about them in extreme detail. Reno Priest: Beneath The Grounds carries another matchup. If they are able to get Raza and Anduin online, your main priority becomes keeping Anduin’s health below half to ward off Spawn of Shadows burst turns. As long as you can do that, we can mostly heal through their turns of chip damage with the hero power and eventually beat them down. Developing any minions we can will help with this plan because the low-health Anduin will be forced to waste hero powers clearing the minions, buying us more time. Favored matchup. Big Priest: Sometimes when you’re playing against Big Priest, they cheat out a Vargoth and a Blood of Ghuun on turn 4 and you just lose. Sometimes, they do nothing for nine turns and you win. It’s the matches in between these extremes that we focus on. Keep your Saps and plan your Vanish turn wisely. Most Big Priests nowadays don’t run Obsidian Statue, but place the highest priority on sapping it if they do. The combination of lifesteal and taunt means that we essentially lose the game if it ends up in the rez pool. Even or slightly favored matchup. Rogues: I faced a hodgepodge of Rogue decks, none of which really felt like a complete list. Combo-style rogues lack taunts and healing and get subsequently demolished by our weapon before they can do anything interesting. Kingsbane Rogue does what we do, but slower and without Lifesteal on every turn. VS says Odd Rogue is a decent deck, but I only saw one on my climb which wasn’t able to do enough damage to burst through the Cutlass healing. Mill Rogue is cute but terrible. I also ran into another Burgle Rogue but he was playing a version with Blink Foxes and Hallucinations which performs very poorly against other rogues. Favored matchup against the entire class I suppose? Even Shaman: I barely faced any of these on my climb, but I think I lost every time I did. We can’t really clean up their wide and efficient boards, and Sea Giant and Thing From Below aren’t bothered by Sap. Unfavored matchup. Big Shaman: Sap is phenomenal in this matchup. Like any Big deck, there will be some games where you don’t draw what you need and get blown out on turn four. But much more often, you’ll find games where the deck puts out a big threat, it gets sapped, and they sputter for a couple turns while you make a giant weapon and start whacking them. Try to avoid playing minions in the mid-late game while pushing for lethal because Walking Fountain or Tidal Wave will allow them to find critical heals. Favored matchup. Aggro Warlock (Pain/Zoo/Discolock): We like this matchup because if your opponents lower their health total quickly enough, we can often start to threaten lethal with our weapon as soon as turn six. Our cheap and flexible removal generally lets us get priority targets like Darkglare, Malchezar’s Imp and Tiny Knight of Evil off the field before they kill us. Discolock doesn’t have the consistent board floods of the decks that really fuck us and Fence and Vendetta line up well against their threats. But at the end of the day, they are an aggro deck and will win if we whiff our draws at all. I faced few Pain and Zoolocks, but Discolock was one of my favorite matchups to play with this list and I felt like it was at worst even and potentially even slightly us-favored. Cubelock: A problem matchup. We simply aren’t able to kill waves of big demons. Vanish and Sap let us delay the threats but once we run out of stalling power Voidlord very effectively prevents us from swinging our weapon to face. Fortunately, Cubelock has an abysmal matchup against Priest and has thus fallen a bit out of the meta. I only saw a few on my climb, but if they start cheating Voidlords before we have them to sub-15 health, we are in huge trouble. Slightly unfavored matchup. Renolock: We stan Beneath The Grounds. Renolocks will generally play defensively and take damage fairly freely in the early game. Generally don’t play BTG on turn three because renolocks draw so much that they’re fairly likely to hit at least two ambushes if you give them enough time. If I have it in hand, I’ll hold it until I start buffing my weapon or until they’re sub fifteen health and might be feeling pressured enough to use Reno. If you don’t find BTG, follow the Zeph Rules and pray to God that you draw it quickly. Tickatus is rarely particularly relevant because if they find the time to corrupt and play it multiple times the game was lost a long time ago. Renolock will often have big taunt Demons also, but they come in more manageable waves than Cubelock. With BTG, this is a favored matchup. Odd/Control Warrior: This matchup is pretty simple. Make your weapon as big as possible as quickly as possible in order to chip through their armor. If they run weapon hate and are able to draw it, you will lose. If they don’t, you will eventually win - they don’t have much to stop you smacking them for 10+ damage every turn. I only ran into three of these decks on my climb and got Stickyfingered twice, so my gut says that it’s unfavorable. Pirate Warrior: Oh how the mighty have fallen. Pirate Warrior simply feels weaker than other aggro decks and its lack of boardwide buffs makes its minions much less threatening. Their highrolls are as scary as ever, but kill Ship’s Cannon and Skybarge on sight and be wary of burst coming in the form of Leeroy or Kragg, and the healing from your built-up weapon will generally outpace their damage. Their biggest strength (efficient trading with minion boards) isn’t particularly relevant against us. Slightly favored - one of our best aggro matchups. Beware of Bloodsail Corsair! My Favorite Wins: Playing a deck that runs on adding random cards to your hand will occasionally lead to hilarious victories with cards your opponent never expected to need to play around. There were too many to write about, but here were some highlights.
I played a Hunter and hit a terrible Dragon’s Hoard on turn one where my best option was a Knuckles. I reluctantly picked it and it sat in my hand until later in the game, where I pulled Houndmasters off both of my Swashburglars. Three houndmaster buffs (one got returned to my hand via Freezing Trap) and a Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil later, I beat my opponent into submission with an unkillable 12/13 Knuckles. I find it possible that it’s the only time Knuckles has actually won someone a game.
I found a Cloning Device off of a Clever Disguise and yoinked my Shaman opponent’s Shudderwock, followed by two Dragon’s Hoards that gave me Dinotamer Brann and a second Shudderwock. I waited until my deck was low enough that no duplicates remained, and played Brann, Shudderwock, second Shudderwock, and thwacked him with four large stompy dinos over three turns.
I burgled a Totem Goliath off Swashburglar, Totemic Might off Clever Disguise, and a Grand Totem Eys’or from Dragon’s Hoard. My poor Shaman opponent was beaten to death by a rogue’s board of basic totems.
While playing a Big Priest I got a Lucentbark off Dragon’s Hoard and a Seance and Power Word: Replicate off Clever Disguise. Turns out three 4/8 taunts that resurrect every turn will win you the game, even against Big Priest with a full rez pool.
A Pirate Warrior wrested board from me, beat me to two health with two cards in hand and one durability on my weapon, and began emoting aggressively. Fortunately, one of those two cards was an Inara Stormcrash which allowed me to deal 26 damage (and kill him) on turn 8.
This deck is by far the most fun I’ve ever had playing Hearthstone, and this list is viable at Legend ranks. I encourage everyone to give it a try. Thanks for making it to the end and please comment with questions! Happy thieving!
RAAAAAAAAR! - Legend With Rattlegore Warrior (Featuring Silas Darkmoon)
Introduction
Since the dawn of time, Control Warrior has risen against the face decks. After encountering a slew of Demon Hunters and Totem Shamans, I decided to experiment with a pure survival deck, and predictably, it dominated against aggro but fell off hard against anything else. There was enough space open in the deck to shore up some of this weakness, though, and the end result is Rattlegore Warrior, so called because Rattlegore and his clones are the only win condition in the deck. If your opponent has a heavy deck that also contains a Rattlegore counter, you'll probably lose, but at the moment, this doesn't describe too much of the meta I saw. The result is a deck that still blows aggressive strategies out of the water, but has the juice to stand up against a lot of other archetypes with a bit of luck. It's obviously way too early to make any definitive statements about the deck, and it's exploiting a pocket in the meta where not too many people are teching Silence effects, which could obviously change. With that said, it treated me very well for my run. I played ~30 games from Diamond 5 to Legend and kept going to 41 total, with a final winrate of 68%. Proof of Legend: https://imgur.com/a/2U3DkAw Proof of winrate: https://imgur.com/a/iTDL4y4
Risky SkippeArmorsmith/AncharrCorsair Cache/Sword Eater The first 4 are your typical armour gain shell that's been in wide rotation ever since Warriors had the option, so of course they were going to be included in a survival deck. Sword Eater interferes with this to a degree, and there's an argument for not including him since Risky Skipper is responsible for a lot of the deck's most impactful turns...but the card is just so good. It's a fantastic board control and stall tool earlier on, while also being able to assist your Rattlegore pressure if drawn later. I've cut down to one Corsair Cache, as between Anchaaar, Bulwark of Azzinoth, and 2 Sword Eaters, that's already 4 weapons in similar mana slots. I didn't want to run more weapons, and the second Corsair Cache was often a dead card with only 2 targets in the deck. Minefield What an incredible tool Control Warrior was given this expansion. Minefield completely denies basically any early board your opponent tries to build, whether that's Phase Stalker, Lab Partner, an attempted Totem setup, any Demon Hunter card...it's an incredibly efficient removal tool that also has some additional utility, such as combos with Lord Barov, or bombing your own Armorsmiths in a pinch. Bloodsworn Mercenary There are a lot of good targets in this deck, the main ones being Rattlegore (against heavy decks with no reliable counter), Kargath Bladefist (heavy decks that can counter Rattlegore), and Armorsmith (Risky Skipper -> Armorsmith -> Mercenary is often a game-ending play against aggro). It also pairs well with a lot of Silas Darkmoon thefts, and sometimes that extra Taunt (Sword Eater) or pressure (Deathwing) is just what you need. Bulwark of Azzinoth A good card against many forms of aggressive strategy, but an absolute force of nature against Demon Hunter in particular. Pen Flinger is the obvious counter and I did see it in a few of them floating around, but a 3 mana heal 4 is still acceptable in that scenario, and in many instances I easily denied 20+ damage over the 4 turns it took them to ping the Bulwark down with their Hero Power, since this deck can very reliably prevent them from sticking a board. Silas Darkmoon There's a lot of mana cheat and big minions running around right now, many of which have Taunt or Rush. Silas acts as a Mind Control lite here, and even if you don't have a smaller minion than Silas to give away, you usually have enough health to not worry about the 4/4 you donated to your opponent. In all honesty, Silas probably wouldn't stick around in a hyper-optimized build, but I threw him in on a whim and he felt good enough to keep, and blindsiding opponents with a big Silas play never gets old. I also ended a game on the spot by stealing an opposing Rattlegore, so there's definitely potential depending on what you're facing. A couple important interactions to note:
If you donate Risky Skipper, its effect doesn't trigger.
Don't play Silas on an empty board, he still gets rotated to your opponent. I tried this in the name of science during a game I was winning handily, so now you don't have to.
Deathwing, Mad Aspect There's anti-synergy between Deathwing and Rattlegore, so if I had any reasonable opportunity to play him in a slower matchup, I usually did. You could certainly make a case to cut it because of this, but it's still an extremely powerful standalone card that saved me many times.
Other Cards to Consider
Stage Dive The only Rush minion in the deck is Kargath Bladefist, meaning that Stage Dive can draw Kargath Prime very reliably. I didn't know how many losing games would be won on the back of this though, the deck does very well against aggro already and it's a solid but not definitive play against slower opponents. Battle Rage You're running Risky Skipper combos and there were some games where I'd have liked a bit more draw. With that said, holding these combo pieces can already clog your hand a bit sometimes, and the deck is kind of light on other activators, both in terms of minions and damage effects. Costumed EntertaineBanana VendoKing Mukla It occurred to me that a lot of this deck's harder matchups are often holding onto 9 card hands, so an attempt to mill them and burn key cards might be doable, but probably not your highest priority. Bladestorm An obvious choice especially against Druid's clowns, but I was just finding too many logjams against larger boards and didn't feel the need for more removal against aggro decks. Dropping Silas for a copy is probably one of the more straightforward optimization attempts you could make, if a pretty boring one. EVIL Quartermaster During the transition to the final clone-focused build of the deck, at one point I was running a single Bloodsworn Mercenary and a single Quartermaster, and the card felt pretty good, just not nearly as good as the 30 in the deck for the most part. Lorekeeper Polkelt His main appeal is helping you find your Rattlegore earlier, so this would be a meta call and one that probably should go into the deck if you're seeing a lot of Control Warlock in particular. This run was done fairly early in the meta so I tended to opt for all-rounders rather than a ton of tech cards, and it does clunk your draws up pretty badly against Demon Hunter, which was by far my most common opponent. Faceless Manipulator Redundancy for Bloodsworn Mercenary in Control matchups, obviously aimed at Rattlegore but also viable with a decent amount of big minions from your opponent. Again, meta call, I think you'd want to run it and Lorekeeper in the same deck. Plague of Wrath Passable removal against aggro while also providing a potential out against Druids or out of control Totem Shamans, and a pretty reasonable choice, albeit hampered by the lack of Bladestorm. Claw Machine Removal and card draw, and a lot of the deck's key cards are minions. There are probably bigger priorities, but I'm curious about this one, it seems pretty solid. Troublemaker I think Troublemaker probably isn't impactful enough in a lot of matchups, but it is a reasonable compromise between a late game bomb that still offers some amount of utility. C'Thun, the Shattered/Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate If you feel that the deck needs another bomb, these would be some options, although they kind of oppose the principle of "anti-aggro deck that can still win thanks to Rattlegore." C'Thun makes it actively harder to draw into Rattlegore, and while I certainly did play games that went long enough to make use of it, there weren't that many, and this deck can't draw aggressively. Against slower decks that can reliably counter Rattlegore? Sure, I'd love to have C'Thun, but realistically, those were a pretty small percentage of games. Yogg-Saron is a much less deck-defining option, although if you're going to take that approach, you'd probably want to add a few more spells as well (probably Bladestorm).
Encounter Stats
Demon Hunter Encounter Rate 20%, Won 88% of Games Druid Encounter Rate 12%, Won 80% of Games Hunter Encounter Rate 5%, Won 50% of Games Mage Encounter Rate 17%, Won 57% of Games Paladin Encounter Rate 2%, Won Game Priest Encounter Rate 2%, Lost Game Rogue Encounter Rate 10%, Won 75% of Games Shaman Encounter Rate 10%, Won 75% of Games Warlock Encounter Rate 15%, Won 50% of Games Warrior Encounter Rate 7%, Won 67% of Games
Strategy
As stated, this is a survival deck first and foremost, with the ability to build an oppressive board in the late game in appropriate matchups. Demon Hunter I encountered Soul Fragment, Face, and Outcast variants of Demon Hunter, all of which felt extremely favoured. You remove their minions easily, and can reliably heal out of their damage. Bulwark of Azzinoth is the standout card in the deck since so much of their burn relies on attacks from the hero, and I usually tried to play it out as soon as I had a clear board, or after they'd equipped a weapon with a single minion in play. Bloodsworn Mercenary is saved for Armorsmith, and it's usually best to resist the temptation to play Armorsmith on curve, but against specifically Umberwing it can be a passable play if you don't have a great hand. Mulligan for Athletic Studies, Armorsmith, Risky Skipper (with Armorsmith), Bloodsworn Mercenary (with the other 2), Sword and Board, Corsair Cache, Minefield, Anchaaar, Bulwark of Azzinoth. Druid I faced Clown Druid and Spell Druid, with Spell Druid feeling very reasonable and Clown Druid feeling a bit more manageable than expected, albeit largely being up to holding the right answers (I suspect with a larger sample size this would be a bad matchup). This is 100% a Rattlegore duplication matchup, and if you can get this up and running before they completely overwhelm you with more than a wave or two of clowns, you've got a fighting chance. Spell Druid is the same thing, win with Rattlegore, although you're on a much more manageable clock. Silas Darkmoon is a lifesaver after a Survival of the Fittest -> Strongman play, as it can immediately pressure them or force out a clown wave to be Brawled down. Mulligan for Corsair Cache, Anchaaar, Lord Barov, Brawl, Rattlegore Hunter A sample size of 2 isn't much to go off, but I encountered one Face Hunter and one Deathrattle Hunter, the results of which were largely as expected. The Face Hunter was convincingly crushed, while the Deathrattle Hunter was able to fire off too many missiles for survival thanks to Darkmoon Tonk, Jewel of N'Zoth, and Vectus. It's worth noting that they had a pretty ideal draw while mine was fairly poor, but I still intuitively think it's probably not a great matchup, while I'd bet good money that Face Hunter is. I didn't play any Highlander Hunter or the new Secret version. Mulligans (assuming aggressive strategy): Athletic Studies, Armorsmith, Risky Skipper (with Armorsmith), Bloodsworn Mercenary (with the other 2), Sword and Board, Corsair Cache, Minefield, Anchaaar, Bulwark of Azzinoth (with earlier plays), Sword Eater (with earlier plays). Mage Minionless C'Thun Mage was the most common version I fought, although there was also Tempo Secret Mage, as well as one Highlander. C'Thun felt very good, and your main goal is to press the Armour Up button every turn you can possibly get away with it. Corsair Cache on turn 2? Wrong, press the button. Rattlegore doesn't have much chance of sticking between Devolving Missiles and Polymorph, whether native or discovered, so save Bloodsworn Mercenary for Risky Skipper -> Armorsmith plays. It's very reasonable to be well above 30 health on the turn they play C'Thun, and if you can pull this off with some resources left, you've likely won. Bulwark of Azzinoth isn't going to do a lot of major damage blocking most of the time, although I still tried to save it for later in the game, and after they'd played Eye of C'Thun. Tempo Mage is a similar principle, but felt tougher since you're not as free to sit back and build armour. Highlander Mage is not one of the decks this is meant to fight, with Zephrys and The Amazing Reno piling onto the anti-Rattlegore tech, so I think saving for a 10 mana Kargath -> 2x Bloodsworn Mercenary is likely the play, although I strongly suspect it's still an uphill battle. In all matchups, don't just discard a dead Corsair Cache if you're floating mana, as it's still good for triggering Counterspell. Mulligan for Athletic Studies, Risky Skipper, Sword and Board, Armorsmith, Corsair Cache, Anchaaar, Shield Block (with other plays), Kargath (with other plays). Paladin I faced a single Pure Paladin, which I beat down handily thanks to Rattlegore duplication. There's not too much detail I can go into here in terms of strategy, but I think it's fair to say that you basically can't win without Rattlegore specifically, as their Librams will eventually wear you down, so hard mulliganing for him might be the best plan. I've seen both Pure and Penflinger Paladin across the expansion so far, but the aggro/Silver Hand Recruit variant doesn't seem like it's taken off, so you can probably assume you'll have at least a bit of time. Coerce might be another fair mulligan, as well as Silas to snipe their big Libram target later in the game (preferably after Lady Liadrin). Priest Again, one game fought, but I think the deck is pretty much brick walled here, as you can never play Rattlegore and have no other way of killing them. Pretty much tradition at this point for Control Warrior vs. Control Priest, and I don't know if the new Resurrect tools have gained any traction. If they have, Silas might be a small saving grace, but in general, go for Kargath -> 2x Bloodsword Mercenary and pray. Rogue I encountered C'Thun Rogue as well as Galakrond Rogue, and the win condition was similar to Mage, squeeze out as much armour as possible while keeping the board under control. Risky Skipper -> Sword Eater is a useful way to clear Shadowjeweler Hanar without using a spell, and I saw her in every match I fought, so keep that in mind, Counterspell and Spellbender are extremely common picks (the same Corsair Cache tip as for Mage applies here). An important tip to note for C'Thun Rogue specifically: I think the correct way to play this matchup on the Rogue's end is probably to save both Shadowsteps exclusively for C'Thun, which would result in a total damage output of 90. The implication here may be that you as the Warrior should be saving your Bloodsworn Mercenaries for armour combos, but I'm not so sure, since 3 (or even 2) Rattlegores can potentially body block most of that damage. This will be an interesting matchup going forward, although none of the opponents I saw on my run were actually using Shadowstep this way, likely assuming I was Bomb Warrior. Wand Thief can discover anti-Rattlegore effects though, which is a bit of a bummer. I didn't fight any Aggro Rogue, but between being a natural counter to aggression, multiple ways to kill stealth minions, and Bulwark to block their big weapons, I have to imagine it'd be very favoured. Mulligan for Athletic Studies, Armorsmith, Risky Skipper (with Armorsmith), Bloodsworn Mercenary (with the other 2), Sword and Board, Corsair Cache, Anchaaar, Coerce, Lord Barov (with another combo piece to deal with Edwin Van Cleef), Sword Eater (with earlier plays), Kargath (with earlier plays). Shaman While I saw a few Battlecry Shamans in the first few hours of the expansion, all the encounters I had with this deck were the Totem version. Their entire deck is built around sticking a board, and your entire deck is built around removal, so it's a pretty comfortable matchup provided you draw a decent answer or two. You've generally won or lost by the time Rattlegore comes down, so save Bloodsworn Mercenary for Risky Skipper plays or as another Rush minion to keep their board clear. The main priority against Totem Shaman is to kill everything, don't leave even a basic totem alive if you have the option not to. Mulligan for Athletic Studies, Risky Skipper, Sword and Board, Minefield, Anchaaar, Lord Barov, Kargath (with earlier plays), Sword Eater (with earlier plays), Brawl. Warlock Control Warlock is probably the deck that most relies on Rattlegore to save the day. If you can stick a Rattlegore and clone it, you can dole out enough pressure to get past their deck burning, but if you don't, there's very little hope. Even then, I played one game where I managed to get 2 Rattlegores out that the Warlock was able to whittle down until they were no longer threats, and I died in fatigue. It's a pretty rough matchup, and one where you need to try and apply a bit more pressure than usual with weapon face swings, etc. Luckily, Zoo decks are much more favoured, although Control seems like the matchup you should assume you're walking into right now. Which means a hard mulligan for Rattlegore, because if it's milled, you're done. Warrior There are a few Warrior archetypes out there, but I mostly ran into Bomb Warrior with a couple Menagerie builds as well. Against Bomb Warrior, Bloodsworn Mercenary has several valid uses, and I think in an ideal world you'd aim for one armour combo and one Rattlegore clone, although armour probably comes first since the deck tends to devolve into burn damage. Rattlegore isn't a core card, but I have seen it several times (maybe for the mirror?), so that's your ideal Silas target. Menagerie Warrior isn't that popular, but keeping up a board presence in order to delay your hard removal as long as possible is important, their minions keeping growing as the game goes on so being able to trade into their earlier ones rather than burning Coerce/Shield Block is very helpful, especially since this build doesn't run Bladestorm. I didn't face any of the new Rush OTK version, but have to assume you're going for armour combos, and saving Silas for their Rattlegore. Mulligan for Athletic Studies, Armorsmith, Risky Skipper (with Armorsmith), Bloodsworn Mercenary (with the other 2), Sword and Board, Corsair Cache, Anchaaar, Bulwark of Azzinoth, Kargath (with earlier plays), Sword Eater, Rattlegore (with earlier plays).
Closing Thoughts
I think Control Warrior has a lot of potential this expansion, and while this almost certainly isn't the most optimized version possible, it was a ton of fun to play, and scratched that classic control itch in a big way. Hope you found this helpful, and RAAAAAAR!
[Table] r/buildapc — I'm the owner/founder of PCPartPicker. Celebrating 10 years of PCPP + /r/buildapc. AMA (pt 1/2)
Source Note: other employees' answers were occasionally included, but are by no means complete.
Questions
Answers
PC Part Picker. Where do I start. First of all, thank you so much for all of the help you guys have given me. If not for your team and your website I might not have built the PC I have now. I am very grateful to you guys for making such straightforward software with so many options. You guys are on top of everything, and I’d just like to thank you for all that you’ve done for the PC building community. That being said, onto the questions! 1. What are your favorite PC Parts? What’s your ideal/dream PC part list? 2. I’ve been having this problem recently because things are out of stock. When I make a parts list I often have to go into the page for the part to determine the actual cost for the part when it comes back in stock from the major retailers. When displaying the price, could you also add in parentheses something like: Price: $265 (Lowest: $200)
Thanks for the kind words! I'll defer to Alex/Ryan on their favorite parts. For me I'd just like to get hold of a 3080 one day but I'm not in a rush. I'm still happily running this build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c99djX
On the stock / pricing issue, we might be able to look into something like that, but I can't make any guarantees.
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Downmented: It's a bad time to be GPU shopping when the founde owner of PCPP can't even score a 30 series GPU BDsBiggest: This was my thought, how does he not have one?
I honestly don't really need one and there are people who play way more intensive stuff than I do. I'm ok to wait.
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On that note, what do you play?!!
I still really enjoy Minecraft of all things. My oldest son started playing Skyblock and so that became a bit of a time sink. Used to play a decent bit of Civ and other Sid Meier stuff a long time ago. I'm just not that much of a gamer though. I'm legitimately terrible at FPS games, so I don't really enjoy them all that much. Minecraft lets me just piddle around and experiment with different creations, architectures, etc. And it's something I can play with my kids which is great until they trash my island.
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As a fellow Minecraft buff, what are your thoughts on the best CPU for Minecraft at the moment? I know it depends more on CPU performance than GPU, at least in Java edition.
I'll have to defer to the other guys on staff or the community because I honestly don't know. I'm playing on an i5-6600k/980 ti which has been more than enough.
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Thanks for the response! How long have you had that build for?
Roughly four years. I need to upgrade the GPU though because where I work in my house it's getting cold and ThoughtA is outpacing me on Folding at Home.
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Do you have a rebuild planned for when the 3080 is back? Or just upgrading the current rig?
It'll probably be a new build, but I'm not sure what it'll be. If 3080s come back in stock where I can get one, then I may start with that and plan the rest around it. Especially if it's something with a particular aesthetic or color scheme that I want to match.
Thank you for your site and all the countless hassle it saved me from. What do you guys and gals think is a thing our community could help you with ? Is there something like a roadmap for pcpp and what are you personally most excited about ? How should people give feedback to you and the other team members? Which channels are you preferring ? On which channels can I send my monthly thank you very much for your service messages ?
Re: what buildapc can help with - this community has helped us so much over the years that I have no asks whatsoever. Just thanks. Thanks for letting us be a part of the community.
We don't have an official roadmap - I run the dev timeline like a software engineer who is terrible at time estimates. Things I promised eight years ago are still undone while other stuff jumps ahead. I'm most excited for benchmarking. I love performance analysis, and what we're building should be super cool. Lots, lots, lots of data, all in tightly controlled environments. The hard part is how to present relevant bits without overwhelming people with data.
For feedback, feel free to ping us on our site forums, our contact page, or on our discord channel. Discord is probably the least formal if it's something small, though I'm not on discord all that often these days (Ryan and Alex are though).
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Ah, "agile" development.
Nope! None of that. No agile practices here thanks. Just software development structured along my capricious demands...
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IMHO, "we don't have a project management philosophy" is the best project management philosophy. As long as progress is being made and people are happy, management theory would just get in the way.
For a while I was working on a codebase of several million lines of C++ in an org with 100+ other really smart engineers. I participated in an effort to modularize part of it, and I failed pretty badly. One of the most important things I learned was from an old Windows NT dev presentation that talked about Conway's Law. That really reshaped how I viewed architecture, teams, responsibilities, and communication patterns.
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Did you consider licensing/sharing benchmarks from other hardware review sites, rather than developing a (presumably not-profit-generating) benchmarking competency? Alternatively, if you do want to generate benchmarks, have you considered monetizing them via a blog?
We're planning on benching at a scale that most review sites don't do. Like an order of magnitude more pairings, runs, etc, with a bit more detail on each as well in terms of current consumption, temps, etc. All that all recorded on identical software setups for comparability. No one right now is doing that at the scale we want.
It's definitely not a profit center, and that's ok for me. I love benchmarking. Before PCPP I was part of a team working on optimizing compiler stuff. I loved writing compiler optimizations and testing the performance changes. So that whole side of things - determinism, accurate measurements, etc, I just really enjoy it. So PCPP in a way helps fund my desire to do that work whether it is profitable or not.
That being said, I do think it's a complementary feature set to add. While it may not monetize directly, I think the value it adds to the site will (hopefully) result in an incremental change in traffic/revenue.
So how does it feel to have a side project or yours become as popular in the computer world as google? You've become the only place I recommend newbies to go (other than reddit) for pc building help, and your site has become the most useful tool I've ever used outside of my daily IT work. You've created something not only powerfully useful, but well designed, smoothly operated, and pleasing to the eye. I don't really have much of question more just taking the opportunity to say thank you for creating a fantastic tool for the community. If a bigger company offers you millions to sell it I'd understand if you did, but please don't, I can't imagine the site being run any better than by it's original team!
Thanks for the kind words. I gave my mom a shirt. A couple years ago someone recognized the shirt in rural east Texas. Like, she lives 30 minutes from the nearest town of 5,000 people. That was pretty wild. My mom was pretty excited lol.
I love having something that I helped build be a useful thing for people. That's immensely satisfying. (And it's a team effort, not just me by any stretch at all. The whole team helps every bit of what you see on the site).
On the other hand, I don't want or like to be out front. I'd rather be behind the scenes working on something and not really be noticed. I think that gets reflected, probably negatively from a business-first standpoint, in how I run things. I don't really push branding hard, don't push social media (Twitter, Instagram, etc), because I personally don't want to be out front there. I can engage here on reddit because I feel like I'm a part of the community here rather than some corporate/redditor relationship. From a business standpoint, I think there's a lot of growth possibility that PCPP hasn't tapped into because I want to avoid various social anxieties and whatnot.
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Just know that if a company offers big bucks (and they probably will eventually) it is because they see an opportunity to leverage the base you built to make money and it most likely will be by selling the customers who trust you. They will probably do something like partner with large manufacturers or sellers and push their own products while if ignoring what is best for the people looking to create their own best build.
Yeah that makes sense. We've made some decisions that probably wouldn't last long - not running ads, not selling user data. So really there seems to be two options: either we run this out until it dies on its own and we get to keep our ideals/positions, or we run out of energy and sell. I don't want to sell. I don't plan to sell. But I'd be lying if I said there weren't days where I feel so tired and just want a break for a bit. It's trying to find the balance of doing a job I love maintaining principles I value and also not destroying myself physically/emotionally/etc in the process.
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Oh cool! If you don’t mind me asking, what area of East Texas? Did you grow up out here? I’m from out in Van, approx 30 min from Tyler. My close friends and I love PCPartPicker. I just used it to build my upgraded rig a couple of weeks ago.
Nice! I grew up in Tyler (edit: but my mom currently lives 30 minutes east of Center, TX - basically on Toledo Bend reservoir and the TX/LA border). My electronics teacher in high school (Mr. Ray) was from Van. He was formative for me in pursuing electronics seriously by introducing me to VICA and electronics competitions.
Benchmark integration timeline when 🍿
Probably mid-2021. We're almost done with a building renovation where they bumped our building service from a 400A service to a 1200A service. Added AC capacity. That 800A is going toward bench... it's going to be fun. This is what I'm talking about https://imgur.com/a/rffuVin. Can't wait to get this all up and running.
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I have a massive transformer that’s the size of a fridge I can’t seem to sell if you guys want it. It was meant for a Bitcoin farm but was never used. Cost $5000 I just want it gone it’s so heavy lol
LOL thanks but we're good. They actually delivered the 1200A from pole mounted transformers. MEP guys were surprised, but the power company said they could do it. Sure enough they did. Old vs new pre-hookup: https://imgur.com/a/ODQlACV
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Dude, you do AWS, dev, hiring, project direction, and building management? Your operation must be crazy efficient.
Oh no I offloaded all the building management stuff to Jack. He's handled almost all the renovation work, which has been an absolute life saver for me. I just come in and throw wrenches in things by adding last minute requests for extra conduit runs from here to there, replace those windows, change that paint color, etc. Jack handles all communication and followups with the GC, subs, etc.
The other stuff I do do though. AWS (our infrastructure isn't that big really, a couple dozen EC2 instances, RDS, Redis, CloudSearch, Cloudfront, etc). Daniel handles the bits of Lambda that we use. I kinda enjoy the deployment / devops side of things, and I think it's important to have my fingers on the pulse of that whenever I'm designing new features. Helps me have a better feel for what kind of query impact different code or modeling decisions will have.
The hiring isn't much - we've averaged about one person a year and that's usually someone in our existing network of relationships. And project direction is pretty small right now since we shut down our cycling site. Back down to just one website makes it a lot simpler. We talk about what we want to do as a group a lot, so (I think) everyone has a pretty decent picture of where we're headed despite timelines not being nailed down strict.
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What kind of benchmarks would you be running? Have you considered pulling data from places like passmark?
Anything we can run deterministically and automated and that has license terms that allow unfettered publication of result data. We won't be pulling data from anywhere, passmark included. All the data will be from runs we do in-house.
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May I ask why the focus on internal metrics vs just pulling them?
Mainly because we can control all the variables and make them consistent across all our result pairs. We have some absolutely phenomenal performance analysis engineering expertise in house.
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Unfettered publication of result data. Wow. Nice. As someone who likes playing with freely available datasets, I really appreciate this. Hard to learn data science without freely available data sets that regular people can have some level of subject matter expertise over to start to learn how to put data-driven stories together.
Sorry, what I meant was that the license terms of the benchmark software have to allow us to publish the benchmark results without restriction. There is a popular benchmarks out today that requires the benchmark results be vetted by them first before publication. We'd have to manually send over bench results if we weren't using their bench platform (we're not, we have our own). Then wait for them to approve, and then we could publish. That's not viable when we're testing at the scale we plan to - it'd need to be automated at least but they couldn't offer that. And for benchmarking prerelease hardware under embargo, it'd mean that we would have no ability to publish data right when the embargo lifted. We'd have to wait however long for their manual review.
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How will you be able to benchmark hard-to-get hardware? e.g. RTX 3090, Radeon 6800xt, and Ryzen 5000? Will the manufacturers send them to you? Or do you have to buy them?
I think it's a mixture of both. On new release hardware it's helpful to have bench data when embargoes lift. But I also want to have store-purchased hardware as the main part of our hardware pool, however long it takes to acquire that. We can flag the benchmarks that come from manufacturer review samples - that way people know the source and can factor in review sample binning.
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So once upon a time, I was gonna write a program that would pull benchmark and pricing data to build a list of best value parts, such that no part in the list had a better performing part at a lower price. A sort of definitive do-buy list to make it easier to pick parts. Once benchmarks are done, pcp would have all the infrastructure in place to make that happen in some form on the site, perhaps as a filter for picking parts or as a warning on the part/build pages?
Yep.
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sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying that to, I should have actually posed a proper question: Will you be implementing that?
That's our intent, yeah. It may take us a bit to get there though.
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There is...a lot... of metal shavings in that box. Ah I’m sure it’s fine it’s only 1200A.
Oh at that point it was still all being hooked up. It's cleaner for sure.
Check this out - relative size difference between old and new...
But how do we know how big Barry is if he's not holding a banana?
Barry is approximately the same height as one marinelli.
A lot of people seem to think that you only host sellers that provide you affiliate kickbacks. Is there any truth to that? Have you ever allowed or disallowed a seller on the basis of affiliate money? How do you decide whether to host a seller or not?
That's not true. We list several retailers without affiliate agreements. Affiliate relationships are often much much easier because they almost always already have price data access. That's the main thing we need.
Our choice on hosting a retailer largely depends on whether we feel they are good for users or not. If a retailer is being abusive to users or doing highly manipulative stuff, we'll remove them even if they're profitable. We've done that several times in the past. If a retailer also has highly inaccurate pricing, we'll delist for that too.
Yaaatttttt: Not sure if you are allowed to reveal this but what retailers have you delisted in the past? LightningProd12: They delisted MicroCenter in the US because they had too many in-store only deals and no way to tell the difference on PCPP's end. And not everyone can go to one, if you live in the Northwest the closest one can be 800-1000 miles away. Edit: This is mostly false, look at the comments below.
ThoughtA: This isn't true at all. We want to have them on the site. We had some discussions with them, but they stopped responding.
We did actually list their in-store deals. I put in a decent bit of code for that so that they only showed up if you were within a configurable radius of one of their locations.
It's a long story, but the gist of it is that we were waiting on some stuff that never came and things went silent. We reach out from periodically but nothing. It stinks - we'd be happy to list them.
You never know what you reception you'll get from retailers. Some are beating down the door to get on board - that's awesome. Others we have to prove that we're worth their time - that's not unusual. A few will say they want to work together, we get 80% of the way there, and then... silence. Or the key person you were working with takes a job somewhere else. And then some retailers basically say not just no, but h*** no. I'll never forget that one. For some retailers there's a strong aversion to something we do, whether it be price comparison or something else. But just know that if there's a retailer that is reputable and treats customers well, we're more than happy to work with them and get them listed.
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Ohh ok, that sucks. On a side note, is there a story behind the "h*** no" retailer?
They're, eh, no longer in business. Honestly probably dodged a bullet there.
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Maybe this was asked already but still: are there any timeline/plan to add more countries to the country list? I am leaving in Austria and I have to use Germany to see the prices and availability of the parts. Moreover, I see German retailers and prices but not Austrian ones.
We're continually adding new countries and retailers. Adding a country is just a few lines of code on our end - we do that when we have a retailer to add in a country we don't currently support. So really it's a matter of finding and adding retailers. If you have any you'd like to see, send us a note on our contact page and we'll take a look at it. Jenny reaches out to the retailers to see if we can get them on board. It usually takes a while to get in contact and get good data access.
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I already raised this issue to him several years ago - because it was blatantly in the open for users in Germany. You would get amazon affiliate links as "lowest" price, even though there are several other stores that are cheaper... He got angry quickly and gave me the same bs excuse. The top sellers with the top user ratings were never listed as cheapest even though they were.
We list the buy box winner for Amazon. If you're saying we prune results for various marketplace sellers, well, you're wrong.
How's the team handling COVID? Is everyone working from home? What kind of challenges are arising?
I sent everyone home in March. We haven't met as a group since. It's been ok - we just meet on video conferencing when we need to. Jack and Barry are up at the office overseeing the renovation which should be done mid-January. I'll probably be up there from January to April to do the benchmark network cabling and office rewiring (from cat5 to 6a+fiber) because I kinda enjoy cable crimping and punch downs. :)
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The transition from cat5 to cat6 is worth?
Yeah. We're not running 5e, just 5. It's what was in there from when we bought it. So that's not where I'd like it to be for good 1Gb.
Any chance we'll ever see some more filtering options for SSDs? It would be really handy to have the following * Filter by the primary storage type SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC/Optane/etc * Filter by whether the drive has a DRAM cache or supports Host Memory Buffer (HMB)
I'd love to, but I think it'd cause a fissure I'm not sure how to fix. Right now we have SSDs and platter drives in the same category, but the specific filtering for each is different. To apply the really detailed SSD filters, I think they need to be their own category. Same with the HDD types. I don't know if splitting them up is the right path though, so I've been continually punting the issue down the road until we're forced to decide one way or the other.
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Tsk tsk, don’t accumulate technical debt there
Oh, no, it's quite the opposite really. Parametric part additions record the type and filter selections. Those added to a part list stay there forever - we never throw them away. So any filters we add never get removed even if we don't show them. Because of that, I try to be very deliberate in what we add and what we don't. Once I add a new part category or filter type, if I decide later it was a bad idea then it means I get to write lots of migration code. That's no fun.
Super excited for the an app version. Are you guys considering price tracking so that users can set alerts for when hardware drops to a desired price?
Yeah. We have that on the site already with email alerts. But the PWA provides them via browser push notifications (on platforms that support that). I have that all working in a beta test mode (for staff only) right now and it's feeling pretty solid.
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As a front-end engineer, what's your stack look like for the PWA?
Basically built on top of our existing responsive site (Python, Django). I didn't want to spend a lot of time migrating to another framework, so instead spent the time kind of standardizing our own API-ish setup and then handling the caching or offline modes for that as needed. We went responsive with PWA to avoid maintaining three separate codebases (web, iOS, Android), but it's looking like we may go native in the end anyway. This buys us some time at least.
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So not iOS?
Right. :(. I understand there are some workarounds to get push notifications through wallets and whatnot, but that feels pretty hackish to me. We might end up going native on iOS at some point to get good notification support there.
How hard is it keeping up with and adding new item releases (not only the new 3000 series graphics cards from nvidia but also possibly unknown stuff like network cards, etc)? Are there any items you decide not to add or do you try to list everything you can?
New GPUs are pretty easy. CPUs are ok, sometimes a pain depending on the chipset/bios situations. Motherboards are terrible, especially the last few years. Cataloging all the M.2 ports, their constraints (PCIe in this slot disables that SATA, etc) is a major pain.
There's some stuff, particularly on cases, where there are compatibility constraints that are not economically viable to model. We know what the constraints are, but to model them all across 30k+ parts would make data entry so slow that we'd never finish.
We try to hit the main product categories, but we'd love to expand that. It's really an issue of how time consuming and costly it is to do the data entry for it versus how often it's used.
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So Wikipedia seems to be crowd sourced, and works pretty well. Maybe some of the more laborious data entry parts could have a crowd source entry option, but be flagged as such when people bring up anything containing those results (a disclaimer)..
It's just not reliable enough. It has to be super accurate, and it's not something I'd ever feel comfortable outsourcing.
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Have you tried asking the manufacturers to get involved? You might just be big enough.
When new releases are coming out we sometimes get data ahead of time. Cases are pretty common. Motherboards are a lot harder, because of embargoes and even BIOSes and manuals not finished days before release. Some of the constraints we see are pretty one-off situations that make it hard to provide some sort of standardized input form for though.
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what if you let companies input their own data for their products.
I don't trust that to be accurate enough. We routinely find bad spec data even on manufacturer sites.
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I imagine that PCPP is large enough now to direct traffic to or away from various retailers in volumes they will care about. Like how Google went from small to large. Given that, probably PCPP should begin leaning on retailers to provide product data in an ingestable format, making data entry moot.
We work with retailers to provide the right data in feeds for sure. But the hard part is that not all retailers have the technical expertise on hand to do it (or for smaller retailers, the margin and profitability to pay for that expertise). The back-and-forth to get updated feed frequency, proper part numbers, stock status, etc - it's non-stop. Brent and Jenny bear the brunt of that.
I know you've been vocal about not opening up a merch store for personal profit, but would you ever consider a merch store where all proceeds go towards your well building charity?
We did this once. My accountant was like, "please don't."
Basically if we buy a thousand shirts and give them away it's super easy - they just get marked as a marketing expense and we give them out however we see fit. But as soon as any of them are sold, you have to track inventory, cost basis, etc. It's a lot more tedious and last time it was maybe a couple shirts a week - enough to invoke packaging and transport overhead but not enough to be efficient. So we instead just give them away at various bapc milestones and donate from our affiliate income instead.
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Kinda funny reading this while wearing the hoodie! It’s easily the comfiest hoodie in my closet.
Oh, major props to Phil for that. He picked it out. I love mine too. We printed some smaller ones for kid sizes and my oldest son tries to sleep in his.
transam617: Philip, Thank you for 10 years of your indispensable help. Over that time, there were probably millions of visitors to your website who have had their PC building experience improved or made possible through the use of your wonderful tool. But specifically: Since 2014, our little corner of reddit (now 10K subs) cabalofthebuildsmiths, has been more effective, and has helped more people as a direct result of your website tool, than from any other tool we have available. We pride ourselves on giving builds to customers where they can reliably buy every part we pick, and be sure they will work as expected. This process takes research and a lot of effort, but the highly accurate, effective communication of pcpartpicker (for all the countries you cover) is the foundation of our process. Thank you for making the messy world of PC parts a little more bearable, thank you for making it all possible, and a big thanks from us, cabalofthebuildsmiths. transam617 kokolordas15 dmz_dragon danyulz bramblexd
Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for all the work you all do to help builders!
What happened to the youtube channel? Loved the build videos and interviews you had while it was still running.
We moved buildings a couple years ago, and decided to pause on them while we renovated the new space for filming and benchmarking. The renovation is finishing up likely mid-January - it took waaaay longer than we originally thought. If we had known it'd be that long we probably would have figured out some interim plan. So once that reno is done, we'll probably start ramping up content again. I'd guess mid-2021 or so.
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My first computer was a an AMD K5-133. That was late 1996 I think and I was in college. My friend and I ordered our mobo+CPU off an ad on a magazine page. I bought his old case and an 80MB HDD off of him. Ran Windows 3.1. We played Warcraft 2 across a null modem cable - that was probably the most fun I've ever had with PC gaming. Floating point on that thing was terrible though. Playing a 64kbps MP3 chewed up like 60% of the CPU.
My roommate introduced me to Quake 2, specifically Action Quake 2. Loved that game. I started running a website on the dorm network on it that got pretty popular. But queries on the db would tank my Q2 framerate so I put in code to disable queries while I was playing.
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tiger direct?
No, it was some small place out of the northeast. I mean, that was pre-internet-shopping days. Wrote a check, hand wrote what we wanted on the order form, mailed it, and waited weeks. No phone calls, no email confirmations, nothing. My kids have no idea what that was like.
Fun fact, I got banned from PCPartPicker for adding a purple dildo from Amazon to my build.
Yeah that'll do it. User code of conduct / ToS and all.
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Boooo. Thats kinda weird, especially for private/personal builds.
Most of the retailers we partner with have as a part of their terms that our site not contain NSFW material. I get some people think it's funny but it can get us shut down, and I'm really not ok with that.
I've used your site so many times and I even met some of the team in Austin outside Dreamhack. Thanks for all you do! Who has the most powerful computer on the staff and what are they running?
I think most powerful computer probably goes to manirelli right now.
Do you have any career opportunities at the company? I have a couple years of marketing experience, but I can’t find a job in these tough times. At least I’ve been learning python so I can get better at data management.
Unfortunately we're not hiring right now. :(
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Mind if I ask where you typically post jobs when you are hiring? Greenhouse.io, LinkedIn, Indeed, all of the above?
Usually it's someone we have an established relationship with. We haven't ever posted a job listing to date.
Are you going to work on an official PCPartPicker API so people don't have to break ToS by scraping?
No. I'd prefer to offer sufficient service that people don't need to scrape.
Most scrapers use up a lot of resources or don't even do cursory things like follow robots.txt crawl delay specs. It's really frustrating. I'd like to spend my time focusing on user benefitting features than blocking abusive crawlers.
gordonv: A cached CLI/SDK that draws from a CDN (not your web server) would be cool. You'd provide sufficient service, reduce processing cost, and get usage stats. The best way to defeat crawlers is to defeat their purpose. Make scraping look idiotic. Heck, mock scrapers in your HTML with an URL to your API. Add a little wit to that wisdom. Add AWS Cloudfront and now you have 200+ servers in the USA distributing your CLI with authentication to 3 million calls for $20 a month. Some leet stuff. Just noticed a sprinkle of posts calling for an app. If you spec CLI/SDK along with app development, killing 2 birds with 1 budget stone.
We're rolling out a PWA (hopefully) before the end of the year.
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invisi1407: Perhaps a better question is, why is there a need for scraping? Could that need be satisfied by new/improving features on PCPP? MLG_G0D: Because integrations with PCPartPicker would greatly benefit the PC building community. Constantly navigating to websites can get tiresome, especially on low spec machines. Automation is great. invisi1407: I understand, but exactly which integrations are people looking for? I get it, but I also understand why PCPP isn't interested in having a public, free API. MLG_G0D: I was thinking about integrating PCPP functions into a reddit/discord bot. invisi1407: Not unresonable, but you do understand how it takes away any earnings from advertisements and what have we on their website, yeah? It seems like they are a small company spending an enormous amount of time on the data they are presenting, so I don't think you'll ever see a free public API anyway. Perhaps a paid one, but I don't suppose many would be interested in that anyway. MLG_G0D: Seems reasonable. I'm just a massive fan of companies being open to their userbase, but I guess PCPartPicker hasnt quite grown to the point where thats economically feasible.
There's more to the picture. On pricing data: We're not the source of pricing data as that comes from the retailers. We have various agreements in place where they give us that data to display on our site or to market their products in ways they allow us to. We don't have permission to then hand that data to a third party to do whatever they want to. If we make it available to someone else via an API, we're breaching terms of our agreement, which in turn makes us lose our affiliate deal and price access. Boom, business is dead. Basically if you need that data, go to the source (the retailers) and negotiate with them.
For product data: We've invested a lot of man years to build our data set, and some of that data helps us maintain a competitive advantage over copycat sites. Making it easier to retrieve that data isn't something I'm keen on. There are other sources of product data available that are more expansive than what we have anyway. I'd suggest pursuing that if you want to build your own hardware related site stuff.
On API stuff for partlists and markdown: If you just want a discord bot, I'd be happy to chat through what it is you're looking for to see if that's something we could support officially on our end. We have our own discord server bot that uses an internal API to do partlist embeds.
Last bit - publishing an API adds an additional thing for us to maintain. It's a maintenance and support burden. Even an unofficial API is. It becomes something that I have to test and not break any time I refactor code around it. We're a small company, and that's not really an area I want to allocate resources around if it's not a revenue generating thing.
Thanks a lot to you guys! With your site, I managed to make 3 separate lists, and now my dream of building a PC is coming true. Maybe you could add recommendations based on what the person has on their list, such as a cheaper but better graphics card, etc
I think recommendations are a possibility once we have our in-house benchmark data in place. But that'd be a ways down the road.
Thanks for your work, and since this is an AMA, simple question: Which is the best flavor of ice cream and why?
Amy's Ice Cream here in Austin. Belgian Chocolate. It's just wonderful but I haven't been there in almost a year now.
manirelliPCPartPicker: I will second Amy's but I'm partial to the Mexican Vanilla flavor.
Wow. What a cool thing to see on Reddit. This is the first AMA I’ve ever replied in/commented on. I’m brand new to PC (3 year macbook user here, and besides a brief stint with a windows Hp laptop on which I played Rollercoaster tycoon and club penguin with “back in the day” I have never had need for the site. Until last month). I’m grateful the site exists, and it’s quite intriguing to me how you manage to create and maintain (emphasis on maintain) such an EXTENSIVE database of parts. I know it’s part of your life, however it astounds me to see these parts that seem so very minuscule, always appear. Have you considered, or maybe there already is and I simply am blind or don’t know about it. Have you considered adding any sort of personal or user based rating system regarding parts? Or a warning system for parts with known issues out of the box?
Our ratings are from users, but we only allow ratings/reviews from completed builds. That way we know that the review is from someone who actually built with it (versus say a 1 star review from someone mad they couldn't buy it).
We do offer some warnings on known issues, but it's something we may expand in the future.
Odd warriors main draw is how easily it preys on the fast decks in this meta. In fact, it is so good at its job that it offers several slots for tech options and experimentation. These slots can be used to double down on your anti aggro matchups, or be used to give yourself a chance in your more hopeless ones. Because of this I and I’m sure many others enjoy experimenting with different builds and seeing what works best. My "credibility" is that I am a warrior main and have made it to legend with warrior multiple times, some of which have been with odd warrior. I've played lots of warrior and love to experiment with it. I’m here to list some cards and packages where builds differ from each other as well as theory craft some builds. Let’s discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these additions. I won't include cards that are staples or just balance out the deck like barov, quartermasters, eternium rovers, removal, board clears ect.) Greed: Dr. Boom: This hero card was once a staple of Odd Warrior, but is now considered optional. Basically just a mediocre value machine. It is pretty useless vs aggro and the other control and combo decks of this meta can run you over despite Booms best efforts. Main selling points here are getting wins in the mirror, being a good card against decks with weak game plans, and also giving some hail marry potential through the discover option. Archivist Elysiana: Anti Fatigue option that can also offer big value. Useless vs aggro but other than that in many ways a better Dr. Boom. With the cold light package it can allow you to play a fatigueish end game. Same advantages as boom and also worth noting it removes garbage from your deck. Azalina: A less popular option. Gives you hope against jades and some combos. To be fair I don't own this one but im not a huge fan from what I've seen. Still, it wins games in theory. Rattlegore: Can win games off of sheer stickiness. Also a huge resource sink for decks without transforms. Can be complimented with Boomship to be proactive and make your Baku a piece of removal as well. Gets slapped by Zephrys unfortunately. Omega Assembly: Some extra greed in the late game can squeeze out games vs a Even Shaman for example, and the extra flexibility of playing it early and comboing with coerces is nice. Tech: Sticky Finger: Mainly there to ensure victory vs Kingsbane. Solid tech that does what it needs. Can also help in the secret mage matchup(even though help isn't really needed.) Gluttonus Ooze: Cheaper weapon removal, but worse vs kignsbane. Meta dependant. Brann and coldlights: This is probably the most popular tech. The ability to burn cards gives you hope against the greedier decks that will grind you out. Additionally the extra draw can find you important answers in aggro matchups. All in all very popular for a reason and feels good. Mischief Maker: Possible insta win vs one of your predators: raza priest. The idea is you hard mulligan for it and drop it once he polkets to steal his Anduin. Feels great to pull of and still pretty uncommon so the priests don't expect it. Also good for stealing combo pieces. Just make sure you don't have Brann up. Against aggro you are usually ruinning their draw but also ruining your draw. Misc Cards: Zola: Some extra flexibility and greed. Nothing wrong with this and a good card to slot in if you see fit. Siamat: Best vs mid range. Also it can lock out games vs aggro and put on pressure vs control if they somehow lack removal against you. Not a fan personal but it is fairly flexible and does what it needs to. Bulwark: Saves your ass vs many combos and killer stall vs big minions. Worth the inclusion if possible. Vs raza priest and aggro it is usually pretty much gain ~8 armor. Deathlord: Out of favor now, but good disruption when the meta calls for it. Also gets stuff done vs aggro. Ancharr+Skippers: Can be useful vs aggro and can thin your deck. Skipper+Barov also decimates any board. Using these is doubling down vs aggro. Town Crier: Gonna want a rush package with zilly and maybe even faceless corruptors. Faceless manipulator: Not really needed in this meta. Can be used to copy giant or sticky minions for great value but quite bad vs aggro. Experimental Crap: Taunt Quest: Wins you mirrors and lets you go toe to toe with other greedy decks. Playing the taunt minions does feel very clunky however. Doesn't help vs aggro. Maybe you could mix in some Into the Frey for better taunt? Otherwise put in the bare minimum taunt with guys like stone hills and infested goblins for quest value. Also is unfortunate that all the quest lover cards are even. When I played this deck I was pretty favorable with this vs aggro and I was able to crush a fellow Odd Warrior and almost gassed out a reno mage. The Ragnaros HP puts in some serious work once its online. Still lost to raza though. Bombs: Insert the Clockwork Goblins and Seaforimum Bombers (maybe with that bomb Dr. Boom) into a Odd warrior deck. I need to test this one but I've heard of it being ok. Idea is to shut down highlander decks. Not sure if it makes your raza matchup favorable. Can't imagine the bomb cards are any good vs aggro, especially the 5 drops. Big: My baby. I did a write up on it a little while a go. Gives you a better chance vs your bad matchups and a worse chance vs your good matchups. Sometimes you'll kill a turtle mage with crazy pressure, but then lose to a secret mage or kingsbane rogue. Other issue is big odd minions are pretty jank outside of Rattlegore so you end up running some less than optimal cards(like Giant Mastadon :P). Playing this deck means you lose out on tonnes of valuable minion based tech which does hurt but still, it's very much legend viable. What are your thoughts on all this? Anything I missed or slept on? Where do you all see this deck going.
Hey everyone, I’m meisender, a German Hearthstone player since Beta and I like to hit Legend with off-meta-decks. Since my last guide, a new expansion released, the ranked system got reworked and either through the new system or the fact, that the Covid-lockdown freed up some time, I transitioned from consistent Dad-Legend-player (with the occasional Legend-climb) to consistent Legend-player. This time, I did my climb exclusively with Hybrid Libram Paladin. Disclaimer: I climbed with an 11-star-multiplier, so my climb was short and easy, take it with a grain of salt. The stats I provide are Legend only, a) because I partly climbed on mobile, b) it took some getting used to the deck and c) stats before Legend are kind of insignificant anyway. I did not invent the archetype or build the deck lists, I’m a good pilot, but an abysmal deck builder, don’t ask me for possible substitutes if you are missing x legendary, I have absolutely no clue :D Proof of Legend / highest rank (EU) List I am currently using (by MartianBuu) Deck code: AAEBAZ8FCNcTlRSdvQK5xwKO0wLj4wKHrQOEwQML9gfCDojHAtn+AuyGA8q4A/24A+q5A+u5A+y5A8rBAwA= Stats at Legend Before I start the guide, I want to specify, what exactly I played, since there are multiple forms of Libram Paladins with vastly different gameplans: a)Pure Libram This is normally some kind of aggro deck since you lack the control-tools, sth. like Wild Pyromancer provides. You could use Lightforged Crusader as a curve-topper and refill-engine, but as far as I can tell the card is considered too slow and unreliable for Wild. The reason to go Pure is Lightforged Zealot, for the aggressively-stated body and the attached Truesilver Champion. If you are interested in this, you might find inspiration in otyka2828’s or corbett’s list, but this won’t be the deck, I will discuss. b)Uther OTK Quest Libram This is an OTK-combo-deck, an Exodia to be precise. You draw through you deck at light-speed with multiple draw-engines, stall and heal until you have your combo-pieces and the needed amount of mana and the win the game (or die tryin’). The deck plays the quest (no matter which one, as you don’t intend to finish it) to get coins off of Licensed Adventurer to use with Auctionmaster Beardo on board to activate Uther DK’s hero-power 4 times in one turn to… well… win. (you need 11 mana and 3 0-cost-spells to go off, so you need at least 1 coin). Fun and interactive deck, if that’s your jam, check for example Gu1Danie1’s or GetMeowth’s list, but those are also not the ones I’ll discuss. c)Quest Libram We’re getting closer. This is more or less a midrange deck with control elements and plays very board-centric. You try to keep big sticky minions on the board and whack the opponent in the face. In this case, you want to finish the quest (therefore it matters, which quest you use) to sing the Galvadon-song and send a stealthed windfury-dinosaur face (if you don’t diiiiiiie turn four). If all goes wrong, you have our lord and saviour Frog-Saron as a Hail Mary. You could argue that this is simply a differently teched variant of the deck I’ll discuss, but I find them to be different enough to call this another archetype. Interested? Try MartianBuu’s or GetMeowth’s list. d)Hybrid Libram Finally, we’re there. Still a board-centric-midrange deck, that aims to control the board and hit face with big sticky minions, but with a twist! No quest here, but you’ve got Exodia as an additional out, making this deck kind of a Swiss pocket-knife: enough board-control-tools and healing/taunts to make aggro sad while also being able to win, if you yourself are getting out-controlled. Dirty Rat can be a nightmare though. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about the pros and cons of the deck, in a TLDR-kind of way, so you can decide if you want to continue reading: the Pros - off-meta: no one expects, what you’re doing and knows how to counter you; no mirror-matches at all - lots of outs - less polarised matchup-spread - lots of decision-making - non-linear gameplay - jack of all trades… the Cons - …but master of none - very specific niche legendaries without any application elsewhere - expensive to craft - incredibly draw-dependant in certain matchups (especially against aggro) - long-ish games - weak to silence/poly/disruption So let’s discuss the deck. I compared the three Hybrid-Libram lists I could find and declared the similarities core, the rest flex/tech: 2x Aldor Attendant: The only one-drop in the deck and part of the highly synergistic namesake Libram-package. Best turn 1 play, great target for turn 2 buffs, gets tutored by Crystology. 2x Crystology: Insane draw-engine, would probably still be kind of insane if they hadn’t buffed it, but damn! Tutors Aldor Attendants, Echoing Oozes, Meanstreet Marshals and, absolutely insane, Lynessa Sunsorrow. If drawn early, it’s basically always 1 mana draw 2. 2x Echoing Ooze: Even if you have a minion in play, most of the time you want your buffs to go here. Multiplies your Librams of Wisdom, generally adds lots of stats to contest the board and is absolutely insane to stop everything directed at your face if you manage to put a Spikeridged Steed on it. Sadly a pretty bad turn 2 play, if you didn’t manage to get your LoW down to 0 mana turn 1 (possible with coin, but oh so rare) but sometimes needed to contest aggro/soak some damage; gets tutored by Crystology. 2x Flash of Light: Very flexible low-mana spell: cycle, face-heal, minion-heal, Wild Pyromancer-proc, or just something to add to the 7-Ladies’ spell-pool. Can save your bacon vs. aggro, but most of the time I try to target a minion with it, to keep the board and to get another draw off of Lynessa. Draws 2 if cast on The Voraxx. 2x Hand of A’dal: 2 mana +2/+2 and cycle, what a great deal. If you manage to get an Aldor Attendant on the board turn one, you are very likely to have a target for it. Contesting pirates is pretty easy with a 3/5 that you can heal or buff further. Cast it on the Ooze turn 4 for 2 3/4s or at 10 mana with Steed on top. Turn 6 on the Voraxx for a 5/5, a 3/3 and 2 draws. Adds stats and draw to Lynessa. Really good stuff. 2x Libram of Wisdom (LoW): Part 2 of the namesake package, easy to get to 0 mana and basically infinite value if not silenced, polymorphed or milled (yes, hand-size-management is a real issue with this deck). With Ooze, Voraxx, Lynessa and Liadrin you can get so many copies of it, that your hand consists solely of it. Every hero-power becomes a threat with a full hand of those stacked upon it, and you always get them back. Also enables the Uther-OTK and massive bursts with Eydis Darkbane. Sadly, there is no tutor for the spell, so sometimes you just sit, cycle and wait for it. 2x Wild Pyromancer: A staple of slow(er) Paladin-decks since the beginning of time (well, Hearthstone, to be fair), this one synergizes extremely well with low- and 0-cost-spells. I had games, where I cleared full demon-boards against a control-Warlock with it. In conjunction with Libram of Justice, it’s a 2 card, one-sided full board clear, for, depending on the reduction of your Libram-mana-costs, 2-7 mana. Auctionmaster Beardo: Enabler of your Uther-OTK-combo against combo/control or a 3/4-body for 3 against aggro. 1x Fencing Coach: Enabler of your Uther-OTK-combo against combo/control, proactive enabler of turn 6 minion + Spikeridge Steed against aggro. For the OTK-combo you need 11 mana, which means either keep the coin or play the Coach in an earlier turn to have a free hero-power. Nozdormu the Timeless: I can’t believe this one made the list, it’s such a shitty legendary since your opponent can use the mana first. But especially against aggro, he won me many games where I had a clunky hand. They will drop their entire hand the turn after you play it, so have an answer. If you can clear, your chances to win skyrocket, because it’s likely they’ll just run out of resources and your big taunts and heals will help you stabilize. In addition, you put a 4 mana 8/8 in play. Against combo/control, use this one with caution, it’s likely to blow up in your face. 2x Aldor Truthseeker: Libram-package part 3, solid stats for the cost, taunt never hurts and the Libram-mana-cost-reduction is the cherry on top. Dropping this immediately reduces LoW-cost to 0, so if it’s in your hand, you can just increase the taunted stats further. 2x Libram of Justice (LoJ): The guy, Equality’s girlfriend tells him not to worry about. Even a single mana-cost-reduction makes this one a strictly better Equality, since it only effects the opponent’s minions and gives you a 1/4-weapon on top, but you can reduce it all the way down to 0 mana. Clears the board with Wild Pyromancer or some weenies on your side. 1-2x Spikeridge Steed: To be honest, I’d run 2 of those, but one of the lists cut one, so here we are. GREAT aggro-stopper, that keeps coming back. It’s a 4/12 for 6 and you can multiply it with Ooze, Voraxx, Lynessa and Liadrin. Lady Liadrin: Running out of stuff? Minions got silenced/polymorphed earlier? Say no more, Liadrin got you covered. Insane value-generation, more often than not fills your entire hand and a lot of the stuff she gives you costs 0 mana, so you can immediately use it. Lynessa Sunsorrow: The second Lady 7, probably even better than Liadrin, since you don’t have to pay mana for everything she casts. Interesting card, cause she makes you think twice if you want to heal your face with Flash of Light and Libram of Hope, because if you do, she won’t repeat those spells. Gets tutored by Crystology. 2x Libram of Hope (LoH): The last part of the Libram-package and the big gun. Heal 8 (minion or face) and summon an 8/8 with taunt and divine shield – that’s more than a speed-bump for aggro, it’s a friggin’ road-block. Mana-cost can be reduced to 3 mana and summons 2 Guardians if cast on the Voraxx. Uther of the Ebon Blade: The last piece of the OTK-puzzle, threatens lethal against combo/control and helps stabilize against aggro through armor-gain and lifesteal-weapon. That leaves us with… 2-3 flex-/tech-slots. You could probably divide the list so far into core and core for this variant, with for example the whole OTK-package being part of the second category, but I’ll just stick to the system I applied so far. Let’s add some spice: The Voraxx: As you might have already realized, I LOVE the card in this deck. Especially the interaction with LoH is straight-up insane, 3/3 + 1/1 + 2x 8/8 with taunt and divine shield for down to 7 mana. 1x Meanstreet Marshal: I don’t know if this is a budget-variant of the Voraxx, just because the creator of the list didn’t have it and didn’t want to waste 1600 dust on a truly fringe legendary, but I didn’t really like the performance of this one. Yes, it’s additional draw and it gets tutored by Crystology while also being an extra one drop. But the unbuffed 2 health are way easier to remove than the 3 health of Aldor Attendant and if it dies unbuffed you are sad. Crystalsmith Kangor: I haven’t played him, but I assume he’s great in an aggro-meta. Doubles healing, which you have a lot of to begin with, and heals you by himself, probably even multiple times thanks to his inherent divine-shield and buff possibilities. Eydis Darkbane: With 3/4 a solid body on turn 3 vs. aggro, but the effect is even better, making it a must kill target for basically any opponent. It’s your version of a Ship’s Cannon, but better since it hits for 3. Becomes a fricking machine-gun if played in the late-game and with a handful of 0-cost-Librams. PEW PEW PEW. Brann Bronzebeard: Want to reduce your Librams faster, further and more reliable? Want a hilariously big Lynessa? More stuff from Liadrin if your hand-size allows it? Even more Oozes? Brann is your guy. Haven’t played him, but his uses are pretty obvious. The list he is played in also runs Zola, for even more value. Zola, the Gorgon: You run some powerful battlecry-minions, so Zola has obvious applications. Another great value-engine, but we’re drifting into severe greed-territory here. Bonus: Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End: He is in none of the lists and I don’t think he is needed, but he’s our lord and saviour after all. Want something wonky or just a Hail Mary? You play so many spells, Yogg becomes a huge RNG-fiesta. But don’t blame me, if he screws you, Yogg giveth and Yogg taketh away. You could also move towards the Quest Libram-lists, if that suits you better, but it’ll probably cost you the OTK-package. Moving on: Mulligan, matchups and stats. I’ll discuss class by class and archetype by archetype based on the times I faced each class (and archetype, but this might become a bit subjective, since I don’t have numbers on this). Remember that my stats aren’t complete, Legend only and with 60 games total a small sample-size. I could be incredibly off here, some matchups occurred only once or twice and I may have won or lost because of good or bad draws. Don’t yell at me. General Mulligan: Always keep: Aldor Attendant, Crystology, Libram of Wisdom and Hand of A’dal. With a buff in hand and ideally on the coin, you can also keep Echoing Ooze. Against aggro: Wild Pyromancer Against control: If the rest of your hand is good, you can think about keeping Aldor Truthseeker, but I’d generally try to have a fast start. Total: 94 games = 100%, 56-38 = 60% winrate vs. Priest (15 games = 16%, 10 -5 = 66%) Favoured Expect Reno Razakus combo, it’s almost certainly correct. I faced a single Inner Fire combo Priest who drew poorly, but in general you are the beat-down in this one, although the Uther-OTK-combo can be a real lifesaver. Try to get on the board early, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t manage to stay there. They run silence (Silence, Mass Dispell, Plague, Zephrys) and very clean board-clears in the form of Psychic Scream (and sometimes Plague, although probably mostly discovered), they can have additional copies of aoe-clear via Shadow Visions and Renew, they can yoink your stuff, they run Dirty Rat to ruin your combo-dreams – in short: it’s a shitty experience to play against, but you have many outs. Try to not overcommit, have something in hand to refill your board after a clear. If you go for the combo-kill, keep multiple minions in hand with your combo-pieces, until you saw the Dirty Rat. Hand-size management is key, try to get as much value out of Liadrin and Lynessa as possible, they are your lifeline if you lost your Librams to a Silence. Prioritize targeting minions with heals, so Lynessa repeats them, but if Shadowreaper Anduin is online, keep your hero’s health up. They can OTK you, especially if they have all their key-cards on curve, so don’t get mad if they do, it simply happens, your giant wall of taunt won’t save you. vs. Warrior (15 games = 16%, 11-4 = 73%): Favoured You should expect Pirate Warrior, although it can also be Odd or DMH. Mulligan for aggro anyway, having a clunky hand against them is something you normally don’t survive to tell about. vs. Pirate Warrior: Even or slightly unfavoured (very draw dependant) Get on the board asap and try to stay there. Tempo minions out in the early-game, even if you can’t buff them immediately, hold on to the board as hard as possible. Ship’s Cannons and Skybarges are high priority-targets, you might need to pop a LoJ just to remove it, they’ll rip your board and face to shreds otherwise. You have nothing to remove the Ancharr, you can only throw taunts in their way. If you have Wild Pyro + LoJ in hand, keep in mind, that it’s not a board clear if they have a Southsea Captain in play, all the pirates will survive with 1 hp left. Nozdormu won me multiple games, because PW fades out fast if they emptied their hand and you removed it. Surviving the early-game is really everything, throw out what you have and hope something sticks to buff next turn (or even this turn, if you are desperate). vs. DMH Warrior: Strongly favoured You’ll probably need to OTK here, so prioritize cycling. They run at least one Dirty Rat and are able to copy it, so don’t tempo out “useless” minions if you are going for the OTK-kill, you might need them as Rat-fodder. Control Warrior doesn’t run silence, so you might also just overwhelm them with sticky minions, they can’t deal with your LoW-stacks apart from maybe through Zephrys, but at this point you should already have won. Plan around Coldlight Oracle-mills, they might also ruin your combo-dreams. vs. Odd Warrior: Strongly favoured They tend to concede once they get what I am up to. No Dirty Rats, no silence, the only way to lose is to get combo-pieces milled – if you even need the combo. vs. Warlock (15 games = 16%, 8-7 = 53%): Slightly unfavoured There are just so many Warlock-archetypes in Wild. Discard Zoo, Mecha’thun OTK, Cube, Reno, Even and probably some other wonky stuff. I tend to mulligan for aggro and a fast start in general. vs. Cube: it feels slightly unfavoured, I don’t know if it is though You can get on the board faster, but they can remove you just as fast. Both of you don’t run silence, but their stuff is bigger. The matches I won, I managed to build a wall and they were unable to get through it, eventually leading to me beating them down. The ones I lost, they pulled Mal’Ganis early and proceeded to copy him, leaving me unable to clear the board via Pyro+LoJ, same issue as with clearing Southsea Captains. Pyro + lots of LoW can work wonders. vs. Discard Zoo: Unfavoured (very draw dependant) They are fast and they draw fast, their deck tends to be empty around turn 5. Probably too fast for us, if we don’t draw well, it’s simply a blow-out. Contest the board early, but don’t get your hopes up, their onslaught of growing weenies will overrun you at some point. Taunts, clears and heals become your best friend at that point, Nozdormu on turn 4 with good follow-up can be backbreaking for them. vs. Mecha’thun: Strongly unfavoured They play Solitaire and at some point you die. It’s inevitable and they draw faster than you can towards your own OTK-combo, sticking something to the board is also close to impossible thanks to Plague and Dark Skies. You can try, but you could also just concede to save time and nerves… If you want to try, go fast! Aim everything face, unless it’s something you really can not ignore (Thalnos maybe?). vs. Reno: Favoured Similar to the Reno-Priest-matchup, but they don’t have the burst and build bigger boards instead. Play around Dirty Rat, don’t overcommit, win. My OTK-combo was once interrupted by a Grizzled Wizard + Sir Finley Mrglton-combo, so that might be a thing. The deck is a rare sight on ladder though… vs. Mage (13 games = 14%, 12-1 = 92%): Strongly favoured There are 4 types of Mages: Quest, Secret, Reno Quest and Reno. I might repeat myself, but you want a fast start. vs. Quest Mage: Favoured Play as aggressive as possible. The nerf to the quest slowed them down slightly, that works in your favour. You aim to kill them before they can finish the quest, but if they stall with freezes and stuff and get close to finishing it, you should build a board of big taunts, so that their Giants can’t connect with your face in their double-turn. If they are able to get a triple-turn with Vargoth, you are nonetheless likely toast. Having Wild Pyro + LoJ at your disposable comes in handy if they freeze your board and establish Sorcerer’s Apprentice or Flamewaker to go off next turn. vs. Secret Mage: Favoured They want to burn you down and you have heals and taunts, should work in your favour. One of the matchups, where a deck-tracker is invaluable cause it keeps track of possible secrets. Avoid throwing expensive spells in their Counterspell, if possible, test with disposable 0- or 1-cost spells. Test for runes with something like Aldor Attendant, where you get the effect even if the minion dies. Nozdormu and board clears also come in handy. Play it safe, they can’t keep up with your value-generation. Prioritize healing your face, they have lots of burn. vs. Reno Quest Mage: Favoured Similar to Quest Mage, but they complete the quest slower and control the board better. Your OTK becomes an option here, so keep an eye out for the Dirty Rat. But generally your big minions should do the trick, polymorphs and freezes can be painful though. vs. LPG Reno Mage: Favoured There are two sub-archetypes of this one, the threat-dense proactive LPG-variant and the deep-control-variant with FLJ and/or N’Zoth. Expect to be out-controlled and favour the OTK-combo if things go south, Dirty Rat again means danger again and they can *poof* your whole board at 10 mana, so don’t play into that. So far the only Mage deck I lost a single game to, shoutout to MajorTomHS, who mopped the floor with me after playing LPG with Dragoncaster on curve into insane value-bombs. vs. Druid (13 games = 14%, 7-6 = 54%): Slightly unfavoured Druid is an odd one. You can expect to play against a combo deck, although there are also aggressive builds (token-style). Problem is, you never really know what combo you play against until you see certain cards, because they all are built so similar. They all ramp and draw lightning-fast and generate tons of armor in the process, so either go insanely big or aim for the OTK-finish (although they’ll reach their win-condition before you, so hope for good draws). Always evaluate if a Spreading Plague will come down next turn and if you can answer it, before doing something like going wide. Evaluate every single hero-power: If it’s just for the sake of spending mana, remember that there will be a 1/5 with taunt against your 1/1. vs. Togwaggle: Slightly favoured, but draw dependant You need to get your Libram-train going before they combo you. Go wide in the early-game and try to get as many LoW as possible, they have no answer to that. At some point, your deck will be gone and you’ll draw useless stuff every turn (or be in fatigue already), so Lynessa and Liadrin to refill your hand and board are crucial. It’s unlikely, that you’ll have the time to assemble the Uther-OTK, but it is very possible to kill them with your Uther-hero-power over multiple turns, since you can buff the tokens so they can’t remove them. vs. Linecracker: Favoured Theoretically, this should be an easy one, since your OTK doesn’t care about armor. Sadly, they can board-lock you and then you lost, since they won’t play anything anymore and you can’t kill your own stuff. For the OTK, you need 5 board-spaces. Wild Pyro + multiple LoW can clean up for you, assuming you still have 2 more LoW left to kill him off after, otherwise he will block you combo by killing your tokens while refreshing with Beardo. Tricky matchup, but winnable. vs. Malygos: Strongly unfavoured This Is one of the matchups, where you can basically roll over. Their combo is incredibly consistent thanks to Psychmelon and they laugh at your taunts and point a giant laser for 0 mana at your face when they go off (which tends to be around turn 5 or 6). Try to SMOrc them, but don’t expect wonders, you’re not an aggro deck and they have so much armor gain. vs. Jade: Favoured (?) I faced a single Jade Druid, so take this with a grain of salt. They have no answer to your never ending LoW-stream, keep building big minions, multiply your buffs and whack ‘em. I held onto my board clears for Plague and giant dragon boards via Ysera and at some point they ran out of stuff to deal with my biggies. vs. Token Didn’t face a single one of those, only know of their existence via twitter. I would probably lose, if I faced one, since I wouldn’t mulligan for my Wild Pyros and the deck’s board clears are very limited to begin with. I would assume that building big taunts is good. vs. Demon Hunter (12 games = 13%, 4-8 = 33%): Unfavoured (very draw dependant) It’s always Odd DH. While you have your ways to contest aggro, 2 cards in their deck significantly lower your chances to succeed: Consume Magic and Warglaives of Azzinoth. Especially the latter can ruin your day, if you managed to get on the board and contest their minions, the Glaives are such an insane swing, because your whole board is gone and their minions keep growing (looking at you, Hench-Clan Thug). Maybe, with the upcoming nerfs, this matchup might take a turn (or they get even faster, I don’t know). As always against aggro, Nozdormu + followup is insane, taunts, clears and heals are great. vs. Paladin (7 games = 7%, 3-4 = 43%): Even or slightly unfavoured Expect aggro of course, no one plays slow(er) Paladin decks. vs. Handbuff Mech: Slightly unfavoured (very draw dependant) You have probably 2 turns to hit the board, they will use the time to draw and buff their hand. You are very dependant on a fast start and a board clear in hand. Do not use Nozdormu if you don’t have a clear immediately after, they will create a ginormous minion, probably with divine shield, taunt and windfury. vs. Odd: Favoured A buffed Wild Pyro is probably the best answer to Odd Paladin you can get. They also don’t like taunts. vs. Shaman (4 games = 4%, 1-3 = 25%): Unfavoured Devolve is a nightmare. vs. Big: Strongly unfavoured If you get a fast start with Librams and other buffs, they’ll just Devolve your board, leaving you with worthless 0- and 1-mana stuff. In addition you’ll have to fight sticky 10-mana-minions from turn 4 onwards, who, even if you manage to clear them with your precious board clears, will simply respawn with full health. And if that wasn’t enough, Ancestor’s call also has a built-in Dirty Rat-effect, pulling your battlecry-minions or combo-pieces. Abysmal matchup (hard-counter?). vs. Even: Unfavoured They also run Devolve, basically denying you an early-game. They also get on the board early and make their totems super-sticky with 0-mana buffs. If you live long enough to get a board-clear off, you have a chance. Because of their threat-density and totem-synergies, that is pretty unlikely, though. vs. Rogue and Hunter (0 games = 0%) DH and Pirate Warrior doing the same, but better, therefore there are neither Rogues nor Hunters in the meta. If you face a Rogue nonetheless, expect aggro or a meme, Odd and Kingsbane Rogue are somewhat viable and Rogue is known for all the shenanigans they can pull off. Hunter should also be inherently aggressive-ish, with Highlander Hunter being the most likely archetype. Conclusion / TDLR: - very fun deck, if you are looking for something different (Midrange in 2020?) and have the legendaries or are willing to churn out thousands of dust right before a new expansion - definitely not Tier S or even Tier 1 material, but seems to be well-positioned in the meta - Swiss pocket-knife style of deck, with specific answers for specific problems - surprise-factor, because everyone expects aggro, when they see Paladin - such an odd deck, that you opponents might add you after a game to have a nice chat, rather than to tell you some dark secrets about your mother P.S.: English is not my first language, if you find mistakes, keep them 😊 Constructive feedback, additions or a discussion in general are of course welcome.
15 Most Famous Slot Machines and Most Popular Slot Games
1. Liberty Bell
Invented and designed by a San Francisco mechanic named Charles Fey in 1895, the Liberty Bell is the first slot machine. The main symbols here include horseshoes, stars, spades, diamonds, hearts, and Liberty Bells. Once three bells are aligned, the machine pays 50 cents. Having a coin slot at the top, it features small reels in the middle and a paytable at the bottom. It works like this - players insert a Nickel and pull a lever on the right-hand side to spin the reels. Although the Operator Bell and Liberty Bell have been removed from casinos, the original Liberty Bell on display can be seen in the Liberty Belle saloon in Reno, Nevada.
2. Lion's Share
One of the most famous slot machines, Microgaming’s classic slot Lion's Share, gained a lot of success back in 2014, due to news channels that discussed the topic on how Lion's Share's progressive jackpot hasn’t been hit for two decades. Thousands of people have tried but no one was lucky enough to pull it off. Although the machine only featured 3 reels and only 1 payline, Lion’s Share has managed to become one of the most popular releases in Vegas, so popular that people waited in line just to put a coin into it and try spinning those reels. Eventually, a New Hampshire couple hit the $2.4 million progressive jackpot in MGM’s Grand’s Lion’s Share. Soon after, MGM Grand made a decision to retire the Lion's Share machine since it required a lot of maintenance. Still, the game became part of slot history with a jackpot that took 20 years to win.
3. Megabucks
Created by IGT, Megabucks has managed to become one of the world's best progressive slot machines. The game is also responsible for numerous big wins throughout the entire jackpots’ history. Also known as the biggest money jackpots of all time, Megabucks slot machines are described as simple games with a massive progressive jackpot. One of the biggest wins was when an anonymous engineer won a staggering $39.7 million at Las Vegas' Excalibur, back in 2003. As for the other big wins hit on this machine, there was a cocktail waitress Cynthia Jay Brennan who snagged an incredible $34.9 million at Vegas' Desert Inn, as well as a retired flight attendant hitting $27.5 million at Vegas' Palace Station. Johanna Huendl won $22.6 million whereas an Illinois businessman hit $21.3 million on the very first spin. However, after winning the prize, one of the winner's family members had a tragic accident, which (as some believe) only supported the theory of a Megabucks curse. Other unfortunate stories are just believed to be urban legends, including anecdotes about underage players, as well as casino employees, being big winners but not being able to claim their jackpots because of specific state laws and regulation.
4. Wheel of Fortune
IGT’s Wheel of Fortune has proven to be the second most famous slot machine of all time. Featuring a bonus feature just like the real show, the slot machine is usually played by many slot fans and can be found in numerous casinos all over the globe. Although the game comes in more variations, probably the most popular one is still its 3-reel version, with a colourful wheel at the top. The Wheel of Fortune multiplayer game features a bank of machines where every player gets their own screen. What makes the game even more exciting is the multiplayer edition where people can play the bonus round together, which really intensifies the game show aspect. In a 5-reel Wheel of Fortune slot, however, Wild symbols will help players land winning combos and, if you’re lucky enough, you may get a Super Wild that will boost your win up to 5x! Last but not least, the Triple Action Bonus is activated by getting at least 3 Triple Action Bonus symbols anywhere on the reels. But still, none of the newer Wheel of Fortune slots measure up to the original one because of the large progressive jackpot involved.
5. Mega Fortune
Featuring 5 reels and 25 paylines, NetEnt’s Mega Fortune slot became very popular among players as it usually grows into a multimillion-euro amount before being hit. The main symbols here include luxury cars, yachts, and expensive jewellery, Mega Fortune is an online slot machine game which justifies its theme that comes with the largest ever online slot jackpots. The game offers a few different features that make the entire gameplay more fascinating, however, by far the most interesting ones are the 3 different progressive jackpots: Mega Jackpot, Major Jackpot and Rapid Jackpot. There are counters for all 3 of these that are displayed above the reels. Champagne is the Scatter and if you land at least 3 of them simultaneously, you will trigger Free Spins bonus round. Likewise, Wheel of Luck is the Bonus symbol, and if you land 3 or more symbols in succession from left to right on an active payline, you will activate the Bonus game. What’s interesting about this slot is the fact that a Finnish man won a huge jackpot worth €17.8 million while spinning the reels of Mega Fortune. This record from 2013, has been passed by Mega Moolah, but the game is still proof how rich players can get after playing Mega Fortune.
6. Mega Moolah
Powered by Microgaming and being among most popular slot games, Mega Moolah is a 25-payline progressive slot which has served as a competitor to Mega Fortune's big jackpots. Followed by African safari music, the game features antelopes, elephants, giraffes, lions, monkeys and zebras as the main symbols. Landing at least 3 Scatters at the same time will trigger 15 Free Spins. What’s more, all wins hit during Free Spins are tripled, whereas Free Spins can also be retriggered. Players can win one of the 4 Progressive Jackpots within the randomly triggered Bonus round. The game paid some of the largest slot machine jackpots that have ever been triggered. In 2015,for example, Mega Moolah gained international recognition when a British soldier Jon Heywood won a massive €17,879,645.
7. Cleopatra
Inspired by the famous Egyptian theme and Developed by IGT, Cleopatra is a 20-payline classic game that managed to stand out above similar releases. Featuring ancient Egyptian music, the main symbols here include Cleopatra, the Eye of Horus, scarabs, and pyramids. Landing at least 3 Sphinx symbols will trigger the Cleopatra Bonus, which awards 15 Free Spins. All prizes, except for the 5 Cleopatra symbols, are tripled in the Free Spins round. The game has been so successful that it inspired its creators to make a sequel, Cleopatra II, with richer graphics and engaging sound effects. But even if you choose the original game, you'll be playing a classic that's still enjoyed by various players today. And, in case you land 5 Cleopatra symbols you’ll get a jackpot of 10,000 coins.
8. Book of Ra
Having a popular Ancient-Egypt theme, Book of Ra has always been one of the best choices to play in land based and online casinos. Powered by Novomatic, Book of Ra is a 9 payline video slot that offers plenty of bonus features and big payouts. With entertaining narrative and energising gameplay, there are numerous ways to win here. In case you land 5 archaeologists simultaneously, you’ll get an impressive 5,000x your line bet. Earning big bucks, however, comes from the Free Spins feature. What players need to do is land at least 3 Scatter books to trigger the Free Spins feature. Pages of the book will flip and randomly determine which symbol will expand during the 10 Free Spins. Although hitting the jackpot may not be easy, with only a few one in between, when big wins come, they can be big.
9. Starburst
There’s no denying NetEnt’s Starburst slot became kinda legendary in the iGaming universe. With its dark background and shiny space looking gemstones, Starburst slot features 5 reels and 10 paylines. The well-known futuristic music in this release is also easily noticeable, as is the game’s expanding Wild. More precisely, the Wilds may only occur on the reels 2, 3 and 4, and, once 1 or more wilds appear on those reels, the Starburst Wild feature will be activated. During this feature, Starburst wilds expand to cover the entire reel and remain while the other reels re-spin. Should a new wild land during a re-spin, it expands and stays along with any previously expanded Starbursts for another re-spin. Another cool feature is that Starburst pays both ways, instead of only paying you for landing at least 3 identical symbols on adjacent reels starting with the reel furthest to the left. The maximum single spin payout for a person (betting the $200 maximum) is $100,000. But, in order for that to happen, you must land five bars on consecutive reels on an active payline. Players love this slot, probably because it’s suitable for both newbies and experienced players.
10. Immortal Romance
Powered by Microgaming, Immortal Romance is based on sci-fi and the cult of Vampires which has become one of the popular casino slot machines in the last couple of years. Apart from superb graphics and great audio and visual effects, the slot features 5 reels and 243 paylines, and the theoretical RTP rate of 96.86%. The four main characters are Amber, Troy, Michael and Sarah. When it comes to features and bonus games, Immortal Romance offers different variants. Wild Desire feature can occur randomly, and as soon as it does, it can turn 1 to 5 reels completely Wild. Likewise, landing 3 or more Scatters anywhere on the reels in this game, activates the Chamber of Spins feature which cannot be triggered during Wild Desire. The game is still among the most popular slots, as many players still try their luck in this slot in the hope to get the highest multiplier possible.
11. Gonzo’s Quest
Beautifully designed video slot powered by NetEnt, Gonzo Quest features 5 reels and 20 paylines. The story is based on the famous conquistador Gonzalo Pizzaro who is on his way to the Peruvian ruins and just about to experience the unique quest. Now, Gonzo’s Quest has become one of the most popular slot games of all time, probably because it comes with a few interesting features, Avalanche Multipliers feature being the most interesting one of all. In Essence, the reels in the slot move in a cascading manner which resemble an Avalanche. As you activate each new Avalanche, you will win a multiplier. Multipliers are displayed above the reels, and go up to 5x, that is if you land 4 or more avalanches simultaneously.
12. Age of the Gods
Being among famous slot machines and inspired by Ancient Greek mythology, Age of the Gods is a 5-reel, 20-payline progressive slot powered by Playtech. The main characters are Athena, Zeus, Hercules, and Poseidon power up 4 free game modes that offer extra wilds and win multipliers! Once you start spinning, you’ll come across a series of bonus features, such as Athena Free Games, Zeus Free Games, Poseidon Free Games and Hercules Free Games. Wild logo is the game’s wild card and it substitutes for all symbols, with the exception of the Scatter. Landing at least 3 Scatters anywhere on the reels simultaneously triggers the Bonus game. Moreover, landing 5 God symbols in any order on an active payline will get you 200x your line bet! During the main game, any spin can activate the Age of the Gods Mystery Jackpot. This mini game guarantees a win of up to 4 progressive jackpots. All you gotta do is click on the coins to reveal jackpot symbols, and if you match 3 identical ones, you will win that jackpot.
13. Money Honey
Having a cute theme, Money Honey is a 5-reel and a 243 payline slot themed around honey. With Wilds, Free Spins, Scatters and multipliers, it is a fast-paced exciting creation featuring vibrant colours. Likewise, it is a mobile-optimized slot which may be an excellent choice if you’re new to online gambling or if you’ve been playing for years. Just like in other games, Wilds will help you win payouts as they are able to replicate most other symbols on the reels once a winning combination has been made. Another symbol you may want to keep your eyes on is a Money Wheel card. Once you manage to land at least 3 of them on your reels after a spin, the bonus game begins, and you spin a big wheel to choose a prize.
14. Quick Hit
And our selection wouldn’t be complete without Bally's Quick Hit slot. Featuring traditional Las Vegas symbols with sharp graphics and relaxed music, the video slot has 5 reels, 3 rows, and 30 paylines. Once you decide how many paylines you want to bet on, your gaming adventure can begin. There are Scatters symbols and three bonus games to benefit from. The biggest payout here comes from landing the triple seven symbol. Should you land 5 of these lucky numbers on the reels at the same time, you will win 5,000 coins, whereas if you land five wild symbols, you’ll get 12,500 coins. Those looking for hitting a jackpot should pay attention to Quick Hit Platinum symbols as 5 of these contribute to 5,000x players’ original bet amount – and even more, with the max bet activated. The second-highest jackpot can be hit by landing 9 Quick Hit Slot symbols. Both the Quick Hit Platinum and regular Quick Hit symbols must occur on or within one position of the first payline to be eligible for a jackpot win.
15. SlotZilla Zip Line
And now something completely different. We’re finishing our selection of famous slots in style, with the world’s largest slot machine - StotZilla Zip Line - 128 feet tall which has two take-off levels. This $12 million SlotZilla zip line took more than a year to build and opened its doors in 2014 and has already had more than 2 million riders so far. The 11-story slot machine is decorated with over-sized dice, a glass of martini, a pink flamingo, video reels, coins, and two showgirls - Jennifer and Porsha. SlotZilla offers two different rider experiences - the upper Zoomline and a lower Zipline. This unique machine has a huge video screen with reels and a gigantic arm, replicating a true slot machine experience.
40 Best Songs of All Times About Poker, Dice, Cards and Addiction
40. Go Down Gamblin’ - Blood Sweat and Tears
Released in 1971, Go Down Gamblin’ by Blood Sweat and Tears is a song describing a gambler who is “born a natural loser.” He never wins, no matter what game he plays, but, he doesn’t feel like a loser. As the song goes – “Cause I've been called a natural lover by that lady over there, Honey, I'm just a natural gambler but I try to do my share.”
39. Gambler - Madonna
Gambler is a song written and played by Madonna, made for the film Vision Quest. Although the song reached the top 10 in the charts of the UK, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, and Norway, Madonna performed it only once on her 1985The Virgin Tour. It’s a catchy song, we suggest you play it as you spin the reels of some of your favourite retro online slots.
38. The House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
Our list wouldn’t be complete without the 1964 hit song - The House of the Rising Sun by The Animals. Everybody knows the famous lines ”My mother, she was a tailor, sewed these new blue jeans, my father was a gamblin' man way down in New Orleans.” This single had a major success and made it to the top 10 songs on mainstream rock radio stations in the USA. Likewise, the hit was featured in the video game Guitar Hero Live.
37. The Winner Takes It All - ABBA
Whether we admit it or not, we all love at least some songs played by the very well-known Swedish pop group, ABBA. According to some sources, Bjorn Ulvaeus wrote the 1980 hit song The Winner Takes It All which was inspired by his divorce to his fellow band member, Agnetha Fältskog. The winner takes it all is a sort of a comparison to a divorce (especially the part ”I've played all my cards and that's what you've done too, nothing more to say, no more ace to play”), where one of them is the winner and the other one is left with nothing. And things are just the same when it comes to gambling, so we’ve decided to put the song on our list.
36. Shape of my Heart - Sting
We’re all aware of the fact that our gambling behaviour can be influenced by certain types of music and that's because online gambling and music go hand in hand. So, we suggest you start playing your preferred games with one of everyone’s favourite songs by Sting called The Shape of my Heart. It was released in 1993 and used for the end credits of the film Léon. In one of his interviews, Sting explained that the lyrics of the song tell the story of a card player who places bets not in order to win but to figure out something that’s been bothering him - “some kind of scientific, almost religious law.”
35. All I Wanna Do Is Play Cards - Corb Lund
“Well, I guess I really oughta be makin up songs but all I wanna do is play cards. I know it's dumb and sick and wrong but all I wanna do is play cards. Got the studio booked in Tennessee, and my record producer's callin me, the tape will roll in just three weeks and all I wanna do is play cards.” Does it sound familiar? It’s a 2005 hit by Corb Lund called All I Wanna Do Is Play Cards, once you hear it you’ll be playing it on repeat.
34. Gambling Man - The Overtones
When you’re falling in love, it’s perfectly normal to feel like you want to gamble everything just to attract that person’s attention to notice you and love you back. Well, Gambling Man is a lively 2010 song that tells a story of a guy fascinated with his love, so he places all his bets on her, as the song goes - “I played my hand, I rolled the dice, now I'm paying for my sins, I got some bad addiction.” This time, he feels that this love affair is different from any other – “Baby, it's you, yeah, yeah, that's right.” The song was released in 2010 and has been popular ever since.
33. Poker Face - Lady Gaga
Although the Poker Face song is more about the game of romance rather than the game of poker, the catchy refrain that starts with “Can't read my, no he can't read my poker face” kinda reminds us of winning at the tables, so we couldn’t skip it this time. Released in 2008, the song achieved worldwide success, topping the charts in the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada and several European countries.
32. Little Queen of Spades - Robert Johnson
Moving on to the Little Queen of Spades, a song title by the American blues musician Robert Johnson who recorded the song in 1937 and first released it in 1938. The first version of this gambling-themed song has a playing time of 2:11, whereas the second one lasts 4s longer (2:15), and is considered an alternate take and first appeared on Johnson's album The Complete Recordings, in 1990.
31. Train of Consequences - Megadeth
Another great song Train of Consequences is the title created by Megadeth, released as the first single from their sixth studio album Youthanasia in 1994. The song was later included on their compilation albums and its music video was the 26th most played video on MTV. There’s this part of the song “No horse ever ran as fast as the money that you bet, I'm blowing on my cards and I play them to my chest” – which is about a person’s gambling problem, who realises something’s wrong with this lifestyle, but it still hunts him down. Could be just the thrill, but he just can’t stop playing.
30. Gambler - Whitesnake
Released on the album Slide It In (1984) and appearing on the compilation album Gold (2006), Gambler is the song by the British hard rock band Whitesnake. These words may sound familiar - “No fame or fortune, no luck of the draw, when I dance with the Queen of Hearts, a jack of all trades, a loser in love, it's tearing my soul apart”. And in case you’ve never heard it, we think you should give it a shot, the chances are you’re going to love it!
29. Gambling Man - Woody Guthrie
Now here’s one single from 1957 - Gamblin' Man. The song was taped live at the London Palladium and published as a double A side, with Puttin' On the Style. Reaching #1 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer 1957, it was “the last UK number 1 to be released on 78 rpm format only, as 7' vinyl had become the norm by this time.” Written by Woody Guthrie and Donegan, this gambling themed song was produced by Alan Freeman and Michael Barclay.
28. Roll of the Dice - Bruce Springsteen
According to Songfacts, Roll of the Dice was the first Springsteen’s song he didn’t write by himself. In fact, E Street Band’s pianist Roy Bittan helped with the music, while Springsteen was in charge of the lyrics, starting with – “Well I've been a losin' gambler, just throwin' snake eyes, Love ain't got me downhearted. I know up around the corner lies, My fool's paradise in just another roll of the dice.” After he broke up the E Street Band in October 1989, Springsteen wrote lyrics for the Roll of the Dice (with two other songs) and liked them to the point where he began writing and recording more songs.
27. Queen of Diamonds - Tom Odell
Here’s one song about a gambling fanatic who’s trying to satisfy his own addiction but also someone else, hoping it’s going to save him. Released in 2018, Queen of Diamonds is Tom Odell’s song from the album Jubilee Road, based on the local characters that inspired this British songwriter to include the whisky-soaked gamblers who regularly visited one betting shop.
26. The Angel and the Gambler - Iron Maiden
Now, this song may divide Iron Maiden fans and it’s most probably because of its repetitive lyrics that can be a bit annoying. The release we’re talking about is The Angel and the Gambler. Truth be told, the melody in general is very catchy and, even a bit similar to The Who in some moments. As the song was released in 1998 while Blaze Bayley was its frontmen, it’s missing the well-known high-pitch vocals from Bruce Dickinson.
25. Ramblin' Gamblin Man - Bob Seger
We’re moving on to a rock single from 1978 - Ramblin' Gamblin Man by Bob Seger. The author meets an old acquaintance, a professional gambler who happens to be a swagger. As such, he attracts people’s attention whenever he bets. Putting so much of his faith in the cards (rather than in people), he walks away every time, just before avoiding loss. Along the way, the narrator realises that, if you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find he’s a very cynical man, who will never change. Another gambling-themed song worth mentioning by Bob Seger is Still The Same.
24. Blow Up The Pokies - The Whitlams
Blow up the Pokies is the next song on our list, played by The Whitlams. It is the second single by the group from their 4th studio album, Love This City. Released in the year 2000, the song became a hit and made it to number 21 on the ARIA Singles Chart. According to several resources, the lyrics written by singer Tim Freedman were inspired by the destruction he saw in original Whitlams bassist Andy Lewis's life, due to his gambling addiction.
23. A Good Run of Bad Luck - Clint Black
Now here’s one 1994-song packed with gambling-related terms. As you listen to A Good Run of Bad Luck, recorded by American music artist Clint Black, you'll have a bit of fun as you try identifying what all these gambling terms mean. The song is a bit fast and is about falling in love by using gambling metaphors. The main character is willing to spend a lot of money to win his special lady over and, although he has had a period of bad luck, he is not giving up – “I've been to the table, and I've lost it all before, I'm willin' and able, always comin' back for more.”
22. When You’re Hot, You’re Hot - Jerry Reed
Jerry Reed won a Grammy for the song When You’re Hot, You’re Hot which was released in 1971. Most people remember it as it was a major hit, ranked as number 1 in the country charts, also making its way up the Pop Top 40. It’s an enjoyable novelty song about the ups and downs of the gambling life, about one’s winning streak caught in an illegal game of Crap. Country star Jerry Reed also came up with a version The Uptown Poker Club in 1973.
21. Lawyers, Guns and Money - Warren Zevon
Next one up - Lawyers, Guns and Money is a song by Warren Zevon, the closing track on his album Excitable Boy, released in 1978. An edited version of this song was distributed as a single and found itself on the A Quiet Normal Life best of compilation on the CD and LP. The song goes like this - “I went home with a waitress the way I always do, how was I to know she was with the russians, too? I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk Send lawyers, guns, and money Dad, get me out of this, hiyah!”
20. The Lottery Song - Harry Nilsson
According to the man in the 1972 pop-rock song The Lottery Song by Harry Nilsson, there's more than one way to get to Vegas. Addressing his lover, the narrator mentions a few different options for buying a ticket and going to Sin City – “We could win the lottery we could go to Vegas,” and “We could wait till summer, we could save our money” as well as “We could make a record, sell a lot of copies, we could play Las Vegas.”
19. Casino Queen - Wilco
Now here’s one black-humoured gambling-themed song, released in 1995 and titled after a casino. Featuring a dirty electric guitar, Casino Queen was composed by an American songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, who wrote this song after playing a game in a riverboat casino accompanied by his dad. Inspired by the event, the author wrote: “Casino Queen my lord you're mean, I've been gambling like a fiend on your tables so green.”
18. Have a Lucky Day - Morphine
Another song on our list that you simply must check out starts like this: “I feel lucky, I just feel that way, I'm on a bus to Atlantic City later on today. Now I'm sitting at a blackjack table and swear to God the dealer has a tag says, "Mabel." Hit me, hit me! I smile at Mabel, soon they're bringing complimentary drinks to the table.” Check it out yourself - it’s called Have a Lucky Day by Morphine.
17. Kentucky Gambler - Merle Haggard
Written by Dolly Parton and released in 1974, Merle Haggard’s Kentucky Gambler is another song on our ultimate gambling playlist that you should pay attention to. It’s about a miner from Kentucky who leaves his family to gamble, under the bright lights of Reno. Unsurprisingly, his winning streak comes to an end, and he loses all his winnings. All broke, he decided to return back home only when he arrived, he found out his wife was involved with someone else.
16. The Jack - AC/DC
The next song on our list will give you some adrenaline boost, for sure. It goes like this - “She gave me the queen, she gave me the king, she was wheelin' and dealin', just doin' her thing, she was holdin' a pair, but I had to try…” Sounds familiar? This song from the 1975s is called The Jack and is played by AC/DC and there’s no way you can skip it.
15. Blackjack - Ray Charles
Moving on to something a bit different - a melody that blackjack lovers can listen to as they play is Ray Charles’ Blackjack. Apart from being a good quality song from 1955, it carries an important message with an emphasis on how brutal the game of blackjack can be. Some sources say that Ray Charles wrote it after beating T-Bone Walker at a blackjack game session. Yet another Ray Charles’ famous song about gambling is called a Losing Hand.
14. Ooh Las Vegas - Gram Parson
“Ooh, Las Vegas, ain't no place for a poor boy like me”... is a song-into for Ooh Las Vegas which was written by Gram Parsons and Ric Grech. It was first released by Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris in 1974. Playing this song would be perfect for the beginning of the road trip (i.e. to Las Vegas), especially if you have the energy to sing along.
13. The Stranger - Leonard Cohen
Published in 1968 and performed by Leonard Cohen, The Stranger appears in the The Ernie Game movie about a man released from a mental asylum. More appropriately, it is the perfect opening song in the 1971 Western McCabe & Mrs Miller, in which Warren Beatty plays a gambler. As you listen to this song (without watching the movie), it makes you see fascinating images of card games, smoky dreams, and concepts of risk versus safety.
12. Desperado - Eagles
Written by Glen Frey and Don Henley, Desperado song is one of The Eagles’ greatest hits from their 1973 album of the same name. The song features a classic tune while the ballad tells the story of a lone wolf imprisoned by his loneliness. As for the lyrics, they have loads of card references mentioning the queen of diamonds, the queen of hearts, and so on.
11. Huck's Tune - Bob Dylan
The next song on our list is about the risks of poker, money, and relationships, which are precisely what the movie Lucky You is all about. Does it ring a bell? That’s right, this 2007 song is called Huck’s Tune and is performed by Bob Dylan. Each of us can all relate to lines "You push it all in, and you've no chance to win, you play 'em on down to the end." Play the song and you’ll enjoy more than 4 amazing minutes of Bob Dylan. Likewise, Bob Dylan recorded Rambling, Gambling Willie and Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, both excellent and both inspired by gambling.
10. Four Little Diamonds - Electric Light Orchestra
A song by the British rock band Electric Light Orchestra Four Little Diamonds was released in 1983 and found itself on the album Secret Messages. The single wasn’t so popular in the US, being only 2 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, at number 86, and number 84 in the UK. This song refers to the singer’s cheating lover who tricked him out of a ring which had 'four little diamonds' on it.
9. You Can't Beat The House - Mark Knopfler
Moving on to our next choice for the day, You Can’t Beat the House. It’s the third song on the Get Lucky studio album released in 2009 by British singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Knopfler. The album and the songs received favorable reviews with the album reaching the top three positions on album charts in Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland. The singer’s divine voice combined with beautiful music and lyrics goes like this – “You can't bear the house, you can't bear the house, tell the man somebody, you can't beat the house.”
8. Deck of Cards - Don Williams
Deck of Cards is a recitation song that tells the story of a soldier who gets caught while playing cards in church and then faces a sentence from a superior officer. The soldier defends his case, explaining he wasn't about to deal a hand of poker, but was rather confirming his faith with the cards. Performed by T. Texas Tyler, the song managed to become a major hit in the 1940s and 1950s. Also, Wink Martindale had an even bigger hit with his 1959 cover, with a successful version by Don Williams featuring Tex Ritter and Buddy Cole.
7. Gambler’s Blues - B.B. King
First recording of the song Gambler’s Blues by B.B. King was in 1966, and it was released in 1967. The song appears on the album Back in the Alley (1970). Some say gambling and blues go hand in hand, so if you (gambling fans) haven’t heard it, listen and see for yourself.
6. Tumbling Dice - Rolling Stones
One of our favourite songs on the list is Tumbling Dice, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It tells the story of a gambler who can’t remain faithful to any woman. Being released in the 1970s and featuring a blues boogie-woogie rhythm, the song was and still is one of the greatest singles of all time. Rolling Stones also recorded Casino Boogie, and it’s from their 1972 album, Exile on Main St.
5. Luck Be A Lady - Frank Sinatra
The next song on our list is about a gambler who hopes that he will win a bet, the outcome of which will decide whether he is able to save his relationship with the girl of his dreams. You probably know what song we’re talking about; it’s called Luck be a Lady released in 1965 and performed by one of the most popular musical artists - Frank Sinatra.
4. Deal - Grateful Dead
Next one up is the song Deal. It was first performed by the Grateful Dead in 1971, as a regular part of the repertoire through their 1970's tour. Although being less common to the fans during the 1990s, the band continued to perform it. The singer opens with the message: “Since it cost a lot to win and even more to lose you and me bound to spend some time wondering what to choose,” that later kicks off with a chorus: “Don't let your deal go down...” Loser is another song first performed by the Grateful Dead in 1971 as well, heavily played during 1971 and 1972.
3. Ace of Spades - Motörhead
Ok, the next song is loaded with some great gambling verses like "The pleasure is to play, makes no difference what you say, I don't share your greed, the only card I need is the Ace of Spades" will definitely set you in the right mood for hitting some winning combinations. Released in 1980, the song was inspired by slot machines that the lead singer Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister played in London pubs.
2. Viva Las Vegas - Elvis
As soon as you start playing the second song from our playlist “Viva Las Vegas,” you’ll probably picture a huge casino and a great gaming atmosphere. Performed by the legendary Elvis Presley, the 1964-released song brings the glamour of the city, and its beat will get you in the mood for some serious gameplay. This song was written for the movie of the same name starring Elvis Presley, in which he plays a race car driver waiting tables at a hotel to pay off a debt. There’s this famous scene when he performs this song at the talent competition alongside many showgirls.
1. The Gambler - Kenny Rogers
Performed by the legendary country singer Kenny Rogers, The Gambler song is our number 1 - it's full of some betting advice that are relevant today, even though it was released more than 40 years ago, in 1978. Here’s how it goes… “If you're gonna play the game, boy you gotta learn to play it right, you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” These classic chorus lines were told from the first-person perspective inspired by a conversation the author had with an experienced poker player on a train. Written in the form of poker metaphors, Schlitz wrote the tune in honor of his late father. Johnny Cash is also among other musicians who recorded The Gambler in 1978, on Gone Girl.
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