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[SHAD0Wdump]

I probably would have picked the mana wraith anyway, especially with an innervate already chosen to bully my way out of the mana restrictions.

[Max White]

You know I have been thinking about Harvest Golem, ranked number 3 neutral common, and why I don't think it is as good as it is made out to be. Firstly it isn't a 4/4 worth of stats, it is a 2/4 worth. While with something like Silver Hand Knight where you have 6 damage on the board, Harvest only ever provides two at a time. Also, it isn't even a 2/4 worth, but rather a 2/3 with divine shield, although slightly different. Normally a divine shield minion means you treat it in two phases, the 'ping' phase where you just try to do minimal damage, and the real phase where you try to actually kill it off. Harvest golem works in reverse, where you try to kill ff its main phase and then ping, but in the end the effect is much the same. A 2/3 with divine shield for 3 mana is still a decent card, but not as good as the 4/4 for 3 some people treat it as.

[palsch]

It's easily one of the best cards for holding board advantage.

Let's assume you are looking at it using the common arena assessment; you get the card without anything else on your side of the board, without any other specific cards (so no certain combos or follow up), on any turn you could play it (but with emphasis on the first one).

The main scenario where it's strong is, well, that. You get a Harvest Golem to play onto your empty board at the start of turn three (or coin into on turn 2) and it's more likely you will get a body left on the board going into turn 4 than with any other 3 health minion or 3-drop in general. It is also good when playing against late game AOE to have something left on the board that requires some extra resources beyond the first spell. Against turn 4 consecrates or turn 7 flamestrikes that can be a significant advantage.

Looking at all neutral common 3 drops this becomes even more obvious.
The Jungle Panther's stealth means it will likely survive the turn, but then it's only likely to trade 1-1 and any 2 attack 1-3-drop will be able to clean it up. A halfway awake opponent can play around it and deny it the option of trading up (unlike a charge minion) or hit it with AOE (plays right into a turn 4 or 5 consecrate). It actually gets better late game, assuming they don't have that AOE to waste on it, when it's more likely to trade up so long as you can survive the turn and they can't drop a taunt in its way.
Razorfen Hunter gives you an extra body straight up, but only at a 1/1 (unlikely to trade up, likely to be pinged, potentially lets them enrage a minion) and more vulnerable to AOE cleaning both of them off the board.
Scarlet Crusader is really nice, but if they clear her on their turn the odds are they can do it more efficiently than clearing a Golem. Any two 1 damage hits kill her, compared to a 3 and a 1 for the Golem, so unless playing onto a board where they will have to trade down to deal with her you would get better value from the Golem.
Shattered Sun Cleric comes close to being more valuable, but needs to have another minion on the board to be effective. It's painful to play her out as a 3/2 3-drop if you aren't getting that buff. Ironically running her alongside the Golem means you are more likely to always have a buff target.

As for why it ranks so highly overall, 3-drops are generally valuable. Given the way most decks build their mana curve you would expect people to value 3-4-drops most highly. Looking at Trump's rating you see the two most powerful common neutral 4-drops, then the two most powerful common neutral 3-drops. I'd almost reverse this, as there are lots of excellent class specific 4 drops and only a handful of such 3-drops, although that does obviously depend on the class you are playing.

[Max White]

The point that it is hard to easily destroy in one turn is certainly true, but that is true of any divine shield minion. Scarlet Crusader will just as easily survive a flamestrike, or other board clear. The Crusader is also able to more easily clear out a wider range of minions (such a River Crockalisk, Bloodsail Raider, Void Walker, Northshire Cleric) in a single swing, and by turn 2 to 3 it isn't uncommon to see a minion with three health. As a three drop her ability to clean up for you seems to be a better option.
The advantage of the Golem is that with 3 health + shield instead of 1 + shield it is actually capable of surviving more than two hits. If your undamaged golem takes a hit and doesn't die it starts doing work, but even then it isn't that amazing. You can expect it to engage in combat about three times (About two for the main body and one for the backup) then it will do six damage overall. As opposed to the Crusader that will be doing six anyway, except it can get that six damage off onto higher damage minions that would outright kill the Golem in one hit (Reducing him to two attacks).

Yes, the Crusader is a higher variance play, but I think the rewards are greater than the risks, especially when for a lot of classes, 1 damage twice in a turn is actually not that common.

[baruk]

 The story so far:

Well, I did it - I made a screenshot of every card selection I got in a draft, I'll get around to transcribing them later - lots of controversial choices to argue over! I chose Druid from the selection as I haven't played them much in arena (Mage and Warrior were the other options). For now, here's the deck - very importantly, there's also 2 innervate (0 cost, gain two mana crystals this turn only) in the deck, cut off from the top of the list:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Any predictions on how I will fare? I haven't played any games with it yet. Since I went to this trouble, I fully expect to fall flat on my face and post a 0/3.

So I narrowed down the six most difficult picks I had in the draft (I'll probably post the full list later). See what you make of these, first spoiler gives you the choice I had, second spoiler explains my decision:

Controversial pick #1:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Justification #1:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At card choice #9 I'm offered ironbark protector, scarlet crusader or innervate. Scarlet crusader is highly rated on the tier lists, but I have a lot of 3 drops already. I'd love to pick the 8/8 taunt for my burgeoning big creature deck, but I have second thoughts - perhaps my deck is a little top heavy already and my resource base could use a boost. I pick innervate.

Controversial pick #2:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Justification #2:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At card choice #20 I get offered pint-sized summoner, mind control tech or violet teacher. I eliminate violet teacher because I don't have very many spells. Whilst mind control tech is very highly rated, I go for pint-sized summoner since my 2 drops are somewhat under-represented, and its ability is thematic with my deck of heavy duty minions.

Controversial pick #3:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Justification #3:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At card choice #21, we have nourish, bite or mana wraith. I eliminate mana wraith as I think it works against my deck. Perhaps I ought to pick nourish to give my deck some needed card draw, but I can't resist going for removal cards, so I take bite.

Controversial pick #4:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Justification #4:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At card choice #24, I get mark of the wild, tauren warrior and claw. Eliminating the underwhelming taunt cow, it's a choice between a buff or a cheap removal card. Tough choice: I go for the claw though I think the buff would have been quite strong in my deck.

Controversial pick #5:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Justification #5:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Card choice #27 provides doomsayer, mountain giant or force of nature. Eliminating doomsayer, I have a choice between another big creature or a quasi-removal card. I pick the charging treants since I lack the card draw to play out the giant consistently.

Controversial pick #6:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Justification #6:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Card choice #30 is between doomsayer, blood knight and ancient of war. Doomsayer gets eliminated again as I'm not a control deck. Ancient of war is an interesting big creature - you get a choice between a 5/10 taunt or a 10/5, something quite threatening to innervate out on turn 5. However, I end up picking blood knight instead as the arena metagame seems quite heavy on divine shield - I feel like an early 6/6 is more likely to win games than the ancient. I feel pretty sick about not having any divine shield in my deck, though, when I had about three opportunities to grab one.

[Max White]

1. Either Ironbark or Crusader are very valid options. Both great cards. I personally would have gone Ironbark but I wouldn't argue with anybody going Crusader. Innovate, on the other hand? Na...
2. MCT is all of the good stuff.
3. I think bite was actually the right choice here.
4. Not the best choices, but claw was the most solid pick.
5. Force of nature easy. Mountain giant is worst giant.
6. Ancient of war, it is a better card and your mana curve was begging for a heavy drop instead of another 3.

[palsch]

Yes, the Crusader is a higher variance play, but I think the rewards are greater than the risks, especially when for a lot of classes, 1 damage twice in a turn is actually not that common.

Very simply, the value assessments reflect this statement. IF you build a deck and/or encounter situations where the risk/reward trade of Crusader over Golem is worthwhile, it's a better card. IF you take all possible situations into account and assume nothing, the Golem has an edge.


As for that draft, I agree with Max on most of those.
1) Ironbark is nice.
2) Mind Control Tech is either a solid 3/3 for 3 or one of the few Hail Mary plays I've actually had pay off and win me a lost game.
3) When it comes to the Nourish/Bite/Mana Wraith choice your mana curve is almost too flat and you have two Innvervates without excess late game, so the Nourish would be wasted. Bite is more reliable than Wraith, so right choice.
4) This is a toss up for me. Bite is far more reliable (don't need a good minion on the board for it to be useful, plus cheap to throw into a turn), but you have 3 cards that work better enraged (Berserker and 2x Raging Worgen). Those are tempting Mark targets for me. Probably would have gone with the MotW on this, but only just.
5) Having the Ironbark would have made this easier, but even so the FoN is the only real option.
6) Not having the Ironbark made the AoW a must-have. I had a 0-3 Druid run today (3 Swipes in deck, 0 drawn in 3 games, GG) where I took two Ancients of Lore over Ancients of War because I expected to go late game and need the draw. I never made it to a point where I was top-decking. A single AoW over AoL would have saved me at least one game (painfully close...) and potentially kept me in a second. Blood Knight is still nice, but frankly without any shields in your deck it's a 3/3 for 3 most of the time. Still reasonable, but not compared to the alternative or in your 3-drop rich deck.

The other two questionable cards are the Winfury Harpy (don't think I've ever seen one of these swing in a game where there wasn't lethal without it) and Arcane Golem where I'd have gone with the Wraith. Both are situational, but the Wraith carries far less downside than the Golem.

[Max White]

The thing about Mana wraith is that its ability is going to affect players on their next turn after it is played. If you have other things you want to play beside mana wraith, play them first! Anyway, the turn after you play mana wraith is your opponents, so they suffer from it first. Either they can try to kill it (Often either wasting valuable removal) or they play creatures at a heightened cost. If they removed it then great, you get off ever having to pay the higher cost! Otherwise when it comes to your turn you can run it into something to lower costs again, or just keep it around and let your opponent face the same problem next turn. Either way you will always go one less turn with higher costs, so while it looks even, the adverse effect actually helps you more than them.


EDIT: Oh my god it comes with German voice acting! This is amazing!

[Mephansteras]

I think Pint Sized Summoner was a good pick. MCT can be great, but most of the time I find it to just end up being 3/3. The Summoner has two nice things going for her: One, she meshes well with your creature-heavy deck. If she lives past the first turn, she's probably going to be quite helpful. Second, she's a cheap target. People put a LOT of emphasis on killing creatures like her, and I've seen people waste removal cards on her when I had much more dangerous things out. Her advantage, more often than not, is psychological as much as it is mechanical.

[baruk]

 I played my druid arena deck last night, and it crashed and burned to a 1-3.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

game 1 win vs warlock

opening hand: innervate, raging worgen, frostwolf warlord. Drop the warlord, get a 2nd raging worgen.
turn 1:
I go first, I innervate out a raging worgen.
He coins to lifetap (looking for removal?). His hp= 28.
turn 2:
I draw claw. I use hero power, and try to hit my worgen, but it's not a valid target - too bad. I swing in for 4. my hp=31, his hp=24.
He plays a 2/1 charge murloc and hits me. My hp=29
turn 3:
I kill the murloc with my worgen gaining +1 attack and windfury, before swinging in for 4. Then I play the second worgen. His hp: 20.
He kills the wounded worgen with mortal coil, gaining a card. He lifetaps, his hp=18.
Turn 4:
I play chillwind yeti and swing in for 3. His hp=15.
He kills the 2nd worgen with 4 direct damage.
Turn 5:
I play pint-size summoner and use my hero power, swinging in for 5. His hp=13
 He plays 2/2 dwarf rifleman, which shoots the yeti. He lifetaps, his hp=11.
Turn 6:
I play stormwind champion with a little help from the summoner. I swing in for 8. His hp = 5
He plays goldshire footman the 1/2 taunt. He uses power overwhelming on the dwarf, and it kills the stormwind champion.
Turn 7:
My summoner kills the taunt, then I kill him with a combination of the yeti and my hero power.

Game 2 loss vs paladin

Opening hand: earthshire 3/3, innervate and force of nature - I drop the latter and find the 2nd innervate. Not great.
I play the first turn 3/3, and it gets to do some damage. But he has strong counterplay and we exchange blows, the 3/3 biting the dust around turn 3 or 4.
Turn 5: I use the second innervate to play both a 4/6 taunt druid and the 2/3 berserker. He uses hammer of wrath to kill the beserker, then passes the turn. He has 1/1, knife juggler and faerie dragon in play.
I kill the knife juggler with my bearform druid, dropping him to 4/3. I play a 5/5 frostwolf warlord.
The crucial turn: can he kill 5/5 warlord and 4/3 taunt when I have stormwind champion to follow up next turn? The answer is yes: he plays consecration and argent protector to shield his 3/2. The 1/1 trades off my 4/1 taunt, whilst the faerie dragon trades his shield for my 5/3 warlord.
I play stormwind champion, but he kills it without needing to trade by using a second argent protector and another hammer of wrath. The next turn he plays his own stormwind champion and it's all over bar the shouting.
 Sadly I didn't draw blood knight this game.

Game 3 loss vs druid

 I felt like I was missing a late game powerhouse here.
Opening hand, going second: innervate, raging worgen, frostwolf warlord, claw. I drop the warlord and get another raging worgen. Nice hand, how could I lose?
First turn I innervate out a worgen. He kills it with wrath, a 2 mana 3 damage druid card.
Second turn I coin out the second worgen. This one lasts longer. He plays a 3/2 panther.
Turn 3 I claw the panther, swing in for 3 and play a 3/2 raptor
Turn 4 Not much happens, he has no counterplay yet.
Turn 5 He plays 3/5 taunt. I play the +1/+1 buff to all minions and I use hero power to knock it to 3/4. My 4/4 worgen kills it, then swings in with raptor for 9.
Turn 6 He swipes the raptor, killing it and the worgen.
 He has card advantage by now, and starts to get board control, playng the 4/5 taunt divine shield.
 I play a lonely stormwind champion again, which gets killed soon enough.
 He plays a bunch of creatures, including dragonling mechanic and boulderfist ogre. My blood knight pays a visit as a lowly 3/3 - just at the point I could have used an ancient of war (it probably wouldn't have been enough to turn things around). I can't stop the ogre so he wins.

Game 4 loss vs rogue

My start was slower this game. I played a bloodfen raptor turn 2. He soon gains board control with his more cost efficient creatures and spells.
Mid-game: I draw all three druids of the claw and start playing them out in bear form starting on turn 5. He kills them as they come out. He has an emperor cobra, so I'm expecting him to trade it off, but he'd rather keep it in reserve. The first 4/6 taunt gets eviscerated and traded off for a 2/2 rogue. The second 4/6 taunt gets hit by a cleric buffed 5/5 azure drake then finished off with the hero power. Here I use my swipe to kill the cobra and the azure drake. He replies by playing out stormwind champion and a worgen, followed by an abomination.
Final turn: I can't decide, and go over the time limit, though no combination would have kept me alive. He kills my final 4/6 taunt with stormwind champion, then shivs his worgen so it becomes 5/4, gives it a +4 attack buff for 9/4, then does me 18 damage to kill me.

The take home from that run:
- Innervate has to do something significant to justify its inclusion, either by helping you get early board control, doing a lot of damage, or just regaining the card that it cost. Playing a first turn 3/3 doesn't cut it when you're in an environment with a lot of cheap 3 damage removal cards - perhaps a second turn yeti or a third turn druid of the claw would have been more impactful. To make an M:tG reference, it's a dark ritual that has yet to find its hypnotic spectre. Also, drawing both innervates in the opening hand is pretty bad, so perhaps only use one at most.
- Blood knight is not a metagame pick, it's just a gamble in a deck without divine shield. Also, two of the strongest sources of divine shield tend to use up that shield the turn they come into play: argent protector and argent commander.
- Removal rules the Arena. If you don't have enough removal, perhaps you can survive to late game by playing out a never ending stream of chunky minions, keeping the enemy busy. To turn things around, you need a late game powerhouse: here's where I could have used the ironbark protector and ancient of war. These definitely seem like the correct picks in hindsight. My concern is consistency, getting stuck too often with late game in the opening hand, so I prefer aggro-style decks that focus the mana curve on 2 and 3 drops. You can definitely take this approach too far.

Here's the full draft of my druid deck (my picks bolded). Perhaps there's a really good deck hiding in there somewhere:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. twilight drake-gadgetzan auctioneer-alarm-o-bot
2. emperor cobra-master swordsmith-mana addict
3. ironbeak owl-elven archer-mark of nature
4. naturalize-stormwind champion-frostwolf warlord
5. ironbeak owl-raging worgen-ironforge rifleman
6. savage roar-novice engineer-druid of the claw
7. swipe-dragonling mechanic-southsea deckhand
8. wild growth-frostwolf warlord-silvermoon guardian
9. ironbark protector-scarlet crusader-innervate
10. mana addict-arcane golem-mana wraith
11. innervate-moonfire-spiteful smith
12. oasis snapjaw-frost elemental-war golem
13. stonetusk boar-savage roar-druid of the claw
14. shieldbearer-chillwind yeti-savage roar
15. mogu'shan warden-shattered sun cleric-claw
16. earthen ring farseer-grimscale oracle-amani berserker
17. wolfrider-cult master-power of the wild
18. raging worgen-dire wolf alpha-young dragonhawk
19. core hound-bloodsail raider-loot hoarder
20. pint-sized summoner-mind control tech-violet teacher
21. nourish-bite-mana wraith
22. nightblade-windfury harpy-silvermoon guardian
23. flesheating ghoul-power of the wild-wild growth
24. mark of the wild-tauren warrior-claw
25. booty bay bodyguard-raging worgen-naturalize
26. faerie dragon-worgen infiltrator-druid of the claw
27. doomsayer-mountain giant-force of nature
28. earthen ring farseer-oasis snapjaw-gnomish inventor
29. soul of the forest-moonfire-bloodfen raptor
30. doomsayer-blood knight-ancient of war

[Max White]

All in all you made most of the right draft choices. One of the more controversial choices I might have made is Spiteful smith for number 11. I know, crazy right? But I do think the the vanilla 4/6 for five has good enough stats to be worth considering in a non-weapon class. Against innovate... Well it would have been a very hard choice and I would have had to give a very careful look at my curve.

[Werdna]

- Innervate has to do something significant to justify its inclusion... Playing a first turn 3/3 doesn't cut it when you're in an environment with a lot of cheap 3 damage removal cards

True, but look at it this way regarding the removal.  In the 3rd game where he used a cheap removal to counter - you just drew out one of his best removal cards in the first few rounds on a cheap (but good) minion.  That removal card was in his hand and going to be cast at some point in your game, Innervate or not; what the Innervate did was force it out early, adding that much more safety margin to your later minions.  Like you said, Removal is really important in Arena, so you essentially traded Innervate and a cheap minion to remove one of his best removal cards.  Not the best possible trade in terms of # of cards, but not a terrible one in the grand scheme.  Ideally, as you said, you'd be Innervating to get out something a bit more impactful than the Worgen - but what would've stopped him from using the Wrath to make that 'impactful minion' into easy pickings for one of his disposable minions?  Arguably, even an early worgen is solid, your Innervated worgen won you game 1 by putting out an early beatdown - how many games do you see the opponent at 15 on turn 4? 

I'd argue you lost Game 3 for other reasons.  The Claw/PowerOTW/Raptor/Worgen for Tazdingo/Swipe/-9 health bought him a 2 card advantage at the overall cost of his health.  Arguably, you could've played conservative, and saved Innervate and Coin to eventually coin out a big creature (in this case Stormwind C) and used the Worgens/Raptor as early trade and removal bait; that might've gone better, but that's hindsight. 

Edit:  I just caught your Dark Ritual reference; it's a good observation.  But a counterargument is that in Magic, people run decks that are vastly more loaded with removal than you'll ever see in Hearthstone Arena.  Dark Ritual to get out an early black heavy of questionable flavor is just removal bait in constructed play, but Dark Ritual would be much nastier in draft-style play when removal is not nearly as common.  The reason Dark Ritual 'needed' Hypno S was because removal was so common in constructed that the combo must have great potential to risk losing two cards to one.

[palsch]

I've used this Shaman deck a lot for quests and entertainment. It's a completely basic deck but plays as a near-OTK semi-control deck with very little effort. Really good fun. Mostly based around Windtalker/Rockbiter/Bloodlust combos. Get board control and two or more of those cards around turn 9 and you can finish them no matter their health. I think my best was dealing 20+ health damage through an 8/8 taunter while on less than 10 health myself.

Then today I started a Shaman arena and got a few rather nice cards. See;

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is after he healed for eight on the previous turn.

Unfortunately I disconnected during the fourth game after going 3-0. So it's now a 3-1 unbeaten deck...

[Siquo]

So I play this too, now, apparently. Though not very well.

[Max White]

So I play this too, now, apparently. Though not very well.

First mistake every new player makes: This is not a 'who ever has more health is winning' game, this is a 'who ever has more cards in hand/minions on the board/unused key cards' is winning game. Go from there... Or watch Trump play, I do.