Warcraft Mounts

Boredom makes the trivial appealing. Based on the list by sickbox in comments.

Level 60

Instances
 Deathcharger's Reins - Stratholme - Lord Aurius Rivendare

Raids
 Blue Qiraji Resonating Crystal - Temple of Ahn'Qiraj - Trash
 Green Qiraji Resonating Crystal - Temple of Ahn'Qiraj - Trash
 Yellow Qiraji Resonating Crystal - Temple of Ahn'Qiraj - Trash
 Red Qiraji Resonating Crystal - Temple of Ahn'Qiraj - Trash

Level 70

Instances
 Reins of the Raven Lord - Sethekk Halls (Heroic) - Anzu
 Swift White Hawkstrider - Magisters' Terrace (Heroic) - Kael'thas Sunstrider

Raids
 Fiery Warhorse's Reins - Karazhan - Attumen the Huntsman
 Ashes of Al'ar - The Eye (Tempest Keep) - Kael'thas Sunstrider

Level 80

Instances
 Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake - Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - Skadi the Ruthless
 Reins of the Bronze Drake - The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - Infinite Corruptor

World Rare
 Time-Lost Proto Drake - Deepholm - Aeonaxx
 Sea Turtle - Pools - Fishing

Raids
 Reins of the Grand Black War Mammoth - Vault of Archavon - All 4 Bosses
 Reins of the Azure Drake - The Eye of Eternity - Malygos
 Reins of the Blue Drake - The Eye of Eternity - Malygos
 Reins of the Black Drake - The Obsidian Sanctum - Sartharion (3 Drakes - 10)
 Reins of the Twilight Drake - The Obsidian Sanctum - Sartharion (3 Drakes - 25)
 Reins of the Onyxian Drake - Onyxia's Lair - Onyxia
 Mimiron's Head - Ulduar - Yogg-Saron (No Watchers - 25)
 Invincible's Reins - Icecrown Citadel - The Lich King (Heroic - 25)

Level 85

Instances
 Reins of the Drake of the North Wind - The Vortex Pinnacle - Altairus
 Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake - The Stonecore - Slabhide
 Swift Zulian Panther - Zul'Gurub - High Priestess Kilnara
 Armored Razzashi Raptor - Zul'Gurub - Bloodlord Mandokir
 Amani Battle Bear - Zul'Aman - Timed Reward

World Rare
 Phosphorescent Stone Drake - Deepholm - Aeonaxx
 Subdued Seahorse - Vashj'ir - Poseidus

Raids
 Reins of the Drake of the South Wind - Throne of the Four Winds - Al'Akir
 Flametalon of Alysrazor - Firelands - Alysrazor
 Smoldering Egg of Millagazor - Firelands - Ragnaros
 Experiment 12-B - Dragon Soul - Ultraxion
 Reins of the Blazing Drake - Dragon Soul - Deathwing
 Life-Binder's Handmaiden - Dragon Soul - Deathwing (Heroic - 10/25)

Level 90

Instances - None

World Rare
 Thundering Ruby Cloud Serpent - Timeless Isle - Huolon
 Thundering Ruby Cloud Serpent - Vale of Eternal Blossoms - Alani

World Boss
 Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent - Kun-Lai Summit - Sha of Anger
 Son of Galleon's Saddle - Valley of the Four Winds - Galleon
 Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent - Isle of Thunder - Nalak
 Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn - Isle of Giants - Oondasta

Raids
 Reins of the Astral Cloud Serpent - Mogu'shan Vaults - Elegon
 Spawn of Horridon - Throne of Thunder - Horridon
 Clutch of Ji-Kun - Throne of Thunder - Ji-Kun
 Kor'kron Juggernaut - Siege of Orgrimmar - Garrosh Hellscream (Mythic)

Draenor Guide

Who's Horde?

Last night Final Fantasy was promoting the 3.3 patch...

Haven't played FFXIV in over a year but I still sniff at what they're up to. Nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this little interaction this morning...

Absolutely hilarious. So great to see such big IPs so packaged, so contained, having moments like this.

Night Before Old Gods

Thanks to a reddit post pointed out by Kripp I got things ready for tomorrow's Hearthstone release. Boiled down to:

• Did you pre-purchase the 50-pack bundle of Whispers of the Old Gods? Yes.
• Have you got your (golden) Old Murk-Eye yet? I do now.
• Are you done with your GvG set? Not really but oh well.
• Have to unlocked Naxx? Yes.
• Do you have an open quest slot? Yes. 

The nerfs that came down were pretty annoying. I was getting comfortable with and enjoying combo druid—*sigh*. Other than druid class cards that got hammered the nerfs all seemed in-line. Knife Juggler is fine doing two damage. Three mana for the Ironbeak Owl is still effective. Losing one attack on Leper Gnome was painful but it's still doing work. 

The only nerf that really annoyed me was to Arcane Golem. Losing a high damage Neutral with charge was fucking lame. Wish I understood more about what Blizzard dislikes in the current meta. 

Oh well. So far the only nerfed cards I dusted were a golden Master of Disguise and an extra copy of Master of Disguise. Will probably kill the Golems. Not something I have to do right away. Currently sitting at 2390 Dust and 4525 Gold.

Currently watching apDrop stream. Thinking I might take his advice. While everyone is dicking around with new decks and concepts you can climb with aggro decks. Not sure it will be that easy since most the play testing shouldn't be done ranked. But I might be able to throw a Tempo Mage or Aggro Shaman together…

Firebat Tweeted With Me!!

I generally dislike social media because of the commercial abuse. Sometimes I'm okay with the exploitation for little moments like this:

Firebat talked to me!! *teen giggle*

So maybe we didn't really talk. But it was interaction with one of my favorite Hearthstone players. Despite being an exceptional player, he's very accessible and he has an excellent sense of humor. Sorta felt bad I didn't know about his early loss in the BlueStacks Invitational thing. He's really been pushing to get Blizzard points wherever they're available.

Lately I've been using a Kolento mid-range Druid on the ladder. Initially tried it out since I had all the cards in his list and really liked it. Since then I've kept an eye out for Druid insights. Firebat's observations were really concise and all made sense to me.

Unfortunately I can't make all the tech swaps since I don't have the cards. Not going to do any more crafting until Old Gods comes out. Being able to understand the points was helpful regardless.

Blade and Soul: Boyish Nubility

Softhands is ready to adventure!

50 Packs Means What

It's been a while since statistics so it's nice to find someone doing this for me…

---

Out of 50 packs, about how many of the 130 cards should the average person get? And how much dust would 50 packs get?

TLDR: 93% of commons, 62% of rares, 21% of epics, 14% of legendaries and 1100 dust, equaling a total value of 18245 dust

Almost forgot to answer the original question from the title: 89 unique cards out of the 132.

I assumed that TGT has the exact same rarity distribution as GvG, plus 9 extra commons (1 for each class), which makes it: 49 commons, 37 rares, 26 epics and 20 legendaries. I also assumed that you don't care about golden cards, so you only keep golden cards if you don't have enough non-golden copies of the same card. Sadly, I don't have the time to properly analyze the data, so I just averaged it all together. (I could sort the runs and show some values for the top and bottom 10%, maybe in a separate post later.) So the average result is:

• Commons: out of 49, you have both copies of 43 and a single copy of 5, that equals 93% (I'm sure that single card missing is the best common of the set)
• Rares: out of 37, you have both copies of 17 and a single copy of 12, that means no copies of 8, equaling 62%
• Epics: out of 26, you have both copies of 2, and a single copy of 7, no copies of 17, equaling 21%
• Legendaries: 3 unique legendaries (duplicates have been auto-disenchanted), it was 2.8 on average, so it's 14%
• Dust: from duplicates, you ended up with 1100 dust
• Total value: 18245 dust, which equals 365 per pack. This is the crafting cost of all the cards summed up plus the dust from disenchanting. (This slightly differs from the sum of the previous values, because of the rounding errors.)

I hope the information was useful for you. I'll maybe do a proper analysis with confidence intervals and all the fancy statistics, if I have enought time for that, sometime later in a separate post.
Good luck actually opening your 50 packs! Cheers!

Hearthstone Brawl: The Masked Ball

Spent a couple of hours on this Brawl to get my dailies done and assemble a decent deck. Starting out I needed to get two Rogue wins. Initially I built a deck with a number of minions to exploit the free summons. Cards like Defias Ringleader, Haunted Creeper, and Violet Teacher. My first game scared a Priest away when coined out the Defias:

During the second game I realized I was doing it wrong. Many of the summons (Spectral Spider or Violet Apprentice) did not cost the required two mana to trigger a free card. While a little disheartened I thought my Hogger would finally shine since it summons Gnolls which "cost" two mana. Alas it appears that only "played" cards would trigger Brawl since when my Gnolls were killed they did not summon Wisps or Target Dummies.

There is a way to exploit the Brawl effect. Turns out it is like a hidden Death Rattle which means Baron Rivendare is suddenly relevant. An enterprising Hunter caught me by surprise with this. Turn six he had a Piloted Shredder on the board. He then played the Baron followed by Feign Death. Suddenly I was facing a full board:

Thankfully I was able to remove the Baron immediately and had enough board developed to stabilize. But imagine the havoc Sneed's Old Shredder could wreak! Something to consider.

While I needed to get some Druid wins in I ended up sticking with the Druid to play. The Druid's ability to ramp into large minions is especially potent with the Brawl effect. Sadly I don't have the cool trees (Ancient of Lore or Ancient of War) but there is plenty of other heft to get by with (plenty, other, heft, et cetera)

Did learn a couple of things.

The turn one Emperor Thaurissan sure seemed powerful. Yet keeping and using the two Innervates along with the coin ended up draining any hope of tempo. Naturally the Priest drew into SW: Death by turn three and nothing that I had drawn into the cost reduction helped me. The biggest lesson came with Poison Seeds. You pretty much guarantee a loss for yourself by playing it since each dying minion summons a new one to go along with a bunch of free treants.

What I ended up doing was "taunting into ramp": Decklist. Start with small taunt minions to stall early aggression. Then follow up with some more taunt in the mid-range, like Belcher and Druid of the Claw. End the curve with high-mana, high-value cards as finishers. Spells were either buffs or removal along with Nourish for the ability to choose between draw or ramp.

There's a bit more tuning to do. The deck is light on draw so each card needs to be high value or more draw should be added. There are too many spells—which don't synergize with the Brawl power. Need to go either removal or buffs. Really wish I had more giants. *sigh*

Nozdormu continues to win me games. With the focus on getting taunts out he's actually surviving and messing with people.

This ramp druid had me beat until I managed to get the roping going. He tried to use Savage Roar on me but the animations must have slowed him down. Was giggling to myself for a while after winning that game. Definitely love that about the Brawl games… being able to use cards that don't fit into "normal" constructed play.

The free pack was okay:

Destroyed all of the commons but I did need the Perdition's Blade. While I enjoy Rogue the decks I've played with never encouraged me to make it.