Honor's Code

I always love the opening nights of a new Raid. Balance issues are still being tweaked, you can't navigate the place blindfolded or say the boss emotes before they do.Trash is somewhat a mystery. Sure you can find Boss strategies from the PTR, but rarely do they cover trash. Even with the PTR videos, there is still a period of adjustment of adapting those strategies to the strengths and weaknesses of your own raid. I was running a little late (again) but I managed to get into the zone before the first boss, Hellfire Assault. This boss encounter reminded me a bit of the old days of Mount Hyjal or what I thought SWTOR raids would look like. You don't fight one big guy, but instead are challenged by small, powerful groups of enemies. The biggest thing for the tanks was picking up the big Bezerkers before they smashed one of our poor healers. We had the gates breached in three attempts which was already much better than our opening night in either Highmaul or Blackrock Foundry. ...

The next boss standing in your way is none other than the red dragon Vaelastrasz. I have to give props to the voice actor's on the entire Blackrock Mountain adventure. The characters are all well done and as an added bonus, I'm learning the correct pronunication of names like Drakkisath and Vaelastraz. Every Boss encounter is heavily influenced by that boss's hero power and Vaelasstraz is no different. Her hero power causes each player to draw two cards making her fight similiar to playing someone on the ladder with a mill deck. I went with a low mana Hunter deck and focused on playing as many cards as I could each round. Here's my deck list: Arcane Shot x 2 Timber Wolf x 2 Webspinner x 2 Explosive Trap x 1 Snipe x 1 Dire Wolf Alpha x 1 Haunted Creeper x 2 Knife Juggler x 1 Scavenging Hyena x 1 Stonesplinter Trogg x 1 Animal Companion x 2 Deadly Shot x 1 Kill Command x 2 Unleash the Hounds x 2 Emperor Cobra x 1 Goblin Sapper x 1 Ironfur Grizzly x 2...

We open up Blackwing Lair with Razorgore the Untamed. The Razorgore fight is all those eggs ('bout them eggs, no trouble). He summons 1 egg per turn. Its a zero attack minion with 1 life. Each turn it grows by 1 life. If it reaches 4 life, it hatches.You don't want those eggs to hatch because if they do, it spawns a 7/3 minion.  The trick is knowing when to attack the eggs and when to attack other minions and Razorgore himself. I didn't realize it at the time, but Razorgore incorporates a mechanic that I saw over and over again as I progressed through the Blackrock Mountain adventure where the enemy has something akin toa  Zoo deck and overwhelms you with minions. I wanted to get some board control so I would always have options for knocking down the eggs before they hatched. I decidd to go with a Hunter deck for this boss. I included Oasis Snapjaw  mostly to provide nice targets for the Houndmasters. A 2/7 isn't much to get excited about by a 4/9 with Taunt can be ...

I got on later than usual due to some real life stuff. We got some potential good news on the house front, but now we enter into a holding pattern to see if its all going to come together. Fingers, and toes crossed. When I finally logged on, I got right to work opening up my Shipyard and getting to Tanaan. At the same time, I had designs on getting into a Mythic Skyreach group to get the new epic gem cutting recipe that drops there. Unfortunately, due to my late arrival, groups had already formed and despite having both a tank and healer we couldn't find enough people online to put a group together. I wasn't sure about PUGing a Mythic dungeon so I had to put that off until another night. I completed the quest to build my shipyard and launched off for Tanaan. It's so weird being in a new place. I had no idea where anything was or how to get from point A to point B. Part of that is exciting and refreshing and part of it is frustrating and confusing. Then came the mome...

The final boss of the Blackrock Spire wing is Rend Blackhand. Rend has a summoning power that changes each time he uses it. He can summons 3 1/1 welps, 3/1 dragonkin, 2 1/1 Orcs with Taunt , Glyth, a nasty 8/4 dragon. I opted for a Mage deck with Pyro as a big finisher. Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion really help with all the possible 1/1 minions he can summon. Polymorph is nice for Gltyh. Water Ele, Frostbolt and Snowchugger also help to keep Glyth away from the face with Freeze effects. Blizzard and Cone of Cold provide nice AoE with a bonus of a freeze effect. Arcane Missles x 2 Mana Wyrm x 2 Arcane Explosion x2 Frostbolt x 2 Snowchugger x 2 Arcane Intellect x 2 Counterspell Cone of Cold Mirror Entity x 2 Fireball x 2 Polymorph x 2 Water Elemental x 2 Faceless Manipulator Sludge Belcher x 2 Blizzard x 2 Flamestrike x 2 Pyroblast Pyroblast is a lovely finisher. 30-0. I'd say that went well.

We've started the process of formally merging the two guilds together into one guild and Wednesday the combined guild took its first steps in Heroics. We had previously killed Beast Lord, Hanz and Franz and Gruul on Heroic and we managed to get them down again with some effort. It is so funny how our comp swings from one night to the next. One night we will have healers (and shamans) coming out of our ears to the extent that some people switch to an alt, but the next night, we'll be looking for healers to log on and have one shaman. Such is life on the Casual Deck of the good ship Raiding. While we were raiding Wednesday, a coward committed an act of evil less than 10 miles from where I sat in my desk chair. #PrayersForCharleston, #PrayForCharleston, and #CharlestonShooting filled my social media. I was numb. This sort of stuff doesn't happen here, and certainly not this close to home. I went and kissed each of my sleeping children on the forehead and hugged my wife. Slee...

The deck I put together for General Drakkisath uses some legendary minions that you get from completing the Naxxramas adventure. I assume you did Naxx before BRM. If you are new to the game or coming back after a long break, I would advise you to get Naxx first. You can buy it with in-game gold, but it is a pretty insane grind. Naxx contains some really advantageous cards that still see use in many decks even with GnG and now BRM out. Drakkisath has an interesting Hero power. All your cards cost 1 mana, but you can only spend 1 mana. The result is you can only play 1 card per turn but you can play any card, and you can never use your Hero power. I went with a Priest deck full of Legendary and other big minions. Drakkisath starts with 50 HP so you'll need some serious firepower. You will want counters for big minions like his 7/7 War Golems. If he gets Troggzor the Earthinator out be careful of your spells lest you fill the board with Troggs. He's also got a board clear (Twi...