Duel of Champions: ToR & 15th Swiss win!

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The expansion, Time of Renewal ("ToR"), was launched on April 15, taking 11 hours to finally get the server up. Gosh, that's crazy. No gesture for compensation at all. Bear in mind that aside from some rebalancing feature, everything else is the same as the cards in the Chinese server.

Currently, the expansion can only be bought with seals (premium in-game currency that can only be obtained using real cash and, no, they are not the fish eating kind). Historically, expansion will only be available for gold purchase 2 weeks after launch. As expected, I haven't seen many new cards yet but I have seen quite a few cards that were previously non-Standard but now is Standard.

The popular Kal-Azaar 4/6/0 control deck is nerfed due to the change in Spell Stealer Heretic. Previously, spells can be recycled (once on any spell) without meeting its stats requirement. For example, Arkath Wrath needs 5 Magic. You can use Kal-Azaar's hero ability to discard it and deal 2 damage to an enemy creature. Then you can deploy the Heretic (needs 4 Might and 2 Magic) and use that spell eventhough you have not upped Magic to 5. Now, you will have to meet the stats requirement of that spell.

The Kal-Azar 3/3/2 rush deck's Bound Succubus is also nerfed. Previously, it'll deal 2 damage to enemy hero at the end of your turn if it didn't attack during that turn. Now, if enemy hero's hp is lower than your hero, then it'll deal 1 damage, instead of 2. Otherwise, it's still 2 damage.

Overall, I think the rush deck is less affected than the control deck because while in the latter it's common to use spell from graveyard via the Heretic without needing to meet the spell's stats requirement, in the former, Bound Succubus is not critical to its success. I regularly win without deploying her as upping Destiny to 2 (or Magic to 3 for Town Portal) is often the last thing to do.

So I decided to use the rush deck to compete in the Swiss tournament on Standard format. I was fortunate that the first 2 duels' opponents (ELO 118 and 875, my current ELO is 1425) used decks (Kal-Azaar and Garant respectively) that were substantially more than 59 cards and were not optimal. The last opponent (ELO 1388) gave tougher challenge with Kal-Azaar 5/6/0 deck and I was surprised I did lethal with the lowly breeder 1/0/1 token :P Incidentally, I didn't deploy any Bound Succubus in all 3 games. As an aside, none of my opponents used new cards or former non-Standard cards.

For the record, the tally now is as follows:

Necro (2) - Ariana on Standard and BS2 format each
Inferno (5) - Deleb probably on Inferno-only format, Kal-Azaar on "minimum 30 spells" format, 3 Kal-Azaar on Standard format.
Stronghold (5) - 3 Kat on Standard and 2 Kat on BS2 format
Sanctuary (1) - Yukiko on Standard format
Haven (1) - Cassandra on Standard format
Academy (1) - Myranda on Standard format

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