Hearthstone 21: We DO take candle!

[Nerocite]

Went 10-3 with Dude-a-din, only losses were to Secret Pally and Big Priest. The brawl did make me want to give wild another look though.

[Legoshrimp]

Wait, how is a brawl that is just normal wild constructed with no special rules besides the buy-in and heavily weighted rewards supposed to encourage fun and diversity? This isn't challengestone or some brawl with odd rules, if you want weird stuff play wild casual.

I think the main point with this one is encouraging people to try wild.

[Rynjin]

I think the main point with this one is encouraging people to try wild.

There's a reason a lot of people don't try Wild, I think.

They don't have any/many Wild cards. At least, I don't.

So a Brawl that forces me to play Wild is a Brawl that essentially boils down to "Here, play with the same cards/decks you always do and get memed on by people who've been playing longer and have a stockpile of obsolete cards".

Fun. /s

[Gandariel]

I... didn't play hearthstone all week, missed the free thing.

I would have probably played my home brew Reno Freezemage with 3-4 duplicates "no, trust me, it works"

[Spore]

There's a reason a lot of people don't try Wild, I think.

They don't have any/many Wild cards. At least, I don't.

The amount of synergy in wild cards is too damn high I think. Even aggro games go to turn 7 or 8 in standard. But you can die as early as turn 4 with wild. Goblin and Gnomes cards are just way too OP. Secret synergy in Paladin is crazy and the upcoming Giants Warlock stomps the rest out.

So a Brawl that forces me to play Wild is a Brawl that essentially boils down to "Here, play with the same cards/decks you always do and get memed on by people who've been playing longer and have a stockpile of obsolete cards".

Fun. /s

It's not the stockpile of cards. I have every relevant card and you simply can't play what "you feel like is good". It has to be the absolute tip top optimised stuff.

[Joran]

The amount of synergy in wild cards is too damn high I think. Even aggro games go to turn 7 or 8 in standard. But you can die as early as turn 4 with wild. Goblin and Gnomes cards are just way too OP. Secret synergy in Paladin is crazy and the upcoming Giants Warlock stomps the rest out.

Giants Warlock is dumb and I feel bad for playing it.

For those who don't know, Naga Sea Witch sets all your cards to 5 mana cost. A hotfix a few months ago made that 5 mana cost set happen before any discounts; I think this was to make such discounts more consistent. So any and all Giants are now very cheap or free (5 minions on board, 5 hp missing, 5 cards in hand, 5 cards in your opponent's hand).

It's very dumb, especially with Warlock which has a nice shell of anti-aggro tools to go along with dropping a lot of giants on turn 5.

I went 7-3 with it in the Brawliseum and lost to Aggro Paladin, Pirate Warrior, and Cubelock. I feel like I wasn't mulliganing properly and lost at least 2 of the games because of poor mulligan, but the deck is so powerful if you draw well.

[Wraith]

Wait, how is a brawl that is just normal wild constructed with no special rules besides the buy-in and heavily weighted rewards supposed to encourage fun and diversity? This isn't challengestone or some brawl with odd rules, if you want weird stuff play wild casual.

Brawls are weekly events designed to showcase Hearthstone and invite all players to try something different from the usual meta-hardened grind. Are you seriously telling me that "being fun" is not the aim or intention of the game?

As for playing casual; please. Have you tried it lately? I've met as many cubelocks, piratewarriors and Murlocadin in casual as I have on ladder, because the way that ranking has changed now means that there's no smurfing on ranked, and people who want to practice tier-1 meta decks without dropping a few stars infest it.

It's not the stockpile of cards. I have every relevant card and you simply can't play what "you feel like is good". It has to be the absolute tip top optimised stuff.

And this is why I don't like constructed brawls; I don't have that many cards and cannot afford - will not spend money - on getting the small pool of meta-popular cards that will become nigh-irrelevant within the next 6 weeks or so.

I will hold my hands up and admit it: I'm not a good player and I'm deliberately putting myself at a disadvantage by not playing often enough to generate the best cards. That's on me. I simply don't have the time or inclination.

I feel, however, that is more a reflection on Hearthstone's crappy "new player experience" than it is on me. Because I've played the game on-and-off for about three years and I'm nothing like competitive, and when Blizzard says "here's a free event that you can take part in to experience all the best parts of the game" and it turns out to be a way for other players to sneer at me for not spending as much money as them I feel like I am being actively driven away from the game.
I can get hyper-competitive PvP whenever I want; that's called Standard Ladder. Where is the play-mode where I can experiment and try something that puts me on an even footing with my opponent so that we can both benefit?

Brawl? Not this week, scrub! Go play casual! Casual? You mean the gymnasium where Tier 1 decks go smurfing for daily quests and ladder practice? Single Player? Sure, I'll go sit in the corner and play all by myself and enjoy being excluded from 90% of he game's content.

[Gandariel]

Giants Warlock is dumb and I feel bad for playing it.

For those who don't know, Naga Sea Witch sets all your cards to 5 mana cost. A hotfix a few months ago made that 5 mana cost set happen before any discounts; I think this was to make such discounts more consistent. So any and all Giants are now very cheap or free (5 minions on board, 5 hp missing, 5 cards in hand, 5 cards in your opponent's hand).

It's very dumb, especially with Warlock which has a nice shell of anti-aggro tools to go along with dropping a lot of giants on turn 5.

I went 7-3 with it in the Brawliseum and lost to Aggro Paladin, Pirate Warrior, and Cubelock. I feel like I wasn't mulliganing properly and lost at least 2 of the games because of poor mulligan, but the deck is so powerful if you draw well.

I think I played the Hunter version some time ago, it was pretty strong. Very good card draw and best reload button with the DK

[ChaosOS]

Brawls are weekly events designed to showcase Hearthstone and invite all players to try something different from the usual meta-hardened grind. Are you seriously telling me that "being fun" is not the aim or intention of the game?

As for playing casual; please. Have you tried it lately? I've met as many cubelocks, piratewarriors and Murlocadin in casual as I have on ladder, because the way that ranking has changed now means that there's no smurfing on ranked, and people who want to practice tier-1 meta decks without dropping a few stars infest it.

Brawl has turned more competitive in the past - this brawl was essentially a lower-stakes Heroic Tavern Brawl, where the buy-in is 150 gold instead of 1000. Last year we had wild heroic tavern brawl around this time, and to me this felt like the replacement based on analytics that showed the 1k gold buy in was just too large.

Casual matchmaking is completely seperate from ranked, so feel free to intentionally tank your casual MMR for fun games, it's something I do whenever I want to screw around with decks like Oakheart Hunter. Also, Wild Casual has a lot more meme decks than standard, primarily because there's a lesser perception of a dominant meta.

[Wraith]

Also, Wild Casual has a lot more meme decks than standard, primarily because there's a lesser perception of a dominant meta.

May I ask if you are on the US/Asia server? I'm on Europe; in my experience "more" is a relative term and it's crawling with meta decks. I wonder if it is genuinely that different between regions (though I very much doubt it).

[ChaosOS]

I'm on US, so it's certainly a possibility, and from past experiences with other games there are real environmental differences between server regions.

[Spore]

As for casual mode having meme decks. Which deranged psychopath plays optimized netdecks in casual? It's not even worth it to get a feel for how the deck operates since the opponents are so wildly different. I meme'd a few times in standard casual but I always meet try-hards that use tier 1 netdecks in that mode....just....why?

[Zevox]

As for casual mode having meme decks. Which deranged psychopath plays optimized netdecks in casual?

Why wouldn't you? Playing casual just avoids the matches impacting your rank, that's all. Nothing preventing you from playing whatever you want - and as the game is inherently a competition, a lot of people will want to play what is most likely to have a good shot at winning.

[Spore]

Why wouldn't you? Playing casual just avoids the matches impacting your rank, that's all. Nothing preventing you from playing whatever you want - and as the game is inherently a competition, a lot of people will want to play what is most likely to have a good shot at winning.

True. But then again, I have been stomped in the past. You just enjoy a casual game of Magic with friends who KNOW your only barely working deck is Goblins (basically Murlocs, but imagine Mage Murlocs for the sake of synergy) and I still do not know half of the rules (for Hearthstone it would be sequencing, for Magic it was instant spells for me to ensure my goblins are not blocked) and they waltzed in with control decks tailored to mine.

That is how I feel playing Randuin or some poor sap playing a budget mage and then being rushed down by Dude-adin.

[Destro_Yersul]

That reminds me. I should see if I have all the cards for Dudeadin. Paladin is my favourite class, so I'm always happy when it has a viable deck.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

I was always under the impression that Casual had it's own internal matchmaking score (winrate?). Could be wrong about that though.

But yeah, the term "Casual" is kind of misleading. I've had my own experiences running into card-for-card ladder decks. It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Casual altogether; ranked wins contribute to something, however small, and the ranked floors mean that eventually I'll get matched with people closer to my level.

Fundamental problem is that you can't compel players to queue up with "fun" decks. The best they can do is make a Brawl where the rules are unpredictable in some way, but some people don't like that either. Random or premade decks don't really have a good track record either, IMHO.

[Zevox]

True. But then again, I have been stomped in the past. You just enjoy a casual game of Magic with friends who KNOW your only barely working deck is Goblins (basically Murlocs, but imagine Mage Murlocs for the sake of synergy) and I still do not know half of the rules (for Hearthstone it would be sequencing, for Magic it was instant spells for me to ensure my goblins are not blocked) and they waltzed in with control decks tailored to mine.

That is how I feel playing Randuin or some poor sap playing a budget mage and then being rushed down by Dude-adin.

That's the difference between playing with friends who know you and how you want to play, and playing with random people online. You have the option to do the former in Hearthstone, it's just challenging people on your friends list. Queing up into anything random means you're likely to run up against someone running one of the currently popular decks - which is what the meta is, just the decks that are currently most widely played, usually due to being most effective.

[Destro_Yersul]

I had a funny thing happen in Wild Casual just now. I had the big Murloc quest, so I was playing a warloc deck with nothing but murlocs in it... and I ran into a warlock deck with nothing but taunt minions in it. So for the first like, five turns I was playing normally... but then the guy played Felguard. And I figure nobody puts Felguard in their deck on purpose unless they're trying to make a Taunt only deck, and the only reason to do that is for the quest. So I started clearing just minions and never attacking face. Even when I had obvious lethal, the other guy kept just playing taunt minions and never conceding. We both ended up running through our entire decks, getting me 30 murlocs towards my quest, and like, 28 towards his (he discarded with Felhound).

Always cool when you run into someone with the same goal as you, and recognise it on time to cooperate.

[The Glyphstone]

I had that one time, with a Warlock quest do play a lot of warlock cards. I ran into a Warlock who was also spamming cheap Warlock cards. We went to double fatigue.

[Rynjin]

Just opened some free card packs and the first thing to pop out was a Golden Woecleaver. Neat.

The question is: any interesting decks that use it? Or is it just a good source of dust?

[ChaosOS]

Nothing good right now, but from people's usage it's a very important card in a very expensive deck, Recruit Warrior. Right now Warrior's survivability tools are really bad since the Fiery War Axe nerf, but it's not hard to imagine a set that gives Warrior an Obsidian-Statue level card to survive or better defensive tools. The deck does lose Y'shaarj with the rotation though, so it's unclear if the tools will even make it good

TL;DR Dust it, you can recraft a regular one later if you ever decide to go for recruit warrior

[Spore]

Hold onto it. Trolden just released a sponsored "Best of Year of the Mammoth" video. A "funny" bit about loosing Dave Kosak appeared on Ben Brode's twitter, and that they won't find him "until Sunday". So the possibility of an expansion announcement is there, I'd say Sunday evening or Monday.

[Psyren]

Regarding this week's Brawl - I think Nefarian starting off with 5 mana when Rag has to start from scratch is some grade A cowplops, but I still managed to beat him thanks to endless Core Hound recursion and a few Flamestrikes.

[Rynjin]

I played two games, both as Ragnaros. While Nefarian definitely dominates the early game, near as I can tell Ragnaros has a huge advantage in the long term because he can just spam big minions and super control the board easily.

Either that, or the people I played against were bad.

[Zevox]

I'd tend to agree with you on that. In this Brawl Nefarian is very much the aggro deck, while Ragnaros is the control. If Nefarian fails to gain a significant upper hand early, odds are he will lose, unless his hero power hands him some very potent comeback cards. But since it's pulling from the full pool of all spells in the game, the odds of that aren't great.

It's always kind of funny to play games where your opponent doesn't seem to understand this. I've seen Ragnaros players who only went face as if they were the aggro deck, and Nefarian players who wanted to use their hero power every turn, as if their victory depended upon squeezing as much value out of that as possible. Those tend to be the easiest wins.

[Wraith]

That sounds about right. Nefarian has the early rush potential, but if Rag gets his control cards when he needs them then he can tough it out and overrun fairly consistently. Using up his weapon quickly seems to drastically increase his chances too, in my experience.

[Destro_Yersul]

Yeah. As Rag you want to swing the weapon every turn, even if it's just to hit face. It's also really important to mulligan for cheap cards, though hitting the hero power is ok because Nefarian doesn't have easy ways to do 1 damage.

[ChaosOS]

As noted, this brawl is actually pretty balanced between Rag and Nef. Each is OP in their own way - spells on average are worse than 8 random damage, but Nef's early aggression helps balance that out. Rag overall shouldn't play for value, but to survive

[Psyren]

Oh I'm aware that Rag is control and wins lategame (usually), but Nef has the spare mana to pull some nice spells while still keeping on the pressure. Aggro decks don't usually need a free mana advantage is all I'm saying, especially one that wide.

[Gandariel]

Still think Nefarian is favored.

Rag only survives the early game if he gets a lucky starting hand. And if by chance Nefarian gets good spells (I once got UI ad Mind control back to back) there's really no way for rag, even with his hero power (which isn't even that insane. Nefarian has 60 health and usually doesn't take damage for the first turns)