Recently, Blizzard announced the upcoming Wildfest event designed to feature Hearthstone’s persistent format. Wildfest runs between February 19th and March 11th and includes several Wild-exclusive events.
Perhaps the most exciting of these side-events is the Brawliseum. A Tavern Brawl reminiscent of Heroic Brawls we’ve seen in the past, the Brawliseum is geared towards competitive players looking to earn in-game rewards for their Hearthstone prowess. Unlike Heroic Brawls, however, the Brawliseum has a much more player-friendly cost of entry and rewards structure, mirroring that of the Arena.
This guide will take you through all of the details of the Brawliseum, including the rules, tips for the format, decks to try, along with successful decks from pro players and streamers!
Brawliseum Start and End Date
While Blizzard has revealed that Wildfest will take place between February 19th and March 11th, we have yet to receive details on the timing of the Brawliseum event.
We’ll update this section as soon as we find out!
Brawliseum Rules
The Brawliseum Rules mirror those of Hearthstone’s Arena mode. Instead of drafting a deck from random cards, however, you will use cards from your collection to assemble a deck of your choice.
Choose wisely, though. Once you lock in a list, it’s the only deck you’ll be able to play until the run ends.
Like the Arena, a run is over when a player reaches 3 losses or hits the maximum of 12 wins.
Need a refresher on the Hearthstone Arena? Take a look at this guide.
Brawliseum Cost of Entry
Participation in the Brawliseum comes at a price. The cost of entry for the Brawliseum is 150 gold.
Short on funds? Blizzard has you covered! Once the Brawliseum event begins, you’ll receive free entry for your first attempt!
Brawliseum Rewards Structure
As you accumulate wins in the Brawliseum, your end of run rewards will improve! The reward structure for the Brawliseum mirrors that of the Arena, show in the table below.
| Wins | Key | Reward Structure | Random Reward Pool |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Novice |
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| 1 | Apprentice |
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| 2 | Journeyman |
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| 3 | Copper |
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| 4 | Silver |
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| 5 | Gold |
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| 6 | Platinum |
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| 7 | Diamond |
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| 8 | Champion |
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| 9 | Ruby |
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| 10 | Frostborn |
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| 11 | Molten |
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| 12 | Lightforge |
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Wild Brawliseum Tips
The unique nature of the Brawliseum format makes it a very different beast than your typical Ranked Play grind session. In reality, the Brawliseum metagame will likely resemble the tournament metagame more than that of the ladder.
Like tournaments, your typical ladder deck may still find some success, but accurately predicting matchups and building your decks accordingly can be highly rewarding, as we’ve seen in the past with Heroic Tavern Brawls.
Maximize Your Win Rate
In the Brawliseum, each win directly contributes to the rewards you receive, while each loss brings you closer to the end of your run. This creates a very different experience than ladder where a single loss, while potentially frustrating, can be quickly rectified. Unfortunately, there’s no undoing of losses in the Brawliseum.
With this in mind, you’ll need to forgo auto-piloting tendencies that are inevitable during long ladder sessions. Instead, play every turn deliberately and do what you can to maximize your probability of winning.
A Different Pace
Unlike on ladder, the Brawliseum structure also means that the speed of the deck you (and your opponents) choose isn’t terribly important. Whereas gaining ranks on the ladder is largely about net wins (which favors fast games) raw win rate is far more crucial in the Brawliseum format. As a result, there is less incentive to jamming games with the fastest aggro deck you can throw together.
Instead, you’ll want to thoughtfully put together decks that will provide the best win rate. This may mean queuing up a deck you’re familiar with, or, simply finding a more refined (and appropriately teched) list than you’d typically run in Ranked Play.
Do Your Research
Part of maximizing your win rate begins before you get into a game. For many players, Wild Hearthstone is a great unknown. Those venturing into the format for the first time may be surprised by cards or archetypes they’ve never seen before.
Before queuing up your first Brawliseum match, take some time to do a little research. Read some meta reports, run a few games in Wild Ranked Play, and review available cards in old sets. Do what you can to avoid going in completely blind.
New to Wild? Here’s a list of some of the best decks in the format.
Adjust When Necessary
If you just wrapped up your third straight 0-3 Brawliseum with a particular deck or strategy, something clearly isn’t working. Adjust your deck choice or tactics if you’re looking to give the format another go. One of the major draws of the Wild format is the variety. Use this to your advantage is something isn’t working and shake things up to capitalize on a different strategy.
Decks to Try for the Wild Brawliseum
If you’re itching to start the Brawliseum as soon as it is available, you’re probably looking for some decks that are likely to succeed. Well, look no further! We’ve rounded up several picks for the Brawliseum. All of these decks have proven to be effective on both ladder and community-driven Wild tournaments, suggesting they’ll be poised to pick up several wins in your upcoming Brawliseum runs!
- Format: wild
- Posted By:
9,720
Even hyper-aggressive decks can have difficulty in tearing through Malfurion’s armor gain potential. A wide-board of large minions is Malygos Druid’s biggest threat, so two copies of Poison Seeds help reset unfavorable board states.
Wild Secret Mage regains the incredibly powerful Mad Scientist and includes Forgotten Torch for additional reach frequently required to close out games.
If, as is often the case, slow decks are prevalent in a format such as the Brawliseum, Big Priest is more than capable of racking up wins. Likewise, a handful of flexible spots in Big Priest lists are to the benefit of players who can accurately predict the metagame.
This deck relies on the same Tunnel Trogg into Totem Golem that once gave Standard players nightmares. After enough early-game pressure, Aggro Shaman has plenty of burn spells to finish off opponents.
- Format: wild
- Posted By:
- 13,920
Mal'Ganis leads to some flashy swing turns, but the real standout in Wild Cubelock is Voidcaller. This Naxxramas alum is so efficient at cheating Demons into play, it renders Skull of the Man'ari unnecessary.
- Format: wild
- Posted By:
- 10,140
On top of overwhelming unprepared opponents by vomiting several Giants into play, Warlock’s potent Demon package helps keep aggressive decks at bay while continuously applying pressure against slower decks.
Because of the nature of the Brawliseum and Wild newcomers seeking out old favorite decks, the format may tend towards slow, greedy decks. Pirate Warrior, despite multiple rounds of nerfs, is still alive and well in the Wild format and has the incessant damage that can punish such decks.
The Wild version of Pirate Warrior features Ship's Cannon and Death's Bite, both of which dramatically improve the deck’s burst potential.
Best Wild Brawliseum Decks
Check out some decks that have proven their worth in the Wild Brawliseum thus far!
Does this end very soon? I notice that the entrance screen to the tavern brawl says the event ends in a matter of hours.
Rewards for 8 wins is incorrect. I just got my rewards for a 8-3 run. I got a pack, 150G, a golden mana wyrm common, and a measly *10* dust. However, it did make up for it in that my one pack included a rare scorpotron and the legendary gorgon. even if I don’t think much of her, she’s worth a lot of dust down the road.
Anybody noticed the reward for 12 wins is slightly worse off than 11 wins based on table above? It lost some dusts
At 12 wins, the base gold is a bit higher and you get an extra reward chest so it works out to be a bit higher overall than 11.
The mage deck was stupid for this brawl…
I got 9 wins with STANDARD tempo mage (since I don’t have any wils cards)… Not gonna try it again though…
8-1 with freeze mage
If people are looking for budget wild decks agro shaman is super cheap. People were kind of moving away from doomhammer to powermace anyway to make it all rares and commons.
What about mill rogue guys?
I tested mill rogue (OF MY OWN) got 8-3
Since brawl is full of priest mage and warlock and of course shaman i won most of them but 2 lose to paladin…
Just went 12-1 with Standard Murloc Pally. Not a single Wild card. Anyone who says you have to have tons of Wild cards to brawl can see me, because my record begs to differ. Only loss was against Dragon Priest at 11 Wins. He got 2 Duskbreakers so it was gg.
Went 12-2 in my free run, then 5-3, now 2-0, with a Getmeowth aggro murloc Paladin list. I’m a mainly wild player, but the list isn’t much different to play from standard
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I’m currently 7-1 with a Combo dragon Priest. I almost never play wild and dusted them all a while back, however, this combo priest deck really only required me to spend 120 dust to complete the deck. Really easy to get high wins with very small wild collection.
Scratch that, just got 12-2 this morning with it.
So, are you gonna share the lists or not boy?
just because your wild library is small or non-existent, doesn’t mean you’re automatically out of wild or this tavern brawl… that’s a huge point you should consider. you can easily take a ‘top deck’ (hehe see what I did there) from standard ladder, etc. play the brawl and still do well.
I just went 5-3 (8 games total) and I only ever vs’d pally or mage. No other classes. I think because lock is so expensive that not so many people are using it although it would be a good choice for what I ran up against (more pallys than mage).
Next run I think i’ll definitely need to target those two decks.
out of 9 games I saw 3 warlock and 4 pally
I don’t own wild cards. The article makes a good point on advising against using fast decks. However, a quick look around the decks listed above made my Standard Cubelock seem like a hopeless deck. Do you think a super fast Hunter deck using lots of small minions and a few silence cards would stand a chance to get wild players with huge combo decks by surprise? Either way, I don’t plan on running a seccond shot at the brawliseum.
I’m willing to bet cube loc and control loc would do well… they’re simply great decks. Mal’ganis isn’t a requirement for the archetype and mechanics of the deck to function.. it’s a super powerful card, but half the time it’s a win more card. just look at your deck carefully and you might be able to make a few tweeks… spell breaker is still a strong tech in wild
This event makes no sense. Those people who didn’t disenchant their wild cards obviously don’t need dust. Regular people who need it won’t be rewarded because they’re missing wild cards so their decks will be significantly weaker.
I don’t really see a connection here.
If you didn’t disenchant your Wild cards, it doesn’t mean that you have enough Dust. It just means that you want to play Wild.
Not to mention that even if someone owns most of the cards, extra Dust is always useful – a new expansion is coming soon.
The event is obviously targeted at Wild players, and there’s nothing wrong with it. We didn’t have any Wild events for a long while, and that’s the point of Wildfest.
Only whales play wild because it’s much more expensive than standard and it’s pretty much impossible to play wild and be f2p player at the same time.
There is nothing wrong about making an event for wild players but they basically reward people who can afford to play wild.
But this is just not true. Wild is a cheaper format in the long run and I don’t get why people can’t see it. Yes, GETTING into the Wild is more expensive, but the maintenance cost is much, much lower. It will be more apparent with time, but the thing is, Wild meta doesn’t change that much. E.g. Dude Paladin is a solid deck for the last few expansions. You only had to add 1 or 2 cards with each expansion and you had a completely viable deck. Same for RenoLock, the list I’ve been playing a year ago in the Wild is almost the same as the list I could be playing right now, with maybe 3-4 cards changed.
Keeping up with the Wild meta is much cheaper. You just need to make a bigger initial investment, either money or dust. I think that they should totally introduce Wild packs you can buy with gold to the store, but that’s the thing – they actually don’t want people to play Wild, because it’s cheaper in the long run. Instead of 100 packs from a new expansion, you need 2 or 3 times less to keep up in the Wild.
Been free to play since beta. Completed every quest for years. I have every non legendary in the game, and most of the good legendaries. Stop crying about everything, put in the work and the cards will come. So many snowflakes out there, gonna have real hard time adjusting to the real world after high school & college.
It is much easier to play wild as f2p. I can’t afford to draft standard-decks during every expansion as meta shifts so quickly but as I have a bit of cards of every expansion and adventures so i still can make relatively competitive wild decks.
Wild meta shifts slowly so it is better for f2p. Your deck will stay relevant with small upgrades.
By the way this event doesn’t really target wild players. It targets standard players because wild players play these decks all the time. There is nothing new to it, they just play the same decks but get rewarded more than usual.
This just doesn’t make any sense.
It’s a way for the Wild players to test their strength in a more competitive environment with better rewards. It’s a bit like the Heroic Tavern Brawl, but with lower risk/reward. It’s like saying that tournaments don’t make sense – it’s just playing the same decks but to get rewarded more than usual. See?
But yes, I think that a lot of Standard players will try themselves in the event too. And that’s cool. Your previous point about Standard players not having Wild cards is not exactly correct too, because from what I’ve gathered, most of the players are keeping their Wild cards and not disenchanting them (at least the good cards, I’ve heard about some players getting rid of the bad/meme cards). I’m playing Standard 99% of the time and I didn’t disenchant any of the Wild cards, because I might want to play the mode in the future (or in the events like that). So did most of my friends, even though we could all obviously use some extra Dust.
But anyway, I again fail to see the problem. It’s just a Tavern Brawl, you can just ignore it. You don’t even miss your weekly pack, because you get one entry for free – if you retire immediately you get rewards for 0 wins, which include a pack (and some extra dust/gold), even easier than your normal Tavern Brawl.
That’s actually interesting what you say about the cost of Wild in the long run. Never realized that. But there is still a big problem getting into Wild, as you said.
And honestly I cannot imagine f2p Standard players who can afford to keep their Wild cards and stay relevant in Standard at the same time. Hearthstone is quite expensive if you want to play tier 1 meta decks. Standard rotations are pretty essential for budget players to get some resources.
Keep in mind that we all need to craft new epics and legendaries every 4 months or so. If I hadn’t disenchanted all of my wild cards I definitely wouldn’t have been able to keep up.
As someone who plays predominantly Wild (F2P BTW), I’m very much looking forward to this Brawl.
Similarly, this Brawl was the most well-received and highly-anticipated part of Wildfest by the Wild Hearthstone community (there are dozens of us. Dozens!).
To say that it targets/caters to only whales or Standard players is simply false.
I agree 100% with a lot of the comment defending the wild. The guy is right it is just as cheap in the long run. secret mage from standard to wild is like a few cards to enchant. I played a lot back when game first came out so for me Giants is really fun and I had all the cards. Get sick of playing same versions of cube lock and stuff.
Yea, yea, I see all your arguments being about playing since beta and accumulating a lot of cards during the years… but how does it help to players comming later? The only real advice is like “create a time machine…”
So to give a better explaination. It is very true, this was not meant to cater players like you. Some events are to cater bringing back old players, some events are catering new players. I am not a F2P, but i just spend about $60 every few months and disenchant. People always say I can’t afford this, I can’t afford that, but better question is, do anyone own a console here? How often do you buy a game and how often do you spend on that game.
It is a matter of perspective. Will I be playing this event? Probably not, I regret disenchanting some legendaries when they decided to start hall of faming, or rotating (I really shouldn’t have :/). Am I mad this wasn’t catered to me? No, this game has done a lot of freebies to help out everyone, and this game can allow you to get a lot of cards with just patience and grinding ladder to get a few free cards and what not. (I am also a casual player, so I am happy just to get a few free cards/packs just to help catch up).
And like any actual card game, whether its magic or pokemon (which I have done both), Hearthstone is much cheaper if you want to go play in non-standard events. (Can cost like easily over 1 grand or so if not more to build 1 deck in older formats for Magic aka. Modern, Legacy, Vintage.) As someone that sold his whole collection for a ton of cash since I played it since the game came out.
a bit narrow minded perhaps? … your perspective is one lacking a wider view and understanding, consider stepping back to see that there are many who have been vested in Hearthstone since or near the beginning. … this means wild is little to no, ‘initial’ investment.. the investment of time and/or money has already been paid long ago. additionally your opinion doesn’t make a subject or point factual.. when the fact is, it’s clearly on record this has already been one of the most well received brawls.. there is much to be had, and many great things to look fwd too.. perhaps a bit of sunshine is what you need, maybe get out and away from this game you seem to have a negative response/outlook to. take a hike.. literally.
The fact it has been one of the most well recieved brawls doesn’t really say anything because brawls suck in general. Most people just play them once a week to get the pack. Of course this one is better than usual giving the possible rewards.