This week’s Tavern Brawl is “Storming Stormwind”!
Discuss this Tavern Brawl on our Discord!
Official Description for Storming Stormwind
Lay siege to Stormwind! The city starts with 1 Health and goes up as you hit it. How much damage can YOU do?
Storming Stormwind Chalkboard
General Information
- Earn a card pack from the latest expansion for your first match in this Brawl.
- This is the second time we see this Brawl. Last time we’ve seen it was on August 3, 2016.
- This is a PvE Brawl.
- Brawl’s format is Wild (?).
- It’s a constructed Brawl. Pick a class and create your own deck.
- You play against a bot (not a real player) and your goal is to deal as much damage to Stormwind as possible.
- City of Stormwind starts at 1 HP and goes up by 1 HP each time you damage it (e.g. dealing 10 damage gives it +10 Health). Your score is calculated based on damage you dealt (so the City’s final Health).
- Your opponent starts with a weapon that grows in attack each turn and minions that gain Attack and Health based on the weapon’s Attack (so they go stronger each turn). You can destroy the weapon, but it gets respawned each turn.
- The match is over when you deal 1000 damage to the city or you die. It’s going to be difficult with some regular decks, so the best way to do it is with some special combo. Your opponent doesn’t have combo disruptors and starts pretty slowly so you should have enough time to set it up.
- You get your free pack no matter if you win or lose – but you can’t concede to get it.
- The above information is based on the last time this Brawl was live, but since that was over 8 years ago, some things could have changed. Let us know in the comments.
Astral Automaton priest worked nicely, easy to get up to the 1000 damage with a decent draw. Marin, Kel’thuzad, Ra-den, Zola, Trusty fishing rod (for grabbing your bots) all worked nicely.
Almost impossible with a regular deck? Libram paladin disagrees
8 years of power creep made this brawl a lot easier
I just copy-pasted the info from 8 years ago, but I guess that the part about being almost impossible with a regular deck is quite outdated now so I changed that to “difficult” 😀
For those who have not been around in 2016, some clever guys broke this brawl to unbelievable extents. Thanks to the brawl returning after 8 years, you too can experience the magic of dealing 2 billion damage (give or take a few) in one single attack.
How can this be done?
Well, the engine you are playing against acts predictably to a certain extent. Namely, if they have Divine Spirit in hand, they cast it. This becomes very interesting as soon as Lorewalker Cho (or two) enters the stage. Now health totals of minions double again and again. In 2016, if you reached the magic number of 2147483648 a.k.a. 2^31, an integer overflow killed your minion, so 2 billion was the limit. Now you are only one Inner Fire away from the hardest strike you will ever hit in your hearthstone career.
However, there are certain pitfalls:
1.) Another rumor says that the engine concedes if you have a minion with very high attack. So we will pile up health first and do not increase the attack value of our minion until the final attack.
2.) One pitfall comes in the form of the cards in the engine’s decks. Most of them are harmless, but there is Execute, which for a single mana can undo all the work of creating a multi-digit-minion. Enter the Coliseum is another nuisance, which can be partly mitigated by playing Kel’thuzad. As long as Kel’thuzad is your highest power creature, he will bring back your other minions, most notably Lorewalker Cho after Enter the Coliseum rears its ugly head. Dark Bargain also can be a problem if it hits the wrong minions. Rally can revive your Cho if something goes wrong
3.) Another pitfall: after the health-doubling-fun starts, you will probably not see any more cards from your deck. It will be all Divine Spirit until the final stage. This also means, that if you do not have Inner Fire already in your hand, it will probably explode as soon as you want to draw it. So just make sure you have your Inner Fire in hand in time. If you are cautious with card draw and hand space you could maybe keep your hand space low enough to draw some new cards, but keeping the opponent’s hand full is important, so he will also keep your hand full too.
What you want to achieve is a “pin” against the AI opponent:
1.) a full board of silenced/0 power minions on his side, so he cannot add new minions any more
2.) a taunt minion with high health and zero power on your side, so he cannot get rid of his silenced minions
2.) a full hand on his side that destroys any card that is drawn from the deck.
Once the opponent is pinned, keep his hand full with Divine Spirits and build that immense minion. Just don’t forget the Inner Fire that is needed to deliver the big blow. Maybe you will also need a Shard of the Naaru to switch off enemy taunt minions when you finally strike, but that card should understandably never land in the opposition’s hand.
Do not bother to destroy the enemy’s weapon, it respawns next turn and he never attacks with it anyway.
All in all the new cards available in 2024 make this whole endavour much easier compared to 2016.
The list below is in no means optimal, but it works and shows the concepts that I described above.
2x (1) Crimson Clergy
2x (1) Funnel Cake
2x (1) Inner Fire
1x (1) Northshire Cleric
2x (1) Power Word: Shield
2x (1) Shard of the Naaru
2x (1) Shieldbearer
2x (2) Creation Protocol
2x (2) Divine Hymn
2x (2) Divine Spirit
1x (2) Lorewalker Cho
2x (2) Shadow Word: Death
2x (2) Tidepool Pupil
2x (3) Anchorite
1x (4) Rally!
2x (4) Unpowered Steambot
1x (8) Kel’Thuzad
AAEBAZ/HAgTvCPIMgg774wMN+ALlBOIG0QrTCr3zApf2AqLoA4f3A6LpBe33BcK+BvjhBgAA
Nice!
Thank you!
However, i noticed that I faced some problems again and again, but I found solutions:
first, sometimes I had no good answer to the 3/3s and 4/4s he spawned in the early game, which my shadow word: death could not handle. –> I changed those to The Light – It Burns, which also happen to be cheaper
second, I found myself often in the situation that Cho was in play, both players had 10 mana, but each turn I had to spend all my mana on spells to fill my opponent’s hand to keep him from drawing his outs (Mind Control Tech is also capable of ruining your day, also the simple 0-mana silence spell). On his turn he would fill my hand to 10 cards, preventing me in turn from drawing new cards. –> one Audio Amplifier gave me extra mana and extra hand space to gain the upper hand in these situations. Emperor Thaurissan also allows you to play more spells after his hand is full, opening up hand space so you can draw new cards.
third, there were those heartbreaking games where I had established the pin, but my deck was almost depleted, and I died from fatigue before i could cash in my billions. Initially I thought Photographer Fizzle could help me here, but the real answer was –> Educated Elekk. That card ensured that I would never die from fatigue again unless I burnt it somehow because my hand was full.
Finally, not playing Mass Dispell in the first place was a big mistake, so these were added as well.
From the original deck I removed the Anchorite/Divine Hymn-combo and one Shieldbearer (5 cards) to make room for the Amplifier, Thaurissan, Elekk and 2 Mass Dispell.
Finally I noticed that there is no integer overflow any more, just a limit how far your creature can grow until Divine Spirit and Blessed Championhave no more effect
in my quest to find the optimal build for this deck I noticed that sometimes the Divine Spirits are buried so deep in the deck that it is drawn too late to build the gigantic creature.
So I cut 1 Tidepool Pupil and 1 Inner Fire for 2 Shadow Visions, which should theoretically always find me the spell I need.
In practice many games had me searching for that single remaining Inner Fire, so I should probably cut Rally, which is a mediocre Lorewalker-resurrector anyway.
The biggest fail was the replacement of Power Word: Shield by Anduin’s Gift.
With Lorewalker active, it allowed the opponent to discover shadow word pain with disastrous results.
What is the point of this brawl?
You can test your skills against an AI opponent and compare your results with others.
Below people posted numbers like 138, 360, 225, 884, 1625.
Can you tinker a deck that can beat these numbers?
And if you do not ike it, you get at least one free pack for this week
fun
Hey! I do not know if you guys already know this, but you can actually “win” by destroying stormwind,
I did 1625 damage on 21 turns and “won” the game. Got a screenwhot
AI still can’t cope with Kel’Thuzad + Taunts; got to 225 damage on it before “Enter the Coliseum” wiped Kel’Thuzad (had some pretty massive totems with Thunder Bluff Valiant).
Rejuggled and went for a cheesy Priest with Kel’Thuzad and some taunts and nutty stuff like Flying Machine with Power Word Tentacles and Inner Fire. Managed to deal 884 damage before Kel’Thuzad was silenced.
https://twitter.com/ComethTheNight/status/760972167358115840/photo/1
Someone tell me a basic deck for this tavern brawl becuase i dont have eny cards
You can play anything you want, it doesn’t matter, you always win.
Anything with Kel’Thuzad and Taunt creatures – the AI doesn’t cope well with that combo. Priest is pretty good; Mass Dispel turns a scary looking board into nothing more than a load of harmless 0/1s and 1/1s which limits it’s ability to play cards (don’t kill the 0/1s) … until he drops Stormwind Champion anyway. It can buy you enough time to get Kel’Thuzad and an Annoy-o-tron on the board.
Then it’s just a matter of seeing *how* much damage you can clock up before Kel’Thuzad gets hit with silence.
Played Yogg ‘n’ Load Hunter, 360 damage in 21 turns. That’s ~17 damage a turn. Malygos unfortunately died after I played him to my Acidmaw + Flamecannon. 🙁
This brawl is super fun, and its easy to do a lot of damage with a face hunter. I did 138 on my first try.
my friend got 5k with mill rogue
Stormwind destroys itself if it reaches 1000 damage