Well then. Stormwind has certainly dropped on more spicy backstory that the Barrens chapters hinted at, and we got explanations for why the Questline featured the heroes thus. Rokara led the Horde team into Stormwind, and Bru’kan stepped in to protect the Stormwind citizens from harm. And Tamsin’s turned out to be a pawn like other characters looking for the shards… I’d agree with Tharid on the compelling storytelling. Cornelius’ fight is the first time I’ve played a match in Hearthstone that simply felt difficult to watch. You’re not so much clearing a final boss as much as you’re slowly killing an old man who has no chance of fighting back and begging his daughter to stop.

Onto gameplay, praying for low rolls is what you need to do for the mercenaries fight. I find that Rokara typically starts her turns with two copies of Conditioning in her hand, and she also usually has Blademaster Samuro and Tent Trasher in there too, which means it’s very easy for her to wipe your board and make a comeback thoroughly impossible. The only realistic way forward for that fight is clear out Bru’kan as fast as possible so Conditioning doesn’t go beyond Rank 2, or luck out with Tamsin’s perfume and get a board wipe. And Guff is… well, the Tamsin versus Guff part of the fight is just sad. Which I suppose makes sense because the two of them can’t bring themselves to actually hate each other.

I’d agree with you here. My experience on Pack Runner and Darkglare is that they’re epics I don’t usually draw into, and they’re combo pieces that require other cards to work. So you wouldn’t drop them on Turn 2, and I’d say you might not even drop them on Turn 4. Could you make a case that increasing the Mana required means it’s harder to drop two copies and build up combos? Sure, but what are the odds of holding onto both at the same time by mid to late game, with the resources to make them work? Funnily enough Darkglare was originally a 3-mana 3/4 (that refreshed two Crystals), so… the Circle of Life! Battlemaster is mostly only dropped for the KO, so you wouldn’t be dropping two copies – and it’s mostly on boards that already have large minions so they could make it cost 10 mana and it wouldn’t change the state of things.

Seconded. If anything, I’d say that Mage has not been doing all that great following the nerfs after Forged in the Barrens’ initial meta, with Face Hunter being the main counter for it as far as I remember – and those weren’t any more interactive.

I agree with you on the last bit. Battlemaster feels like it’s just one budget Wild Highlander deck away from being Tier 1.

From the four adventures we HAVE seen in Book of Mercenaries, it’s clear that Team 5 has some idea of how the mercs’ narratives are going to go down – and is moving onto continuing, if not tying up some of the looser ends. (Spoiler warning, in case it wasn’t clear!)

Guff and Rokara’s quests don’t go much further beyond what’s already established in the Book: they’re both young members of the Horde, full of heart for what they believe in, and the Book of Mercenaries tied it all up pretty nicely.

Varden’s questline continues from their fate at the hand of Xyrella’s group in Kurtrus’ chapter: after being forced to cover for Kazakus’ escape. Based on ripped audio files of the end of Varden’s questline, Varden has returned to Silvermoon in search of “answers”, likely to investigate the true nature of the naaru shards.

At the end of Xyrella’s adventure, both Scabbs and Tavish realise that they’ve both been hired by Katrana Prestor, but it looks like only Scabbs is following up on that lead. If not for Tharid mentioning it I wouldn’t have noticed Scabbs’ cameo in the Mage questline. He does declare “I can’t sit here! Stormwind needs me!” as his Summoning quote, so it sounds like he’s able to do something about his dire straits.

Did Cariel fall in battle to Kurtrus? It certainly seemed like it in Kurtrus’ adventure; Cariel has no death quote, no aftermath, although seeing her leading her group in the United in Stormwind trailer makes me think otherwise. “The Fallen”, I imagine, would refer to the 1-drops and comrades she’s had to lead and lose in the demonic invasion. As I mentioned in the page for Rise to the Occasion, it looks like the Roame sibling rivalry is about to reach a tragic conclusion.

What about Bru’kan? Tharid suggests that he’s holding back both the demonic invasion AND the Alliance attackers, but I’m not so sure – my lack of WoW familiarity aside, it looks like Bru’kan is sharing a vessel with Stormwind soldiers, based on the hammers they’re wielding. We know from Rokara’s adventure that Bru’kan is a stronger shaman than he lets on, he believes in compassion and finding your own way, even respecting Rokara when she extends this philosophy to enemies of the Horde. Bru’kan’s flavour text also reads: “Bru’kan, his body weathered and weary, felt his time nearing its end. Teaching brave champions like Rokara gives him hope for a greater future.” Is Bru’kan’s commanding of the elements a sign of him putting aside the differences between the Alliance and the Horde, and “uniting” them against a larger threat? Is Bru’kan going to go out with an elemental bang? Who knows, but seeing both his protege and himself on boats for their questline art, perhaps Bru’kan is once again demonstrating that he knows more than he lets on. Maybe he has one final lesson for Rokara yet…

My players, you look tired and angry! How ’bout some Stormwind cards?
From rogue to priest, some buffs at least – it shouldn’t be too hard!
And if our troubles are leaking – how ’bout a pack or three?
There’s no excuse, most players are used to getting content for free!

I don’t think “Casts when Drawn” spells count towards Educated Elekk though. Even so, I’m not sure you’d want Educated Elekk in the deck. Rogue has plenty of deck thinning options, between Cutting Class, Secret Passage and the Field Contact Miracle engine. Does Rogue need a Garrote deck, though, when Miracle Alex burn is already a reasonably solid list? Maybe Blizz is trying to push Grand Empress Shek’zara and Malevolent Strike… for some reason.

Umbral Owl, Celestial Alignment shenanigans? Off the top of my head those are the synergies that stand out, but how useful those would be is something I’m not getting just yet.

…Welp. It looks like the sibling rivalry between the Roame sisters isn’t going to end well.

Actually, they didn’t! If you assume that the brown rat is the Rat Token representative, there are clearly only three Rat Tokens in the artwork of Rats of Extraordinary Size. The art simply depicts the card having being played when there was already a full board and there are four 5/5 Rat Tokens in the player’s hand.

“But there’s clearly seven gray rats on the field!” you’d say, and, uh…

I personally lucked out on a Secrets-based Hunter deck and finished the Rumble Run on my first attempt – then I wondered why there was no associated challenge with the other classes. So I tried playing through the content again as other classes, and… well, everything went downhill from there. Wasn’t just the fact that everything was so imbalanced against the player, it cemented Rastakhan’s Rumble as one of the more forgettable sets in the game’s history.

Were Witchwood and Boomsday Project great as expansions? In my opinion, not very, but at least you somewhat felt that the cards and the solo content had some modicum of effort put in. Rastakhan’s Rumble on the other hand felt so underwhelming the only cards I remember from the era are either the joke cards Rogue got for Legendaries or the degenerate Druid/Paladin OTK combo enablers.

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/evidents-ragnaros-fire-festival-patron-warrior/

Evident’s old list from waaaaaay back in 2017 still works, although it has a heavily Taunt-based build for some reason which shouldn’t be necessary. (That’ll teach me to netdeck as usual.) I didn’t have Blood Brothers so I swapped in copies of Bomb Wrangler and Sudden Genesis, but I’ll agree with other commenters and recommend an Enrage/Egg-based list.

I think it’s fair to say that the main issue was how ridiculously consistent the deck is, akin to pre-errata Hysteria-Wretched Tiller. The problem with Stealer of Souls is that there’s no way to fix the card like they did with Hysteria, short of making it useless – I’ve seen suggestions like making it such that it only converts the cost for drawn Demons.

I’ll agree that the ban is a radical solution, but the idea that is just opens the floodgates to additional ban demands is a bit much. I doubt that players who want certain cards nerfed or removed would halt their complaints if Stealer of Souls wasn’t banned. Regardless, I think most would agree that the devs really dropped the ball by forgetting the interactions of Plot Twist. A nigh-perfectly consistent Mecha’thun OTK is not something anyone should consider healthy for the game.

Garona’s encounter is as painful as I remember from Valeera’s chapter. That said, we should be expecting some spicy lore as this chapter reveals that both Tavish and Scabbs were separately hired by Katrana Prestor to find the shard of the naaru. Hopefully HSTD’s lore speculators will be putting out an article soon!

Rokara’s story does give something of an introduction to the mercenaries, although I can’t help but feel that as a preview into the Horde-aligned mercenaries, it feels… pretty underwhelming. Maybe it’s because these Hearthstone-unique folks don’t have the history shared by the campaigns in the Book of Heroes, but most of the chapters feel so unessential.

There IS a bit of intrigue with the involvement of Kazakus, which I hope future Books of Mercenaries actually delve into and not have a repeat of Guff/Varden/Tamsin’s intro chapters.

Monty Python expansion crafting, anyone?

Armament Studies
Rogue/Spell
Cost: 1
Discover a Weapon. Your next one costs (1) less.
“Then equippest thou thy Discovered Weapon towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my eyes, hall snuff it.”

It’s not so much that the developers aren’t proactive – they very much are; exactly how proactive they should be is a discussion for another time. But the fact that they aren’t sure what to tell us about whether Edwin VanCleef is getting a nerf or not – or getting Hall of Famed or Wilded or not – appears to the layperson or average, uninvested player that the devs don’t know what’s happening in their own game. Appearing as though you have no idea what you’re doing is, perhaps, worse than Team 5 mishandling the EXP system integration, because it justifies players’ fears and accusations that development has gone off the rails or the developers flat out don’t care.

Personally, the F2P rework hasn’t bothered me that much. I mostly get annoyed at the start of expansions, splurging on 60 to 80 booster packs with gold and raging over the dismal legendary pull rate. But I do wish that EXP gain outside of quests was more visible the same way getting 3 wins for 10 gold used to be.

I’m pretty sure “Phoenix” was meant to allude to 2020, with the introduction of the Demon Hunter class and other mechanics on top of the EXP system as a sort of renaissance for the game… which certainly didn’t pan out the way the developers intended. There’d be very little sense in naming a year after an emblem only to have its symbolism apply to the last few months after most of the major content has rolled out.

Hearthstone certainly had a challenging 2020, during which they lost a lot of the goodwill they once enjoyed, and I’ll not dive into the tired debate of how much of it was their fault or how much of it they deserved. But if anything, the question of whether Edwin’s nerf is a thing or not seems to indicate that Team 5 still hasn’t quite figured out how to communicate upcoming changes and/or drive hype around them. I don’t wish any more crap on the developers than they already got during Darkmoon Faire, but the fact that they haven’t quite coordinated over the status of Edwin is… concerning.

As for “class style”… I think the flavour argument is a pretty poor one to make considering the myriad of playstyles Blizzard tried to implement with each set (viability notwithstanding). We’ve had Big Hand Warlock, Druid AND Mage. We’ve been told Rogue doesn’t deserve big healing, hence the Leeching Poison nerf, while Heal Paladin and Warlock ran amok (mostly the latter, though). I still haven’t quite gotten over the fact that Priest was meant to be the class that represented the “Cloning” sciences in Boomsday Project and yet Druid was running absolutely wild with their ability to make multiple Malygoses.

But we shall see. It’s fun to theorise, and bonus points if you get it right, but I think for this year going forward we ought to manage our expectations. You become less likely to be emotional and disappointed that way.

Personally I liked to think of it as a meta comment. “So I’m afraid that we’ll have… nothing. Which is exactly what’s going to happen for the near and likely extended future due to Demon Hunter’s thing being consistent aggro, so I’m adding nothing after the word ‘have’. Ignore this blurb as a moment of silence for the “slowing down” that corrupted mechanics were supposed to give us.”

” The problem is that World Championship happens a week from now, and releasing a balance update so shortly before it wouldn’t be great for the competition. So I’m afraid that we’ll have”

I’m pretty sure the above segment was left unfinished by accident, but it’s bizarrely humorous to think of it as Stonekeep running out of things to say and something in his mind just decided “screw it”.

Considering that Soul Demon Hunter is one of the top tier decks? Yup, it’s not nearly as difficult as one might think. Between Marrowslicer, Soulshard Lapidary, Twin Slice and Chaos Strike, the deck has plenty of options. Demon tag even gives this lady more value if you happen to get Felosophy off of Wandmaker. Demon Hunter’s going to get real silly, real quick – again.