FINALLY we can play Tavern Brawls on Mondays and Tuesdays! One of the best and most requested changes in a long time!

I have two concerns about this “class identity” summary:

1) This identity could force classes to become too one-dimensional. We are already seeing this right now with e.g. Warlock, where the lack of healing and good finishers makes Warlock unable to play Control and is forced to go Zoo. I think classes should be able to overcome some of their weaknesses with combos. So, for example, Spreading Plague is NOT good because it shores a class weakness with one single card. But Dark Pact is OK because it requires two cards (we can discuss that the power level of Dark Pact was off the charts because it provided with too much healing originally and it also killed Possessed Lackey, which was unfair in Cubelock. But the card design was good).

2) Many expansion mechanics are much better for some classes than for others, so there will also be an imbalance there. Rush for example has changed the flow of the game. Before, if you had a creature on an empty board, the opponent would have to use removal to get rid of it, or waste a Charge minion to kill it. Charge minions are pretty bad when trading and attacking minions, whereas Rush minions are pretty good at that. So Hunter can play more for board control and come back from behind much easier now. Another example is Echo, a value keyword. Echo was great for Warrior, but pretty abysmal for Rogue.

You are right that Plaguebringer could still see play in a Standard meta that’s favorable to it, but if Plague Scientist were still around, that’s the card that would see play. People argue that Plaguebringer is great right now where Lackeys around. And precisely because of that Plague Scientist would be great too, because it would be very easy to enable the Combo.

I agree that the HoF replacement cards are generally horrible. We obviously didn’t want Fireballs or Ice Bolts, but we also didn’t want Silverback Patriarchs nor Magma Ragers.

I think you just gave an example that perfectly proves my point: SI:7 Agent has been a staple in Rogue forever, whereas Fire Plume Phoenix has only been played in aggressive decks that cared about the Elemental tag (Even Shaman, Elemental Shaman…). I never saw a Rogue deck with Fire Plume Phoenix. Plaguebringer could still see play in a Standard meta that’s favorable to it, but if Plague Scientist were still around, that’s the card that would see play. People argue that Plaguebringer is great right now where Lackeys around. And precisely because of that Plague Scientist would be great too, because it would be very easy to enable the Combo.

Hearthstone’s current best competitor, MTGA, has both Rare and Mythic Rare protection (so when you have a playset of the card, you open a different one, like here Leg dup protection). I’m always afraid to draft Epics when a set comes down because I know I’ll be opening more packs of the set and I’ve had several times where I’ve opened a 3rd or 4th copy of an Epic while having 0 copies of 10 more other epics in the set. I still for example have 0 Magic Carpets and 0 Waggle Picks despite having 5 Hench Clan Hags. It’s a huge feel bad and yes, it affects mostly people who pay a lot, but it also affects people who only preorder or people who don’t even spend real money.

Tournament mode only needed to be something like Battlefy: submit decks, ban a class, keep track of what has been played. It’s ridiculous they couldn’t even implement that. The other Blizzard game I play, StarCraft II, has had a tournament mode for a long time now, and it’s nothing special.

Let’s cross our fingers for the new Limited mode. It’s long due.

Tome of Intellect is actually playable in a Miracle/Quest Mage deck. Plaguebringer looks pretty bad, and it’s unplayable in Wild because Plague Scientist is strictly a better card.

I think people are underestimating this card a bit. The stats are already pretty good for the mana, and you just need to make one trade to get good value out of it. Even if you only get like a 3/3 back. 7 mana for a 6/8 + 3/3 sounds good value to me even for Constructed. Obviously it won’t fit into every deck, but it could be a nice top-end for a midrange deck. And there’s obvious synergies with sacrifice or Rush, although you only have maximum 3 mana in your turn for comboing this.

Yeah, they’re also supposed to be good with Beasts. Their beast-synergy cards have been abysmal most of the time. The only exceptions have been niche: Witching Hour when Hadronox was still around.

So as probably many others, we are happy on the direction many of these changes are trying to go: buffing unplayable cards, putting in new cards to replace the rotated out ones (although these new cards are all trash, I’m not happy about that)… In the end they should listen to Brian Kibler, who mentioned many times that an Evergreen Set is problematic, and they’re actually proving him right with all these changes. But, back to point, when are these long-awaited changes going to be implemented?

1 – Tournament mode.
2 – Economy rework. Either have triple-Epic protection when opening packs, or reduce a Legendary’s crafting cost, maybe to 1200 dust? And Wild packs should cost 75% of what Standard packs cost, if not less.
3 – New Limited modes. New modes in general, too.

Thanks for your reply, OG! I really enjoy reading your articles. I have never tried Eternal, I think I will try it sometime. The asynchronous Draft is definitely a good way to implement Booster Draft in a Digital Card Game, although I still think there’s so much value in reading signals of what color is open in the pod, and to make educated guesses of what will wheel to determine your draft. I guess this is lost in Eternal. Also, I can’t believe that a modern card game like Eternal decided to implement mana the same way as Magic and recreate mana screw and mana flood. That is for sure the worst part of MTG and we can accept it since the game is almost 30 years old and many mechanics play with lands. But why would a moder digital game implement that flaw, it totally baffles me.

I used to like Hearthstone’s Arena, but since I experienced MTG’s Draft format I made the switch and haven’t looked back since. In MTG’s Draft I have SO MANY decisions to make, have to read signals, have to draft synergies and have to build a coherent deck. In HS you have to play all the drafted cards, so you’re stuck with your bad buckets. Not to mention that MTG’s sets are all designed for Limited play, and that every set is different. So I always have so much more fun in MTG’s Draft than HS’ Arena. HS has potential for so much more, if they design a better format I might jump back in (the only thing I complain in MTG’s Draft is that MTGA uses bots instead of real people, which is annoying).

I started playing Between Frozen Throne and K&C and I would really like to get into Wild. I paid for 2 of the adventures and I have a functional Tempo Mage and a functional Odd Rogue, but even though I have most cards from Year of the Mammoth and Year of the Raven, there’s still so many legendaries and cards I don’t have in Wild, so I can’t really get into the format fully. I think it is a disservice that we now have to hard-craft stuff like the Charge Murloc or Ragnaros when the first one was given for free after getting all Murlocs in the Classic set and the second one could be opened from packs. I think Wild packs should cost 75% of the full-price at least, if not 50%, and it’s ridiculous that they cost as much as Standard packs. Still waiting for them to lower the price on the packs to get into the format. And no, this Bundle I won’t buy, because although I want packs for GvG, TGT, WotG and Gadgetzan, I don’t want packs for Year of the Mammoth, I already have most of those cards.

Baleful Banker: “Right now, it’s mostly used as a way to shuffle an extra Archivist Elysiana into your deck in Control builds. But I wouldn’t put it high on the priority list, because using Youthful Brewmaster gives you a similar effect in Control mirrors – some players even prefer to run Brewmaster instead (since it has some more applications).” – This text is outdated. Since Elysiana’s nerf to 9 mana, most builds have dropped the extra shuffle because you can’t always be on the Coin.

Great analysis and you are totally right. In MTG playing the value-war and getting 2-for-1’s is so important, but in HS there is so much value generation. I recently played a Rogue who very carelessly played all his cards and I had clearly stabilized, with 4 cards in hand and on a sure path to victory. Next turn he topdecks Myra’s Unstable Element and draws enough burn to finish me off. Not saying that MUE is an overpowered card or that this is a typical case scenario (we’ve all lost to lucky topdecks). I’m just saying that it feels completely wrong to get so outvalued by individual cards. It happened with the DK hero cards that pulled value out of thin air. And we still have it today, although not so blatantly, with Discover-like mechanics. And I love Discover, BTW, but not Elysiana/Master’s Call/Omega Assembly types of Discover that packs so much value in just one card.

Unlikely. Commons and Rares don’t take that much dust to craft, so it’s not a huge waste if you craft the “wrong” cards of these rarities. For commons the best way is actually to buy packs of the expansion you need. With 40 packs opened you should have almost all the commons.

tom60229’s decks are certainly the ones with the highest power level. The power creep that year was real. And yet, I have been able to crush some of those decks thanks to unnerfed Miracle Rogues.

This Brawl is awesome, by the way.

I bought 1000 Amazon coins and then… this Bundle is not in the in-game store. Why would Blizzard make a pack offer that is not even in the in-game store? Can I only pay with real money?

“Another time-honored way to nerf cards is to make them give +1 Attack, let’s say to all of your Battlecry minions.” LMAO. I appreciate humor in these “serious” articles. 😉

I’m pretty sure we get Rise of Shadows packs instead of Rastakhan’s Rumble packs, right? 🙂

Silence Priest.