IMHO, the problem with Nightmare Amalgam isn’t his initial stats, it’s that its so easy AND rewarding to turn him into a fat divine shield + taunt + poison late game. Everyone plays “see an Amalgam, pick an Amalgam”, so a lot of games come down to just who got offered and who doesn’t. A better rework IMHO would be to move him to Tier 4 or 5. That way he still has the potential to carry late game, but by then a 3/4 naked body is really weak and your board is full so you really need to think about if its worth investing in him or not. Strategy-wise he becomes more like a Lightfang, Iron Sensei, or Brann, except instead of sacrificing a slot to give buffs to your other minions, you’re doing it to accept buffs.

^^ This. Except they need to be smart about it. Specifically: I think they need to give a way where players can increase the stats of non-tribal minions late-game that doesn’t just give an additional way to grow tribal minions.

My biggest hope for this game is that they find a way to make synergies OTHER than tribal viable. Like: as Stonekeep points out, taunts by themselves are just too weak bodies mid-to-late game. Divine Shield / Bolvar is a bit more viable if you can score a Cobalt Guardian <- Mech lineup, but even then Bolvar is limited to 7 HP so he just dies too soon late game. I think they need to find a way for players to empower non-tribals like Bolvar and Phalanx Commander that can't also be applied to Cave Hydra / Nightmare Amalgam / Junkbot /etc.

Re: Azure Explorer–I think you meant Cosmic Anomaly instead of Arcane Anomaly.

For Pogo Rogue, I like either Zola or Brann better than Novice (assuming you have them). And for Combo Priest, I was running Power World: Shield instead of Divine Spirit–it is less HP, but you get a draw plus you can play it a turn earlier. …But yeah, this Brawl is pretty garbage.

“Wild dynamic fights!
Z3ro calls this mode garbage, but
its just not his taste”
-A haiku by OldManSanns

I was sleeping on the Crowd Favorite + Brann combo until I had a really good run last night. Even though my tribal comp was garbage, being able to just buy any battlecry->stat minion I could find for double effect plus a free +1/+1 on the Favorite really snowballed after a few rounds.

I have been having some really good luck with Jaraxxus running demon/menagerie hybrid comps. The trick is to get 2 amalgams. (I know: that’s a good strat for anyone!) Once you do, even if you only have 1-2 other demons, you still get so many stats for 2 mana… Just keep an eye out for crystal weavers (+1/+1 to all demons), Toxfins, Lightfangs, and all the other menagerie buffers. The cost reduction from 3 to 2 made such a huge difference!

Ah. That sounds like the perfect champion for me then! Not because she’ll be good, but because I’m constantly freezing the tavern when I shouldn’t be. I actually think that’s not very good at all. You’ll get some AFK-grade value early on–e.g., you can freeze on the first round after you buy your first minion, then upgrade and re-freeze on your second turn, then sell (hopefully a token) to upgrade/freeze again on the third round, then on your fourth turn you can either buy two minions with +3/+3 or press your luck and upgrade to four stars and wait until your fifth turn to get two minions with as much as +4/+4… After that, though, you’ll fall off hard. +1/+1 on (usually) 1 new minion a turn later just isn’t that good. And where AFK gets mid-star minions that she might be able to build a strategy around, the above plan will net you 1-2 star minions which you’ll probably want to sell off before too long.

My Way-Too-Early evaluations: Elise and Brann sound both powerful and fun to play. Finley sounds extremely weak–basically like a more-random version of first-gen Mukla, and first-gen Mukla was already pretty bad. Making it either passive, targeted, or even just +1/+2 might change this, but as-is I think you’ll always rather reroll than HP. Sindragosa is interesting. If she gets some way to easily freeze minions, that’s insane! You can either freeze taunts just to bulk them up or a Khadgar / Baron / Mama Bear / etc to prevent them from attacking while simultaneously giving them more health… On the other hand, if she’s relying on buying certain minions to do the freeze as a battlecry, this HP becomes a lot worse. Also–given how buffs currently work: if you freeze a minion during your tavern phase, it would keep that for all subsequent rounds, so the tradeoff would be it gets to constantly grow yet never able to initiate an attack? Very intriguing…

Yup; just a theory from a cynic. Blizzard has been cagey about their long term plans.

We can always hope. 🙂

No rewards currently, but this mode is just a beta.

That said: once it does release, I would expect them to treat it either like an extremely long Brawl (i.e., every month or so they do a new “season” and everyone gets a legendary quest to play a few games with a reward of a free pack or two) or like Arena (you pay either 150 gold or $2 to play a certain number of games and then get rewards based on how well you did). I can’t see them making this like Ranked Play where you can always get significant monthly rewards without investing either fixed entrance fee or card collection just because that’s a poor business model.

“Beast synergy”? You mean like if you discover a Witching Hour off your single Dendrologist so you can bring back a 1/1 for 3 mana?

I’d strongly recommend dropping the hares and the Gift of the Wilds; the former are too wimpy and the latter is too slow. Good candidates for replacement are Bees!, Sn1p-Sn4p, Landscaping, and a 2nd Dendrologist. You might even want to consider playing with Sathrovarr–he’s real cheeky when he hits a 0 mana Mulchmuncher, but for this archetype I imagine most matches he’s probably a dead card.

Do we know how exactly the pool sharing works yet? I was watching a streamer go for a Shudderwalk-Pogo strategy yesterday, and chat was divided about whether or not it was worth selling them back so that he had slightly better odds at finding new ones.

I know. My point was: the difference between a stale meta and a “good” (i.e. diverse) meta usually boils down to 1-2 cards being slightly more powerful than their peers.

Grr… I can hardly wait for Battlegrounds to go open beta on Tuesday. I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that much cash on the pack bundles.

I’m really hoping this is the expansion where Deathrattle Rogue becomes a thing again. It still needs some help, but between Waxadred, Anka, and the necrium cards from RR, its showing promise.

Blizzard said invoking would have ‘no effect’ if you don’t have Galakrond–I would assume this includes not empowering things like Umbral Skulker.

“One final thing to note is that when you Invoke, it is Galakrond himself that is rewarding you for your efforts. If you don’t have a Galakrond as your Hero, or in your hand or deck, then Invoking has no effect. So, if you steal and play an Invoke card from your opponent, you won’t get any benefit from the Invoke effect unless you have a Galakrond.”

You say that, but wait for the dust to settle. E.g., all these Doom in the Tomb cards sounded awesome, but the fact that Evolve is so much more powerful than any of the other cards they featured resulted in Shaman becoming 30% of the meta–and the only reason why its that low is because everyone’s abandoned any decks that don’t compete with it. It just takes 1-2 cards that are significantly better than the rest to throw everything off. 🙁

You get free Galakrond (legendary hero card) for priest, warrior, shaman, rogue, and warlock–5 total.

I haven’t heard of anything beyond that.