Looking back at 2024, I think I liked the Tourist mechanic best.
Honorable mention: Repairing the broken achievements at the end of 2024 was a good service for all achievement hunters

The worst part was probably the badly executed attempts at monetarization.
There is nothing wrong with a company wanting to earn money, but it has to be done in a way that is acceptable to the player base. Besides the obvious weekly quest fiasco I think that the Twist format failed mostly because the Caverns of Time set was designed with the main intent to earn money with it. It throws you back to the time before duplicate protection: to get to the new epics and legends, you have to buy packs that give you epics and legends that you already have, or you have to spend dust on them just like it was before duplicate protection.

opponent silencing my gift boxes – that’s where Sea Giant, Mogu Fleshshaper (+transform) and ticking/haywire Zilliax are best 🙂

it’s true that hardcore control decks can let the shaman transform deck struggle, but the deck can also win from early Sea Giants and from surprise Thrall’s Gift discovering Blood Lust, so it’s not an auto loss against control as long as your deck can do something more than just transform minions

Customs Enforcer could work here, as it makes both – the gift cards and the discovered cards – more expensive for your opponent

shadow hunter vol’jin does not work that way.
– either you swap one of the gifts on your side with a minion in your hand. that denies your opponent a legend, but you also probably miss out on an important battlecry (like crazed alchemist), unless you get lucky and hit your sea giant or one of the legends you got from destroying a gift.
– or you swap one of the gifts on their side with a minion in their hand. that denies a legend to yourself, which is bad, and it probably summons one of the legends they are holding from destroying a gift on your side.

either way, shadow hunter vol’jin is not a good card in this tavern brawl I think.

Thank you for all the work you put in.
You said it yourself – mana cost is a deciding factor.
Also, i think you underestimate transform effects in this brawl. The serve several functions:
1.) transforming your gifts denies your opponent the legends. And the legends are good, because they come at reduced mana cost.
2.) sometimes you get a legend with relatively weak stats compared to its cost, but transform gives you another chance to get fair value for your mana.
3.) lots of big creatures run around in this brawl. transform allows you to “heal” a damaged minion by replacing it with one at full health.

Finally, one important aspect of this tavern brawl is that the game starts with 8 minions on the board, which makes Sea Giant, , Mogu Fleshshaper, and very cheap – ready to be transformed into something gigantic. (To some extent this also works with Eredar Brute and Rabble Bouncer, but those only count your opponent’s minions, and ticking module Zilliax only counts your own minions. Still works fine with ticking/haywire, just transform it when the haywire damage gets annoying).

All that being said I agree to you that Priest has a imbalanced card in Purifying Power to silence all their own gifts with profit and a vast arsenal of spells that mass kill the opponent’s gifts (which both come in handy when new gifts arrive at T7 and T9)

well, I consider the interaction between Velen and Saronite Chain Gang a bug, but apparently blizzard had the intention to create a neutral 2-card combo that completely shuts down creature combat (barring a very specific subset of cards that silences, transforms or exiles)

[Progression] Fixed a bug where multiple older Achievements didn’t progress correctly if you used Core Set versions of the relevant cards instead of the originals.

I waited for this so long and posted it so many times. I hope it works!

imho the introduction of the “caverns of time” set was also a failed attempt at monetarization, specifically targeting players that try to complete a collection. These collectors now have to get all those “reprinted” cards that they already own a second time – because owning the “cavern of times”-version of a card does not count as owning the original version.

they just took this tavern brawl to show how the new order in the court works.

coin-order-front lines is definitely one of the stronger openings.

beindes that, druid has the upper hand against mage, and all other heros are not to be seen

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.

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

nice, i answered a survey from blizzard and told them (among other things) that the power level was too high, reno was everywhere and the should do more nerfs and one day later everything comes true!

Now I hope they will fix all those bugged achievements just as I told them …

8 years of power creep made this brawl a lot easier

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

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

maybe the solution would be:
“destroy the top card of your deck, then draw a card and deal damage equal to its cost”

this would destroy the ceaseless expanse and then deal 25 from shirvallah, while still keping the giants active in case you draw shirvallah and/or expanse.

personally i think the “draw a paladin card from your deck and deal damage equal to its cost” is the more elegant solution, but you would need ways to shuffle shirvallah back into your deck or else the deck would fizzle upon drawing it

I think they wanted starships to matter, so they needed a slower environment.

death knight – deathrattle
demon hunter – crewmates
druid – ramp
hunter – discover
mage – elementals/fire spells
paladin – librams
priest – dranei
rogue – burgle
shaman – asteroids/elementals
warlock – ?
warrior – dranei

“Each player has got one free entry”

well, i have never played the pre-release brawl and still have to pay 2 tavern tickets for my first game.

what has gone wrong?

[Progression] Corrected the wording on the KEEP OUT: BEWARE OF DOGS Achievement.
[Progression] Fixed a bug where the Valedictorian’s Honor Achievement couldn’t be completed.

I am glad to read that at least one bugged achievement was repaired (i have not verified it yet).
That gives at least some hope that other bugged achievements will also be fixed in the future.