well, they do pay us with one pack for the first win.

it is definitely a brawl where rng is a dominant factor

The Arfus deck is full of board control, lifesteal and acceleration.
Cutting some health points did nothing to really weaken the deck, because most preconstructed decks do not have the means to “rush down” the Arfus deck.
It is still on top by a margin

I think it is a step into the right direction to reward players for playing games, not winning them.
Because if the reward is only for winning, you a loss is doubly frustrating for falling down one step of the ladder and also not advancing your quest. When playing is rewarded, a lost game at least gives you some progress on your quest as a consolation price.
What’s even more important: If a quest requires you to win, you are pushed to play the most efficient (net-)decks to complete that quest. This punishes “experimental” decks with lower win rates by denying them quest completion and also pitting them against a higher rate of decks people copy from the net to get the wins for their own quests.
So hopefully this new style of quests will lead to a wider variety of decks on the ladder.

As for monetarization in general:
The basic dilemma imho is, that the company wants the players to spend more money on the game, while the players understandably would like to keep their money and go on playing the game for (almost) free.

just a typo here:
… Sock Puppet Slitherspear now properly gains ATTACK

There are only limited ways to improve your chances of winning.
– you have to try to try to keep a wide board to deflect bomb salvos (Violet Teacher can be helpful here). do not attack unless you want to create board space or you are going for the kill during your opponent’s next turn (usually this involves one or two savage roars)
– use your healing on the player with lower health, but preferrably on Druid, because Mage has Animated Armor. You should protect Animated Armor from Prioritize by keping a larger attack minion on the board (also protect Troggzor, Violet Teacher, Brann and Moonkin this way if possible).
– choose carefully with which creature you trigger Mirror Entity. Arnassus Aspirant is the worst, but there are many good options (mostly anything without battlecry, sometimes even Zombie Chow)
– mana ramp is the best way to start the game. Arcane Golem is valuable here, but Darnassus Aspirant less so because it dies easily, taking the mana crystal away again.
– to finally win the game, there are some combos, like setting up your opponent with Troggzor+Millhouse / Moonkin+Millhouse / Troggzor+Cho
– you might want to stockpile some (cheap) spells in case your opponent drops Troggzor or Moonkin
– keep in mind that Lorewalker is always killed at the second occasion (after both players had 1 turn with it), so you know what Mechazod is doing, i.e. not killing your largest creature
– turn 1 Zombie Chow is often not a good play in this brawl, because you will probably waste the 5 healing for your team, and you give Mechazod a target for Bomb Salvo and Prioritize which would otherwise just fizzle on the board. (Zombie Chow only survives only if Overclock never triggered).

That being said, RNG plays a huge role in this brawl. If mechazod starts with some overclocks, follows with bomb salvos against your board and finishes you with double zap there is almost nothing you can do. On the other hand, in the late game overclock feels like a free turn for you, and prioritize sometimes even comes against an empty board in the early game, making Mechazod waste its turn.

At least we get 2 legends again with the 20packs bundles.

Last time they offered only one, and I declined

I found it very hard to win any games at all with Splendiferous Whizbang.

I thought at Bronze 10 (at the start of the month) I cold collect some wins with splendiferous at lower levels, but 80-90% are Reno Warrior, Aggro Hunter and Excavate Death Knight.
None of the decks had any chance against those decks. They were defenselsess against Hunter, and against the control decks they got the board cleared so often until the ressources ran out every time.

you missed multiple elemental invocations being played, each discounting thunderbringer by 2.

actually a good strategy, because the thunderbringers have taunt and spawn more thunderbringers when they die

what did you add after cutting drain soul and endgame?
i think Finley definitely can save you some games in which you drew doomguards (or in which you failed to draw crane game).

It would be interesting to watch some games in spectator mode. but for the time being this tavern brawl is over, and we have to see if crane game will be viable next time “blood magic” comes around

buffed Treasure Distributor looks quite imba at first glance

it was just my experience with the 40+ games i played (sounds much, but most games do not last more than 2-3 turns)

real turn 1 kills by my opponents were quite infrequent (even with specialized decks), because you only have little time in your first turn. That lead to many situations where one player puts himself down on cards and life to almost kill his opponent, and then said opponent only needs to inflict 10-15 damage, but only has little life left to do so. That is why Molten Giant is quite effective in practice, even if it does not help with turn 1 kills.

If you expect to face only Burn Druid and Demon Hunter decks (those are the only ones capable of T1 kills in the hands of a very a quick player) you could call it a turn 1 meta, but even there a dreadlord can help you with its taunt, because much of Druid’s and Demon Hunter’s damage comes from attacks by the hero.

I had bad results with Hand of Gul’dan, because if you pay 6 life for it you often miss the necessary life total to play all the cards drawn, and there is no way besides luckily hitting it with scourge supplies to consistently discard it to play it for free (like expired merchant and chamber of viscidus – those are obviously not an option).

Maybe I play too slow, and maybe the fact that i do not own The Soularium makes such a big difference, but i almost never could do 30 damage on turn 1 with the original deck. Drain Soul (paying 2 life to gain 3) made no sense, and i never ever played Endgame in a way that made a difference to the outcome of the game.

Shard of the Naaru counters many decks like Pogo and Patches.
Astral Automaton is a good fit for the second slot, as it snowballs nicely.

and as Quakins already mentioned below: flik skyshiv + counterfeit coin is a thing people are doing

i am deeply impressed how far out of the box hearthstone can be taken.
the only twist about the deck is that you need 2 real mana crystals (not just 1 crystal and the coin), so going second maybe means that you die to T1 Embiggen-Embiggen-Patches from your opponent. … but on the other hand that is true for almost every deck

i totally agree that wild packs are vastly overpriced, but at least they give me access to to the legacy cards that were taken away from my collection by the core set rotation.

That being said, I like the quest of completing entire sets, and I hate what they have done with the cereation of the cavern of times set: They just effectively disabled the duplicate protection for all reprinted cards, so there are like 18 legends that you can pull twice, 16 epics that you can pull 4 times each, thereby making the completion of sets much more difficult.

Maybe blizzard will someday clean up the mess they created, but i highly doubt it because it would just reduce the amount of money collectors have to spend

I like the idea of T1 crane game into Doom Guard, then buffing them with Monstrous Form and Power Overwhelming and finally copying them with Reverberations for a T1 kill.

I played the deck a lot, and the biggest issue is that the deck fizzles badly if you draw even a single Doom Guard or if you destroy one by Fracking while digging for Crane Game.

At first I wanted to solve that by adding Plot Twist, but I ultimately settled for Sir Finley, Sea Guide and also a pair of Enhanced Dreadlords as Crane Game Targets 3 and 4.

T1 kills are now far less likely, but still possible, and the total win rate goes up. Of course you are still an underdog against Burn Druid, but all other matchups are manageable.

I cut Drain Soul, Hand of Gul’dan and Endgame, adding Molten Giants, a Sacrifical Pact and the above mentionend enhanced Dreadlords instead (I do not own The Soularium).

Now the biggest remaining issue is if you mulligan into all those 1-mana-spells that need a minion on your side instead of Crane Game or draw spells.

There are decks beyond Burn Druid in this format:

I have seen …

Paladin with Tip the Scales and with Front Lines.

Hunter with Nagrand Slam and with Guardian Animals into Tundra Rhino to Charge Unleash the Beast.

Token Druid with all kinds of expensive global buffs.

… but in the end Burn Druid is still king

Arcane Artificer and Solid Alibi do not work as they did, so that strategy is dead.
(apparently this is stated in the “general information” in bold, i just did not read it)

So Violet Illusionist and Blur from Demon Hunter are out too.

draw/heal/burn Druid on the other hand still works, but again time is your greatest issue.
(but even if you do not kill your opponent T1, you can still reduce his life enough to severely limit his options)

Apparently the Control Warrior deck from February’s Twist season worked just fine.
Just replace the Dragonslayers and the Big Ol’ Whelps

Kayn Sunfury destroys the idea of this brawl, but Pogo Hopper is still king of it (and of many many other tavern brawls too)

I managed to win with Demon Hunter against Paladin by copying his injured Titan 4 Times with the 2 Locations i had, but yes, most decks did not work.

You named Paladin and Hunter, and I think the Death Knight deck also does what it is supposed to: buffing undeads in hand to double digits and preying on the anemic decks most other classes have