I just played every deck until I had my first win and noted the win rates of every deck (my losses also counted as a win for the opposing deck and vice versa). Interestingly I played at least once against every deck, completing the list in my penultimate game:

1. priest 100% (+4) – Hedanis looks imba, because most of the preconstructed decks are too weak to contest him.
2. paladin 100% (+3) – those were mostly rushes
3. warrior 100% (+2)
4. shaman 67% (+1) – especially Pack the House dominates late midgames
5. death knight 60% (+1)
6. druid 50% (+/- 0)
7. rogue 43% (-1) – i have to admit that my opponents went 2-0 and i went 1-4 with it, so maybe it should be higher
8. demon hunter 33% (-1) – my win came in the mirror match
9. warlock 33% (-1)
10. mage 20% (-3) – i won a mirror match by fatigue, my opponents went 0-4 with it
11. hunter 14% (-5) – this is sad, because all those fat beasts look like fun, but the deck itself is atrociously misbuilt

thanks for your reply!

that’s bad news for E.T.C.:

on the one hand, there are already Necrotic Mortician and School Teacher for flexibility to adapt to a wide range of possible matchups, so E.T.C. is not really necessary.

on the other hand, there are so many possible matchups that three additional cards from E.T.C. cannot cover them all.

the “new” ideas I encountered were:
– Haleh as the “super-Flamewaker” and
– Meteorologist (because your hand will always be full)

and just like in Standard some months ago, Astalor handily replaces the nerfed Denathrius.

just cracked legend with a DK deck including E.T.C.
mostly used him for loatheb.
secret tech living dragonbreath against freeze shamans and freeze mages never happened
eater of secrets/ashen elemental would have been useful against ice block at times

the real mvps were astalor and sylvanas
honorable mention: battlefield necromancer

Since you have so much DK experiance, I wonder what your most frequent choices were for the battlecries of School Teacher and Necrotic Mortician?

For me, I think it’s Plague Strike, Blightwidow (only NM) and if I have a wide board of anemic Minions I also sometimes like anti-magic shell

Does this change any of the claims you made in this article?
https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/you-can-add-tech-cards-to-beat-the-top-meta-decks-but-you-probably-should-not/

I guess the most interesting band members are loatheb, smothering starfish, eater of secrets, spot removal and maybe some kind of board clear (it’s weird that spells can be band members too)

i don’t get the point of this brawl.

the best choice is a run-of-the-mill standard aggro deck like frost death knight.
there is no way to use the special rules to your advantage, except maybe that aggro gets a slight push because the interaction is even lower than in normal hearthstone games.

and still we get the same brawl every 4 months or so

I cannot wait to try out constructed quarter in my even DK deck 😀
So actually the card was buffed, not nerfed for me

Pillager is fubr now, but it was a non-interactive deck in the first place anyway.

I am curious what will happen when I just keep my Warlord discard deck unchanged.
It will probably need one more discard outlet and T4/T5 kills with 15-20 damage from hand are definitely no longer possible, but that is probably a good thing anyway

If I had to take a guess, I would say they will bring a separate rotating core set just for wild.

That would lower the entry barrier for new players that want to take a step “into the wild”

Once the players are hooked, they will pay for “wild bundles” and their dubious “duplicate protection”, that still floods you with duplicates no matter how many rares are still missing from your wild collection

This is the wild version:
– still lacks the necessary card draw, but has better damage spells.
– Arcane Artificer is a nice backup for Solid Alibi. They even combo for ultimate armor protection. The best thing is, that the need for mulliganing is now greatly reduced and you can keep all card drawing as soon as you see either Alibi or Artificer in your opening hand.
– Frost Bolt and Ice Lance are included because they can buy you a turn against Demon Hunter and Druid if you cannot win on the spot, and they are still sweet damage. The Ice Lance would possibly be a second GA Missiles if I owned it.
– play Arcane Brilliance always as your first card draw spell. It produces copies, so it will probably not to run itself out of targets (Pyroblast), but why take a chance?
– play Pyroblast always before you go below 10 life, because afterwards it is locked, even under Alibi protection.
– you can still win without alibi as long as your spells deal more than they cost (Missiles, Mask, Bolt, Lance and Pyroblast if necessary
– coin+firebolt is still one damage if you survived their T1 and if you do not need the mana for
Arcane Artificer
– alibi still lasts during your opponent’s turn, so if you fail to kill them, not everything is yet lost.
– even if you cannot get them to 0 health, the farther you whittle them down, the less options they have. still, some opponents can still win from very low life (demon hunter starting with blur and card draw for example), but you can do the same with Arcane Artificer(s) – Solid Alibi – draw spell(s)

AAEBAf0EAqwB27sCDpYFo7YCluQCtPwCgb8D99ED+90D0ewDopIE/J4E/Z4E4bkE8NMEyt4EAA==

2x (1) Arcane Artificer
1x (1) Ice Lance
2x (2) Cram Session
2x (2) Frostbolt
2x (2) Gifts of Azshara
2x (2) Research Project
2x (2) Solid Alibi
2x (3) Arcane Intellect
2x (4) Arcane Brilliance
2x (4) Fireball
2x (5) Apexis Blast
2x (5) Refreshing Spring Water
2x (7) Firelands Portal
1x (7) Greater Arcane Missiles
2x (7) Mask of C’Thun
2x (10) Pyroblast

as a side note, you have to play pyroblast first, because when you drop below 10 life the game does not let you play it, even under alibi protection

I just noticed that the new mercenaries Lilian and Godfrey are both rare, not epic.

So there are 3 rares (3rd is KelThuzad), 2 Epics (Arfus and Bigglesworth), and Jandice as Legend.

Already have all of them except Jandice.

If cash flow was really the intention of mercenaries (and let’s be honest: cash is the only thing blizzard really cares about), they should have tried to sell interesting items at reasonable prices.

All I get offered is cosmetics, and I could not care less.

For example, if they sold the equipment that needs heroic wins for runestones some impatient players might have paid for it.

They might even have added a button where you can refresh toki’s quest for gold, just to put one more leak into the player’s gold bags.

Let’s wait and see what they have in store for us with this “final” update.

I always thought the meaning of mercenaries is to winn all bouties, complete every task of each merc, and max out every merc.

Then you finally look around and wonder how much the world has changed while you were in your bubble grinding for mercenary coins.

I guess “mythic boss rush” is a nice offer to those who have already “completed” the game mode, but those people will probably not come back, or they will only briefly return to get the 6 new mercs, complete their tasks, max them out, and leave the game mode forever.

good timing by blizzard

i do not care for cosmetics, but i am easily tempted by any kind of quest, task, etc that offers me a reward.

Thank you stonekeep for talking me out of it!
I deleted the quest and never looked back

the only way to win is not to play
-war games, 1983

Lord Marrowgar is a good card.
It just deactivates Grave Strength and it’s totally awful when it gets hit by Mutanus, but I would definitely play it

I can recommend Demon Hunter/Rat which I played to 5/2 (weekly quest)

losses came against /pig, which can play game breaking cards far ahead of the curve

I do not think that HotS and Hearthstone are comparable, because Hearthstone is so much simpler and therefore more easily accessible.

What I do fear is that a chain of causality is pushing dominoes, and we are right in the middle of it.
When living costs increase, the money spent for a game that can also be played for free are easily cut.

Less earnings for blizzard means less future investments into game development, so the end of the road may be blizzards stopping all development alltogether and freezing the state of the game. While I would still enjoy it, there will be some point in the future where I would lose interest (although people still play chess, and the rules have been the same for centuries now)

The introduction of the new class (Death Knight) ws ah half fail/half success, because it seems to be too weak for constructed and too strong for arena.

As for the alternative game modes, only battlegrounds seemed to be successful, while mercenaries and duels never really took off (i do play mercenaries, but to be honest it could really benefit from some variety)

To invigorate the player base and the game itself some successful ideas would be necessary, but at the end of the day only ca$h matters for Blizzard, and if nobody spends his money for the game any more, it will die