Angry Chicken #100 with Ben Brode, TeSPA 100k Collegiate Tourney, BlizzCon Giveaway

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Placement & Ranking Changes, Americas Championship and Giveaways, Fails of the Week
Patch 6.2.2 Live This Week

Update: This week's Tavern Brawl is It's Raining Mana. If you're looking for some decks to take for a spin, check out all decks for this Brawl.

The Angry Chicken #100 with Ben Brode

Last night The Angry Chicken podcast celebrated their 100th episode! Ben Brode joined the crew, along with appearances by Frodan and Karma. We've recapped the important bits from Ben Brode below. If you want to watch the vod, that's also available. 

Quote from Ben Brode

Ben on Randomness in Competitive Play
"Increasing the randomness can increase the skill. Crackle isn't as obviously manipulable as Knife Juggler but the question remains when do I play it and do I risk playing it on something with more then 3 health? Do I have a backup if it doesn't work out? I think it represents intense skill and just feels bad when you lose. We can make it feel better or worse but I think it adds additional skill to the game."

The Grand Tournament

  • They felt like it was the right time for a new keyword (Inspire) to be added to the game.
  • They first wanted to play around with a lot of Charge minions for Jousting, but it wasn't enough.
  • Before Joust became what it is today, it was simply reveal a card, not only a minion, to get a bonus.
  • Mysterious Challenger worked really well as it made cards such as Repentence playable and brought a new deck into the mix.

Card Nerfing

  • Very hard to do right after an expansion launches as things need to settle.
  • Nerfing cards devalues your collection and doesn't make it feel like a real card if they can be changed so easily.
  • Players should figure out how to combat certain decks with the tools already available to them. They would rather put more tools in the game to deal with any decks players can figure out how to beat rather than nerfing problematic cards.

New Player Experience

  • There is someone dedicated to the new player experience.
  • A lot of players don't realize there are adventures in the game. [That's a problem]
  • They changed the Taunt error message due to the old one confusing some people causing them to quit before completing the Tutorial.
  • Thousands of players stopped playing during Hemet Nesingwary thanks to Fen Creeper, so if you lose once, the game forces you to Polymorph it the second time around.
  • It is important for them to look at the "wall" in players mind of acquiring cards and figuring out how to deal with it.

The Arena

  • When new content comes out they want it to show up in the arena.
  • They increased the drop rate of TGT cards in the arena so it felt more different with the new content.
  • Rarity is a good way to balance cards in arena but also skew complexity in card packs.
  • If Astral Communion was a Common it would be crazy in Arena and people wouldn't understand how to use it as much.
  • They'd love to make rewards in the arena matter more. It would be great if golden cards showed up if you owned them, like Hero portraits. Ben was not sure when or if that is possible.

This channel is a part of the Union For Gamers Network.
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TeSPA Collegiate Hearthstone Championship

TeSPA is running a team tournament this fall for North American college students which has $100,000 worth of scholarships as prizing. More details can be found in this post by Blizzard, and you can enter register your own team at compete.tespa.org.

There are a few more things to keep in mind:

  • Teams must consist of three players currently enrolled in the same college
  • Each team member must be a part-time or full-time student of a four-year college
  • This is a new competitive format in which teams of three work together to play a single deck
  • Teams play one deck at a time, but accounts can be switched between games
  • League play consists of one best-of-five match a week for 7 weeks, followed by the playoffs

Card Design Competition #31 - Voting Phase

The voting phase of our weekly card design competition is now live. Go checkout all the community created cards and give the ones you like a thumbs up so we can tally the results and see who will make it to this week's final cut.

BlizzCon Virtual Ticket Giveaway

Blizzard is holding a contest which is giving away 100 BlizzCon prize packages. The packages include a BlizzCon Virtual Ticket and a BlizzCon Goody Bag. Click the banner, or here, to enter.

Overwatch Beta to Start Soon?

There's been some recent activity with Overwatch our friends over at OverPwn have discovered which is pointing to an imminent beta test. If you're looking forward to Blizzard's upcoming shooter and need some more hype, check out their most recent post.

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