The Dark Wanderer Reflections - Looking Back on the Latest Tavern Brawl
Blizzard recognized the 20th anniversary of Diablo in pretty big ways this year, and the celebration wasn't confined to just the Diablo series itself. Hearthstone gamers got to join the party when the most recent weekly Tavern Brawl got a demonic makeover. The Dark Wanderer, the main meddler of Diablo II, took a stop in the inn to court the powers of evil with a deck of cards. The ensuing event was one of the most unique and interesting Brawls to date.
Now that the Tavern Brawl has ended, it's time for a little reflection. From the poll on the Forums, the HearthPwn community gave the Brawl a 3.9 in Awesomeness, a 3.1 in Replayability, and a 3.3 in Balance. But how did the pros feel about it?
Some of Hearthstone's biggest stars sat down with the new mode to see what's what, and the below is a small sampling from some of the best. Were you left wanting more, like Krip? Or were you like Amaz, and just left confused by the whole ordeal?
Disguised Toast
Did you reveal all of the Dark Wanderer's 10 secrets during the Tavern Brawl? Toast's breakdown of the event is as comprehensive as it gets, and it includes all the secrets, an optimal deck list, and the strategies he used to beat the NPC. From the number of cow-related puns in the video, it's clear that Toast found this Brawl quite a-moo-sing.
Kripparrian
Though he found the Tavern Brawl to be interesting and high quality, Krip wasn't a fan of its replayablity. "It felt like a fairly mediocre PvE encounter as part of an adventure," he said in his video about the subject.
Trump
Maybe the most well-known Hearthstone player on the internet, Trump walked into the Dark Wanderer blind, and he was taken by surprise in the cow dimension phase of the Brawl. After taking an initial trampling by the hellish herd, he eventually gained the upper hoof. "That's kind of cool," Trump shrugged after receiving the special card back. While the event was clearly unique, it didn't seem to rank high on Trump's Awesomeness scale.
Amaz
NRG's Amaz needed a couple of takes before understanding the secrets of The Dark Wanderer. Even then, the presence of the Cow King provided him with many more questions than answers. He did stumble across one of the more interesting secrets within this special event; if you gain possession of the Enigmatic Portal before it triggers, you will be the one to transform into The Cow King! Overall, it seemed like Amaz was left wanting more from the Tavern Brawl.
Now, we want to hear from you. How did you enjoy this unique Tavern Brawl? Let us know in the comments below.
So a company that has bosses and shareholders to answer to doesn't give you enough free stuff? Do you complain when Wal-Mart doesn't hand you free candy when you leave the store?
/Decline of civilization continues
This is the first brawl (in a long long time) that I played on even after getting the reward since it is pretty unique. Of course I did not trigger all Secrets always... only did that twice (lost the first time but bashed The Cow King on the second time).
But my main point in replaying this is that it helps in quests too.
The Blizzard team should get a commendation for making this brawl happen & I'm looking forward to more unique brawls like this in the future.
*moooooved
Well i made the wanderer bocame the cow king, the cow king become ragnaros, then i became regnaros and killed the other rag.
So yeah, i enjoyed it.
They should have made a co-op or a Legendary duel like Nefarian vs Ragnaros, where each player must improvise with unique cards and decks against each other.
AND possibly add a two-step reward, classic pack for victory, cardback for secret level.
That would have been awesome and highly replayable.
But this one is barely ok, nothing special by far... They already know PvE is generally bad for replayability, it doesn't matter how they refine it...
Made an N'Zoth Jade Rogue deck with 2x Mistress of Mixtures and 2x Infected Tauren. Got my cardback in the 1st run, never looked back tbh. It was a fun experience, but I couldn't see myself playing it more.
Imho the best Brawl was the co-op one with Nefarian.
Kinda liked it... woulda love it if I got a card pack with the card back... but hey.. that's just me
Pretty cool brawl... not the best one, but pretty good. Kinda annoyed that you didn't get to play for as long as you liked, as both portraits explode around bovine 64 killed. Kinda sad, I was hoping to get a board full of 30/30 jade golems, only managed to make one of them.
Got my card back and never played it again. Boring. No replayability.
I liked it a lot, but IMO the brawl should be harder.
Also, I would like to see the wanderer transform into Diablo itself :D would be awesome!
I hope the Cow King will returni in a COOPERATIVE BRAWL!
You should also check Hysteria's video. It's much more interesting than the ones above.
Had gone to play other games for a while but thankfully checked and was able to get that card back for when I start playing again later. Probably my favorite artwork. It's very well done :D
that beautiful card back made me happy :)
This was my favorite tavern brawl so far :D
Unfortunately I haven't revealed all secrets because the same ones kept repeating over and over again, but I had fun nontheless. I've done about 50 runs of it, either for quests or for fun, and it sucks a bit that we might not see it return :/ Hopefully the will make more brawls like this one :D
Yet again Team 5 have a good idea, but extremely poor execution. Twenty years of Diablo, paying tribute to one of the most epic and famous games EVER, having a huge backstory to explore and take advantage of, and all they came with was this lousy PvE brawl that was so easy, non-creative and uninspiring...??? It was strictly worse than ANY boss of ANY HS adventure. Heck, it was even worse than Unite Against Mechazoid brawl...
And the "rewards"...? OMG... for 20 years of success and millions of sold copies and billions for Blizzard, all they could spare was a card back...?
One other thing - what did we get for Christmas from Team 5 - yes, you guessed it - nothing! Not even a single Christmas Quest even... Meanwhile in other Blizzard games (HotS, and Overwatch for sure, I don't play Diablo 3 and WoW) there were pretty signifficant quests and bonuses and gifts. In HotS there were a couple of quests that rewarded a lot of gold and 8-10 heroes! An equivalent in HS would be 10 card packs (and even this is less in HS terms compared to a free hero in HotS).
I really can't understand how can HS team/management can be so stingy, greedy, and cheap. Especially since all the "rewards" are digital and it costs them absolutely nothing.
So, Brode, next please shut the fuck up and don't whine and wonder why you have a toxic community.
And what, exaclty, would you expect as a reward? A Diablo card?
The cardback is actually pretty sweet and A LOT BETTER than the sprays and player icons from OW, for example.
Srsly, sometimes people like to complain over nothing... its not like you paid for this event or anything like that (like you do in the adventures, with better PvE encounters, like you said). Sure, Diablo is a great game, one of my favourites of all time, but you wont see me crying about something that came as bonus feature and nothing else.
It was a cool reference to the secret cow level, one of the most iconic easter eggs in the entire game in all these 20 years, and thats it.
Also, Blizz have absolutely no obligations to make hollidays events on every single one of their games, they will skip some events from time to time, and thats ok.
There are SO MANY things to complain about HS as a game right now, and you guys are choosing the most irrelevant topic to bitch about. Jeez...
Why so salty bruh? xx
he does have a point though. Every brawl we get a card pack. why are they unable to give out a card pack? and we didn't get anything for xmas. why? They could have done some advertising for the game and give us some packs. Something simple like come and log into hearthstone today and receive 5 cards packs from the latest expansion. or they could of maybe combined it. say they gave us 5 packs and the card back for diablo for missing xmas.