Hearthpwn

I think the most important thing the game lacks is purpose. There is not enough social reward and interaction, that is, not enough going on basicly.

I think what makes people stick around long term is a combination of a) game is fun, and b) socially rewarding. Hearthstone is very lacking in the latter. 

True, but it is also a late game card in a meta where everyone has a Death knight, that are often just better and dont require synergy. After rotation cards like Undatakah can be looked at in a new light. 

Brawls like these can be frustrating when you lose a couple in a row and just want that pack.

But with the bad comes the good, and sometimes you get the most epic games out of these.

I just played one of the most insane games I have ever played. I wish I had it recorded, but I will recap, to show you what you can get with a brawl like this. I knew for sure, multiple times ,that I almost couldnt lose. And I also new for sure, multiple times in the game, that I almost couldn´t win! But RNGesus was taking both me and my opponent for a ride.

I play warlock, up against a warrior. The game goes back and forth - we both make multiple RNG-comebacks with sweepers, weird removal and insane suicide effects on our own boards. The most important events are these: 1) Upwards 12 creatures get shuffled into my deck from Psychich Scream. 2) Warrior (the opponent), getting low on cards, copies multple cards from my hand (one of the comebacks, since Warrior was getting grinded out and was losing for sure without a draw-5). This means eventually we both end up playing the same cards for multiple turns, including Iron Juggernaut that shuffles a mine into opponents deck. So we both have a mine in our deck that can explode in our faces. 3) We both have a mage secret in play, and we both KNOW, having checked for everything else, it can be nothing other than Ice Block, for sure giving us both an extra turn at some point. (actually, my opponent knew it was 50/50 I had Ice block or Spellbender, but whatever. I had checked Spellbender also, so I knew he had Ice Block).

Late in the game, my opponent is getting closer and closer to losing to fatigue (see 1) ). But he is ahead, I am dead on board on my turn, but Branchinc Paths gives me 6 armor. Next turn opponent alphas and puts me to one life. I make a couple of trades, and then play Sideshow Spelleater, copying his hero power. Board is empty, and I start gaining armor. Every turn, I get 2. 2 turns later, I slam 7/14 dinosaur onto an empty board, thinking "now I win for sure", but it gets Crushing hands:ed down to 6 life. It still ends up clocking him in the face two times, but he can trade it off eventually. I keep drawing 1/1s (see 1) ).

In my hand, I have a game winning card, namely Chief inspector (see 3) ). I can set up an alpha attack, kill Warriors secret, and win. But I keep being forced to trade off and not try to kill Warrior, and we are both armoring up all we can. And Warrior is about to have no cards in hand and none left in the deck, so I can just win that way also.

At this point, I have completely forgetten about the mines (see 2) ). On the next-to-last turn of the game, Warrior has one cards left in hand and one left in the deck. Warrior plays a card, and it ends up drawing another card, which is the mine, and it explodes, but Warrior bjust barely survives that. The mine was the last card in the deck. Had it been drawn at any earlier point I would have won.

My turn, the last turn of the  game. I am at 1 life 8 armor, plenty of cards left, a bord with which to kill Warrior and Chief Inspector at the ready. It was a great ride, but now I win, GG.

I draw the mine, it explodes into my face, and I die.

I friend requested my opponent, who graciously accepted, and we both exchanged GGs and well playeds. Opponent is way late for work now because "brawl that takes infinite time lol", but I am sure the boss will be understanding since "the game was indeed epic lol". I get my 40 dust classic pack the very next game when my opponent rage quits turn 4 after some bad RNG. Thanks, RNGesus.

It pains me to say it, but this is the right call. Cold blood is just a great card you put in your deck to win games kind of for free. 

But I think it will be too clumsy and weak at 2 mana and see little to no play now. 

Very intreseting!

You don´t like Zilliax? I have mostly played Corpsetakers in rogue, but in my experience they are a huge threat if they have windfury but kind of meh if you don´t. So having 2 windfury cards in the deck might be a good idea. Did you try Zilliax or is it just not what the deck wants?

I took this brawl as a chance to play with Conceal. Very annoying for the opponent who can´t get their gift for a turn and very funny for you! Remember to BM when you play conceal, all in good fun of course. 

The classic set is in a weird place. Two things can happen with it:

Either some cards in classic (and basic) are too powerful and decks look the same all the time, througout the years (druid). This also limits design space heavily, like I am sure Preperation has a ton of impacton on which rogue spells can be printed and how they care costed. 

Or, they eventually nerf all good classic card, solving the above problem but making it kinda pointless to collect the classic set. It also sort of ruins the history of the game. You can´t look back to iconic decks of old and compare them with today, since they contain the same cards but with different words on them. It might not sound like a huge problem, and it is not for a game that wants to survive just another year before probably discontinuing it. But if you want an iconic game that survives for decades, like Magic, you need the game to have a history, and nerfing cards basicly nerfs the game in that regard.

I´m thinking, why can´t you have a rotating classic set, so to speak? The classic set can be what it is, but for each season the devs can pick, say, 1/3rd that is active and the rest is not playable in standard.  It could be a way to change up the meta more often. And the more broken classic cards don´t have to be nerfed. 

Step one: play a super bad priest deck. Put Chameleos in it.

Step 2: mulligan for Chameleos. If you have it, it can change to opponents swap spell.

Step 3: When Chaemelos turns into their swap spell, you can play two swap spells. The first one destroys their spell. You have now forced them to play your super bad deck and they cant do anything about it.

Pretty sweet!

It is super rediculous that you dont get dust refund for a legendary that gets destroyed by the nerf of another card. Totally apalling.

Other than that, the nerfs look great. 

Very impressive win rate.

Why does he have to nuke the whole board instead of killing just one minion? Stupid shit. Makes it so that you basicly can't win first time since you don't know about that thing. I lost 3 in a row because opponent just filled their board and then got nuked. 

They should have also let you start with 2 mana crystals. Make it slightly easier and less slow, you never do anything until like turn 4, nor should you. 

Anything like this will have to wait until rotation of course. Ultimate infestation + ramp makes playing smallball like this pointless. But there might come a time when druid will need to look for other strategies, when it doesn't have a clear reward for ramping a ton. And then I will take another look at this card. But for now, pass.

This wans to be Loatheb, but it is not. Which is probably just as well. It is nice for people who hate ramp to be able to play a hate card against it, that still probably won't be that great against control decks. Loatheb just kills control decks, and there is very little playing around it. This you can at least play around a little bit as the ramp/control player by planning your turns with this in mind. 

I could be wrong though, not too easy to evaluate a card like this. Depends a lot on the meta I suppose. 

Interesting card, hard to evaluate. I feel that right now druid decks dont want such a "small" utility card, but after rotation maybe druid will change quite a lot and be interested...?

Actually been enjoying this brawl. I like it. Ofc some games snowball and other games you draw crap, and you know after turn 2 you can just concede. But there are also some sweet unusual games where you can find odd and funny synergies. And games don't take forever, which is important. I think the worst brawls are not only highly random but also take a long time to play, this one is pretty fast and there is at least some play to it.