Hearthpwn

I had the warrior quest over the weekend and played the random Brawl for my quests. I can confirm that Cursed Blade is ridiculously, hilariously awful. I got it twice on my first turn and tried to make it work both times. I lost both games very, very quickly. I'm not sure there's a deck you could design around it. When I played aggro-warrior for a time it was often a race between my own health and my opponents. Cursed Blade just doesn't do enough damage fast enough to justify the insane drawback. Worst card in the game. I would pick Bolster with 0 taunt minions in Arena over this card just so that I wouldn't accidentally play it.

I haven't played Heroic mode, but when I played Rafaam Pt. 1 I used Warlock, giving him awful cards like Blood Imp, Summoning Portal, Sense Demons, and Sacrificial Pact. So he has two summoning portals out, uses his hero power, gets Jaraxxus out for 2 mana, and is able to hero power a 6/6 out on the same turn. This is normal mode, so I still have control of the game, but it required me to actually think about my plays... until the next turn when he used a Sacrificial Pact on himself, killing him instantly. I have to imagine the AI would be similar on heroic mode. It's a risky play, but set him up with Jaraxxus and Sacrificial Pact. Particularly if you cut the summoning portals, it will be a turn 9 play, making it more likely that he has Sacrificial Pact in hand.

Anyway, that bit of goofiness aside, everyone is missing the best card to include in the deck which is Coliseum Manager. He plays it every turn, and then auto-casts his hero power the next turn before he attacks. It's an automatic 3-mana sink every turn, and it's rare.

My picks based on what I thought was balanced and fun:

Loyal Companion: Majordomo combo decks! Fun little card otherwise. I would draft it in arena decks over many other cards.

Exorcism: Balanced, but not that exciting. Would maybe be a 1x in certain decks.

Rudolph the Reindeer: 100% perfect merging of a thematic concept with an existing effect in the game.

Mounted Shark: Balanced. Sticky. Fun. Wouldn't make the cut in constructed, but an excellent arena card.

Warden: Cool original effect. Good balancing of a powerful effect with mana cost and stats.

Nightborne Enchantress: Always play on curve. Picked 100% of the time in arena, but automatically balanced.

I played an older version of this decklist and it didn't work at all for me. This new version that cuts Ram Wrangler and Elekk is much stronger. Tomb Spider seems like worse tempo since it's a card in hand instead of board, but it's actually ridiculously worse dropping a 3/3 for five instead of four (on curve or not). Plus, grabbing Dreadscale allowed me to have a massive comeback in two games so far against a Paladin and Warlock. Random choices are amazingly superior to pure random. Elekk is good, but there just isn't room for another 2x two drop and the card draw just isn't necessary.

Well, the tiers are ill-named. Ethereal Conjurer is not a "God" card, but it's very, very good in the right deck. After playing with it a lot, I think any non-combo deck that uses Azure Drake should replace it with Conjurer. While you might get a third Ice Block or Fireball in freeze mage, it's more important to draw through your own deck so that you don't get Alex, Healbot or Antonidas a turn too late. However, in tempo or midrange it's very, very powerful to get an additional spell that's appropriate to the current or next turn. I think the Spell Damage on Azure Drake is often irrelevant. The only considerations are 1) How valuable is it to draw through your own deck; and 2) How much do you care about +1 health. Again, after playing with it I think too many people are over-valuing the +1 health over getting a spell when you need it. It's rare that your opponent can trade with it for free, and even if they trade up they've still used a card, while yours replaced itself. If it actually survives a turn the 6 damage will either trade up or go to face. Think of it this way; would you play a card that took a Frostbolt out of your opponent's hand, and put it in yours?

Reno Jackson hard counter :)

I'm surprised this works as well as it does. It's performing very respectably for me around Rank 8, and it was a fun way to complete my dominance quest. I made the following changes. -1: Lock and Load, Cult Master, and Volcanic Drake. +1: Kill Command, Hound Master, and Sylvanas.

I was playing Warrior vs. Priest and had him under 10 health. He calmly plays Reno Jackson (triggering the effect) and Echoes of Medivh. Wait, what? Oh, of course that's the card Nexus Champion generated three turns ago for the one turn it was in play. Forget deck slots; Blizzard needs to get replay functions set up.

I won my first game with Nef. It's a repeat, but much fewer people are going to be interested in Tavern Brawl this week with LoE dropping any minute.

I think this card will see some play in a specially constructed Mage or Warrior deck. Warrior is better able to utilize it's ability, but Warrior also needs the ability less with its ability to quickly ramp up armor. I don't think it would work in a mill Druid deck, but maybe the 6 casting cost vs. 9 for Tree of Life makes it a powerful enough late-game tempo play to make that deck viable.

I would pick Flamejuggler over this in arena every time. There are few things more satisfying than killing a turn one 2/1 with your turn two flamejuggler in arena.

Here's a simple nerf. Switch the Epic and Legendary status of Mysterious Challenger with Eadric the Pure.

I'm surprised that United Front and Forbidden Knowledge are leading. Super cool concepts, but both ridiculously OP.

I thought Bribe was practical, exciting, and balanced, but I totally forgot about Prep. It should probably be a 7 mana spell instead for balancing. Power Word: Vision would be about 1,000 times better than the new TGT card while still being balanced. Edge of Time gets the award for craziest concept - mill yourself, equip weapon.

This was actually my favorite brawl, and I'm happy to see it again with the new TGT cards in the mix. The incidence of legendaries, particularly ones not usually played, is very high. 15 random class cards also leads to some odd spells being run. It made for some really strange and memorable games. Even in arena you can make reasonable guesses on what cards your opponent is running, and I really enjoyed that every turn was a surprise. The repeat of spell-->minion brawl wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be. The constructed element had already become too refined (Priest/Druid dominance). I like the genuine randomness of this one. I like that I can play Hunter, not feel dirty, and get some truly wacky wins. Sometimes you simply get stomped by RNG, but it feels better in most cases than being burst down from 20+ life in 1-2 turns in constructed. I'm going to exclusively play this week's for my quests.

I like this Brawl despite the obvious criticism that the Hunter deck is.. not as good.

The mage deck is solidly built. It really doesn't have a useless card in it given the match-up. While the decklist is laughable in constructed it definitely demonstrated to me that inspire could really work as a tempo strategy. The power-creep is real. Every inspire (or hero-power buffing aka HPB ie Maiden of the Lake or Fallen Hero) minion is potentially a real threat. Your opponent can't remove all of them turn after turn. Once you get to a turn where 1) you have at least 2 inspire or HPB minions on board 2) you can play a useful card, and 3) use your hero-power - your tempo and advantage is seriously multiplied. Now, it won't be as bonkers as this match-up because people play with these things called board clears, something that the Hunter deck didn't have.

I've won with hunter. I think it's easier to win with hunter than to win with Rag vs. Nef. I like playing with new cards. That said, the hunter deck makes no sense. It's trying highlight Lock and Load at the same time as Joust while maybe having some beast synergy, but not having enough space for the best beast cards since it's highlighting Lock and Load and Joust. It's a mess. I think inspire will be a thing to a point where some mid-level inspire cards might get used from time to time. I think Joust is essentially a failure unless the card is really good on its own. Hopefully I'll be prove wrong when the set releases.