Hearthpwn

BGH is a good answer to Questing Adventurer/Edwin.
Loatheb should be in every deck.

This + Octosari + Imp Swarm can draw 56 cards.

Like many others I will be cutting back on how much I usually spend at launch. The previous nerfs gave me enough dust for 5 legendary cards, which is about how much you would get in the small bundle, thanks Blizzard.

I'm kind of excited past this expansion. I'm looking forward to a new Hearthstone year with rotation, core 2022, and merc-less expansion themes.

Extra benefit to going 2nd, coin player gets to see what card their opponent bans before choosing their own ban.

Yup, in June. It's deja vu all over again.

Card backs have been pretty good lately.

Keep 'em comin'.

Unlike Duels and Battlegrounds, Classic format is very little upkeep. They are not designing cards or balancing the game, it's like releasing an adventure. There is low risk here, there has been some player demand for it. Classic format is just an extra bonus that isn't going to take away from anything else Blizzard is doing.

When I first saw I got Scholomance packs, I was impressed, I thought it was a great change. It was odd it wasn't announced. I hope they keep this for the future as it makes season 4 of an expansion more bearable to grind. Each expansion is still a seasonal reward for 4 seasons going forward, but now it front-loads a seasons worth of packs for the player to open on day 1.

It's definitely worth having the new packs, but they are also giving the player seasonal rewards they can't open. They did this with Tavern Brawls. The natural urge is to be able to open the pack immediately, especially if the player has a low collection and wants cards to open up access to the game. If this is to continue the expansions should be released earlier in the month to reduce the wait time. We haven't had a late month release since WotOG, which would have meant 26! days before you can open your seasonal reward packs. The latest we have gotten in more recent HS times is the 2nd week of the month, which isn't too late. If this was truly a pure accident, we really lucked out with only having to wait 6 days to open packs with SA. Only 2 other expansions have released earlier than the 6th in their respective months.

This expansion would have been so much better if they kept the game at 9 classes. Focus on building upon Year of the Dragon. Now this entire year will be DH playing catch-up with the rest of the classes because it has the smallest class card pool in the game. They add a 10th class and it feels like we have less classes in the game.

A good thing is the adventure is free, the bad thing is... where the hell is it? It's June! The expansion was released in April!

Makes Blowtorch Saboteur extra effective against DH. Increases the HP by 2 mana instead of 1, and they don't get it back to 1 mana until they spend 3 mana for it, making for an awkward turn. Take THAT DH!

So we get a new class, and of course everyone is going to be playing it. Demon Hunter is accessible to everyone, old players, new players, casual players, hardcore players. It's extremely powerful, and since both players are using the same overpowered cards, its suddenly...fair. Extremely fair, actually... the most fair! So day 1 I found a list, played it, had success, then it started performing worse as I encountered better DH deck lists, so I changed my list, and so forth and by about 5 revisions my deck was rolling through the DHs and especially the few non-DH I would face. Winning is fun, the outcast mechanic is like a game in itself, so I had a lot of fun.

But... This is going to get old. Thankfully these nerfs already have non-DH seeing more play. If these nerfs are enough to really boost one of the anti-DH decks, it could could get more people switching sides, further dropping DH playrates. It was always going to see heavy play for quite some time, but I'm hopeful players will yearn the classes they know & love so we get a bit more variety on ladder.

Day 2 and the Outcast mechanic is already something decks are trying to avoid proccing because of Skull/Eye Beam interaction. I wonder if they intend for Outcast to be a negative effect on some cards, they could make it a powerful card, but the outcast makes it bad to play after a topdeck, or if you hold onto it too long.

I have a golden Antaen too. It's one of the coolest golden effects I have seen in the game, I even thought about crafting a 2nd because I wasn't expecting a nerf so soon. I won't be crafting a 2nd one, but I'm probably going to keep it. This card could become a 1-of in the future, especially with highlander being a thing.

I'm sure we will get cards to help deal with them, but I fully believe Blizzard knows that everyone is going to want to play Demon Hunter, and they will fully embrace it. This is exactly how it was in WoW, so it's like an 'homage' or some Demon Hunter swarm mentality identity. The meta will revolve around DH, which looks fairly easy to pick up on, powerful, and alluring.

It's tough to say what a good counter is, just the other day I would have said taunt...

Nozdormu

This card is has had problematic interactions because of card animations. Most recently with Ysera, Unleashed, where players would have their entire turn skipped. This card is just a trash classic legendary too, so trade it out for a card that might make a deck list. A card players might actually want to craft or pull.

Not every HOF has to be a barn burner.