An Evil Exchange is This Week's Brawl
Kel'Thuzad and Rafaam are competing to see who the superior endboss is! Take a side and battle for evil supremacy!
Trivia
- This is the second time we've seen this brawl.
- An Evil Exchange made its debut on March 23, 2016.
- Special emotes are active during the brawl, check them out!
- Kel'Thuzad's hero power has changed from the first time we saw this brawl.
- Originally, his Hero Power resurrected a random minion of his that died that game.
How it Works
- Press the Brawl button and get randomly assigned one of the heroes, Kel'Thuzad or Rafaam.
- Each boss is quite unique with brawl-only cards and feel like they're from their respective adventures.
Kel'Thuzad
- You have 60 effective health through 30 health and 30 armor.
- Your hero power is Necromancy which adds a random minion from Naxxramas to your hand.
- His deck contains cards which emulate the bosses of the Curse of Naxxramas adventure.
- Make use of his hero power early on instead of playing a minion. There's fantastic potential for value!
Kel'Thuzad's Unique Minions
Kel'Thuzad's Unique Spells
Rafaam
- You have 60 health, and no armor.
- Your hero power is Staff, First Piece which adds a random rare to your hand. The rare card costs (2) less. So much value!
- Your hero power can be upgraded throughout the game through Uncover Staff Piece. We suggest using it ASAP.
- The first upgrade of your hero power, Staff, Two Pieces, adds a random epic to your hand. The epic costs (3) less.
- The second and final upgrade of your hero power, Staff of Origination, adds a random legendary to your hand. The legendary costs (4) less.
- Your first stage of the hero power is good but not necessarily worth using when you have other options in-hand, at least during the early game. Once upgraded though, it's op!
- Save any removal cards you come across to deal with Kel'Thuzad's annoying minions.
Rafaam's Unique Minions
Rafaam's Unique Spells
Discuss this Brawl
Head on over to our dedicated discussion thread for this week's Brawl!
I also believe this brawl is extremely broken and unbalanced. but I havent seen many people talk about why it is so. so i'll shed on some light why I feel this is so broken.
Hero power. in the past kel'thuzad had a very powerful hero power that would make their win easy if used correctly. as long as you are playing strong minions only, you would be able to resummon any of those that died for only 2 mana each turn, thus increasing the cap of how many copies you can have of a special unit. this was extremely powerful in the early game but eventually gets weaker as more useless units die. the new necromancy hero power is extremely weaker now because it only draws a random minion that comes from Naxxramas. these units are not discounted and most of the time are much lower in power level or require synergies that do not exist in kel'thuzad's deck. making this change to hero power extremely weak. not to mention you pay 2 mana to get another card but with no discounts and thus you can look at it as paying 2 extra mana to play a minion.
Rafaam's hero power on the other hand is much more powerful being able to draw any rare, epic, or legendary card depending on the amount of staff pieces you've casted. sure you spend 2 mana extra to get an upgrade, but each rank will increase the discount at each tier. thus the investment is more better. plus rare, epic, and legendary cards are usually more higher in power level than a random Naxxramas card. this is why Rafaam's hero power is far superior to kel'thuzad's current hero power.
another thing that makes rafaam's deck better is the fact that he has so many removal and control. rafaam has 3 aoe cards, 2 of which are 0 mana cost, he also has 2 types of hard removal, one that transforms a minion into a 2/1 snake and another that destroys a random minion, both of which are also 0 mana. with his hero power, he can get fairly strong minions for cheap and thus continue to flood the board. this is how he wins
with kel'thuzad, he can get some fairly strong minions, but majority of them require a board to be present in order to get full effect from it. such as noth, and grobbulous, or they would require to survive the turn in order to be useful. but with rafaam's amount of control, this is an extremely hard task to accomplish, and with the lack of aoe in the deck, rafaam can easily control the board much quicker than kel'thuzad can.
The only way i've been able to win with a kel'thuzad deck is if the opponent does unfavourable trades, and lets key units such as noth or grobbulous live, and let those units help snowball out of control. Kel'thuzad really needs to have board control in order to win, but the problem is that he has no control cards to help him compete with rafaam's ability to control the board.
This is why I feel this brawl is broken and extremely unbalanced.
Played 4 games. 1 as Rafaam, 3 as KT. Won twice as KT and once as Rafaam. Seems balanced.
A 3 mana 4/5 with the 4 dmg at the end of turn is much more tempo oriented than value oriented. If you can't beat a 4/5 on turn 3 with rafaam cards you have been managing resources/mulliganing poorly or just getting really unlucky.
Duplicate is a value card, yes. Also an easy card to play around.
They did balance the brawl, in the previous state it was really unbalanced in favor of KT.
I've been following Kel'Thuzad's cross-training and fitness regimen all morning, and the results are great. Five wins!
This brawl is worth playing just for the Sorry emotes. Damn I miss those
Played 4 games. First 3 times I got KT. 4th Rafaam. That likely tells you the story, but..
First game I played to the very end. I think he still had 50 health when I died.. I just thought he had god draws and me shit.
Second time I conceded around turn 8 because his constant legendary + minion+ removal was already insane.
Third time I conceded when he upgraded to legendary power on turn 3 and I still have 4+ costs in hand that weren't turning the tide by any means.
Fourth game I got Rafaam, had a ton of fun and they conceded when I was able to clear their board and cast 3 minions all on turn 7.
I played my first game as KT. It was a tough match, but I won with about 15 health left. Certainly felt like Rafaam had the upper-hand. Came here and I'm reading that Rafaam is WAY more powerful, so I guess I had some good luck getting the win.
I have two thoughts to ponder and a question:
1) Would it be fun to have a mash-up Brawl, like last week, but instead of all the brawls, having all the unique Brawl heroes? (KT, Rag, Raf, etc.) If so, could the decks/heroes be balanced a bit so there wouldn't just be one that always won?
2) What cards, if any, from this Brawl would be good enough and/or fair enough to see moved into a regular set? Could some of these cards be moved into something like the Hall of Fame, where they'd reside as Wild Only cards, or even added to the Classic set in the future?
Here's my question: What could they change to make it more fair and balanced? Staff pieces cost more? KT gets a discount on minions from his hero power? Something else? I'd love to read some solutions and ideas instead of a comments like "this sucks, OP Raf, Blizzard is lame, blah blah blah."
I love the special heroes with unique cards and unique emotes, and I'd like to know what could make it better. Does anyone see a clear way Blizzard could make this balanced?
There has been a brawl in which each class was an adventure boss (sometimes with slight changes so it wouldn't be as unfair).
Most of these boss cards are just too OP.
This is the second time this brawl has been around, they did balance it a bit as KT had a huge advantage. It's impossible to balance perfectly, no matter how hard you try.
I won my first Kel game too, I think people are overstating how weighted the match is. Like yours it seemed like I was usually behind, but I ended up pulling it out in the end. I think many people just auto concede when they think they are behind, because they have this habit from ladder play where they are trying to grind matches. time wise it sometimes even makes sense on ladder play, but when you have this much health and comeback mechanisms and you're definitely playing for the challenge this lazy habit of concedeing early only clouds their judgment of the truth.
Edit: It's also why some people think the game is "a random kids game" they treat it as a random kids game. If they don't get the good draw at the start and the opponent gets ahead they auto-concede. As a result they never learn how to play from behind, and the evidence to them says "it's all based on the draw." sad really. confirmation bias in card game form.
It alternated for me, first Rafaam then Kel'thuzad, ending with 3 matches played with Rafaam and 2 with Kel all won :D (was doing brawl quest). Super easy if you understand the decks, regardless which hero you're playing. Rafaam's hero power is op, while Kel's deck is op. I think it balances itself if you play it right.
I don't hate this brawl. They changed it, now Rafaam has the upper hand, in contrast to the KT supremacy in its former state.
This is way more balanced than last week btw, sometimes you even get actual fun interactions. The only thing that can ruin the fun is a sequence of insane legendaries from Rafaam's hero power, otherwise it's fine. As long as KT player is skilled he/she can keep up with the slight disadvantage.
Clearly you haven't been getting multiple Mr. Bigglesworth from the hero power.
Lucky you, lucky you.
This guy's opponent clearly got exactly Millhouse from every single time he used his hero power...
Any one else notice that they both still have their Sorry emotes?
Rafaam is OP and Kel'Thuzad is autoconcede. Just amazing brawl
Then my enemy was very bad, because i outplayed him very hard. He never had the chance to come back on the board, because i could always use something to kill his big minions and the rest was just good trades for me.
8 mana minion "kill a minion"
2 mana spell "kill a minion"
Dublicate from mads...
deal 4 damage to a enemy at the end of your turn from a minion...
I really never had bad trades at all. The most awesome was the "if you kill something with this minion, then spawn a 2/2 with poison". He really NEVER had the chance to play something and let it stay on the board
It's not auto-concede, but Rafaam does have the upper hand, not by too much, but you have to be a better player to win with KT.
It is auto-concede if you don't want to play the slightly weaker class at all, lol.
Rafaam definitely has the upper hand but there are certainly ways to win as KT, like if your noth survives, or if you get a second weapon guy from darkness calls
"if your noth survives" .... You mean that 9 drop with 2 attack so it can be hit by either of their 3mana Shadow Words... or the same 9 drop that only has 5 health so they can clear it with Raf's 0 mana deal 5 damage? ... it's not like at this point Noth is going to be a surprise to them..
KT would be "decent" if the game didn't make it into a "late game" ... but since they both have 60hp to burn through instead of 30.. Good luck ending early