Hearth, Stone, Pals

[postinternetsyndrome]

I think the raven idol one is one the less annoying ones, but I mainly agree. I wish they’d do more preconstructed theme brawls like the boss fights. That’s more work I guess though.

[arathain]

I’m hoping Decks Assemble comes up again for this card set. I’m not really into most Tavern Brawls, but I’ll cheerfully play multiple games of that one.

Decks Assemble is the one where you discover a random card every turn which goes into your deck and keeps coming back around. It totally changes the value of many cards, and there’s lots of neat counterplay.

[Squiz]

The next Hearthstone expansion, a new adventure, has been announced:

**One Night in Karazhan **(link to official announcement site)

Announcement trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlHx7YNWYGY

More info via Hearthpwn: http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/1557-one-night-in-karazhan-announcement-live-stream

Release date will be on August 11th.

The cards that have been revealed so far look really cool, with more draw manipulation and things like this:

http://i.imgur.com/F8Fey55.png

[postinternetsyndrome]

I was actually slightly underwhelmed by the cards themselves, but the adventure itself looks fun. The peddler and the 1 mana 2/2 for druid where the stand-outs for me. The new hunter card might be nuts too. Full recap and all revealed cards: https://www.reddit.com/live/xc2yorvy6s5h

[Squiz]

Yeah, Grandmother seems like yet another broken deathrattle card. Barnes on the other hand is really cool again and will probably enable tons of combos.

[postinternetsyndrome]

I’m not that excited by Barnes. Very unreliable effect. I thought the curator was the more interesting legendary since it is just generally good.

[Squiz]

Oh I guess time will tell. I’m more interested in cards that bring something new to the table and might make constructed fun again, not so much interested in meta defining cards. Curator will probably work fine, agreed.

Edit: There will be a prologue episode (think “wing #0”) that will be free for everyone and will give everyone two cards for free, Firelands Portal and Enchanted Raven.

[Stirbelwurm]

I guess Barnes could work in a deathrattle deck. If he pulls any battlecry or plain minions, that would suck.
Well, lets see what else they came up with

[arathain]

The thing about Barnes is that even if he draws a minion that makes a vanilla 1/1 that’s still 4/5 of stats. You’d rather a yeti in most cases, but it’ll do. So if you load your deck with deathrattles, and Ragnaroses and the like and you come up with a dud you aren’t screwed.

[Squiz]

In my mind Barnes is a combo enabler. You can think up Mage decks, for example, that just run Barnes, Antonidas and Malygos as only minions and win condition. Also remember that you get a copy of the card, so even if the 1/1 is removed, you still get to keep your means to win the game. As a side note, it has been speculated that the 1/1s can be silenced to their original stats just as you can do with those created by Herald Volazj.

[unruly]

I wonder, is this going to cycle out BRM from Standard on release, or is that not going to happen until next year?

[Stirbelwurm]

Afaik, the first set or adventure that is released each year is going to trigger the rotation of older cards. So, BRM should stick with us a little while longer.

[postinternetsyndrome]

Afaik, the first set or adventure that is released each year is going to trigger the rotation of older cards. So, BRM should stick with us a little while longer.

This is exactly how it works. And they’ve in fact said that they are going to stick to the specific formula of expansion - adventure - expansion each year, so the rotation is always going to be accompanied by the release of a lot of new cards, rather than the smaller injection that an adventure provides.

[Squiz]

In case anyone of our regulars is playing on the Asia server as well, I got the 80g friend quest and would hold on to it for a while if you’re interested.

[Stirbelwurm]

So, we got some more interesting cards. Medivh for example!
We now got a hero as a card and also the first neutral weapon (which is a staff). This looks like it fits right into my spell druid deck.

Also, Prince Malchezaar looks like a fun card (most likely not competitive, but fun nontheless), with a unique mechanic.

[arathain]

Medivh looks very strong. I might even crack and craft Harrison as my next legend. I’m interested in the new discard Warlock archetype, which is starting to look strong. Reddit is calling it Discolock.

[Lethe]

I heard that Deadly Fork was bad, but it looked alright to me. Then I played it.

Yeah, no.

Latest craft is Captain Greenskin to complete my Pirate Rogue deck. Wild ofc – need those Ship’s Cannons.

[postinternetsyndrome]

Deadly Fork is a value card in the same way that Tentacles for Arms is. It can generate a lot of card advantage in the right situations, but it’s very slow.

[arathain]

I put Deadly Fork in my N’Zoth Reno Rogue, as well as Barnes. The Fork seems to do the job just fine. It’s a nice deathrattle to get from N’Zoth’s brood. Barnes, on the other hand, mostly insists on defying the odds and pulling out Reno or an Azure Drake, and carefully avoiding all the deathrattles.

On the other hand, Barnes is amazing in my new favourite deck, Evolve Shaman. I run Nerubian Prophets, Things from Below, Moat Lurkers, Fire Elementals- all sixes. Turns out 5 mana for a random 5 cost and a random 7 cost is pretty good. 7 mana destroy a minion get a random 7 cost is also quite decent.

I threw the deck together as a proof-of-concept, and was surprised to find myself winning more than I was losing. I’ve refined it a little since, but I haven’t changed it a whole lot. I’ll post the list if anyone’s interested.

[apricotsoup]

So the ethereal peddler deck is extremely fun, really nice playing with some of the crazier class cards which don’t see play but really shine when they cost 2-4 mana fewer :]