At exactly 2 hrs 29 min 55 sec into “Avengers: Endgame”, Thanos says “I am inevitable!” right before trying to snap his fingers when he thinks he has the Stones.
My guess is that they are referencing that line. Especially since this spell specifically targets the last friendly demon that died as its rez target, because as long as no other demons die the return of that last demon is inevitable!
With the cost reductions you play (1) Naval Mine, (3) Baron, (3) second Wrench, (0) first mini Wrench, (1) second mini Wrench, swing with weapon. That's 8 mana to trigger Naval Mine a total of 8 times for 32 damage. Have something like a Slam or other cheap spell that can kill the Mine and you'll get 40 damage instead.
I know Wild is probably too slow for this to be good, but damn I can't wait to watch the video of Mark doing this very combo. I can hear it now... "Okay, Deck intro time. And this time... Garrosh is going Rogue."
”Back in my day…” I remember when the art for Witchwood Grizzly was changed so it would be a possessed bear, not a ghost bear. Because ghosts couldn’t be beasts!
How do we go from giving a ghost bear some hair to avoid confusion to making alt mech art for non-mechs and being like “this is fine!”
Why is the Mini version of Factory Assemblybot not a Mech?
Because Blizzard.
My guess is they want to prevent it from being magnetized of buffed too much from mech buffs. Like playing it and then magnetizing a DS or stealth or reborn spark as a rogue, to say the first that comes to mind.
Flux, I have trouble finding the forums since the site was updated. But on the front page there is an article from a few days ago featuring a picture of Harth Stonebrew that doesn't link to anything. It says "Reuse" as the article title, so it makes me feel like maybe you guys meant to post an article about Harth's "Iconic Hands" and accidentally put up a link to an article template or something.
Just wanted to make sure someone on the team is aware so you could get it fixed.
Making predictions late, so obviously we know about Whizbang's Workshop.
Given that the portrait in the WW big bundle is a Patches portrait, I was thinking it could be a clue to the second one, which could be a Pirate themed adventure. Maybe a group of pirates, or a few different pirate factions, are going to a desert isle in search of treasure, only to find the isle is overrun by murlocs! So you get a bit of a throwback to their first main expansion by calling it Pirates vs Murlocs!
The final one, something with Elune, so finally a Night Elf focused expansion.
After that answer, Catrina and Spellstone definitely indicate more resurrection stuff this year. And since Chirurgeon was part of that response, I’m definitely thinking some sort of pirate theme set two. Maybe Hooktusk leading a crew on a hunt for buried treasure on a remote island
Alexstrasza, Breeder, and Spirit are definite crafts for me as I might have uses for them. The others are maybes. Could craft Skytalon just to have it!
Then again, open two Wild packs and I’d have the commons and Breeder. Might get lucky and pop a leggo too
According to Hearthstone Top Decks the two “meta decks” are a Tempo Jade Rogue with buffs, no spell damage package, and “Dragon Warrior”. I use quotes because it’s really just Control Warrior, but the best cards for controlling the board are dragons or dragon related. Warrior has no class dragons, and the only class card in the deck related to dragons is the 3 mana “get two random dragons” spell.
But I would agree, there are a lot of options. I beat the meta Rogue deck with a Dragon Priest deck, again… most of the dragons are neutral and are used mostly as board control. I think I managed to beat the meta Warrior deck with a Face Hunter, just hit them hard and fast before they can use the bigger taunts. I want to do a Tempo Undertaker Priest, with Embalming Ritual and things like Sandstorm Trooper and the wraith with the same DR as Trooper. Just win the board, but also make it so if they clear they take big damage. With Grave Ruin in the format as well you can try to spawn even more copies of those. Could be fun!
To be fair, I think they care about Twist more than we think. I mean, they did ban Caverns Below during the latest Twist run due to it being a power outlier. I would also assume they won't ban any cards, but only because they didn't see anything as being a big power outlier this time around. And if a card gets banned midseason it would have to be a VERY big power difference, otherwise they'll likely leave it since the entire meta should change come March.
The biggest problem this session is that a few cards aren't being included in the card pool like they should if you don't have the Caverns of Time copy (Snipe and Mana Wyrm). Not a huge deal, but it is a little bothersome since it was my understanding that regardless of the set version, if a card was legal in a format you could use the card. So despite Basic set not being included, these Basic cards are in CoT. So even if I don't have the CoT versions, shouldn't I be able to use the Basic (Legacy) versions? Again, no big deal this time around, but in the future someone who invested in CoT and got some legendaries they otherwise don't own might get fucked over if they don't include CoT, and a legendary that should otherwise be legal is suddenly not useable for that player. If they don't correct this, it could mean bad news for future Twist/Wild sets with reprints, making people less likely to buy into them.
Just starting my Twist climb, but so far I've seen zero Dragon Warrior lists. And honestly, looking at the card pool I'm not sure what would make Dragon Warrior a special deck since there aren't any class dragons or dragon enabled class cards. Seen a few Control lists that might use a few dragon or dragon enabled cards. That actually makes more sense seeing as most people seem to be going Aggro/Tempo right now. So a decent Control list should do well against those. So if you are higher up the ranks you could be seeing more Control players who have vaulted above the tempo or aggro players.
Sure, but you could say this about any card game. So that's not so much an issue with Hearthstone as it is the genre of strategic card games as a whole. Magic the Gathering seems to release new sets more frequently than Hearthstone. I believe they typically do 4 sets a year, and actually 5 sets in 2023. And if you prefer physical MtG, you have no guarantees of duplicate protection like in Hearthstone when buying packs. And buying individual cards after they've been opened can be way more expensive. I don't play it, but I thought Legends of Runeterra does fairly well with their f2p model, you still have the time commitment to grind out a set of cards prior to a new set being released, and then grinding to get more cards because the new ones change the meta and what you need to be competitive.
This is why historically people have claimed that Wild is cheaper than Standard. Stronger old cards often and fewer of the new cards are needed to make competitive Wild decks. However, in the last year or two, more and more new cards seem to become relevant in Wild upon release as the team has had to really power creep to create more new, and interesting cards. In some cases, entire new archetypes have come up that require a lot of new cards (Curse Warlock, Even 3xUnholy Plague DK... which is an extreme example as the entire class is barely a year old).
And I'm not necessarily saying that Hearthstone is cheap, by any means. Just more so making a general observation that it and nearly all other games like it, are going to have the inherent cost of time and/or money to build up a collection of useable cards.
I got a little bored over the holiday weekend and decided to do something dumb. I created a new HS account under the name "SantaHS". Why would I do this? Because any time they update the New Player Experience I usually make a new one and give it a try. To see what the experience would really be like for a brand spankin' new player! And I must say... this new experience is WAY better than before.
The Old Experience
As early as three months ago I did the same thing as I hadn't in a long time. I was wondering what it was like since I had never gotten a free deck before on a new account. And it was pretty much the same as it's been for years, parts of it were the same since launch. You start as Jaina, fight Hogger, Mukla, Millhouse, and a few other familiar characters. Then you went into the 40 Apprentice ranks and had to climb your way out. Along the way you unlocked classes by beating them once, and unlocked core cards by leveling up each class.
This process was honestly quite tedious unless you knew exactly what to craft to make fast work of all the 3x Unholy DK bots that Blizzard populated the Apprentice ranks with. At least, I assumed they were Blizz bots. Might have been account farming... if people do that. (Do they?) I did craft a deck that I enjoyed and happened to already open a legendary for, and I was able to climb to normal ranked ladder in about 6 days. Don't remember how much time I was devoting to the account, but overall I can say it took a lot of games! And I can just imagine a brand new player who doesn't know what to craft and build might have had a tougher time as you have to actually win games to climb out in the old system.
The New Experience
This was totally different! Right off the bat. You have only three tutorial fights. First you fight Rexxar and Garrosh in an effort to recruit them so you can take down the real enemy: The Lich King!
After these three fights you enter the new Apprentice track. Instead of winning games to climb, you simply have to play games. I think the idea is that an actual new player might not know what they are doing and could lose some early on. But every game they play they are gaining knowledge, so each game they play they gain 100 xp. Initially 100 xp is enough to climb one rank. Later it becomes 150, 200, and 300. There are also only 25 levels on this track, and a lot of really nice rewards along the way. Not to mention Apprentice specific quests to get xp faster, and if you complete a page of the special Apprentice quests, you get a pack. I might be the only one, but I really like the art style of these Apprentice quests. Could we get updated quest art in normal ladder to be more like these?!
Along the track there are two levels that say "Pick one of three" and have deck images next to them. Now... I thought this was a way for them to let you try some of the loaner decks. NO! These are free decks that you get to keep! Forever! If you don't like any of the options, look for the one with the most dust value. Also, cards won't ask you if you want to reroll if you have two of them, or one legendary, and then get another copy or two in the free deck. SO if you are choosing just for the dust, keep that in mind.
I should also mention that the non-golden Core cards didn't have to be earned anymore, aside from unlocking each class to get access to their class Core cards. So no leveling up each hero just to get all the neutrals, etc. You just get them all, and level up each class to start getting the golden copies. Personally, I thought that was a very nice change. I think part of this change leaked through on my previous run a few months ago. When the old system was still in place, I definitely had some Core Hunter cards, and even some golden Core Hunter cards prior to unlocking them. Classic indie gaming Blizzard!
Lastly, the entire experience was quick. Easily done in a single day or two depending on how much time you have to devote to the Apprentice track. And at the end you still get three loaner decks, and you get to keep one after 7 days.
Recap
Shorter tutorial section to get into Apprentice
New Apprentice Track replaces Apprentice Ranks, and is much easier to get through
Leveling up classes no longer seems necessary to unlock non-golden Core cards, you just get the regular versions of the Core cards immediately
You get to pick two complete decks along the track, and one after a loaner period, making for THREE FREE DECKS!!!
Ketch... *uh-hmm*... Catch Up packs also make the new player experience very nice, getting a lot of cards faster.
Best of all, I didn't get stuck in 3x Unholy DK hell! I barely saw any of this.
In fact, the three pre-made DK recipes are a thing of the past. They give you a Rainbow DK to start, and the 3x Unholy recipe still exists as "Core Death Knight" if you really want to play it right away.
The only odd things that I wasn't sure how to feel about was that in the tutorial games some cards are altered from their actual form. Examples would be Huffer has no charge in the tutorial, and Pyroblast is a 9 mana spell that can only hit the enemy hero. I realize this is all due to the first three fights being scripted so players can learn, and they want the player to be able to survive and find lethal at a specific point. But why teach new players with cards that are not correct? Just seemed odd.
OVERALL, I personally think the overhaul of the New Player Experience is great! Not sure if it'll do anything to bring new players in, but it definitely won't drive new players away like the old one might have!
I just recently made a new account to see what the new player experience was like these days. And I got to say… so much 3x Unholy DK base decks!!! It really made the experience miserable.
I don’t blame the player (if they were real) because it’s a completed deck with tons of synergy that they gave out for free. I too used it to climb the first 10-15 ranks before being flooded with mirror matches. Once I could build a deck that was favorable against Unholy DK it went smoothly, but until then it was just play the mirror and hope I draw better.
Let’s hope DK is the last class unlocked on this new track! That way actual new players can learn and try out different decks with their collections before getting stick in Unholy DK hell. Although, winning games may not be necessary for progressing through apprenticeshipanymore either.
At exactly 2 hrs 29 min 55 sec into “Avengers: Endgame”, Thanos says “I am inevitable!” right before trying to snap his fingers when he thinks he has the Stones.
My guess is that they are referencing that line. Especially since this spell specifically targets the last friendly demon that died as its rez target, because as long as no other demons die the return of that last demon is inevitable!
I can't wait to try and meme in Wild with a Warrior version of Mine Rogue.
Impossible Game Plan:
I know Wild is probably too slow for this to be good, but damn I can't wait to watch the video of Mark doing this very combo. I can hear it now... "Okay, Deck intro time. And this time... Garrosh is going Rogue."
Honestly, I thought the same thing.
”Back in my day…” I remember when the art for Witchwood Grizzly was changed so it would be a possessed bear, not a ghost bear. Because ghosts couldn’t be beasts!
How do we go from giving a ghost bear some hair to avoid confusion to making alt mech art for non-mechs and being like “this is fine!”
That said, the signature art is pretty nice!
Or it’s a mistake in the art that got revealed
Or pack your deck with Sludges, then spend 8 mana, watch the fireworks, use remaining resources to maintain control until auto win!
The sludges popping off could also swing you from a potentially losing state to having board control and a chance.
I could honestly see Sludge Lock running this solely as a way to pop off with a ton of barrels at once.
Is there a full reveal schedule for this expansion? The link on this page that’s supposed to go there takes me to the reveal schedule for Badlands.
Flux, I have trouble finding the forums since the site was updated. But on the front page there is an article from a few days ago featuring a picture of Harth Stonebrew that doesn't link to anything. It says "Reuse" as the article title, so it makes me feel like maybe you guys meant to post an article about Harth's "Iconic Hands" and accidentally put up a link to an article template or something.
Just wanted to make sure someone on the team is aware so you could get it fixed.
Making predictions late, so obviously we know about Whizbang's Workshop.
Given that the portrait in the WW big bundle is a Patches portrait, I was thinking it could be a clue to the second one, which could be a Pirate themed adventure. Maybe a group of pirates, or a few different pirate factions, are going to a desert isle in search of treasure, only to find the isle is overrun by murlocs! So you get a bit of a throwback to their first main expansion by calling it Pirates vs Murlocs!
The final one, something with Elune, so finally a Night Elf focused expansion.
After that answer, Catrina and Spellstone definitely indicate more resurrection stuff this year. And since Chirurgeon was part of that response, I’m definitely thinking some sort of pirate theme set two. Maybe Hooktusk leading a crew on a hunt for buried treasure on a remote island
Actually that'd be the first one of 2024.
Unless I’m missing something, here are the Core specific cards rotating out that would now need to be crafted if you want them in Wild.
Alexstrasza the Life-Binder
Ysera the Dreamer
Aegwynn, the Guardian
Selective Breeder
Shadowed Spirit
Emerald Skytalon
Alexstrasza, Breeder, and Spirit are definite crafts for me as I might have uses for them. The others are maybes. Could craft Skytalon just to have it!
Then again, open two Wild packs and I’d have the commons and Breeder. Might get lucky and pop a leggo too
According to Hearthstone Top Decks the two “meta decks” are a Tempo Jade Rogue with buffs, no spell damage package, and “Dragon Warrior”. I use quotes because it’s really just Control Warrior, but the best cards for controlling the board are dragons or dragon related. Warrior has no class dragons, and the only class card in the deck related to dragons is the 3 mana “get two random dragons” spell.
But I would agree, there are a lot of options. I beat the meta Rogue deck with a Dragon Priest deck, again… most of the dragons are neutral and are used mostly as board control. I think I managed to beat the meta Warrior deck with a Face Hunter, just hit them hard and fast before they can use the bigger taunts. I want to do a Tempo Undertaker Priest, with Embalming Ritual and things like Sandstorm Trooper and the wraith with the same DR as Trooper. Just win the board, but also make it so if they clear they take big damage. With Grave Ruin in the format as well you can try to spawn even more copies of those. Could be fun!
To be fair, I think they care about Twist more than we think. I mean, they did ban Caverns Below during the latest Twist run due to it being a power outlier. I would also assume they won't ban any cards, but only because they didn't see anything as being a big power outlier this time around. And if a card gets banned midseason it would have to be a VERY big power difference, otherwise they'll likely leave it since the entire meta should change come March.
The biggest problem this session is that a few cards aren't being included in the card pool like they should if you don't have the Caverns of Time copy (Snipe and Mana Wyrm). Not a huge deal, but it is a little bothersome since it was my understanding that regardless of the set version, if a card was legal in a format you could use the card. So despite Basic set not being included, these Basic cards are in CoT. So even if I don't have the CoT versions, shouldn't I be able to use the Basic (Legacy) versions? Again, no big deal this time around, but in the future someone who invested in CoT and got some legendaries they otherwise don't own might get fucked over if they don't include CoT, and a legendary that should otherwise be legal is suddenly not useable for that player. If they don't correct this, it could mean bad news for future Twist/Wild sets with reprints, making people less likely to buy into them.
Been trying out a lot of different things. Especially enjoying Rogue with the spell damage package.
Just starting my Twist climb, but so far I've seen zero Dragon Warrior lists. And honestly, looking at the card pool I'm not sure what would make Dragon Warrior a special deck since there aren't any class dragons or dragon enabled class cards. Seen a few Control lists that might use a few dragon or dragon enabled cards. That actually makes more sense seeing as most people seem to be going Aggro/Tempo right now. So a decent Control list should do well against those. So if you are higher up the ranks you could be seeing more Control players who have vaulted above the tempo or aggro players.
In response to Crusader2010:
Sure, but you could say this about any card game. So that's not so much an issue with Hearthstone as it is the genre of strategic card games as a whole. Magic the Gathering seems to release new sets more frequently than Hearthstone. I believe they typically do 4 sets a year, and actually 5 sets in 2023. And if you prefer physical MtG, you have no guarantees of duplicate protection like in Hearthstone when buying packs. And buying individual cards after they've been opened can be way more expensive. I don't play it, but I thought Legends of Runeterra does fairly well with their f2p model, you still have the time commitment to grind out a set of cards prior to a new set being released, and then grinding to get more cards because the new ones change the meta and what you need to be competitive.
This is why historically people have claimed that Wild is cheaper than Standard. Stronger old cards often and fewer of the new cards are needed to make competitive Wild decks. However, in the last year or two, more and more new cards seem to become relevant in Wild upon release as the team has had to really power creep to create more new, and interesting cards. In some cases, entire new archetypes have come up that require a lot of new cards (Curse Warlock, Even 3xUnholy Plague DK... which is an extreme example as the entire class is barely a year old).
And I'm not necessarily saying that Hearthstone is cheap, by any means. Just more so making a general observation that it and nearly all other games like it, are going to have the inherent cost of time and/or money to build up a collection of useable cards.
*I CREATED A NEW ACCOUNT SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO*
I got a little bored over the holiday weekend and decided to do something dumb. I created a new HS account under the name "SantaHS". Why would I do this? Because any time they update the New Player Experience I usually make a new one and give it a try. To see what the experience would really be like for a brand spankin' new player! And I must say... this new experience is WAY better than before.
The Old Experience
As early as three months ago I did the same thing as I hadn't in a long time. I was wondering what it was like since I had never gotten a free deck before on a new account. And it was pretty much the same as it's been for years, parts of it were the same since launch. You start as Jaina, fight Hogger, Mukla, Millhouse, and a few other familiar characters. Then you went into the 40 Apprentice ranks and had to climb your way out. Along the way you unlocked classes by beating them once, and unlocked core cards by leveling up each class.
This process was honestly quite tedious unless you knew exactly what to craft to make fast work of all the 3x Unholy DK bots that Blizzard populated the Apprentice ranks with. At least, I assumed they were Blizz bots. Might have been account farming... if people do that. (Do they?) I did craft a deck that I enjoyed and happened to already open a legendary for, and I was able to climb to normal ranked ladder in about 6 days. Don't remember how much time I was devoting to the account, but overall I can say it took a lot of games! And I can just imagine a brand new player who doesn't know what to craft and build might have had a tougher time as you have to actually win games to climb out in the old system.
The New Experience
This was totally different! Right off the bat. You have only three tutorial fights. First you fight Rexxar and Garrosh in an effort to recruit them so you can take down the real enemy: The Lich King!
After these three fights you enter the new Apprentice track. Instead of winning games to climb, you simply have to play games. I think the idea is that an actual new player might not know what they are doing and could lose some early on. But every game they play they are gaining knowledge, so each game they play they gain 100 xp. Initially 100 xp is enough to climb one rank. Later it becomes 150, 200, and 300. There are also only 25 levels on this track, and a lot of really nice rewards along the way. Not to mention Apprentice specific quests to get xp faster, and if you complete a page of the special Apprentice quests, you get a pack. I might be the only one, but I really like the art style of these Apprentice quests. Could we get updated quest art in normal ladder to be more like these?!
Along the track there are two levels that say "Pick one of three" and have deck images next to them. Now... I thought this was a way for them to let you try some of the loaner decks. NO! These are free decks that you get to keep! Forever! If you don't like any of the options, look for the one with the most dust value. Also, cards won't ask you if you want to reroll if you have two of them, or one legendary, and then get another copy or two in the free deck. SO if you are choosing just for the dust, keep that in mind.
I should also mention that the non-golden Core cards didn't have to be earned anymore, aside from unlocking each class to get access to their class Core cards. So no leveling up each hero just to get all the neutrals, etc. You just get them all, and level up each class to start getting the golden copies. Personally, I thought that was a very nice change. I think part of this change leaked through on my previous run a few months ago. When the old system was still in place, I definitely had some Core Hunter cards, and even some golden Core Hunter cards prior to unlocking them. Classic indie gaming Blizzard!
Lastly, the entire experience was quick. Easily done in a single day or two depending on how much time you have to devote to the Apprentice track. And at the end you still get three loaner decks, and you get to keep one after 7 days.
Recap
The only odd things that I wasn't sure how to feel about was that in the tutorial games some cards are altered from their actual form. Examples would be Huffer has no charge in the tutorial, and Pyroblast is a 9 mana spell that can only hit the enemy hero. I realize this is all due to the first three fights being scripted so players can learn, and they want the player to be able to survive and find lethal at a specific point. But why teach new players with cards that are not correct? Just seemed odd.
OVERALL, I personally think the overhaul of the New Player Experience is great! Not sure if it'll do anything to bring new players in, but it definitely won't drive new players away like the old one might have!
Deck still kicking ass in this brawl in 2023!
The bug was actually fixed in the patch today, right after you posted this. But it seemed fun while it lasted.
I just recently made a new account to see what the new player experience was like these days. And I got to say… so much 3x Unholy DK base decks!!! It really made the experience miserable.
I don’t blame the player (if they were real) because it’s a completed deck with tons of synergy that they gave out for free. I too used it to climb the first 10-15 ranks before being flooded with mirror matches. Once I could build a deck that was favorable against Unholy DK it went smoothly, but until then it was just play the mirror and hope I draw better.
Let’s hope DK is the last class unlocked on this new track! That way actual new players can learn and try out different decks with their collections before getting stick in Unholy DK hell. Although, winning games may not be necessary for progressing through apprenticeshipanymore either.