There will some downtime with a patch hitting tomorrow. Keep an eye out for patch notes to follow after it concludes.
Mythgard will be down for a patch update tomorrow, 12/18, from 9am to 1pm PST (5pm-9pm UTC). Patch Notes will be posted when server downtime starts at 9am PST.
Added patch notes.
Patch Notes v0.17.3 - Holiday Edition
12/18/2019 5:31:40 PM
Mythgard Patch 0.17.3 - Holiday Edition
Tis the season of Axolotls! One ranked season is ending and another is about to begin. Between them, we’re running a special 2v2 Holiday’s event. Play with crazy Highlander decks and earn a Christmas card back, courtesy of the King of Axolotls himself, foxfire_kadrpg. There are also new elite missions that each award an animated axolotl emote (you know who to thank for that one too). Collect all 23! Speaking of emotes, you can now choose a custom set of emotes in the player profile.
Ranked Beta Season I ends Dec 21st, 2019 and Beta Season II starts Jan 3rd, 2020. Players will start the new season at the bottom of the next lower tier. For example, if you finished Beta I at G04, you’ll enter Beta II at S01. Don’t forget to pick up your Beta I rewards in the ranked panel, which include card packs and a fancy portrait trim.
Have fun, and have a wonderful, joyous, holidays everyone!
Features & Bug Fixes
There is a new 8-turn tutorial mission for those who opt out of the story on their first login
This mission explains the basic rules but gives far fewer rewards than the story
Those who wish can play through this tutorial for 100 xp and 400 coin. We’re not saying it’s worth it if you already know how to play, but you have the option!
Winter Holiday’s 2v2 event
Random 75 card, 3 color, highlander decks (you still need to queue with a legal deck)
Random power, no path
6 card starting hand
Draw 2 cards per turn
This event runs until January 8th
Event mission
Draw 250 cards in the 2v2 event to get a special Christmas Axolotl card trim, courtesy of foxfire_kadrpg
Festive Winter holiday game boards
And Santa hats or other holidays accoutrement if you equip any of the winter card backs or trims!
Animated emotes
If you’re on our Discord, you know them well. Thanks foxfire - you are the best!
Everyone starts out with “blush”. We’ll be giving out a code for “flex” via our mailing list and the rest you can win via a new set of elite missions
Emote customization
Players can now select their emotes via a panel in the player profile
End of Beta Season I
Season rewards: 1/3/5/7/10 packs and a special portrait flair depending on rank tier
The ranked panel now shows your past season record in the medals panel
Added 3 new puzzles (see Known Issues)
Fixed missing “Next Pack” button in the pack opening screen
We will be experimenting with a different matchmaking algorithm that will be more friendly to players at the very high and low ends of the spectrum. Let us know if you notice better or worse results. We can flip back to the old algorithm if the new one has problems
You can now burn cards by dragging them straight down, even if they are at the sides of the hand
Fixed another bug that caused zoomed cards to get stuck in some rare cases (there will be more, please report them as you find them!)
Improved scaling of some parts of the UI for phones (there’s still a lot of work to do here, but this should help make some of the buttons a bit more pressable to start)
Entry VO for the following cards removed: Dashing Ringmaster, Howling Abyssal, Panic Raider, Strigoi Familiar
Ranked points for Champion level players is awarded in the same way as Mythril players as a temporary band-aid for not having gotten something better in place in time for next season
Various other bug fixes
Known Issues
Guilds are NYI
Tournaments are NYI
The puzzle Minmaxer’s Coup is broken on iOS. We also had to change the puzzle slightly at the last minute due to fixing an issue with one of the cards. Since none of us were able to solve the puzzle anyway, we can’t guarantee that it’s solvable period. Have fun!
Cards/Tuning
Minor balance changes. Full refunds available on Master of Shadows, Scourge of Serpents, Shadhavar Beast, and Volition™ if made or unmade in the past 3 weeks.
Halcyon Decree
Enemy minions in three adjacent lanes get -2/-0 → permanently and are [Suppressed] until your next turn
This strength debuff has always needed to be immune its own dang suppression to function; making it permanent is a small buff, but also feels closer to a good reason this doesn’t thwart itself.
Master of Shadows
4[P]P → 5[P]P
Stealth → Removed
Bringing the Master out into the light of day here; needing a slightly higher cost is a bit of a giveaway, but it’s always been possible to figure out when he was around based on his effect on other incoming minions anyway.
[ed. - if you’ve been to our Discord recently you know that Purple has a less than stellar win rate. We’ll look to buff other cards in the faction sometime soon]
Scourge of Serpents
4[Y]Y → 5[Y]Y
Shadhavar Beast
3/3 → 2/3
Storied Martyr
1/1 → 2/2
Demise: Give all your other minions +1/+1 and Overrun until the end of the next turn → Give all your other Rebel minions +1/+1
Volition™
3[Y] → 2[Y]
Give a friendly minion a standard action → and 'is Stunned until end of turn after attacking' until end of turn
Art
Card art updated for Salt the Fields, Scourge of Serpents, Fossegrim, and Muttonmorphosis.
Ok, to preface, I haven't been playing Hearthstone more than about a year. I started shortly after Boomsday released so I'm not familiar with a lot of the older broken and ridiculous decks that have come and gone. That being said, I really feel like the meta over the last several sets has increasingly given Aggro more and more tools whiles starving Control decks for answers to those tools. When I first started, I stuck with the Mage deck after the tutorial. I played other classes, but Mage became my favorite. And of course, Big Spell Mage was a powerful force at that time. It was a fun and interesting deck that I really enjoyed as it challenged me to find answers to my opponents' board state, but also contained enough tools to handle most anything. The two areas it faltered, was of course, OTK's and extremely aggressive decks when you had poor draw.
So I really, really like Control decks. I like to run more than half my deck and hell, I'm all for going to fatigue. I want to spend time playing a game. I want to feel like the moves I make, the timing in which I play my cards is critical to whether I win or lose. Forgetting Shaman for the moment, the last couple of expansions has seemed to give Aggro decks so many tools for summoning wide and/or tall boards that there are almost no control decks that can keep up any more. Hunter in particular has been one of those. The current iteration of Quest Hunter basically punishes any deck that either can't beat them down fast, or clear a board full of small minions ever single turn. Paladin has been that way too. They snowball so fast, that you really have little option in terms of counters if they have a decent draw. Rush Warrior has been crazy with all the rush minions, and Pirate Warrior looks to be so much worse. Rogue has always excelled at keeping their hand filled, and going face again and again while controlling the board with spells and minion effects. Warlock is the traditional board flood/zoo class, and even they are having a hard time keeping up with all the minion generating and Mana cheating effects given to other classes of late.
I'm just at the point I'm tired of so many of my games being decided by turn four or five. I'm tired of broken decks with little or no interaction. I want to feel like I actually have a chance when I queue up with a slower deck. Maybe I'm just not that good a player, but I'd like to think as much time and money as I've invested into Hearthstone that I'm at least halfway decent.
Anyway, end of rant. What are your thoughts? Does control have any real chance in the current state of the game? Or is Aggro the only real way to go any more? (Shaman not withstanding.)
Easy. I've already hit legend so I don't have a need to restrict myself to only play in ranked where it should be assumed that optimized decks will do better than fun decks more often. When you play in casual wild you can honestly make almost any type of deck work, you just need to keep your expectations in check (ie Know that meme decks will always have lower winrates regardless of the format being wild or standard).
As for the comments referencing most cards/big collections not being viable in wild, that would happen regardless of the power level/power creep in wild. Decks are only 30 cards, not Yu-Gi-Oh's 40 card minimum or MtG's even larger possible sizes. When you have that restriction and the ever growing hundreds (and years later maybe thousands) of cards that you can't put in a single deck it makes sense that many many many cards will eventually not be 'useable' versus almost any competitive meta.
1. When you say you aggressively mulligan for 1-drops, do you mean you try to start the game with a full hand of 1 drops or do you keep some 2 or 3 mana stuff if you already start the mulligan with a Quest?
2. Standard seems to run a ton of heals at the moment (Warlock, Dragodin, Priest), so I'm thinking of converting the deck to Wild and making it even less fair. Any tips for Wild cards?
I enjoy my time in Wild because I’m playing my Joke Priest deck, or my Aviana, Togwaggle Druid. But I don’t intend to ever really climb ladder at all, so there’s that.
You brought up your collection which I think is something players tend to forget about. There are ALOT of cards in HS and you can’t really do much with them because of the power level that is wild. I read this post a while back, some parts of it are irrelevant now but it makes some good points.
It just depends on what I’m playing against, if my opponent is likely to have an answer I save it for use with the Hero Power (most often the case). If not,I’ll play it on curve and use it for tempo, sometimes there’s not another play.
This happened to me once. Also twice I had X4 copies of all of the basic cards, and once I had X6 copies of all my basic cards. Something weird is going on.
Try out the Amara Deathrattle Cycling package and you will realise that it goes toe to toe with Cleric shennaanigans). Hemet is here for 2 reasons: 1 is getting you closer to combo cards preferably post Quest completion or just thinning your deck to make it even more useless for your opponent. Either way hes doing his job and even 5 cards destroyed speed up your combo by a large amount of time.
Give it a try and see yourself). There's also Kohais version which is a little bit different in terms of draw engine as he runs slightly different cards. You can try it out as well^^
I love Togwaggle shenanigans! I will totally give this a spin! Hemet is a nice idea, but you have a lot of stuff he won't clear out. Maybe add more draw? We've all seen the insane amount of cycling priests can do with Northshire Cleric,Wild Pyromances, Acolyte of Pain, etc.
Duplicate will never make it into the cut unless the all meta switches to ultra greedy control lists. It is just not flexible enough to make it into the deck as all the other secrets are. Also the 4th secret messes up with your secret tutor cards which is unnapealing. Especially in Control v Aggro where you want to fish for Ice Block or Flame Ward at any point in the game or for Potion of Polymoprh in the Mid Game.
Depth Charge being the second Doomsayer is a great update to highlander decks. By removing the Volcanic Potion it boosted up Dragons Fury to have higher damage in more cases. It proved to be great in a variety of matchups like Odd Rogue,Pirate Warrior,Secret Mage and even in Control V Control like Renolock. I stay behind this change
I agree with the confusion about Polymorph removal. And if you feel like you need it more than Rolling Fireball feel free to remove it. I added rolling Fireball into the deck because of the fact that it acted as both single target removal in Even Shaman matchup and both as AOE in matchup like Odd Rogue. Which is great flexibility, That being said polymorphing the large Demon from Guldan or Magnetised mech abomination feels great as well. So feel free to run it
Vulpera proved to me that she is more flexible than Keysmith,she ads unexpctancy moment, costs 1 mana less, has better stats and actually doesnt get countered by Secret Tech which I greatly appreciate. That being said I also toy around with Bad luck Albatross instead of her and that card just singlehandedly slows reno decks so much that Im actually considering adding this card to the deck. Keysmith may be strong but some Reno Mage players are abandoning her for better options Im not th only one in that regard and Element91 removed the Keysmith from his build as well
Dragon package from 3 Dragons only wouldnt be consistently triggered. I've tried it with 5 Dragons and even then I got pretty unlucky with the draws. Activating Dragon package for new Malygos only also sounds pretty questionable. Because it may appear to you as another Kazakus or Zephrys but it is actually far more rng dependant and not all of his options are good
The only time when I feel like there’s definitely something wrong with the game is when you’re up against someone who consistently makes mistakes and obviously barely understands what they’re doing, but they still manage to win
That's literally the majority of the decks you just mentioned though, lol: Secret mage, mech pally/hunter, rez (big) priest and arguably pirate warrior.
Only ones missing from your list are odd paladin, odd rogue and even shaman.
Depending on the deck you’re running it’s not so bad, a lot of the decks I went up against either seemed to be really aggressive (secret mage, pirate warrior, mech pally/hunter) or heavier control decks (I’d count Rez priest and the shaman decks I went up against as that at least).
Yeah it gets frustrating to go up against meta decks and lose, but it isn’t that difficult to make a deck that has a decent win rate against most of them. The only time when I feel like there’s definitely something wrong with the game is when you’re up against someone who consistently makes mistakes and obviously barely understands what they’re doing, but they still manage to win
Better than increasing the deck size would be to increase the starting hand size. Just image the changes of starting with 4/5+coin cards in hand. Especially for control decks this would be game-changing *pun intended*.
Deck size is already fluid (see Rogue, Druid or Priest cards that shuffle cards into your or your opponent's deck), I don't think a bigger starting deck size would be that much better (definitely less consistent).
Hey, just checking if anyone else encountered this bug: I'm currently missing all basic cards except for Mark of the Wild. This results in me not being able to play any of my decks in standard... (It shows them missing and gives replacement options, I can't find them with the collection manager search or by reducing the set to basic cards)
Pretty sure this bug was introduced with the latest patch?
For me, it (subjectively speaking) greatly increased the time I spent with Bob (/reduced the time of battle animations). I definitely won several games which I wouldn't have won bc I wouldn't have had the time to do all the necessary things in the tavern.
You aren't going to run into an deck that oppressive at low ranks because everyone using it is ranking up. The people who are using it and not ranking up are either so bad it doesn't matter what they play or don't have enough cards/dust to make the deck properly.
Mythgard - Patch 12/18/19
There will some downtime with a patch hitting tomorrow. Keep an eye out for patch notes to follow after it concludes.
Added patch notes.
Has Aggro Become Too Strong?
Ok, to preface, I haven't been playing Hearthstone more than about a year. I started shortly after Boomsday released so I'm not familiar with a lot of the older broken and ridiculous decks that have come and gone. That being said, I really feel like the meta over the last several sets has increasingly given Aggro more and more tools whiles starving Control decks for answers to those tools. When I first started, I stuck with the Mage deck after the tutorial. I played other classes, but Mage became my favorite. And of course, Big Spell Mage was a powerful force at that time. It was a fun and interesting deck that I really enjoyed as it challenged me to find answers to my opponents' board state, but also contained enough tools to handle most anything. The two areas it faltered, was of course, OTK's and extremely aggressive decks when you had poor draw.
So I really, really like Control decks. I like to run more than half my deck and hell, I'm all for going to fatigue. I want to spend time playing a game. I want to feel like the moves I make, the timing in which I play my cards is critical to whether I win or lose. Forgetting Shaman for the moment, the last couple of expansions has seemed to give Aggro decks so many tools for summoning wide and/or tall boards that there are almost no control decks that can keep up any more. Hunter in particular has been one of those. The current iteration of Quest Hunter basically punishes any deck that either can't beat them down fast, or clear a board full of small minions ever single turn. Paladin has been that way too. They snowball so fast, that you really have little option in terms of counters if they have a decent draw. Rush Warrior has been crazy with all the rush minions, and Pirate Warrior looks to be so much worse. Rogue has always excelled at keeping their hand filled, and going face again and again while controlling the board with spells and minion effects. Warlock is the traditional board flood/zoo class, and even they are having a hard time keeping up with all the minion generating and Mana cheating effects given to other classes of late.
I'm just at the point I'm tired of so many of my games being decided by turn four or five. I'm tired of broken decks with little or no interaction. I want to feel like I actually have a chance when I queue up with a slower deck. Maybe I'm just not that good a player, but I'd like to think as much time and money as I've invested into Hearthstone that I'm at least halfway decent.
Anyway, end of rant. What are your thoughts? Does control have any real chance in the current state of the game? Or is Aggro the only real way to go any more? (Shaman not withstanding.)
Wild players: how do you still enjoy it?
Easy. I've already hit legend so I don't have a need to restrict myself to only play in ranked where it should be assumed that optimized decks will do better than fun decks more often. When you play in casual wild you can honestly make almost any type of deck work, you just need to keep your expectations in check (ie Know that meme decks will always have lower winrates regardless of the format being wild or standard).
As for the comments referencing most cards/big collections not being viable in wild, that would happen regardless of the power level/power creep in wild. Decks are only 30 cards, not Yu-Gi-Oh's 40 card minimum or MtG's even larger possible sizes. When you have that restriction and the ever growing hundreds (and years later maybe thousands) of cards that you can't put in a single deck it makes sense that many many many cards will eventually not be 'useable' versus almost any competitive meta.
Eternal - Promises by Firelight Spoilers Dec. 17
We've got a couple of new reveals for today. The first comes from Scarlatch on Discord.
Next we've got one from Telemokos on Twitch.
MC Kronx feat. Big G
Looks interesting giving it a try when home. What is “MC” Kronx?
[Legend] Leprosy SMOrc Hunter
Thanks, I have two more questions:
1. When you say you aggressively mulligan for 1-drops, do you mean you try to start the game with a full hand of 1 drops or do you keep some 2 or 3 mana stuff if you already start the mulligan with a Quest?
2. Standard seems to run a ton of heals at the moment (Warlock, Dragodin, Priest), so I'm thinking of converting the deck to Wild and making it even less fair. Any tips for Wild cards?
Wild players: how do you still enjoy it?
I enjoy my time in Wild because I’m playing my Joke Priest deck, or my Aviana, Togwaggle Druid. But I don’t intend to ever really climb ladder at all, so there’s that.
You brought up your collection which I think is something players tend to forget about. There are ALOT of cards in HS and you can’t really do much with them because of the power level that is wild. I read this post a while back, some parts of it are irrelevant now but it makes some good points.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/c9vsy3/blizzard_i_want_my_collection_to_matter_pls_make/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
[Legend] Leprosy SMOrc Hunter
It just depends on what I’m playing against, if my opponent is likely to have an answer I save it for use with the Hero Power (most often the case). If not,I’ll play it on curve and use it for tempo, sometimes there’s not another play.
Fan Community Spotlight - CivilKobold's "Dawn of Desolation"
Really nice designs! My favorite was Voracious Bloodwing.
I used to make a lot of custom cards, classes and expansions back in the day, reading this made me want to create some more!
G'huun the Blood God also has such a cool design.
Reading Novice Beckoner's card text I caught my self saying: "Heh, you know it's going to be C'thun, don't try to fool me!".
Great stuff, would love to see more!
Weird Bug: Missing Basic cards
This happened to me once. Also twice I had X4 copies of all of the basic cards, and once I had X6 copies of all my basic cards. Something weird is going on.
MC Kronx feat. Big G
my bad, i think zalae used a more control shell with dr boom harrison jones and the new deathwing. i mixed things up. sorry
[Legend] Leprosy SMOrc Hunter
Hi! I have a question, do you ever play Dragonbane on curve or only if you can hero power along with it?
MC Kronx feat. Big G
I haven't seen Zalae's version, but thanks for the support. Your comment was super helpful and definitely worth your time and mine.
MC Kronx feat. Big G
this is basically zalae's decks with dragonmaw poachers. if i recall correctly zalae called this deck "no fun allowed"
The ultimate Thief Priest=The Togwaggle Priest
Try out the Amara Deathrattle Cycling package and you will realise that it goes toe to toe with Cleric shennaanigans). Hemet is here for 2 reasons: 1 is getting you closer to combo cards preferably post Quest completion or just thinning your deck to make it even more useless for your opponent. Either way hes doing his job and even 5 cards destroyed speed up your combo by a large amount of time.
Give it a try and see yourself). There's also Kohais version which is a little bit different in terms of draw engine as he runs slightly different cards. You can try it out as well^^
The ultimate Thief Priest=The Togwaggle Priest
I love Togwaggle shenanigans! I will totally give this a spin! Hemet is a nice idea, but you have a lot of stuff he won't clear out. Maybe add more draw? We've all seen the insane amount of cycling priests can do with Northshire Cleric,Wild Pyromances, Acolyte of Pain, etc.
Fun and Powerful Galakrond Control Warrior
Hey everyone, just want to share my favorite deck of the new expansion so far. Give it a spin! Let me know if you have ideas for improvement.
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/10789-mc-kronx-feat-big-g
Legendary Reno DK Mage
Thanks for the feedback^^
Duplicate will never make it into the cut unless the all meta switches to ultra greedy control lists. It is just not flexible enough to make it into the deck as all the other secrets are. Also the 4th secret messes up with your secret tutor cards which is unnapealing. Especially in Control v Aggro where you want to fish for Ice Block or Flame Ward at any point in the game or for Potion of Polymoprh in the Mid Game.
Legendary Reno DK Mage
Depth Charge being the second Doomsayer is a great update to highlander decks. By removing the Volcanic Potion it boosted up Dragons Fury to have higher damage in more cases. It proved to be great in a variety of matchups like Odd Rogue,Pirate Warrior,Secret Mage and even in Control V Control like Renolock. I stay behind this change
I agree with the confusion about Polymorph removal. And if you feel like you need it more than Rolling Fireball feel free to remove it. I added rolling Fireball into the deck because of the fact that it acted as both single target removal in Even Shaman matchup and both as AOE in matchup like Odd Rogue. Which is great flexibility, That being said polymorphing the large Demon from Guldan or Magnetised mech abomination feels great as well. So feel free to run it
Vulpera proved to me that she is more flexible than Keysmith,she ads unexpctancy moment, costs 1 mana less, has better stats and actually doesnt get countered by Secret Tech which I greatly appreciate. That being said I also toy around with Bad luck Albatross instead of her and that card just singlehandedly slows reno decks so much that Im actually considering adding this card to the deck. Keysmith may be strong but some Reno Mage players are abandoning her for better options Im not th only one in that regard and Element91 removed the Keysmith from his build as well
Dragon package from 3 Dragons only wouldnt be consistently triggered. I've tried it with 5 Dragons and even then I got pretty unlucky with the draws. Activating Dragon package for new Malygos only also sounds pretty questionable. Because it may appear to you as another Kazakus or Zephrys but it is actually far more rng dependant and not all of his options are good
Wild players: how do you still enjoy it?
That's literally the majority of the decks you just mentioned though, lol: Secret mage, mech pally/hunter, rez (big) priest and arguably pirate warrior.
Only ones missing from your list are odd paladin, odd rogue and even shaman.
Wild players: how do you still enjoy it?
Depending on the deck you’re running it’s not so bad, a lot of the decks I went up against either seemed to be really aggressive (secret mage, pirate warrior, mech pally/hunter) or heavier control decks (I’d count Rez priest and the shaman decks I went up against as that at least).
Yeah it gets frustrating to go up against meta decks and lose, but it isn’t that difficult to make a deck that has a decent win rate against most of them. The only time when I feel like there’s definitely something wrong with the game is when you’re up against someone who consistently makes mistakes and obviously barely understands what they’re doing, but they still manage to win
Should the deck size be increased to slow down general tempo?
Better than increasing the deck size would be to increase the starting hand size. Just image the changes of starting with 4/5+coin cards in hand. Especially for control decks this would be game-changing *pun intended*.
Deck size is already fluid (see Rogue, Druid or Priest cards that shuffle cards into your or your opponent's deck), I don't think a bigger starting deck size would be that much better (definitely less consistent).
Weird Bug: Missing Basic cards
EDIT: Restarting fixed the problem
---------------------------------------------------
Hey, just checking if anyone else encountered this bug: I'm currently missing all basic cards except for Mark of the Wild. This results in me not being able to play any of my decks in standard... (It shows them missing and gives replacement options, I can't find them with the collection manager search or by reducing the set to basic cards)
Pretty sure this bug was introduced with the latest patch?
Update
For me, it (subjectively speaking) greatly increased the time I spent with Bob (/reduced the time of battle animations). I definitely won several games which I wouldn't have won bc I wouldn't have had the time to do all the necessary things in the tavern.
Standard Meta Report #15 - Fixing (Yet Another) Shaman Meta
You aren't going to run into an deck that oppressive at low ranks because everyone using it is ranking up. The people who are using it and not ranking up are either so bad it doesn't matter what they play or don't have enough cards/dust to make the deck properly.