Of my 12 matches, 5 were running this exact same deck, 2 running basically the same (1 swapped Mogu for EVIL Totem + 1 swaped Mutate for Sludge Slurper). The other 5 were: 2 Murloc Shaman, 2 Flamewaker Mages, and 1 Res Priest.
So yeah - this brawl is just a distilled meta for sure.
I was actually excited about Battlegrounds, but having played it for a day I must agree with other players. Here is a quote I made in another thread in response to it:
So, having played early access battlegrounds, I wanted to share my thoughts. While overall a fun mode, there isn't enough dimensions to keep most players entrained past initial week in my opinion. Already in 1 day of playing I started seeing the same end-game patterns over and over. The main end-game strategies are very repetitive (I really hope the complexity of this mode increases to keep it enjoyable long-term):
1. Go all in on beasts: Get Mama Bear and beasts that spawn more beasts (i.e. Rat Pack) and a cleaver or 2 (Cave Hydra)
2: Go all in on mechs: Get Junkbot and mechs that spawn more mechs (magnetize them) and a cleaver or 2 (Foe Reaper 4000), sound familiar?
3: Go all in on demons: Get Wrathweaver and rotate a bunch of demons between rounds to buff him, eventually get Annihilan Battlemaster with ~200 health (optionally get Malganis temporarily so Wrathweaver stops hurting you)
4: Go all in on murlocs: Try to discover poison + divine shield from Gentle Megasaur for every minion on board, or give it manually to your murlocs through other battlecries.
Oh, and of course, regardless of which of the only 4 endgame strategies you pick, buff/max out your Nightmare Amalgam, giving it a ton of health, poison, divine shield, etc. and magnetizing anything you come in contact with.
In my opinion, the Co-Op mode (2 players fighting a rogue minion, similar to some Brawls - but more variety and ability to use the entire card sample space) would have been a more interesting addition. Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the mode, but I doubt I still will a week from now.
I disagree slightly. Due to RNG in re-rolls, going all in on a specific tribe is risky. When it works (which it usually does for at least 1/8 players), it is hard to beat, which is why you usually see one of the strategies you mentioned in the finals of the round. But more often, you can't roll the pieces you need and then it fails hard. The best strategy for always having a decent (top-four) finish is to mix tribes and strategically use buffs and selling minions to create a solid board. That strategy is pretty fun, because its always a little different and requires many tough choices.
I have noticed one disturbing trend though---which is that my finishing position, no matter what strategy I use, is usually wholly dependent on how many Nightmare Amalgams I'm offered in the game. If I get offered 1 or none, I'm almost always finishing at the bottom. If I get offered 4-5, I almost always finish at the top. I've started tracking (will post results after 50 runs or so) but so far after tracking for 10 runs its worked out exactly as I thought: More amalgams always equals better finish.
If that ends up true, it reduces the mode to rolling for 1 card, which is pretty terrible design.
In my anecdotal experience of around 30 games, sure Amalgam is a strong card, but I RARELY go after it since almost always go full Beast Spawn (Pack Leader/Momma Bear, Hyena, and Infested Wolf/Rat Pack) and I've come in top 4 in 23 games, claimed 1st place in 7.
I think it's a "win plus" rather than a "win more." If you've got a weaker field then it can definitely help carry the load (especially with poison) but it isn't going to win the the game solo or really even help that much if you can put together a strong Beast or Mech Spawn set without it.
My suggestion (that I know will never happen but I can dream) to "solve" the disparity in Casual:
3 Modes - Ranked, Casual, and idk EXTRA Casual
Ranked is the normal ladder as it exists now, EXCEPT you get 10g for 2 wins (so 2 "megacrowns" = 10g)
Casual is exactly like it is now with the same 3 "normal" crowns = 10g
EXTRA Casual gives no gold rewards at all
That way people who are in it for the gold will stay on the ladder since the rewards would be better. People who want to play T2/T3 decks, practice, tweak "real" decks have Casual as a testing ground to do so while also getting "something" for winning. And people who want to try their ridiculous "Hey can I summon 7 Highkeeper Ras at once?!" decks without getting bodied in 6 turns have a place to do that as well since nobody would play EXTRA Casual with anything other than a fun, goofy deck.
Since the above will never happen: I've said this in other threads, but for me this is a game, meant to be fun. Yes it's competitive, but I really don't get the mentality where people don't seem to comprehend there is someone else on the other side of that screen who is maybe not playing this to be the very best (like no one ever was! Da dahn da dah!) but is instead playing to have fun. So when you're "testing" or "practicing" decks that are proven Tier 1s in Casual and you run into someone playing Silence Priest or Beast Druid, maybe you should be the nicer/bigger person, concede to them, and move on. You aren't gaining any experience or whatever since this is a deck you'll never see on the ladder, and then you can go find another opponent that will actually provide you the option to improve if that's what you're really after.
I‘m a little tired of those casual complains. I get your point, you want those Trolden worthy Highkeeper Ra or Desert Obelisk finishes... well they aren‘t worth a dime if you have to face a Mecha‘thun hunter to get there. You may aswell play against the inkeeper.
Other people use casual as a place to learn new decks they just crafted. How can you blame them for that?
Can‘t you just see netdecks as the ultimate challenge for your homebrew? If you can’t get to 40% winrate, the roblem may not be the netdeck but your own.
It‘s like casually playing Tennis but using a badminton racket.
That's not an apt analogy at all.
A better one would be: I'm an amateur tennis player at my local club looking to casually play against other middle-age weekend schlub players, except wow look at that today my opponent is Rafael Nadal. Mr. Nadal could and should easily find better opponents than me, but here he is kicking my teeth in because he wants to try out a new backhand or restrung racket.
See how that might make me resent him for raining on my parade even though he may have a "good reason" for doing so?
There are Iron Man Xbox games? Also, very good points.
Consider yourself fortunate to have avoided them - they were compared (very justly) to Superman 64 in terms of just rank unplayability. Basically nothing in the games worked at all. The games were clearly just rushed out to capitalize on the success of the movies.
I basically feel the same way. However good the game is, it just feels like another Marvel licence game to me-- which I've personally grown tired of. Sure, games like Hearthstone are often based off of other existing universes, which I like, but they are generally made by the same company who makes the original game. This feels like Ben didn't have faith in an original idea for the team, so they just hitched on something already popular.
As someone who's worked in/with venture funding, I would bet at least $8 that it wasn't that BB wanted to build something new and couldn't so he "settled" for Marvel - it's that HE was approached BY Marvel who said "Hey, you've made an incredibly successful card game - want to jump ship and make one for us? You will be your own boss and by the way here's a big ol' sack of money for you/whichever of your Blizzard team you want to poach away."
The fact he announced a fully funded Marvel game what two months after announcing the company itself would strongly support that bet.
I agree though I'm pretty much exhausted from licensed Comic/Star Wars/Other Random Nerd Culture games & such so I expect I'll give whatever he makes a try, but doubt it's going to be good enough as a game to hold interest. And by that I mean: if you make a licensed game where - if you removed the license - the game would still be amazing, then your game is good (for example, if the Arkham games featured idk steampunk randos, the mechanics and setting would still make it a great game). If not and your game would die without the license, (Hi there Iron Man Xbox games!) then your game is bad.
I had this happen as well. The quickest/easiest fix is to "Copy" your deck, delete the deck, and then create a new one - if you've "copied" the deck it will ask if you want to make a new deck with what's in your clipboard so just say yes and there you go. Annoying to deal with, but only 3 clicks to resolve instead of the in/out/in/out/in/out of manually correcting.
I was actually excited about Battlegrounds, but having played it for a day I must agree with other players. Here is a quote I made in another thread in response to it:
So, having played early access battlegrounds, I wanted to share my thoughts. While overall a fun mode, there isn't enough dimensions to keep most players entrained past initial week in my opinion. Already in 1 day of playing I started seeing the same end-game patterns over and over. The main end-game strategies are very repetitive (I really hope the complexity of this mode increases to keep it enjoyable long-term):
1. Go all in on beasts: Get Mama Bear and beasts that spawn more beasts (i.e. Rat Pack) and a cleaver or 2 (Cave Hydra)
2: Go all in on mechs: Get Junkbot and mechs that spawn more mechs (magnetize them) and a cleaver or 2 (Foe Reaper 4000), sound familiar?
3: Go all in on demons: Get Wrathweaver and rotate a bunch of demons between rounds to buff him, eventually get Annihilan Battlemaster with ~200 health (optionally get Malganis temporarily so Wrathweaver stops hurting you)
4: Go all in on murlocs: Try to discover poison + divine shield from Gentle Megasaur for every minion on board, or give it manually to your murlocs through other battlecries.
Oh, and of course, regardless of which of the only 4 endgame strategies you pick, buff/max out your Nightmare Amalgam, giving it a ton of health, poison, divine shield, etc. and magnetizing anything you come in contact with.
In my opinion, the Co-Op mode (2 players fighting a rogue minion, similar to some Brawls - but more variety and ability to use the entire card sample space) would have been a more interesting addition. Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the mode, but I doubt I still will a week from now.
These complaints are identical in most/all auto-chess games.
Also, this is still in beta. It just needs to be a good starting point. Not a perfectly polished, Intricately balanced version of it.
This is my guess as well - I expect it will be like Arena where the card sets get added to/rotated every so often to keep it fresh. If not, then yeah everything in the main post was 100% correct about going hard into one of those 4 tribes being the only chance for success so the mode would get super stale pretty quickly without something.
I was actually excited about Battlegrounds, but having played it for a day I must agree with other players. Here is a quote I made in another thread in response to it:
In my opinion, the Co-Op mode (2 players fighting a rogue minion, similar to some Brawls - but more variety and ability to use the entire card sample space) would have been a more interesting addition. Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the mode, but I doubt I still will a week from now.
While I would definitely enjoy a Co-Op mode (or 2v2 mode), it's funny to see so many people asking about it considering every time there's a co-op brawl, 700 people take to the boards to complain about the "brainlet they got paired up with who made them lose." Let's be honest: many players bitter, obtuse asshats who would not or could not cooperate effectively and/or wouldn't trust their partner to play well. Don't believe me? Go read the thread where people are bitching that other players are going to get Tyrande for "nothing" which "diminishes her value" - which is exactly what happened when they re-gave out the Ragnaros card back. I mean, how many years have we seen players ask for an auto-squelch feature because god forbid anyone use the emotes for fun or just to say 'Hello' and 'Well Played' unironically.
I think there's a very real concern that having the players cooperate to win would be asking too much and people would quickly abandon the mode since it's "RNG" on steroids (i.e. the RNG of being paired with a good player) and you've got a player base that would just bitch about the MMR or their matching with "casuals."
Did you notice, that a 1place grants you 1/3 of 10 gold... :D
Actually I got the crown rewards at 4th and 3rd places butnot at 6th place - and the main screen shows "number of times you've come in 1st" AND "Number of times in top 4." So it looks like all you need to do for the 1/3rd 10g is come in 4th or better.
Granted 3 games is a small sample size, but honestly it's a fun little mode that I will definitely play to break up the "normal" games. ESPECIALLY in times like now where the meta is so oppressive (only 25 days left until Shamanstone ends!)
Maybe I missed this somewhere - but is there an explanation on Battlegrounds for what "wins" games i.e. gets you the crown award? I played 2 games and came in 4th and 3rd, and both times I got a crown. So is it just "finish in the top half" and get the crown towards 10g?
Boy, I'm really sensing some power creep this expansion
I've always thought that was sort of the idea? Since each year's 3rd expansion will be Standard for the shortest amount of time (only 16 months instead of 20/24 like expansion 2 and 1), if it's not seriously impactful it'll end up being very "skippable."
I mean look at RR - aside from a few specific builds like OTK Shirvallah Paladin or Armor Druid, how much of that set is still really used? Maybe 1-2 cards form each class plus a handful of neutrals - maybe 20-30 in all out of 135?
Chances are your opponent hasn't planned their deck or mulligans to take advantage of 10 mana on turn 4/5 while you have. I think the card has a chance.
Also I know everyone is obviously looking at the battlecry, but on its face it's still a FOUR-mana 8/8. That will see play late-game for sure - heck on turn turn 10 you could play Nozdormu and then Pharaoh's Blessing for a 12/12 with Divine Shield and Taunt. Or possibly even a 15/15 or 18/18 if you've managed to get some Dragon Speaker love on it
I really shouldn't go for the $80 bundle, but I love dragons so much I think I'm going to have to.
Dragon Priest was my first "real" deck when I joined HS just before K&C, and I legit tried to make Dragon Warrior work after RR (to no avail) and I actually got a decent Dragon Paladin deck together after RoS. Now it looks like both of those decks might be able to make a comeback in a big way - plus very nice to finally see some Hunter dragon love after they printed Carrion Drake and Emeriss way back in WW and then nothing.
You're not wrong!
Of my 12 matches, 5 were running this exact same deck, 2 running basically the same (1 swapped Mogu for EVIL Totem + 1 swaped Mutate for Sludge Slurper). The other 5 were: 2 Murloc Shaman, 2 Flamewaker Mages, and 1 Res Priest.
So yeah - this brawl is just a distilled meta for sure.
This deck is just mean! Went 9-3 and the losses were all where they banned the Hares and I couldn't draw Mogus for shit.
In my anecdotal experience of around 30 games, sure Amalgam is a strong card, but I RARELY go after it since almost always go full Beast Spawn (Pack Leader/Momma Bear, Hyena, and Infested Wolf/Rat Pack) and I've come in top 4 in 23 games, claimed 1st place in 7.
I think it's a "win plus" rather than a "win more." If you've got a weaker field then it can definitely help carry the load (especially with poison) but it isn't going to win the the game solo or really even help that much if you can put together a strong Beast or Mech Spawn set without it.
My suggestion (that I know will never happen but I can dream) to "solve" the disparity in Casual:
3 Modes - Ranked, Casual, and idk EXTRA Casual
That way people who are in it for the gold will stay on the ladder since the rewards would be better. People who want to play T2/T3 decks, practice, tweak "real" decks have Casual as a testing ground to do so while also getting "something" for winning. And people who want to try their ridiculous "Hey can I summon 7 Highkeeper Ras at once?!" decks without getting bodied in 6 turns have a place to do that as well since nobody would play EXTRA Casual with anything other than a fun, goofy deck.
Since the above will never happen: I've said this in other threads, but for me this is a game, meant to be fun. Yes it's competitive, but I really don't get the mentality where people don't seem to comprehend there is someone else on the other side of that screen who is maybe not playing this to be the very best (like no one ever was! Da dahn da dah!) but is instead playing to have fun. So when you're "testing" or "practicing" decks that are proven Tier 1s in Casual and you run into someone playing Silence Priest or Beast Druid, maybe you should be the nicer/bigger person, concede to them, and move on. You aren't gaining any experience or whatever since this is a deck you'll never see on the ladder, and then you can go find another opponent that will actually provide you the option to improve if that's what you're really after.
I'm curious since this is Wild and Hunter - why Chief Inspector rather than Flare or Eater of Secrets? Just the bigger body?
That's not an apt analogy at all.
A better one would be: I'm an amateur tennis player at my local club looking to casually play against other middle-age weekend schlub players, except wow look at that today my opponent is Rafael Nadal. Mr. Nadal could and should easily find better opponents than me, but here he is kicking my teeth in because he wants to try out a new backhand or restrung racket.
See how that might make me resent him for raining on my parade even though he may have a "good reason" for doing so?
I will refrain from rehashing my multiple posts on the topic last week, and simply say: I agree with KingKrush.
Consider yourself fortunate to have avoided them - they were compared (very justly) to Superman 64 in terms of just rank unplayability. Basically nothing in the games worked at all. The games were clearly just rushed out to capitalize on the success of the movies.
I'm thinking of some very interesting Necrium Vial + Da Undatakah shenanigans - wouldn't be too hard to get 6 or 7 Waxadreds on the board at once.
Wow two current memes in one response? That's the kind of efficiency we like around here - well done.
As someone who's worked in/with venture funding, I would bet at least $8 that it wasn't that BB wanted to build something new and couldn't so he "settled" for Marvel - it's that HE was approached BY Marvel who said "Hey, you've made an incredibly successful card game - want to jump ship and make one for us? You will be your own boss and by the way here's a big ol' sack of money for you/whichever of your Blizzard team you want to poach away."
The fact he announced a fully funded Marvel game what two months after announcing the company itself would strongly support that bet.
I agree though I'm pretty much exhausted from licensed Comic/Star Wars/Other Random Nerd Culture games & such so I expect I'll give whatever he makes a try, but doubt it's going to be good enough as a game to hold interest. And by that I mean: if you make a licensed game where - if you removed the license - the game would still be amazing, then your game is good (for example, if the Arkham games featured idk steampunk randos, the mechanics and setting would still make it a great game). If not and your game would die without the license, (Hi there Iron Man Xbox games!) then your game is bad.
MRGLGLG - and I cannot stress this enough - LGL!
I had this happen as well. The quickest/easiest fix is to "Copy" your deck, delete the deck, and then create a new one - if you've "copied" the deck it will ask if you want to make a new deck with what's in your clipboard so just say yes and there you go. Annoying to deal with, but only 3 clicks to resolve instead of the in/out/in/out/in/out of manually correcting.
This is my guess as well - I expect it will be like Arena where the card sets get added to/rotated every so often to keep it fresh. If not, then yeah everything in the main post was 100% correct about going hard into one of those 4 tribes being the only chance for success so the mode would get super stale pretty quickly without something.
While I would definitely enjoy a Co-Op mode (or 2v2 mode), it's funny to see so many people asking about it considering every time there's a co-op brawl, 700 people take to the boards to complain about the "brainlet they got paired up with who made them lose." Let's be honest: many players bitter, obtuse asshats who would not or could not cooperate effectively and/or wouldn't trust their partner to play well. Don't believe me? Go read the thread where people are bitching that other players are going to get Tyrande for "nothing" which "diminishes her value" - which is exactly what happened when they re-gave out the Ragnaros card back. I mean, how many years have we seen players ask for an auto-squelch feature because god forbid anyone use the emotes for fun or just to say 'Hello' and 'Well Played' unironically.
I think there's a very real concern that having the players cooperate to win would be asking too much and people would quickly abandon the mode since it's "RNG" on steroids (i.e. the RNG of being paired with a good player) and you've got a player base that would just bitch about the MMR or their matching with "casuals."
Actually I got the crown rewards at 4th and 3rd places but not at 6th place - and the main screen shows "number of times you've come in 1st" AND "Number of times in top 4." So it looks like all you need to do for the 1/3rd 10g is come in 4th or better.
Granted 3 games is a small sample size, but honestly it's a fun little mode that I will definitely play to break up the "normal" games. ESPECIALLY in times like now where the meta is so oppressive (only 25 days left until Shamanstone ends!)
Maybe I missed this somewhere - but is there an explanation on Battlegrounds for what "wins" games i.e. gets you the crown award? I played 2 games and came in 4th and 3rd, and both times I got a crown. So is it just "finish in the top half" and get the crown towards 10g?
I've always thought that was sort of the idea? Since each year's 3rd expansion will be Standard for the shortest amount of time (only 16 months instead of 20/24 like expansion 2 and 1), if it's not seriously impactful it'll end up being very "skippable."
I mean look at RR - aside from a few specific builds like OTK Shirvallah Paladin or Armor Druid, how much of that set is still really used? Maybe 1-2 cards form each class plus a handful of neutrals - maybe 20-30 in all out of 135?
Also I know everyone is obviously looking at the battlecry, but on its face it's still a FOUR-mana 8/8. That will see play late-game for sure - heck on turn turn 10 you could play Nozdormu and then Pharaoh's Blessing for a 12/12 with Divine Shield and Taunt. Or possibly even a 15/15 or 18/18 if you've managed to get some Dragon Speaker love on it
I really shouldn't go for the $80 bundle, but I love dragons so much I think I'm going to have to.
Dragon Priest was my first "real" deck when I joined HS just before K&C, and I legit tried to make Dragon Warrior work after RR (to no avail) and I actually got a decent Dragon Paladin deck together after RoS. Now it looks like both of those decks might be able to make a comeback in a big way - plus very nice to finally see some Hunter dragon love after they printed Carrion Drake and Emeriss way back in WW and then nothing.