• When the current expansion ends, the achievements for it will remain but will no longer reward experience

Thats a shame. Wouldn’t this be a nice little catch up mechanic for new and returning players? Some stuff like summoning ungodly amounts of Greyboros is just nothing I plan to do with the current cards available.. 

Not to mention the meme that is the Yogg secret.

This is honestly more important to me than the hysteria nerf lol 

I always found quest warlock intriguing but that’s a new peak. 
You generally didn’t have enough cards to capitalize on your HP but now I’m dropping 0-cost primes turn after turn after turn. 
And the ways the games turn out are just hilarious. Every single one was highlight worthy. 
For instance, I just beat a rogue with 7 fatigue that played 4 Zephrys against me! Counter spelled his Bloodlust - thanks Solarian Prime

Insanely fun! Rocking 100% winrate at 4K legend ;) (3-0)

I outlasted a Tikkatus warlock with the insane amount of Primes that this deck is able to generate.

Well put. The KO system is great and allows noticeable personal progression. Winning more games is 10x more rewarding than having a higher MMR rating. 
I realize that this comes at a cost - The vast majority of people have little success in arena. Every 8th run ends in a 0-3! That’s why I don’t understand the pricing of it. They should reduce the cost by 100 gold and take out the pack from the prize pool

That’s ... craz

Very nice read! Little clarification as I don’t know much about WoW, is the fight against N‘Zoth part of wow or Warcraft?

I like these  nuggets of hearthstone original lore very much and would love to see more ingame references. I feel like there is a ton of potential for alternate voice lines in specific encounters. 
Imagine Xanesh saying different things when he enters play against a N‘Zoth hero or when attacking a corrupted card himself. 

They are much less impactful than back in the day though. Now we have proto drake, same thing but worse. 
Oh and knowing Lady Barov, there is a lot of middle ground in the 5 mana slot for firelands portal, and Draconic egg and desert Obilisk aren’t even in the rotation. 

Also, there are many Un’goro cards that will make up for it

Quote From Thonson

Compared to the Warlock hero power Life Tap this is one more mana, one more self damage, draw 2 additional cards!

Nope, it’s just one additional card since you have to spend a card doing so. And for a card to be stronger than a hero power is not exactly a good reference.

I’m surprised so many people like this card..

Flavor 5/5 but the effect? Urgh..

Why would you spent 2 mana and a card on a 0-tempo effect that might even trigger only in a couple turns from now?

All things summed up, both players lost a card but you payed 2 mana to give your opponent a banana. 
And bananas are not even that bad!

No, “cast” means trigger a spell as if you played it. So this “just “ puts a secret into play. Still insanely busted card.

It would have been a fine card even without the card draw

Weapon poison is played right now. This is almost twice as strong. The corrupt part is no issue whatsoever. It also activated combos and pretty well
Insanely busted

I don’t see this in DH either, the tempo gain seems to little. Compared to the 1 mana 2/2, this card is just slow.

In hunter though.. Phasestalker alone has justified the inclusion of tour guide - in highlander hunter! 

Now you can double up on that. You either play Tour guide into Phasestalker on two or Deadeye into Phasestalker on 3. 

Granted, the effect doesn't carry over and that’s a very big deal. A 2/3 on turn 2 has still a high chance to stick though when you’re going first)

This card is the doom of every aggro deck.
Once online, it’s over

Same here! I‘m sitting on 50 packs rn, damn it! It’s super unreasonable to collect those 4 legendaries with packs.. oh well, the pricing is still awesome! I wonder if the community had any impact on that decision. H

Agreed! I didn’t mention rogue in the above post because I haven’t really figured out his place yet. The Aggro variant seems still very strong but on a healthy acceptable level imo. 

I just finished my climb with ETC warrior and had an astounding 15-3 winrate. Took me some time to figure it out though. With ETC, Rattlegore and Zephrys, there are lots of unintuitive ways to close out games. I had one mirror match, literal insanity. 

I didn’t face many paladins or hunters btw, these might be more powerfull in gold and platin now that I think of it. Solid curvestone decks. 

Fun idea! My little experience with the grand finale tells me though, that it needs a little more than a couple 8/8 to win games. Giants are a threat on turn 5, less so on later turns. 

The Sandwich only accelerates you power turn by 1, I feel like that doesn’t justify the inclusion and build around but the deck may prove me wrong! 

—->
Turn 5: Naga Sand Wich
Turn 6: Elemental Setup 
Turn 7: Grand Finale 

Those are 3 consecutive turns without any direct impact. No rush, no removal, no taunt. You don’t get such an opportunity against any form of aggressive deck. And control decks should have no issue to answer your threats. 
Not only that, the Naga interrupts your elemental chain and your bonus effects won’t activate on turn 6. 

I like however the part about the water elementals! Deep freeze singlehandedly won you games when DH was king. Recent shaman nerfs make face freezing much less exciting.

Even though I’m critical with the deck, I very much appreciate the article! Good read and fun exercise to analyze alternate deck ideas. Hence my on depth comment. Keep it up! : 

Hi folks, 

Just wanted to chit chat a little about the impact of the nerfs in standard.
They are online for a couple days now and first statistics are rolling in.

A quick look on HS Replay shows a rather balanced playfield (i don't have access to diamond and legend data though).
The clear winners this time are paladin and hunter, followed by a majority of the classes pivoting around the 50% mark with only druids and priests at the bottom.

What amazes me the most is the huge decline of shamans. What a single attack point on a weapon can do is truly impressive.
This decline in winrate might be biaised though since many people disenchanted their bonespine knuckels and picked up more experimental shaman decks like aggro, highlander or OTK. 

However, this shows how cutthroat the fight for the top of the tierlist is and how little the differences in powerlevel can be.
A multitude of decks have popped up in diamond wich results in a surprisingly entertaining ladder experience (for me).
Different versions of warlocks, hunters, paladins, warriors ... A ton of decks seem viable. 

My prefered lists right now are OTK/deck of lunacy mage and ETC warrior.
It's been quit a while since some true OTK decks have been this viable! 

What are your first impressions and what decks work best for you? 
Do you think Hunters and/or Paladins will become as opressive as shamans were? 

I don’t say you are wrong about that, it sure must feel bad to miss out on stuff just because you don’t like to play another game mode. But tbf, standard remains the main game mode of Hearthstone and cards are the main thing to spend gold on.
If you only care for BGs, you should have next to no problem getting enough gold for the battle pass, don’t you?

Great stuff and interesting read! What would interest me is to know how much time every step approximately takes.

I feel a little sad for the other blueprints that will never come to life lol.