Yeah, the hardest part of the fight was trying to make Rexxar’s absolutely atrocious deck work. Like even the automatic deck builder is better than that garbage!
Anyway, if you can’t clear the first few ships you are definitely screwed. The key is to just keep removing his ships. Thats the whole fight. He can’t fight back outside of Monsoon (which is an awesome callback by the way).
Also, the final fight was such a disappointment as well. Whats the point of giving us such a hero power when your opponent barely has any minions either? It just came down to me smacking him over and over with the Eaglehorn Bow and then winning
Everyone knew this would either be really good or complete garbage. Turns out it was the latter. Mainly because Soul DH is pretty much the only good DH deck rn and it does not need Glide to win. Also, there are no prevalent combo decks in the meta right now, so Glide has literally no reason to be played considering that DH has a monstrous amount of Draw options that are just so much better.
But here you go, since you feel entitled to a take a lot of people also felt (2 months later might I add): 🍪
I'm a little sad that they didn't go the route of "If you played an elemental last round" for Elementals. It would have made Elementals a very interesting playstyle (although I can see why it might not be the best mechanic for Battlegrounds). Even something like "If you didn't buy this card this round" would make Elementals a bit more unique. I just wish that they'd gone in a different design direction than just Buffs plus Card Generation.
Conversely, I feel that they captured the flavour of Elementals quite well, actually! They obviously rely on each other to work well and there is sufficient hand manipulation going on to still resembl elementals, especially with the unique mechanics from things like the Gentle Djinn and Stasis elemental.
Honestly, I feel that the design of “play an elemental last turn” is a bit unnecessary and does not really matter from a purely gameplay perspective of BG. If you are playing elementals, you should almost always be playing an elemental last turn anyway and this whole effect becomes nothing more than a glorified battlecry. Unless they were to relegate elementals to something like support units for other tribes, which forced you to sacrifice some gold to play an elemental in the last turn for a huge pay off (like give all your minions +3/+3?), then I really do not see the point to it.
However, I do like some of the ideas you have mentioned like the “not play an elemental this turn” effect. The only caveat would be that it might be a bit complex for people to keep track of.
Alright, it looks like Elementals are a strange hybrid of both Pirates and Murlocs, it meshes the economy aspect of pirates and the board-buffing aspect of Murlocs, but does not really excel at either of them. However besides big stats, I don’t really see Elementals being able to compete with the Divine Shields and massive stats of dragons or being able to beat Amalgadon, the most played strategy right now. Unless it ends up being a very strong midrange strategy, I can see it potentially flopping. I’m not going to look into the individual cards, but most of them show a lot of promise, especially since their discover/draw effects are very targeted and low tiered.
Heroes:
Ragnaros: 3/5
Could potentially be very strong, actually! You can activate this hero power by turns 5-6 and this is a massive power spike as you just get so much free stats over the course of the game. However, seeing how fast the meta is at the moment, it could be a problem of “too little, too late” as you are forced to go without a hero power for so many turns. I am optimistic for this hero, especially since there are so many tokens that your opponents will be running. Not amazing probably, but has potential.
Chenvaala: 2/5
I am not very sold on this hero. He has crazy highroll potential provided you receive elementals. I will not write him off as of course, power-leveling is the meta right now, and if done correctly, can allow you to really pop off. However, he seems rather inconsistent and relies on the elemental tribe which I believe will not be that good. I suspect you will just use his hero power to quickly switch off elementals into Amalgadon or a Beast build and try to win from there. Very skeptical overall due to how inconsistent the strat is as you will probably die before you can really pop off.
Rakanishu: 1/5
Hero power is way too slow and at 2 gold is not even worth it. Edwin is much better in that sense, and even he is struggling right now.
Al’akir: 4/5
We have established that free stuff is awesome! This is very similar to the Lich King’s hero power and just buffs your dude for free. It can allow you to survive the early game easily (which we established was a problem) and reach those late game builds much safer. I would say he has the most potential to succeed among the heroes shown here is Rag or Chenvaala don’t blow my expectations out of the water. However, the hero power can also prove to be a hinderance in certain situations, but they are rare and few. You have Divine Shield to survive a first hit and Windfury to ensure the minion will always get its swings in.
Congrats to the winners! Some thoughts on the cards if you will:
Fiendish Imp was very well made and was a good candidate for winning! If a Warlock fully gives in to his dark side, he is more than willing to sell part of his soul to call forth some extra power and summon Demons straight from the hand. It plays with the self-damage identity of Warlock in a good way and has synergy with multiple cards. I thought it would be a bit too strong to summon 2 3/3s for free at the start of the game, then I realised that if you were going to build a deck full of Warlock cards, the payoff needed to be something pretty good as Warlock cards suck, so that was fine. My only problem is that Warlock needed to piggyback off of neutral cards to close the game at the time, and this card would suffer from the problem of not having a proper archetype to be included in. I realised it pretty much only benefits from Shadow Council, which adds even more flavor, whether intentional or not.
My runner up would be Meditation which was also a very flavorful card. If I remember correctly, it was a Shaman card, which is contradictory to their Class Identity, but Blizzard has broken this rule so much you can pretty much throw it into the wind. It could have been a Mage card and also have worked well, and even boosted the “no minion” mage archetype that was being pushed, as well as draw parallels to Font of Power.
While the other cards were also very well made, I felt they either did not have a strong enough payoff or just simply did not have enough flavor to make the card truly interesting.
Flanking Strike?
Yeah, the hardest part of the fight was trying to make Rexxar’s absolutely atrocious deck work. Like even the automatic deck builder is better than that garbage!
Anyway, if you can’t clear the first few ships you are definitely screwed. The key is to just keep removing his ships. Thats the whole fight. He can’t fight back outside of Monsoon (which is an awesome callback by the way).
Also, the final fight was such a disappointment as well. Whats the point of giving us such a hero power when your opponent barely has any minions either? It just came down to me smacking him over and over with the Eaglehorn Bow and then winning
Wow, I have never seen anyone run this card with Spellstone like, ever. The more you know I guess.
That name pun for the competition never gets old
CREATED BY
FUCK THESE 2 WORDS. BLIZZARD WHY.
Everyone knew this would either be really good or complete garbage. Turns out it was the latter. Mainly because Soul DH is pretty much the only good DH deck rn and it does not need Glide to win. Also, there are no prevalent combo decks in the meta right now, so Glide has literally no reason to be played considering that DH has a monstrous amount of Draw options that are just so much better.
But here you go, since you feel entitled to a take a lot of people also felt (2 months later might I add): 🍪
Carnivorous Cube? I am absolutely stumped here. Is it a meme card or a good card in a deck or something?
Noice, can’t wait to play BG when I have the time lol
Conversely, I feel that they captured the flavour of Elementals quite well, actually! They obviously rely on each other to work well and there is sufficient hand manipulation going on to still resembl elementals, especially with the unique mechanics from things like the Gentle Djinn and Stasis elemental.
Honestly, I feel that the design of “play an elemental last turn” is a bit unnecessary and does not really matter from a purely gameplay perspective of BG. If you are playing elementals, you should almost always be playing an elemental last turn anyway and this whole effect becomes nothing more than a glorified battlecry. Unless they were to relegate elementals to something like support units for other tribes, which forced you to sacrifice some gold to play an elemental in the last turn for a huge pay off (like give all your minions +3/+3?), then I really do not see the point to it.
However, I do like some of the ideas you have mentioned like the “not play an elemental this turn” effect. The only caveat would be that it might be a bit complex for people to keep track of.
Feral Rage?
👏TAVERN REVIEW 👏
Alright, it looks like Elementals are a strange hybrid of both Pirates and Murlocs, it meshes the economy aspect of pirates and the board-buffing aspect of Murlocs, but does not really excel at either of them. However besides big stats, I don’t really see Elementals being able to compete with the Divine Shields and massive stats of dragons or being able to beat Amalgadon, the most played strategy right now. Unless it ends up being a very strong midrange strategy, I can see it potentially flopping. I’m not going to look into the individual cards, but most of them show a lot of promise, especially since their discover/draw effects are very targeted and low tiered.
Heroes:
Ragnaros: 3/5
Could potentially be very strong, actually! You can activate this hero power by turns 5-6 and this is a massive power spike as you just get so much free stats over the course of the game. However, seeing how fast the meta is at the moment, it could be a problem of “too little, too late” as you are forced to go without a hero power for so many turns. I am optimistic for this hero, especially since there are so many tokens that your opponents will be running. Not amazing probably, but has potential.
Chenvaala: 2/5
I am not very sold on this hero. He has crazy highroll potential provided you receive elementals. I will not write him off as of course, power-leveling is the meta right now, and if done correctly, can allow you to really pop off. However, he seems rather inconsistent and relies on the elemental tribe which I believe will not be that good. I suspect you will just use his hero power to quickly switch off elementals into Amalgadon or a Beast build and try to win from there. Very skeptical overall due to how inconsistent the strat is as you will probably die before you can really pop off.
Rakanishu: 1/5
Hero power is way too slow and at 2 gold is not even worth it. Edwin is much better in that sense, and even he is struggling right now.
Al’akir: 4/5
We have established that free stuff is awesome! This is very similar to the Lich King’s hero power and just buffs your dude for free. It can allow you to survive the early game easily (which we established was a problem) and reach those late game builds much safer. I would say he has the most potential to succeed among the heroes shown here is Rag or Chenvaala don’t blow my expectations out of the water. However, the hero power can also prove to be a hinderance in certain situations, but they are rare and few. You have Divine Shield to survive a first hit and Windfury to ensure the minion will always get its swings in.
Bolf Ramshield?
Congrats to the winners! Some thoughts on the cards if you will:
Fiendish Imp was very well made and was a good candidate for winning! If a Warlock fully gives in to his dark side, he is more than willing to sell part of his soul to call forth some extra power and summon Demons straight from the hand. It plays with the self-damage identity of Warlock in a good way and has synergy with multiple cards. I thought it would be a bit too strong to summon 2 3/3s for free at the start of the game, then I realised that if you were going to build a deck full of Warlock cards, the payoff needed to be something pretty good as Warlock cards suck, so that was fine. My only problem is that Warlock needed to piggyback off of neutral cards to close the game at the time, and this card would suffer from the problem of not having a proper archetype to be included in. I realised it pretty much only benefits from Shadow Council, which adds even more flavor, whether intentional or not.
My runner up would be Meditation which was also a very flavorful card. If I remember correctly, it was a Shaman card, which is contradictory to their Class Identity, but Blizzard has broken this rule so much you can pretty much throw it into the wind. It could have been a Mage card and also have worked well, and even boosted the “no minion” mage archetype that was being pushed, as well as draw parallels to Font of Power.
While the other cards were also very well made, I felt they either did not have a strong enough payoff or just simply did not have enough flavor to make the card truly interesting.
I have no idea at all. I assume it is an anagram for a card?
Yes. You have completed THE ULTIMATE TEST (not really).
Sorry, both are wrong.
This card is first of all pretty much forgotten/outclassed right now. The last 3 lines are related to voicelines.
Nope. I’ll try and give a few hints if it was way too vague, riddles are not really my forte.
Stand strong men, for I am here!
I will turn the tide and win the fight!
They cower before my mere presence
and none dare to accept my challenge!
But if things go south... can I get outta here?
Annoy-o-Module, then?
[Hearthstone Card (Al’Akir the Windlord) Not Found]?