I just finished watching the Mercenaries stream and I wanted to share my thoughts about it in general and create some discussion.

First off, the mode in itself is Hearthstone's greatest departure from its core experience. So much that at times I thought this could be a completely standalone game, only with a layer of Hearthstone paint. If we didn't have that, not much resemblance would remain of the main game. This is concerning for Blizz, because the mode could alienate the core HS players because it's so weird and different, but fail to attract new, outside audiences because it's part of an established game where they would be far behind long-time players.

What struck me about the art style was that it's... not very pretty. It looks basic, barren at times. The main mode doesn't have amazing spectacles either, but every deck has at least 15 different artworks. The board evolves throughout the game, with minions being summoned and destroyed. However, in Mercenaries, it's just 6 GIFs in a 3x2 table? It's very static. Yes, there are fancy entrance and ability animations but many of those are recycled and there are lots of empty, boring grayish/brownish space on the board.

In terms of gameplay, it doesn't look too bad, there are many factors in play like positioning, speed, schools, the Tank/Melee/Caster R/P/S triangle, etc. You must choose 3 out of 6 mercs at the start of a game, that's 20 combinations if I'm correct, there's room for variance and adaptability. The deckbuilding aspect, however, looks pretty simplistic: "I type Murloc into the searchbar and choose 6 of them". We'll see how tribe/spell school focused the "decks" are going to be, but with ultimately only having to choose 6 mercs + 6 equipment, the experimentation and flex spots of the traditional 30 card deckbuilding are missing. Also, the thing that will ultimately greatly simplify your choices is that there's a big power difference between mercs with different levels, which leads me to the next point, and the elephant in the room:

Monetization. For me, the way progression is handed is a major turnoff. Frankly, it's insulting. Hearthstone is already a very expensive game, in terms of your money and your time, which is your gold (or both). Either you play Standard, where half of your collection is deleted every April, or you play Wild, where there are thousands of collectible cards. Not even €130 worth of preorders give you all cards in an expansion. Battlegrounds is €20 or gold every 4 months for the ability to choose a better hero, and both Arena and Duels require payment to enter. And when they show us 3 PREORDERS, 2x €50 and 1x €30, that was just upsetting. How much are they expecting us to pay? How many whales do they want to milk? It's just all so overblown compared to normal, offline, singleplayer games (that cost 90 at most with DLC for a complete, balanced experience).

It just doesn't feel pleasant that non-whales will have to play those time-consuming, computer-generated and therefore soulless "campaign maps" to just have one roll at the slot machine. Oops, didn't get the mercenary that's in the meta? Well, play more and more for more rolls until you become so disillusioned with the grinding that you buy our packs. Any semblance of a decent progression is shattered when a whale can just buy packs until they have all mercs at max level. They said they wanted "asymmetrical PvP matches", but we all know what that means: buy packs until your numbers are higher so "the balance" tips in your favor.

Overall, I am disappointed. I don't want to completely disregard the mode, but this is not what I expected. This was never Slay the Spire, this is only a numbers game. Buy packs to win.

What are your thoughts? 

A fucking joke. The Demon Seed turned a previously healthy Wild meta upside down and made ALL control decks go completely extinct. Look! 0. No Reno decks anywhere, archetypes that were staples since LoE but a singular, uninteractive card made them obsolete. The Wild meta will be fucked until the Warlock quest is redesigned.

Quote From Blizzard

• Added interactions between Pave the Way (part of the Paladin Questline) and Duels-specific hero powers.

This was in the newest patch notes. Can someone who has the quest check in and show us what this actually means?

Congrats! To everyone who submitted a deck, well done! This was an outstanding effort by the OOC community, so many of them have fantastic guides, it's a joy to read them! 

Here's my deck! I really wanted to show something unique, something that's not just a meta deck but a brand new concept. This was hard to come up with, but it was fun tailoring the deck to be as effective as possible against the new Questlines. Please also read my guide, I put a lot of effort into it.

Have fun with it!

This is deckbuilding bait.

No Quest deck should run this over Venomous Scorpid. While one may think "wow, Quest synergy, must include", Scorpid is just a better card. A 3/4 that's only active for some of the game or an infinite/3 that always gets you a spell. The choice is obvious.

I'd like a free pack but there's no way I'll be able to get this one. I'm on mobile, on a shitty satellite internet connection that disconnects me for a moment every 2 turns in Hearthstone (which is already a game that uses very little data). Loading an unoptimised browser MMO - seems impossible. I won't have access to a normal connection until after Dreamhack has ended. I wish there was a way to claim the pack from the homepage or something that doesn't require high specs for people like me.

Non-meme: Venomous Scorpid + Commanding Shout + this for clearing the enemy board, drawing a card and discovering a spell for 5 mana. Doable in Standard.

After completing the Quest, Priest has no problem fetching that Purified Shard:

Thrive in the Shadows, Cleric of An'she, Devout Dungeoneer, Shadow Visions or Cleric of Scales.

My greatest worry about the new Questlines is that (as it looks like now) the final, big rewards are all going to be vanilla 5 mana 7/7-s with no immediate impact whatsoever. Because you will already be behind in tempo (-1 card in hand, no turn 1, deckbuilding restrictions), all Quest decks will have pretty bad matchups against any decks that put out pressure. Mid-quest rewards are so far underwhelming, 1-2 mana tiny bonuses, meanwhile their requirements are quite demanding.

I don't see yet how will these decks survive until completing all 3 steps, playing a slow minion and then being able to leverage the reward. Most deck will just outpace them. Especially in Wild, playing an expensive but unimpactful minion is a death sentence against non-control decks. I don't want to see these brand new and interestingly designed effects be very weak.

Wow! This is amazing and easily one of the best custom classes I've ever seen! The flavor is on point and card design is varied and creative. Fantastic effort, well done!

Fantastic guide! Thanks for sharing!

Damn, I had to face 5 final bosses today in my last minute climb. But in the end I made it to legend :)

July 27 or August 3.

Barrens was released on March 30 which was a Tuesday, four months from that could be either date. I'd say July 27 is more likely.

That swirly nightmare thing to the right of Malfurion is Archdruid Naralex's portal when he creates a dream card!

Don't get me wrong, this is a relatively fun and creative brawl, but we could really see some variety in terms of tavern brawls. We had this one 30 weeks ago and 60 weeks ago. Three repeats in little over a year.

I really don't like this approach because it's overly heavy-handed. Simply removing problematic cards - sweeping them under the rug - may fix the situation, but at the cost of the card itself. I don't want to see it go. I don't want to wait 2 years for Barrens to rotate out to see the card again. It's an unfun desing philosophy. It violates the core principle of the format:

"Wild is exactly that, WILD! Any cards can be used!"

There is another way. A way that has been proven to be effective: nerfing the card. Think about some "problematic" decks of the past: Naga Sea Witch Warlock, Darkest Hour Warlock, Aviana Kun Druid, Flamewaker Mage. They were all fixed with a simple mana cost increase to their main combo card. They disappeared completely from the meta after that, but the cards still remained. People could still play them in off-meta builds. Why they decided that they do not want to use this method I cannot understand.

Stealer of Souls sees 0 play in Standard anyways. Nerfing it to 6 mana wouldn't make any  difference in that format, but it would "save" Wild.

I could support Wild-only nerfs as well. 

So how likely is merging collections in the future?

If it's a sure thing, I should start earning gold now on all servers. I would then open as many guaranteed Legendaries (from the first 10 packs of an expansion) as I can on each server, and eventually gain them all in one collection. But if it won't happen, I don't want to spend my time earning cards I'll never use.

What should I do?

Very well written article.

Weird as it sounds, this could be a finisher for Aggro against minion-based decks to remove all potential enemy blockers.