You don't need a huge board: Fungalmancer was a strong card and it affected at most two minions. I think whether Barrens Blacksmith succeeds or fails depends on how easy the frenzy effect is to trigger.
The non-binary aspect is indeed not very clear from the card art, but the article says that Varden Dawngrasp is one of the Mercenaries, so the character might get more fleshed out in future content like Book of Heroes.
I think the problem with Void Drinker is that you care more about stats if you're the proactive player, but several of the early cards that shuffle soul fragments are defensive (Soul Shear and School Spirits). Particularly School Spirits is a card that you don't want to play if you're ahead on board.
This card might have the same issue, where there is nothing to heal if you're facing a control deck. But maybe the 1 extra attack makes it more acceptable to play this without the battlecry going off.
This card's value will be entirely based on whether it survives its first trade. If not, it's just a 7 mana removal (possibly not even that). If it does, it's massively good.
If you summon it on turn 5 using Overgrowth or Lightning Bloom, it's quite likely to survive the trade. Later in the game it might not survive every trade, but then you probably have more freedom to pick the right moment for it.
Definitely seems like a contender for N'zoth style decks but the front half is the one you want back. The taunt side isn't aweful but still clutters the rez pool a bit.
What beast are you playing that you would rather see resurrected than a 6/7 taunt? Usually I'm already content to get Circus Amalgam back.
I know the guardian is going out soon. Like I said a 6/7 taunt isn't bad but I tend to prefer rush for immediate action or reborn for sticking around if I can get it.
Winged Guardian is a strictly better resurrection indeed. Whether taunt or rush is better depends on the situation: rush gives you more control, but versus a wide board you run the risk of removing one minion and then getting hit in the face by the rest. It also depends on what other minions you have in the rez pool: all-taunts is vulnerable to AoE, so you probably want a mix of rush, taunt and deathrattle.
Druid of the Plains is more defensive when first played than Marsh Hydra and easier to play early than a corrupted Pearltusk, which is important if there is any aggro in the meta. I think that advantage would outweigh the small differences in resurrect value, since it will come up more often: both because you can play Druid of the Plains as a 2-of and because you have to get through the early game before you get to play N'Zoth.
If your opponent already has a big minion in play by the time you draw Druid of the Plains, you do have the option to sacrifice the first half and then try to get the frenzy to trigger on the N'Zoth turn. I don't think this will come up often, but it might when two slower decks face each other.
Definitely seems like a contender for N'zoth style decks but the front half is the one you want back. The taunt side isn't aweful but still clutters the rez pool a bit.
What beast are you playing that you would rather see resurrected than a 6/7 taunt? Usually I'm already content to get Circus Amalgam back.
Great card. Druid needed some HARD removal, even though hard removal is something that supposed to be druids weakness. It's also a beast, so it can get ressurected by N'Zoth, God of the Deep. Druid of the Plains kinda reminds me of Siamat, it's great removal and pretty flexible. (For multiple druid decks.)
This is not hard removal like for example Naturalize was: if you're facing Deathwing, this is useless. This is soft removal, for very unsubtle values of "soft" ;)
I updated my deck from the last time this brawl was run. I shifted its early game focus from removal spells to having more hate minions than the opponent. Sacrificial Pact was dropped because it can no longer target opponent's minions.
I guess that Tavern Brawl gets more unique players, but they don't play many games. Most weeks, I play until I get my pack and then go back to Constructed. It looks like Arena players get a lot more games in.
The Duels numbers are not so bad given that it launched late in the year, but I wonder if they are consistent over time or had a huge peak during launch. The hype certainly died down quickly: if I look at Twitch then Zalae is the only streamer I see playing Duels; the rest moved back to Constructed or Battlegrounds.
I wouldn't use it. Disenchanting golden cards is good source of dust and I prefer to have more cards to build decks from over having golden cards. But I think it makes sense to give players the option.
A lot of cards currently in Basic + Classic are unplayable, either because they were never good (Magma Rager), because they were power creeped out (Chillwind Yeti, Shattered Sun Cleric) or because they got nerfed (Abusive Sergeant, Warsong Commander). I expect them to select relatively more playable cards for the Core Set.
Obviously Blizzard wants people to spend money on Hearthstone, but at the same time I think they realize that it's easier to get people to spend money when they're having fun than to try and wring the cash out of them.
A deck containing only cards from the Core Set may not be competitive, but I'm sure there will be budget decks that do reasonably well. You don't need to play top tier decks to ladder: you can get wins with slightly less powerful decks as well, easily enough to complete your quests and if you're persistent enough even to reach legend.
in Standard, your Legacy cards are useless, since you'll get access to the ones in the Core Set whether you have them in your collection or not
in Wild, having Legacy cards in your collection can be useful, since they'll not all be in the Core Set all the time
in the new Classic format, you only get the old versions of Legacy cards if the card is in your collection
If you only play Standard, you can disenchant your Legacy cards on rotation, but you'll only get the disenchant value, not the full craft value. However, if you do this for all your Legacy cards, it can still be a large pile of dust. Only do this though if you're very sure you only ever want to play Standard: as Duels has shown, there might be new game modes that make use of cards outside of Standard.
For opening Classic packs, if you only care about Standard, it doesn't matter when you open them. But if you care about other formats or modes, you might be better off holding on to them until rotation, since hall-of-famed cards like Ragnaros, Sylvanas and Leeroy should be returning to Classic packs.
How do you define "viable"? In my opinion, Hearthstone these days has a lot of decks that are viable, in the sense that they allow you to climb the ladder if played well. This wasn't always the case, but recent sets have more playable cards and Blizzard is much quicker to perform balance changes.
I do agree that the economy is still not good: the drop rate of epics and legendaries is quite low and the crafting cost when you don't get the one you want is very high. They have taken important steps improve other aspects of the economy, such as extending the duplicate protection and now the new free core set, but the high cost of epics and legendaries remains a problem.
I expect the Core set to be a bigger chunk of the meta than the current Basic + Classic sets. If that turns out to be the case, you'll need fewer expansion cards to build competitive decks.
Depends on which modes you're going to be playing. For Standard the packs will not be useful in the future, so you might as well open them now. For Wild and the new Classic format, former Classic cards like Ragnaros and Leeroy will be returning to the packs, so if you don't have those yet and you want to play modes other than Standard, you're better off waiting.
You don't need a huge board: Fungalmancer was a strong card and it affected at most two minions. I think whether Barrens Blacksmith succeeds or fails depends on how easy the frenzy effect is to trigger.
The non-binary aspect is indeed not very clear from the card art, but the article says that Varden Dawngrasp is one of the Mercenaries, so the character might get more fleshed out in future content like Book of Heroes.
I think the problem with Void Drinker is that you care more about stats if you're the proactive player, but several of the early cards that shuffle soul fragments are defensive (Soul Shear and School Spirits). Particularly School Spirits is a card that you don't want to play if you're ahead on board.
This card might have the same issue, where there is nothing to heal if you're facing a control deck. But maybe the 1 extra attack makes it more acceptable to play this without the battlecry going off.
They call it a half-revert, which I think is accurate: it will be more playable as a 1-mana 1/2 than as a 2-mana 2/3.
The potential to snowball is what prompted the nerf in the first place, so I'm glad they're not doing a full revert.
I made a brawl version of my Spell Token Druid deck:
I'd like to see a Nozdormu tournament.
If you summon it on turn 5 using Overgrowth or Lightning Bloom, it's quite likely to survive the trade. Later in the game it might not survive every trade, but then you probably have more freedom to pick the right moment for it.
Winged Guardian is a strictly better resurrection indeed. Whether taunt or rush is better depends on the situation: rush gives you more control, but versus a wide board you run the risk of removing one minion and then getting hit in the face by the rest. It also depends on what other minions you have in the rez pool: all-taunts is vulnerable to AoE, so you probably want a mix of rush, taunt and deathrattle.
Druid of the Plains is more defensive when first played than Marsh Hydra and easier to play early than a corrupted Pearltusk, which is important if there is any aggro in the meta. I think that advantage would outweigh the small differences in resurrect value, since it will come up more often: both because you can play Druid of the Plains as a 2-of and because you have to get through the early game before you get to play N'Zoth.
If your opponent already has a big minion in play by the time you draw Druid of the Plains, you do have the option to sacrifice the first half and then try to get the frenzy to trigger on the N'Zoth turn. I don't think this will come up often, but it might when two slower decks face each other.
What beast are you playing that you would rather see resurrected than a 6/7 taunt? Usually I'm already content to get Circus Amalgam back.
They have a new watermark on Blizzard's images. I guess that Out of Cards just didn't have time yet to add the new watermark to their card renderer.
This is not hard removal like for example Naturalize was: if you're facing Deathwing, this is useless. This is soft removal, for very unsubtle values of "soft" ;)
Maybe they'll bring back Tar Creeper? That's not removal, but it does help defend against aggro.
I updated my deck from the last time this brawl was run. I shifted its early game focus from removal spells to having more hate minions than the opponent. Sacrificial Pact was dropped because it can no longer target opponent's minions.
I guess that Tavern Brawl gets more unique players, but they don't play many games. Most weeks, I play until I get my pack and then go back to Constructed. It looks like Arena players get a lot more games in.
The Duels numbers are not so bad given that it launched late in the year, but I wonder if they are consistent over time or had a huge peak during launch. The hype certainly died down quickly: if I look at Twitch then Zalae is the only streamer I see playing Duels; the rest moved back to Constructed or Battlegrounds.
I wouldn't use it. Disenchanting golden cards is good source of dust and I prefer to have more cards to build decks from over having golden cards. But I think it makes sense to give players the option.
A lot of cards currently in Basic + Classic are unplayable, either because they were never good (Magma Rager), because they were power creeped out (Chillwind Yeti, Shattered Sun Cleric) or because they got nerfed (Abusive Sergeant, Warsong Commander). I expect them to select relatively more playable cards for the Core Set.
Obviously Blizzard wants people to spend money on Hearthstone, but at the same time I think they realize that it's easier to get people to spend money when they're having fun than to try and wring the cash out of them.
A deck containing only cards from the Core Set may not be competitive, but I'm sure there will be budget decks that do reasonably well. You don't need to play top tier decks to ladder: you can get wins with slightly less powerful decks as well, easily enough to complete your quests and if you're persistent enough even to reach legend.
It depends on what modes you want to play:
If you only play Standard, you can disenchant your Legacy cards on rotation, but you'll only get the disenchant value, not the full craft value. However, if you do this for all your Legacy cards, it can still be a large pile of dust. Only do this though if you're very sure you only ever want to play Standard: as Duels has shown, there might be new game modes that make use of cards outside of Standard.
For opening Classic packs, if you only care about Standard, it doesn't matter when you open them. But if you care about other formats or modes, you might be better off holding on to them until rotation, since hall-of-famed cards like Ragnaros, Sylvanas and Leeroy should be returning to Classic packs.
How do you define "viable"? In my opinion, Hearthstone these days has a lot of decks that are viable, in the sense that they allow you to climb the ladder if played well. This wasn't always the case, but recent sets have more playable cards and Blizzard is much quicker to perform balance changes.
I do agree that the economy is still not good: the drop rate of epics and legendaries is quite low and the crafting cost when you don't get the one you want is very high. They have taken important steps improve other aspects of the economy, such as extending the duplicate protection and now the new free core set, but the high cost of epics and legendaries remains a problem.
I expect the Core set to be a bigger chunk of the meta than the current Basic + Classic sets. If that turns out to be the case, you'll need fewer expansion cards to build competitive decks.
Depends on which modes you're going to be playing. For Standard the packs will not be useful in the future, so you might as well open them now. For Wild and the new Classic format, former Classic cards like Ragnaros and Leeroy will be returning to the packs, so if you don't have those yet and you want to play modes other than Standard, you're better off waiting.