Preventing damage from minions can be done by nuking or freezing them, no taunts needed. Hero powers are an issue though: even with freeze effects, Hunter and Mage can still damage you. In the case of Mage, you are at least making them use their mana inefficiently, but a lot of Hunter decks are going to be using their hero power on every turn in the late game anyway.
Specific keywords like "reborn" usually aren't supported later, but Galakrond's Awakening was an exception as it closed the year's story arc by using mechanics from all three sets.
With archetypes in general, there have been several cases where archetypes that didn't see much play received a boost just before they rotated out. I think Pure Paladin did see a significant amount of play, but if they're nevertheless giving it one last push, there might not be any Pure support next year.
However, it's also possible that Pure will become an archetype that's always around for Paladin, like the "discover" and "rush" keywords stuck around. Still, it being present doesn't mean that it will always be strong: the discard mechanic is always around for Warlock, but it has rarely been good in Standard.
Pirates had weapon synergy from the start, but Warrior-specific pirates started in Old Gods (N'Zoth's First Mate, Bloodsail Cultist). Pirate Warrior became a top deck because of Patches the Pirate in Mean Streets, but it existed before.
Most played Paladin decks in Standard is currently are built around Librams (either Pure or Pen Paladins). I don't know if this would be better, but maybe a hybrid is possible. While Libram of Wisdom is good when you always have small minions on the board, you do want them to die so you can reuse your Librams once they cost 0, which means giving your dudes divine shield might be counterproductive. But maybe that's not so much of an issue since on turn 4, your Librams likely will not cost 0 yet.
Part of the reason aggro warriors need to finish games quickly is that they don't have much card draw. For example zoolock uses cheap cards as well but gets more turns to do its thing because of the hero power. That said, since this can only be a one-of, it's not very reliable card draw. There is still Ancharrr though, maybe together they're reliable enough.
The more I think about it, the more this looks like one of those good cards that ends up seeing very little play because there is no deck for it. But who knows; there are still a lot of unrevealed cards remaining.
The card back never factored into my decision to get a pre-order, so this doesn't change it. I think the only pre-order I ever got was Un'goro, when they offered bonus packs.
In general, I don't get much enjoyment out of exclusivity, so it's fine with me if they make old card backs available to new players or players who skipped the pre-order back then for whatever reason.
Shudderwock was even worse, since the animations would draw out the game to ridiculous lengths. Turtle Mage is more like Freeze Mage, Fatigue Warrior or Control Priest where there is a sliver of hope that the opponent makes a mistake or runs out of resources, but they hardly ever do.
While pros are saying it's a pity that a high-skill deck is killed, the problem is that over time more and more players get skilled enough to play it and its popularity on ladder will grow. That happened with Quest Rogue (The Caverns Below) as well: in the first week it had terrible win rates because the lists were unrefined and people were playing it poorly, but a few weeks later the only thing you could do was hope your opponent drew poorly.
I like that the Turtle nerf specifically kills the combo, while leaving the card playable in other decks. In combination with Luna's Pocket Galaxy, the change is even an improvement, since it's unlikely you'd want to draw that spell after casting it.
The nerf to Guardian Animals on the other hand makes the card pretty much unplayable in non-ramp decks, which includes all Hunter decks. So I think they hit the wrong card with the nerf bat.
Twilight Runner could have been nerfed by lowering its attack or making it draw only one card. I know they prefer to adjust cost instead, but this is a card that's less than two months old, so it's not like returning players will be confused by it working differently.
Overgrowth is the card that enables the archetype and probably the most overpowered card. But there may not be a way to nerf it that doesn't immediately kill the deck.
Ysera, Unleashed is another card they could have nerfed: I've noticed that the games I win versus Guardian Druid are usually the ones where Ysera is very deep in their deck, so the opponent either doesn't find her at all, or summons a board full of dragons and still dies if none of them have taunt. Ysera is also easy to nerf, by changing the number of portals shuffled into the deck.
If you love combo decks, I'm sure you'll find more decks to play Polkelt and Sphere in. Polkelt is even playable in aggro decks, to draw the high end of the deck on turn 5+.
I've been using Polkelt to draw Galakrond + Kronx in a tempo priest deck, to give it just a bit more reach. Adding Polkelt means that you are more likely to be able to use Kronx for his devastations rather than to draw Galakrond.
Are you sure "Impressive" belongs to Thanks rather than Well Played? It seems like a non-obvious pairing, but perhaps Blizzard had some reason to do it like that.
A free run is at least one pack, plus you can get two additional packs by letting a run expire before and after the event. Add 3x3 packs from legendary quests and you can get a total of 12 packs for minimal effort, more if you bother finishing Book of Heroes and win some Arena games before you reach 2/3 losses.
Blizzard has never been super generous with Hearthstone freebies. Compared to other Hearthstone events, I think this one is well above average.
I don't care much for the skin, but 25 packs + 1 legendary for $25 is better than the average bundle. Still, it's $25 that I'm not sure I want to spend on Hearthstone.
As someone who never played WoW, I enjoy the lore summaries. However, the AI for the bosses is so terrible that defeating them doesn't feel very rewarding. In the Jaina story, there was one boss who could gain spell power from his hero power, yet decides to cast a damage spell and after that use the hero power. Why even bother giving the boss that hero power if he can't use it effectively?
It's fine (preferable, probably) if the AI doesn't play optimally, but such basic "order lol" mistakes make me wonder how simplistic the AI is. Is it a rules engine like Zephrys? Because even if it just evaluated and scored a few possible moves without looking ahead past the end of the turn, it should have figured out that using the hero power first would result in a better outcome.
A free ticket is not equivalent to giving away 1000 gold though: a ticket is only worth 1000 gold if the player is buying it and many people won't be playing this brawl if they don't get a free ticket.
I ran a simulation and got an average of 713 gold in rewards. So you could argue that a free ticket costs Blizzard about 700 gold. But that is under the assumption that people will play the same number of games: some people might play the same number of games they would have otherwise, but other people might play more, especially if they weren't sure they'd play at all without the free ticket. And every extra ticket sold takes about 300 gold out of the Hearthstone economy.
Then there is the question of how the rewards, especially as top-heavy as the distribution is, affect people's future purchases. For example, someone who disenchants the golden legendaries might buy fewer packs in the future, but someone who keeps them may not. If a F2P player gets a big reward, it won't cost Blizzard anything, since they weren't spending money anyway. Other players might have a more or less fixed budget for Hearthstone, and more freebies just means they'll have access to more cards.
For expensive minions, stats are usually far less important than abilities and cost. I'm not sure that cutting the stats was necessary, but I do think that being able to play her one turn earlier makes her a better card despite the lower stats.
I don't mind aggressive; for example Highlander Hunter is a deck I like which is pretty aggressive, but it's not a deck that fizzles out once the early game is over. I think the issue with Demon Hunter is the last thing you mention: that the good cards are the cheap ones, while the more expensive cards are merely OK.
If you're playing Hunter and you're not able to do face damage every turn, you're probably in more trouble than Flare can solve.
Preventing damage from minions can be done by nuking or freezing them, no taunts needed. Hero powers are an issue though: even with freeze effects, Hunter and Mage can still damage you. In the case of Mage, you are at least making them use their mana inefficiently, but a lot of Hunter decks are going to be using their hero power on every turn in the late game anyway.
Specific keywords like "reborn" usually aren't supported later, but Galakrond's Awakening was an exception as it closed the year's story arc by using mechanics from all three sets.
With archetypes in general, there have been several cases where archetypes that didn't see much play received a boost just before they rotated out. I think Pure Paladin did see a significant amount of play, but if they're nevertheless giving it one last push, there might not be any Pure support next year.
However, it's also possible that Pure will become an archetype that's always around for Paladin, like the "discover" and "rush" keywords stuck around. Still, it being present doesn't mean that it will always be strong: the discard mechanic is always around for Warlock, but it has rarely been good in Standard.
Pirates had weapon synergy from the start, but Warrior-specific pirates started in Old Gods (N'Zoth's First Mate, Bloodsail Cultist). Pirate Warrior became a top deck because of Patches the Pirate in Mean Streets, but it existed before.
Against for example Face Hunter, turn 8 is too late. But versus a slower deck like Soul Demon Hunter, the healing will be very useful.
Not currently, but with this and Day at the Faire it might become playable. There is quite a lot of support for a zoo-style paladin with Righteous Cause, Hand of A'dal, First Day of School, Brazen Zealot and Never Surrender!.
Most played Paladin decks in Standard is currently are built around Librams (either Pure or Pen Paladins). I don't know if this would be better, but maybe a hybrid is possible. While Libram of Wisdom is good when you always have small minions on the board, you do want them to die so you can reuse your Librams once they cost 0, which means giving your dudes divine shield might be counterproductive. But maybe that's not so much of an issue since on turn 4, your Librams likely will not cost 0 yet.
Part of the reason aggro warriors need to finish games quickly is that they don't have much card draw. For example zoolock uses cheap cards as well but gets more turns to do its thing because of the hero power. That said, since this can only be a one-of, it's not very reliable card draw. There is still Ancharrr though, maybe together they're reliable enough.
The more I think about it, the more this looks like one of those good cards that ends up seeing very little play because there is no deck for it. But who knows; there are still a lot of unrevealed cards remaining.
I'm thinking Whatley is more likely to be used in an aggressive deck, so pulling something like Southsea Deckhand + Skybarge.
I agree about the weapon: the buff isn't good enough to compensate for the tempo loss.
I'm surprised they included it to begin with, since it was already overpowered in the single player version.
The card back never factored into my decision to get a pre-order, so this doesn't change it. I think the only pre-order I ever got was Un'goro, when they offered bonus packs.
In general, I don't get much enjoyment out of exclusivity, so it's fine with me if they make old card backs available to new players or players who skipped the pre-order back then for whatever reason.
Shudderwock was even worse, since the animations would draw out the game to ridiculous lengths. Turtle Mage is more like Freeze Mage, Fatigue Warrior or Control Priest where there is a sliver of hope that the opponent makes a mistake or runs out of resources, but they hardly ever do.
While pros are saying it's a pity that a high-skill deck is killed, the problem is that over time more and more players get skilled enough to play it and its popularity on ladder will grow. That happened with Quest Rogue (The Caverns Below) as well: in the first week it had terrible win rates because the lists were unrefined and people were playing it poorly, but a few weeks later the only thing you could do was hope your opponent drew poorly.
I like that the Turtle nerf specifically kills the combo, while leaving the card playable in other decks. In combination with Luna's Pocket Galaxy, the change is even an improvement, since it's unlikely you'd want to draw that spell after casting it.
The nerf to Guardian Animals on the other hand makes the card pretty much unplayable in non-ramp decks, which includes all Hunter decks. So I think they hit the wrong card with the nerf bat.
Twilight Runner could have been nerfed by lowering its attack or making it draw only one card. I know they prefer to adjust cost instead, but this is a card that's less than two months old, so it's not like returning players will be confused by it working differently.
Overgrowth is the card that enables the archetype and probably the most overpowered card. But there may not be a way to nerf it that doesn't immediately kill the deck.
Ysera, Unleashed is another card they could have nerfed: I've noticed that the games I win versus Guardian Druid are usually the ones where Ysera is very deep in their deck, so the opponent either doesn't find her at all, or summons a board full of dragons and still dies if none of them have taunt. Ysera is also easy to nerf, by changing the number of portals shuffled into the deck.
If you love combo decks, I'm sure you'll find more decks to play Polkelt and Sphere in. Polkelt is even playable in aggro decks, to draw the high end of the deck on turn 5+.
I've been using Polkelt to draw Galakrond + Kronx in a tempo priest deck, to give it just a bit more reach. Adding Polkelt means that you are more likely to be able to use Kronx for his devastations rather than to draw Galakrond.
Are you sure "Impressive" belongs to Thanks rather than Well Played? It seems like a non-obvious pairing, but perhaps Blizzard had some reason to do it like that.
A free run is at least one pack, plus you can get two additional packs by letting a run expire before and after the event. Add 3x3 packs from legendary quests and you can get a total of 12 packs for minimal effort, more if you bother finishing Book of Heroes and win some Arena games before you reach 2/3 losses.
Blizzard has never been super generous with Hearthstone freebies. Compared to other Hearthstone events, I think this one is well above average.
I don't care much for the skin, but 25 packs + 1 legendary for $25 is better than the average bundle. Still, it's $25 that I'm not sure I want to spend on Hearthstone.
As someone who never played WoW, I enjoy the lore summaries. However, the AI for the bosses is so terrible that defeating them doesn't feel very rewarding. In the Jaina story, there was one boss who could gain spell power from his hero power, yet decides to cast a damage spell and after that use the hero power. Why even bother giving the boss that hero power if he can't use it effectively?
It's fine (preferable, probably) if the AI doesn't play optimally, but such basic "order lol" mistakes make me wonder how simplistic the AI is. Is it a rules engine like Zephrys? Because even if it just evaluated and scored a few possible moves without looking ahead past the end of the turn, it should have figured out that using the hero power first would result in a better outcome.
A free ticket is not equivalent to giving away 1000 gold though: a ticket is only worth 1000 gold if the player is buying it and many people won't be playing this brawl if they don't get a free ticket.
I ran a simulation and got an average of 713 gold in rewards. So you could argue that a free ticket costs Blizzard about 700 gold. But that is under the assumption that people will play the same number of games: some people might play the same number of games they would have otherwise, but other people might play more, especially if they weren't sure they'd play at all without the free ticket. And every extra ticket sold takes about 300 gold out of the Hearthstone economy.
Then there is the question of how the rewards, especially as top-heavy as the distribution is, affect people's future purchases. For example, someone who disenchants the golden legendaries might buy fewer packs in the future, but someone who keeps them may not. If a F2P player gets a big reward, it won't cost Blizzard anything, since they weren't spending money anyway. Other players might have a more or less fixed budget for Hearthstone, and more freebies just means they'll have access to more cards.
For the regular Brawliseum we got a free ticket, but not for the Heroic Brawliseum, if I recall correctly.
However, that was 3 years ago and Hearthstone has become more generous since then, so who knows what they'll do tomorrow.
For expensive minions, stats are usually far less important than abilities and cost. I'm not sure that cutting the stats was necessary, but I do think that being able to play her one turn earlier makes her a better card despite the lower stats.
I don't mind aggressive; for example Highlander Hunter is a deck I like which is pretty aggressive, but it's not a deck that fizzles out once the early game is over. I think the issue with Demon Hunter is the last thing you mention: that the good cards are the cheap ones, while the more expensive cards are merely OK.