They will also have optimal personalized interactions, as Activision Blizzard can tap into Google Cloud's AI tools to offer curated recommendations for in-game offers and differentiated gaming experiences.
Twitch is owned by Amazon, so regarding your first point there is not much of a difference. But they do have more of an e-sports culture.
As for the handling of Blitzchung's protest, that was done entirely by Activision Blizzard; Twitch had no role in that. It seems that Bobby Kotick was the one pulling the strings there and the only game he seems to be passionate about is making as much money as possible. Which is probably also the motivation behind this move.
Regarding a possible secret package, in my experience if you run Phase Stalker and Master's Call, you will pull and draw your secrets pretty quickly, so to make Subject 9 worth it you'd have to run at least 6 secrets. I've used a 4-secret package without Subject 9 in my Master's Call quest deck:
Have you tried Hunting Mastiff? That card did surprisingly well for me in the quest deck. Obviously summoning multiple minions isn't as important for your deck as it is with the quest or when running Scavenging Hyena, but the Mastiff is flexible removal and it can complete the sidequest by itself on later turns.
I understand the frustration of playing against Convincing Infiltrator, but to me it doesn't happen all that often. Yesterday I played 3 games against 3 different decks (Highlander Mage, Holy Wrath Paladin and Secret Highlander Hunter); all games were fun and different.
During the Doom in the Tomb event I played Malygos Shaman as an answer to N'Zoth decks. If you Hex the first minion they want to resurrect, you slow them down enough that they'll likely be dead before they can threaten you. And with Spirit of the Frog, finding Hex is not hard.
So if the resurrection mechanic bothers you so much, you can play Hex or Polymorph or even Tinkmaster Overspark. Not only do these take a good minion out of the resurrection pool, they also put a bad minion (a Beast!) back in. It might be difficult to build a good Mage deck that is not Highlander, but Shaman has so many good cards that it must be possible to build a deck that can afford to run two copies of Hex, or one copy you can tutor with the shrine.
They could decide to do a patch each week, so data miners wouldn't get the info much sooner than players. Might be tricky to time it for mobile though.
Bazaar Burglary works well in this brawl, since drawing a non-class card counts as adding it to your hand and most of your draws will be Unstable Portal. The quest reward helps you get a board advantage through less or better trades.
Aggro vs aggro can be quite skill-testing, but people who never play aggro don't experience those match-ups. Aggro vs control often boils down to who draws better, since even if the control deck has anti-aggro tools, it needs to find them very quickly. There is a limit to how much anti-aggro tech you can run before you become powerless against greedier control decks.
I'm not sure how far I'd agree, really. Sure, some games are determined that way, but equally, that's true of any matchup. It's not like you need to find all your anti-aggro tools in every match, after all, just enough of them to turn the corner (most of the time). Also, the very fact that you've got limited anti-aggro tools is a major skill factor - knowing when to sit on your defensive options and when to rip them is important. There's also a fair bit of basic prioritisation in there - you'd be amazed how many people I see sit on cards like Baleful Banker in aggro matchups instead of ripping them on turn 2, despite playing at a level where they should have learned better long ago
Draw RNG is part of any matchup, but the shorter the game, the more each individual draw matters. Especially with the way mana curves in Hearthstone: high-cost cards can be literally unplayable in short games.
Skill can certainly give you an edge: I have lost more games than I'd like to admit by playing into Mortal Strike or Unleash the Hounds. But I've had even more games (from either side) decided by the defensive player drawing Zilliax.
Part of the reason draw RNG has such a large role is that many aggro decks only fight for the board for a few turns and then switch to a burn plan. So the window for the slower deck to interact with the board in a way that matters is fairly small. In the burn phase, there is far less counter-play.
With a mid-range deck you can have success trying to race them; I won quite a few matches of Even Warlock vs aggressive Paladins and Mages by running a Giant into their face. But with a control deck the threats usually come too late for such a strategy to work.
It's very true that a card can be worse than Branching Paths and still be playable. But the cards have very different strengths: Branching Paths was over-costed but more than made up for it in versatility. Rising Winds' summon option has a fair cost, but situations in which a 3/2 Beast can really turn a game around are pretty rare.
In terms of card draw, it effectively only draws you one card, since it also has to replace itself. Unless you combine it with Keeper Stalladris or Gadgetzan Auctioneer perhaps, but no current deck runs those; decks that want to draw lots can just use Overflow.
Maybe it's playable in a deck with Elise the Enlightened, so you can avoid running two copies of Nourish and activate your highlander cards earlier. Also when you don't want to draw anymore, this card is easier to get out of your hand than Nourish, since you can spend the mana split over two turns.
Another option would be Token Druid, but I think that for slower variations Treants are probably the way to go (with Aeroponics to draw), while for an aggressive variant there are more mana-efficient options, such as Cult Master or Crystal Merchant.
They should be able to schedule any brawl they want at any time on internal test servers; no need to do that on the production servers.
My guess is that issue is with the client rather than the brawl itself, but the brawls uncover bugs that don't occur during normal play. Weird things have been happening ever since they upgraded Unity, such as purple keywords in the collection viewer.
Re: 'does aggro mean a lack of skill', it absolutely does not. It's a statement you'll hear a lot, though, and usually from 'Control' players who don't actually know what Control means, and who lose every game to aggro while refusing to include anti-aggro techs. Just one of the usual excuses people make for things they don't know how to handle.
Aggro vs aggro can be quite skill-testing, but people who never play aggro don't experience those match-ups. Aggro vs control often boils down to who draws better, since even if the control deck has anti-aggro tools, it needs to find them very quickly. There is a limit to how much anti-aggro tech you can run before you become powerless against greedier control decks.
As far as I know, when two players get knocked out in the same round, they share the same place. But Hearthstone isn't capable of visualizing that. So you and the other player tied for 4th place, which counts as a win.
Dragon's Pack isn't the best comparison, since that's a pay-off card for invoking and even with that restriction, the original version was so powerful it got nerfed. I think Rain of Toads is a better comparison and that card saw a bit of play. This is even more late game, but gives you enough stats to also have some offensive value. Still, 10 mana is a lot; I could only imagine this going into a highlander control shaman as a one-of.
Kragg should be good in Quest Shaman, since it either advances your quest or gives you the option of an additional 4/2 rush for 2 mana. I don't think every quest deck would play it, but I'll give it a try in Shaman, Rogue and Hunter for sure.
Chump was playing an Elemental Aggro Mage deck recently that Arcane Amplifier might fit into.
While I was initially positive, I'm starting to develop doubts about Rising Winds. Branching Paths was often used for drawing cards, but when it wasn't, the alternatives were very strong: picking armor could help you survive versus aggro or avoid getting OTK-ed, while picking attack could clear the board or add up to lethal damage. Compared to that, a 3/2 Eagle does nothing the turn it is summoned and doesn't do much late game either. Also 3/2 are not great stats for the current meta.
Dark Arakkoa was played even in decks without C'Thun and this has a lot of extras for 1 more mana. Sludge Belcher showed that it is very useful to have a taunt that leaves behind a body.
The only issue I see is that at 7 mana, it might come down a turn too late versus aggro. But versus big minions, where druid is currently weak after the rotation of Naturalize, getting a high-attack second body is useful.
The Beast tag might be useful for Witching Hour, especially if you would include both this and Witchwood Grizzly in the same deck. Grizzly isn't played a lot currently since a lot of decks generate cards and therefore have big hands, but when resurrected or pulled by Oondasta it's a very nice minion.
It's possible Erkh counts as a lackey for Tekahn while not being in the random lackey pool. Unlike Treants where every card with "treant" in the name is considered a Treant, there have been cards with "lackey" in the name that are unrelated to the League of EVIL, such as Kabal Lackey and Possessed Lackey. So the card name cannot be leading, but it could be that the set of minions that counts as a lackey while on the board is separate from the set of randomly generated lackeys.
The problem might be finding the right term to search for. A simulator implies that it includes behavior. What you're looking for is a tool to create synthetic screenshots. Not sure what that would be called. Maybe a composer?
Most likely yes. When Yogg was nerfed, they didn't change the card text but did allow full dust disenchants. I think that when the way a specific card plays is changed in a way that makes it less strong, they give full dust. But if a mechanic is changed across multiple cards, that is not considered nerf and there is no full dust disenchant.
I've been playing a Quest Hunter with just beasts and Master's Call. It performs pretty decent, although often I win or lose before quest completion, so I'm not certain yet it really should be a quest deck. I don't have Halazzi either, but I would probably include it in this deck if I did. Instead, I've been using Hunting Mastiff.
I've been playing Overload Shaman (slightly modified version of the deck recipe) and Quest Dragon Shaman and both of those feel pretty powerful as well. Not overpowered like the Galakrond deck, but good enough to keep up with the other unrefined decks on ladder. So I think there is hope for Shaman after the nerf. I also want to try Control Shaman at some point: with Control Warrior nowhere to be seen, I think Shaman can win by outlasting their opponent.
I've had a few easy wins with a Mech Paladin, but that might be very situational to the current meta, since there is not a lot of AoE at the moment. Most Shamans seem to have cut Sandstorm Elemental, for example.
Galakrond Zoo Warlock doesn't really work for me, but I don't have all the cards yet. I'm not sure I want to craft the epics though; I'm not too crazy about Zoo as an archetype, so maybe my dust is better spent on Valdris Felgorge.
I'm still seeing ads next to and between comments.
Edit: This stopped happening on this page as soon as I posted. Maybe the page needs to be regenerated for the ads to be expelled because pages that are cached server-side still have ad slots in them?
This sounds very worrying to me. Activision is still the owner of a patent on manipulating matchmaking to reward players who make in-game purchases.
Twitch is owned by Amazon, so regarding your first point there is not much of a difference. But they do have more of an e-sports culture.
As for the handling of Blitzchung's protest, that was done entirely by Activision Blizzard; Twitch had no role in that. It seems that Bobby Kotick was the one pulling the strings there and the only game he seems to be passionate about is making as much money as possible. Which is probably also the motivation behind this move.
Regarding a possible secret package, in my experience if you run Phase Stalker and Master's Call, you will pull and draw your secrets pretty quickly, so to make Subject 9 worth it you'd have to run at least 6 secrets. I've used a 4-secret package without Subject 9 in my Master's Call quest deck:
Have you tried Hunting Mastiff? That card did surprisingly well for me in the quest deck. Obviously summoning multiple minions isn't as important for your deck as it is with the quest or when running Scavenging Hyena, but the Mastiff is flexible removal and it can complete the sidequest by itself on later turns.
I understand the frustration of playing against Convincing Infiltrator, but to me it doesn't happen all that often. Yesterday I played 3 games against 3 different decks (Highlander Mage, Holy Wrath Paladin and Secret Highlander Hunter); all games were fun and different.
During the Doom in the Tomb event I played Malygos Shaman as an answer to N'Zoth decks. If you Hex the first minion they want to resurrect, you slow them down enough that they'll likely be dead before they can threaten you. And with Spirit of the Frog, finding Hex is not hard.
So if the resurrection mechanic bothers you so much, you can play Hex or Polymorph or even Tinkmaster Overspark. Not only do these take a good minion out of the resurrection pool, they also put a bad minion (a Beast!) back in. It might be difficult to build a good Mage deck that is not Highlander, but Shaman has so many good cards that it must be possible to build a deck that can afford to run two copies of Hex, or one copy you can tutor with the shrine.
They could decide to do a patch each week, so data miners wouldn't get the info much sooner than players. Might be tricky to time it for mobile though.
Bazaar Burglary works well in this brawl, since drawing a non-class card counts as adding it to your hand and most of your draws will be Unstable Portal. The quest reward helps you get a board advantage through less or better trades.
Draw RNG is part of any matchup, but the shorter the game, the more each individual draw matters. Especially with the way mana curves in Hearthstone: high-cost cards can be literally unplayable in short games.
Skill can certainly give you an edge: I have lost more games than I'd like to admit by playing into Mortal Strike or Unleash the Hounds. But I've had even more games (from either side) decided by the defensive player drawing Zilliax.
Part of the reason draw RNG has such a large role is that many aggro decks only fight for the board for a few turns and then switch to a burn plan. So the window for the slower deck to interact with the board in a way that matters is fairly small. In the burn phase, there is far less counter-play.
With a mid-range deck you can have success trying to race them; I won quite a few matches of Even Warlock vs aggressive Paladins and Mages by running a Giant into their face. But with a control deck the threats usually come too late for such a strategy to work.
It's very true that a card can be worse than Branching Paths and still be playable. But the cards have very different strengths: Branching Paths was over-costed but more than made up for it in versatility. Rising Winds' summon option has a fair cost, but situations in which a 3/2 Beast can really turn a game around are pretty rare.
In terms of card draw, it effectively only draws you one card, since it also has to replace itself. Unless you combine it with Keeper Stalladris or Gadgetzan Auctioneer perhaps, but no current deck runs those; decks that want to draw lots can just use Overflow.
Maybe it's playable in a deck with Elise the Enlightened, so you can avoid running two copies of Nourish and activate your highlander cards earlier. Also when you don't want to draw anymore, this card is easier to get out of your hand than Nourish, since you can spend the mana split over two turns.
Another option would be Token Druid, but I think that for slower variations Treants are probably the way to go (with Aeroponics to draw), while for an aggressive variant there are more mana-efficient options, such as Cult Master or Crystal Merchant.
They should be able to schedule any brawl they want at any time on internal test servers; no need to do that on the production servers.
My guess is that issue is with the client rather than the brawl itself, but the brawls uncover bugs that don't occur during normal play. Weird things have been happening ever since they upgraded Unity, such as purple keywords in the collection viewer.
Aggro vs aggro can be quite skill-testing, but people who never play aggro don't experience those match-ups. Aggro vs control often boils down to who draws better, since even if the control deck has anti-aggro tools, it needs to find them very quickly. There is a limit to how much anti-aggro tech you can run before you become powerless against greedier control decks.
You're probably better off trying to kill your opponent before they draw Reno or are able to play him.
As far as I know, when two players get knocked out in the same round, they share the same place. But Hearthstone isn't capable of visualizing that. So you and the other player tied for 4th place, which counts as a win.
Dragon's Pack isn't the best comparison, since that's a pay-off card for invoking and even with that restriction, the original version was so powerful it got nerfed. I think Rain of Toads is a better comparison and that card saw a bit of play. This is even more late game, but gives you enough stats to also have some offensive value. Still, 10 mana is a lot; I could only imagine this going into a highlander control shaman as a one-of.
Kragg should be good in Quest Shaman, since it either advances your quest or gives you the option of an additional 4/2 rush for 2 mana. I don't think every quest deck would play it, but I'll give it a try in Shaman, Rogue and Hunter for sure.
Chump was playing an Elemental Aggro Mage deck recently that Arcane Amplifier might fit into.
While I was initially positive, I'm starting to develop doubts about Rising Winds. Branching Paths was often used for drawing cards, but when it wasn't, the alternatives were very strong: picking armor could help you survive versus aggro or avoid getting OTK-ed, while picking attack could clear the board or add up to lethal damage. Compared to that, a 3/2 Eagle does nothing the turn it is summoned and doesn't do much late game either. Also 3/2 are not great stats for the current meta.
Dark Arakkoa was played even in decks without C'Thun and this has a lot of extras for 1 more mana. Sludge Belcher showed that it is very useful to have a taunt that leaves behind a body.
The only issue I see is that at 7 mana, it might come down a turn too late versus aggro. But versus big minions, where druid is currently weak after the rotation of Naturalize, getting a high-attack second body is useful.
The Beast tag might be useful for Witching Hour, especially if you would include both this and Witchwood Grizzly in the same deck. Grizzly isn't played a lot currently since a lot of decks generate cards and therefore have big hands, but when resurrected or pulled by Oondasta it's a very nice minion.
It's possible Erkh counts as a lackey for Tekahn while not being in the random lackey pool. Unlike Treants where every card with "treant" in the name is considered a Treant, there have been cards with "lackey" in the name that are unrelated to the League of EVIL, such as Kabal Lackey and Possessed Lackey. So the card name cannot be leading, but it could be that the set of minions that counts as a lackey while on the board is separate from the set of randomly generated lackeys.
The problem might be finding the right term to search for. A simulator implies that it includes behavior. What you're looking for is a tool to create synthetic screenshots. Not sure what that would be called. Maybe a composer?
I remember Mountainfire Armor being fluffy. Was that the first card?
Most likely yes. When Yogg was nerfed, they didn't change the card text but did allow full dust disenchants. I think that when the way a specific card plays is changed in a way that makes it less strong, they give full dust. But if a mechanic is changed across multiple cards, that is not considered nerf and there is no full dust disenchant.
I've been playing a Quest Hunter with just beasts and Master's Call. It performs pretty decent, although often I win or lose before quest completion, so I'm not certain yet it really should be a quest deck. I don't have Halazzi either, but I would probably include it in this deck if I did. Instead, I've been using Hunting Mastiff.
I've been playing Overload Shaman (slightly modified version of the deck recipe) and Quest Dragon Shaman and both of those feel pretty powerful as well. Not overpowered like the Galakrond deck, but good enough to keep up with the other unrefined decks on ladder. So I think there is hope for Shaman after the nerf. I also want to try Control Shaman at some point: with Control Warrior nowhere to be seen, I think Shaman can win by outlasting their opponent.
I've had a few easy wins with a Mech Paladin, but that might be very situational to the current meta, since there is not a lot of AoE at the moment. Most Shamans seem to have cut Sandstorm Elemental, for example.
Galakrond Zoo Warlock doesn't really work for me, but I don't have all the cards yet. I'm not sure I want to craft the epics though; I'm not too crazy about Zoo as an archetype, so maybe my dust is better spent on Valdris Felgorge.
I'm still seeing ads next to and between comments.
Edit: This stopped happening on this page as soon as I posted. Maybe the page needs to be regenerated for the ads to be expelled because pages that are cached server-side still have ad slots in them?