I played some Odd Druid during Witchwood and Boomsday (so before Gonk, the Raptor was even released) and it wasn't all that bad. Claw was a pretty good card in that deck, although part of the reason was the synergy with Lesser Jasper Spellstone, which isn't in Standard anymore.
Shu'ma's ability doesn't seem good enough to make up for its stats at that mana cost. The repeating value is going to be rare: if your opponent cannot deal with a 7-health minion on turn 7, wouldn't you rather play a War Golem? At least with the War Golem it will cost them something to kill it with minions or a weapon.
Even for token decks, this seems weak. The tokens are summoned at the end of the turn, so you can't attach buffs or deathrattles to them on the turn that they are summoned. Druid, Shaman and Hunter have no shortage of tokens to summon, so a new token generator is only interesting if it is better than what is already there.
Dragonrider Talritha is going to be unreliable, since the buff might attach itself to an expensive dragon that you won't be able to play until for example turn 7 or 9. But the stats are decent and there isn't much competition at the 3 mana slot in a Dragon Paladin deck, so it will likely see play if the deck itself does.
Envoy of Lazul is the hardest to predict. 2/2 is not great but still useful early game. Scouting has been rated higher in predictions than in actual play, looking at Chameleos and Madame Lazul. For value, this is roughly Mind Vision on a stick; a not very exciting effect, but "on a stick" can make all the difference, see Vilespine Slayer.
The real issue is whether there will be a deck that the Envoy fits into. It doesn't do anything useful in a Divine Spirit / Inner Fire combo deck. The 2/2 is a downside in a resurrect deck. There is no particular synergy with the quest. So it will only see play if a new Priest archetype can make use of it. Maybe a deck built around Galakrond, the Unspeakable, since both the hero and the synergy cards have a removal theme, so it seems to be aimed at long games.
[i]Edit[/i]: Maybe they're trying to push a Princess Talanji deck, but I played a Talanji deck with randomly discovered minions and it's not good. Versus aggro Talanji is too slow to matter, while one wave of threats isn't going to defeat control.
When discussing Battlegrounds, it would be nice to be able to link to the Battlegrounds versions of cards instead of the regular Hearthstone versions, such that it includes the tier rating instead of mana cost.
I'm not sure what the syntax should be. One option would be to have a separate tag like {bgcard} instead of {card}. A different option would be to have a prefix in the body, such as {card}bg:Alleycat{/card}. I guess the cleanest solution is an attribute, such as {card set="battlegrounds"}Alleycat{/card}, but that would be terrible to type.
A different approach would be to have the post editor look up the card as you're typing and have a way of cycling between versions of the card. Misspelled card names are the #1 reason for me editing my posts, so a way to verify that the right card will be displayed would be great. But this is probably the most work to implement.
With Out of Cards supporting multiple card games, I guess you'll eventually run into overlapping names between games as well. Especially really generic names such as "fireball" might exist in multiple games. So it might be worth thinking of a solution for disambiguation in general and not just in the scope of Battlegrounds.
The Curator being one of the top heroes shows that getting an amalgam early, regardless of stats, is very good. So my guess is that it will remain an auto-pick in tier 2 even at 2/2.
Stats would matter more for minions that you eventually get rid of, since those need to be immediately useful. For example Vulgar Homunculus is a good early pick even though most players don't stay on demons. But Amalgams you typically keep until the end, so their starting stats are less important.
There is a short but very informative clip of Mike Donais providing info about the minion pools sitting next to Brian Kibler playing Battlegrounds at Blizzcon in this week's OmniSlash highlights.
There is a loading screen tip that states there are 6 copies of the tier 6 minions shared between all players. I assume the other minions have a similar system, but with larger numbers. That's also how other autobattlers work, as far as I know.
Firebat sometimes mentions things that developers confirmed, I assume that is from a public source like Twitter, but I don't follow Twitter closely since there is so much noise.
My impressions of the tribes from watching a lot of Twitch this week:
Demons: Never seems to work out when I saw them being used. If you don't become a turtle find Mal'Ganis early, you kill yourself.
Mechs: The current meta. The main downside is that the other players will be looking for mechs as well, so there will be fewer in the pool.
Beasts: Pretty solid, but it depends a lot on finding Mama Bear for the late game.
Murlocs: You might have a chance if you get poison + shields from Gentle Megasaur, but that's a lot of high-rolling.
Some meme options you didn't mention yet:
Shifter Zerus, which is in tier 3 but can shift to any tier, so you can get a super early tier 6 minion.
Bolvar, Fireblood with taunted Cobalt Guardian and mech-summoning deathrattles. You can't buff the health unless you get him golden though, so Junkbot is generally just better.
It's a pity that currently the strongest decks (Quest/Evolve Shaman and Combo Priest) are so RNG-heavy, but I think it was Liooon's selection and piloting of Malygos Druid and especially Highlander Hunter that gave her the edge over the other players.
Purple is the color of the League of EVIL, so a card glowing purple might represent a League victory. Right now in the Battle.net client I'm looking at an ad for the Hex and Flex bundles, of which the left side is Rafaam on a purple background and the right side is Reno on a yellow/orange background, so the other card color might simply represent an Explorers victory.
Based on hints from one of the brawls, I think there will be some additional twist that involves Nefarian, but I can't find any evidence for that in this teaser. I never played WoW though, so it's very much possible I didn't pick up all hints available.
My goal for climbing is rank 15 and I reached that in the first week this month. I think I was playing mostly Quest Paladin at the time.
Since Doom in the Tomb all my old decks are basically useless. Now that I've accepted that I've been playing Malygos Shaman and that works very well against the likes of N'Zoth Priest and Rogue. I haven't faced another Shaman yet though, which is weird, since half my opponents were playing Evolve or Overload or Murloc Shaman decks a few days ago.
I preferred the original Uldum meta; almost every decent deck was playable. In the current meta, you can't out-tempo evolve effects (other than hoping they don't draw Evolve/Mutate in time), while if you're going for a more defensive strategy you need to be able to out-greed or OTK the N'Zoth decks. This leaves far fewer options for deck building.
The rotation direction depends on whether you are the first or second (Coin) player: because Hearthstone's view of the opponent's board is a mirror image, rotating clockwise for one player means the other player sees a counter-clockwise rotation.
It would have been more fair to rotate minions in a figure-8 pattern, so from the left side of your board to the right side of the opponent's board for example. But I guess that would have been harder to communicate to the players and they picked simplicity over balance for this brawl.
For big random summons it's a down side if they immediately rotate, but if you're summoning multiple small minions it can be an advantage to rotate them instead of the Dreadsteeds, since that means you'll have more minions left after trading. In particular, I think Paladin and Shaman are at an advantage since they can pad their board every turn with their hero power.
I don't think you can beat the very late game (N'Zoth) unless you're playing either a greedier N'Zoth deck or a combo deck. So for other decks, the goal is to kill them before they either reach 10 mana and have drawn deep enough into their deck to find N'Zoth.
As others have said, transform effects like Hex, Polymorph and Tinkmaster Overspark help to both neutralize deathrattles and screw up resurrects.
You could also consider silence, in particular Ironbeak Owl (drawable via The Curator) or Shieldbreaker. Since Khartut Defender is such a key card for slower decks to survive into the late game, taking that out might be enough for an aggro or mid-range deck to finish them off before the late-game value becomes too much.
Some aggro decks use Octosari to refill their hand. It allows them to spend a lot of cards in the early game without running out of steam too early. This won't help in the very late game, but it can give them a few extra turns of pressure in the hope of running the opponent out of removal.
I watched a bit of Trump's stream yesterday and if I understood correctly, Fearsome means that small minions cannot block it (not sure of the exact condition, but it was an attack or health threshold, I think) and Overwhelm is like Trample in MtG: blocking does not stop all damage, but only up to the health of the blocker, with any remainder damaging the player.
Like MtG and unlike Hearthstone, the defender assigns blockers, so I guess keywords like that are necessary to be able to get damage through without always having to clear an opponent's board.
I played some Odd Druid during Witchwood and Boomsday (so before Gonk, the Raptor was even released) and it wasn't all that bad. Claw was a pretty good card in that deck, although part of the reason was the synergy with Lesser Jasper Spellstone, which isn't in Standard anymore.
I'm not so sure. There are other options at 2 mana worth considering, like Acidic Swamp Ooze, Doomsayer, Bloodmage Thalnos, Auchenai Phantasm, Belligerent Gnome, Holy Ripple etc. Those are a bit situational, but so is Envoy, since whether the card you copied (assuming you can guess it reliably) is useful will depend on the matchup and luck.
Onyxia is technically a 14/14 for just 2 mana more, still doesn't see play.
Shu'ma's ability doesn't seem good enough to make up for its stats at that mana cost. The repeating value is going to be rare: if your opponent cannot deal with a 7-health minion on turn 7, wouldn't you rather play a War Golem? At least with the War Golem it will cost them something to kill it with minions or a weapon.
Even for token decks, this seems weak. The tokens are summoned at the end of the turn, so you can't attach buffs or deathrattles to them on the turn that they are summoned. Druid, Shaman and Hunter have no shortage of tokens to summon, so a new token generator is only interesting if it is better than what is already there.
Dragonrider Talritha is going to be unreliable, since the buff might attach itself to an expensive dragon that you won't be able to play until for example turn 7 or 9. But the stats are decent and there isn't much competition at the 3 mana slot in a Dragon Paladin deck, so it will likely see play if the deck itself does.
Envoy of Lazul is the hardest to predict. 2/2 is not great but still useful early game. Scouting has been rated higher in predictions than in actual play, looking at Chameleos and Madame Lazul. For value, this is roughly Mind Vision on a stick; a not very exciting effect, but "on a stick" can make all the difference, see Vilespine Slayer.
The real issue is whether there will be a deck that the Envoy fits into. It doesn't do anything useful in a Divine Spirit / Inner Fire combo deck. The 2/2 is a downside in a resurrect deck. There is no particular synergy with the quest. So it will only see play if a new Priest archetype can make use of it. Maybe a deck built around Galakrond, the Unspeakable, since both the hero and the synergy cards have a removal theme, so it seems to be aimed at long games.
[i]Edit[/i]: Maybe they're trying to push a Princess Talanji deck, but I played a Talanji deck with randomly discovered minions and it's not good. Versus aggro Talanji is too slow to matter, while one wave of threats isn't going to defeat control.
Nice!
Maybe the relevant card tags could be shown on the card's page? For example below the images.
When discussing Battlegrounds, it would be nice to be able to link to the Battlegrounds versions of cards instead of the regular Hearthstone versions, such that it includes the tier rating instead of mana cost.
I'm not sure what the syntax should be. One option would be to have a separate tag like {bgcard} instead of {card}. A different option would be to have a prefix in the body, such as {card}bg:Alleycat{/card}. I guess the cleanest solution is an attribute, such as {card set="battlegrounds"}Alleycat{/card}, but that would be terrible to type.
A different approach would be to have the post editor look up the card as you're typing and have a way of cycling between versions of the card. Misspelled card names are the #1 reason for me editing my posts, so a way to verify that the right card will be displayed would be great. But this is probably the most work to implement.
With Out of Cards supporting multiple card games, I guess you'll eventually run into overlapping names between games as well. Especially really generic names such as "fireball" might exist in multiple games. So it might be worth thinking of a solution for disambiguation in general and not just in the scope of Battlegrounds.
The Curator being one of the top heroes shows that getting an amalgam early, regardless of stats, is very good. So my guess is that it will remain an auto-pick in tier 2 even at 2/2.
Stats would matter more for minions that you eventually get rid of, since those need to be immediately useful. For example Vulgar Homunculus is a good early pick even though most players don't stay on demons. But Amalgams you typically keep until the end, so their starting stats are less important.
There is a short but very informative clip of Mike Donais providing info about the minion pools sitting next to Brian Kibler playing Battlegrounds at Blizzcon in this week's OmniSlash highlights.
There is a loading screen tip that states there are 6 copies of the tier 6 minions shared between all players. I assume the other minions have a similar system, but with larger numbers. That's also how other autobattlers work, as far as I know.
Firebat sometimes mentions things that developers confirmed, I assume that is from a public source like Twitter, but I don't follow Twitter closely since there is so much noise.
My impressions of the tribes from watching a lot of Twitch this week:
Some meme options you didn't mention yet:
It's a pity that currently the strongest decks (Quest/Evolve Shaman and Combo Priest) are so RNG-heavy, but I think it was Liooon's selection and piloting of Malygos Druid and especially Highlander Hunter that gave her the edge over the other players.
Purple is the color of the League of EVIL, so a card glowing purple might represent a League victory. Right now in the Battle.net client I'm looking at an ad for the Hex and Flex bundles, of which the left side is Rafaam on a purple background and the right side is Reno on a yellow/orange background, so the other card color might simply represent an Explorers victory.
Based on hints from one of the brawls, I think there will be some additional twist that involves Nefarian, but I can't find any evidence for that in this teaser. I never played WoW though, so it's very much possible I didn't pick up all hints available.
My goal for climbing is rank 15 and I reached that in the first week this month. I think I was playing mostly Quest Paladin at the time.
Since Doom in the Tomb all my old decks are basically useless. Now that I've accepted that I've been playing Malygos Shaman and that works very well against the likes of N'Zoth Priest and Rogue. I haven't faced another Shaman yet though, which is weird, since half my opponents were playing Evolve or Overload or Murloc Shaman decks a few days ago.
I preferred the original Uldum meta; almost every decent deck was playable. In the current meta, you can't out-tempo evolve effects (other than hoping they don't draw Evolve/Mutate in time), while if you're going for a more defensive strategy you need to be able to out-greed or OTK the N'Zoth decks. This leaves far fewer options for deck building.
The rotation direction depends on whether you are the first or second (Coin) player: because Hearthstone's view of the opponent's board is a mirror image, rotating clockwise for one player means the other player sees a counter-clockwise rotation.
It would have been more fair to rotate minions in a figure-8 pattern, so from the left side of your board to the right side of the opponent's board for example. But I guess that would have been harder to communicate to the players and they picked simplicity over balance for this brawl.
For big random summons it's a down side if they immediately rotate, but if you're summoning multiple small minions it can be an advantage to rotate them instead of the Dreadsteeds, since that means you'll have more minions left after trading. In particular, I think Paladin and Shaman are at an advantage since they can pad their board every turn with their hero power.
I was lucky to get Houndmaster Shaw in the last game, which made it easy to boost the Dreadsteed count.
I laughed.
Starts at 8 am local time? I can imagine that won't be easy for some of the players.
I don't think you can beat the very late game (N'Zoth) unless you're playing either a greedier N'Zoth deck or a combo deck. So for other decks, the goal is to kill them before they either reach 10 mana and have drawn deep enough into their deck to find N'Zoth.
As others have said, transform effects like Hex, Polymorph and Tinkmaster Overspark help to both neutralize deathrattles and screw up resurrects.
You could also consider silence, in particular Ironbeak Owl (drawable via The Curator) or Shieldbreaker. Since Khartut Defender is such a key card for slower decks to survive into the late game, taking that out might be enough for an aggro or mid-range deck to finish them off before the late-game value becomes too much.
Some aggro decks use Octosari to refill their hand. It allows them to spend a lot of cards in the early game without running out of steam too early. This won't help in the very late game, but it can give them a few extra turns of pressure in the hope of running the opponent out of removal.
There was plenty of hype for Artifact. It failed because of its design and business model, not because Hearthstone.
Edit: MtG Arena released around the same time and seems to be doing fine.
I watched a bit of Trump's stream yesterday and if I understood correctly, Fearsome means that small minions cannot block it (not sure of the exact condition, but it was an attack or health threshold, I think) and Overwhelm is like Trample in MtG: blocking does not stop all damage, but only up to the health of the blocker, with any remainder damaging the player.
Like MtG and unlike Hearthstone, the defender assigns blockers, so I guess keywords like that are necessary to be able to get damage through without always having to clear an opponent's board.