October 29 brings The Great Dark Beyond to Hearthstone early with a special event Tavern Brawl which kicks off the pre-release period.
Blizzard has not provided many important details about this "first-ever pre-release tavern brawl", but we can draw some parallels to the Heroic Brawliseum event that we have seen run in the lead-up to content releases. The pre-release brawl will, unfortunately, require paid access through the use of Tavern Tickets. If you don't play Arena though, you've likely got several of these kicking around for various reasons and it is about time that Blizzard added in a new use for them; Though it does make one wonder if Blizzard is doing this to try and remove a lot of these tickets from Hearthstone's economy because they are planning on adding more support for using them in the future. We do know Blizzard has been slowly working internally on possible Arena changes.
Luckily, everyone will get at least one opportunity to participate in the event, because everyone will be allowed to enter once for free. Not understanding how many card packs can be earned from this event though doesn't allow us to do any math to know if it is going to be worth paying the 2 Tavern Ticket entry fee on additional runs, and there is a large disparity in the cost to enter vs Brawliseum:
- Heroic Brawliseum is 1000 Gold to enter
- Pre-Release Brawl is 300 Gold to enter (Tavern Tickets are 150 Gold each)
- You can use Gold, Tavern Tickets, or 400 Runestones to enter
With under a third of the entry fee, we'd expect that rewards would be around a third of what one would expect out of Brawliseum. The format of the pre-release brawl is going to be "6 Wins or 3 Losses and you're out" which is half the wins of Brawliseum. Here is the Brawliseum rewards structure for those not familiar with it:
Blizzard, we ask that you please stop making announcements and withholding critical information. We don't need a repeat of the Tavern Pass from 4 years ago. Let us know what the rewards are going to be so we know ahead of time if this is worth paying to play.
Quote From Blizzard You can open your Great Dark Beyond Packs, build decks, and play with the new cards in a mini-competition until you hit 6 wins or 3 losses and win prizes based on how well you do—including more The Great Dark Beyond cards and packs!
One entry will be free for all players. After that, entries will cost 2 Tavern Tickets, 300 Gold, or 400 Runestones.
We feel that this brawl ultimately misses the mark on what pre-release period for Hearthstone expansions should be. It should be a time where we get the community together and celebrate the launch of a new set of cards and not to make it all about pay-to-play competition. It's nice that people will be able to play with their new cards early, but why doesn't Blizzard do the "premade deck" expansion brawl happen sooner and give everyone a proper taste of the expansion, even if they didn't pre-order, and really get everyone talking about the new strategies.
Yes, the answer is indeed money, but one can certainly hope for a rethink on how this is done in the future.
Quote From Blizzard Blast off into The Great Dark Beyond with our first-ever Pre-Release Tavern Brawl from October 29 to November 5!
All Players will be given 1 free entry for the chance to open The Great Dark Beyond packs early, build decks & win more packs. Additional entries can be purchased for 2 Tavern Tickets.
Hearthstone The Great Dark Beyond Pre-Release Tavern Brawl. Open The Great Dark Beyond packs early to use during the Pre-Release Tavern Brawl Event. All players will get one free entry. October 29th 10 AM through November 5th 9 AM PT.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 17 - Day 7 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-7.webp)
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
I do like the idea of trying new stuff and being able to get something out of it at the same time... but then I happen to have preordered this time and I'm bad at Arena so those tickets are probably better used in this special Brawl anyway. If the rewards are good and I can build something competitive with my pack openings, I will consider spending gold as well. Rewarding 1 pack per win would be an interesting idea for example.
All that said, it does feel bad for F2P players. Risking their hard earned gold with this is a tall order and they will probably be severely handicapped without a base collection of new cards.
If the event will be tGDB cards only, there will be no f2p players on that event as long as buying packs with gold is unavailable before release. Even they give 3-4x packs and 1x comes from end of season, it is still 25x cards from new expansion, not enough to build a complete deck.
I guess it will be the first event that only paid members can participate.
It should be a standard Brawliseum. Why would blizzard give everyone a free ticket to enter then only 5% of players can build a deck?
Also seeing as most people don't buy preorders anymore, the pre-release event will be 90% current meta decks (or whatever decks are good after the nerfs this week)
Definitely a shitty idea for a pre-release expansion event
Because mostly those %5 make money for them.
I don't think that most people don't buy preorders btw. My opinion is on this is like it is the only thing Blizzard can sell right now because all other products rather than Tavern Pass doesn't give the value you spend and people who spends on Hearthstone pays for availability at start of an expansion so they likely buy preorders rather than buying only Tavern Pass.
These are my assumptions tho. Maybe there are people out there who just don't care and buy only tavern pass for cosmetic stuff but it is so unlikely in my opinion. Buying Tavern Pass later on might be a think if they give an option to buy it with in-game currency but that's not a thing.
I just need a real draft mode on HS. I am still playing MTG:Arena for draft and it tires me sometimes to staying up to date for both games and i am playing fully f2p both games so it takes a lot of time.
Maybe i can leave MTG behind if HS gets a real draft mode, Arena mode is just awkward. I know that class system prevents them to make a real draft at the beginning but there are class packs now and i don't think it is so hard to create Arena-special packs for people.
Also, it is almost 11th year of Hearthstone, why can't we have a Wild Draft mode still ? Only one draft mode is just a shame for a game which is around for a decade. There is still no other way than buying packs with gold or real money to collect wild stuff.
If i need to be honest, they won't do anything for draft mode. That event is just a try to increase pre-order sells. If people don't pre-order, They won't have any tGDB cards so Team 5 and Blizzard simply says "hey we made a new mode (old but new) for you! if you want to participate in the event, go buy the pre-order !"
So they are just trying some oriental cunning style of ruse. Two birds with one stone; Sell pre-orders, make people spend their tickets/gold before even expansion starts. People who open their packs will likely spend some dusts too on release if they spend all their gold on event because you can't craft anything from new expansion before it is active so they want all our resources to go dim so they can milk us.
i hate this era of capitalism and consumerism.
I don't know how draft works in MTG Arena but if it similar to physical MTG drafts then I think the reason why we don't have it in HS is it's difficult to ensure that people who drafted together will play together. What happens if the person you drafted with got bored and closed the app? It's the same reason why we don't have Tournament mode.
in paper you're right but in MTG:Arena, it works as; you draft with people then you can play the games whenever you want as long as the event stays online, also there is a quick draw mode too which you draft with bots, difference between normal draft and quick draft is that there is no time to pick cards on quick draft but there is time limit on normal draft with people, like 30secs to pick a card and in both modes you keep the cards that you draft. If it is a duplicate, it fills a vault chest, if it is a rare or mythic duplicate, you get a little amount of gems which you can use to buy another draft token when you have enough amount.
The only reason we don't have this draft mode is how class mechanic and rarity system is and maybe also dust system. Dust system is easily configurable tho like giving 1/2 or 1/4 value if duplicate card is coming from arena etc. but rarity is a bit problem here. in MTG:A you can have 4x Mythics so having duplicate from draft is kind of hard but you know, finding a duplicate of a legendary in arena is easier.