Hearthstone

Greetings everyone, and welcome to the submission thread of second episode of Master Duelist!

General Information

This challenge will begin today, September 10th, and will end on September 30th. During this window of time, you'll have to start a Duels run with a starting deck containing at least 1 card from each mana cost, from 0 to 10 mana. Moreover, in order to make things a little easier, Signature Treasures will count as well!

Everyone who'll post proof of a 7+ wins run in this article's comment section will be awarded with a different amount of gold, an in-site currency you'll be able to earn from different activities and that will be used to purchase cosmetics in our in-site shop.

Submission Rules

In order for your run to count towards the challenge, you'll have to provide an appropriate proof of your feat; otherwise, your result won't count. To be precise, you will have to reply to this forum thread including:

• a picture of how your run ended;
• a picture of your starting deck;
• a picture(s) of your final deck.
• any other information you want: even though it's not necessary, it may help other players or generate a discussion!
  • you can submit as many runs as you want: we'll always pick the best one. Don't be afraid to show what you experimented with: let's start a discussion here!

Remember that we have to make sure you actually played following the rules, so please help us in doing so - disqualifying players feels bad, and we'd want to avoid it if possible!

Challenge Rewards

Here's a quick breakdown explaining the rewards you'll receive based on your performances:

The winner will be contacted through Direct Messages, where the next challenge's theme will be discussed. In case no one will be able to hit 12 wins before the deadline, the next challenge's theme will be decided by none less than Avalon himself.

Time Criteria

Those which follow are the time criteria we'll use to determine the winner in case of identical scores:

• An Heroic run will be considered more difficult than a Casual one, therefore Heroic players will have the priority.
  • If you get the best score overall with a 10-wins run in Casual and somebody else gets a 10-wins run in Heroic, the latter will be the winner of the challenge.
• In case of more people getting the same score, the winner will be decided by the submission time.
  • If more players will get to 12 wins, losses will count as well: a 12-0 will be considered better than a 12-2 or a 12-1. 
  • You could get the highest score on the first day as well as on the last day of the challenge, but if someone submits the same score before you do, then they'll be the winner.

Closing Information

If you want to learn more about this challenge, make sure to visit our guide page, where you'll be able to find a couple of starting decks provided by ourselves in order for you to take inspiration for your runs.

Moreover, don't forged to share your own creations with the community by adding them to our deck database via our deckbuilder.

Any hint how to defeat Bolvar?

I'm an Arena and Battlegrounds fan so maybe I'm a little biased, but I really don't enjoy seeing:

Hearthstone

Battlegrounds 

Mercenaries

Modes

You open up modes to find Arena, Solos, Duels and Tavern Brawls. Would it have been so much to ask to split the 4 main bars into 1/8's and also add in practice mode to make up the 8th? 

It just seems clumsy and rushed to me. I feel it's tacky and out of place. They should know better and I hope they change it soon!

"Anyone who purchases (or has purchased since Thursday, July 1,2021) a 6-month subscription before October 19, 2021 or have a 6-month subscription with a future renewal date of Monday, August 31, 2021 is eligible for the 6-Month Subscription rewards."

...

"Your Mercenaries packs will not be visible until the Mercenaries game mode goes live on October 12, 2021."

...

"In addition, if you still have game time on December 1, 2021, you will also get an additional:

• 15 New Expansion Packs
• 15 Mercenaries Packs
• Next Expansion Tavern and Battleground Perks"

Stole the description from Wowhead. This has to be the reason.

So they have advertised "over 50" initially available Mercenaries ... well, guess what? They already revealed 52 on the reveal stream this morning.

You've got the ten "Mercenaries" of the Year of the Gryphon ...

The ten "original" heroes of Hearthstone classes ...

Gromm, Ragnaros, Jaraxxus, Samuro, Voone, Blink Fox, Antonidas, Cairne, Sylvanas, Diablo, daddy Roame, Gruul, Mukla, Mannoroth, Mutanus, Arthas/The Lich King, Tirion, Varian, Krush, Tyrande, Millhouse, Geddon, Murk-Eye, Rathorian, Saurfang, Alexstrasza, Brightwing, Anacondra, Morgl, Velen, Natalie Seline, Shadow Hunter Vol'jin.

That's 52. All confirmed in the stream.

Interesting that Rathorian made it; he's the only one I (as a non-WoW-player) am completely unfamiliar with from War2, War3, and HS.

I just finished watching the Mercenaries stream and I wanted to share my thoughts about it in general and create some discussion.

First off, the mode in itself is Hearthstone's greatest departure from its core experience. So much that at times I thought this could be a completely standalone game, only with a layer of Hearthstone paint. If we didn't have that, not much resemblance would remain of the main game. This is concerning for Blizz, because the mode could alienate the core HS players because it's so weird and different, but fail to attract new, outside audiences because it's part of an established game where they would be far behind long-time players.

What struck me about the art style was that it's... not very pretty. It looks basic, barren at times. The main mode doesn't have amazing spectacles either, but every deck has at least 15 different artworks. The board evolves throughout the game, with minions being summoned and destroyed. However, in Mercenaries, it's just 6 GIFs in a 3x2 table? It's very static. Yes, there are fancy entrance and ability animations but many of those are recycled and there are lots of empty, boring grayish/brownish space on the board.

In terms of gameplay, it doesn't look too bad, there are many factors in play like positioning, speed, schools, the Tank/Melee/Caster R/P/S triangle, etc. You must choose 3 out of 6 mercs at the start of a game, that's 20 combinations if I'm correct, there's room for variance and adaptability. The deckbuilding aspect, however, looks pretty simplistic: "I type Murloc into the searchbar and choose 6 of them". We'll see how tribe/spell school focused the "decks" are going to be, but with ultimately only having to choose 6 mercs + 6 equipment, the experimentation and flex spots of the traditional 30 card deckbuilding are missing. Also, the thing that will ultimately greatly simplify your choices is that there's a big power difference between mercs with different levels, which leads me to the next point, and the elephant in the room:

Monetization. For me, the way progression is handed is a major turnoff. Frankly, it's insulting. Hearthstone is already a very expensive game, in terms of your money and your time, which is your gold (or both). Either you play Standard, where half of your collection is deleted every April, or you play Wild, where there are thousands of collectible cards. Not even €130 worth of preorders give you all cards in an expansion. Battlegrounds is €20 or gold every 4 months for the ability to choose a better hero, and both Arena and Duels require payment to enter. And when they show us 3 PREORDERS, 2x €50 and 1x €30, that was just upsetting. How much are they expecting us to pay? How many whales do they want to milk? It's just all so overblown compared to normal, offline, singleplayer games (that cost 90 at most with DLC for a complete, balanced experience).

It just doesn't feel pleasant that non-whales will have to play those time-consuming, computer-generated and therefore soulless "campaign maps" to just have one roll at the slot machine. Oops, didn't get the mercenary that's in the meta? Well, play more and more for more rolls until you become so disillusioned with the grinding that you buy our packs. Any semblance of a decent progression is shattered when a whale can just buy packs until they have all mercs at max level. They said they wanted "asymmetrical PvP matches", but we all know what that means: buy packs until your numbers are higher so "the balance" tips in your favor.

Overall, I am disappointed. I don't want to completely disregard the mode, but this is not what I expected. This was never Slay the Spire, this is only a numbers game. Buy packs to win.

What are your thoughts? 

I have just reached for the 9th time in the month Diamond 1 + 3 stars.

All the previous times, this was the start of a sequence of losses, leading to restart the process to reach Legend ... now I decided to stop and go to bed ... Let see tomorrow, the last day of the month, if I finally succeed to reach Legend ...

Hi guys,

I've had to abandon my work on my custom expansion for the time being as I'm finding it difficult to get past some mental creative block. I had an idea for a much smaller scale project that I can come back to as when I want. 

I've decided to undertake creating Hearthstone boss fights for random boss battles in WoW or possibly even for Hearthstone-original characters like the Boomsday Project scientists. I want to stay fairly faithful to the fight mechanics from WoW, which I've taken from WoWPedia. 

For the first one, we're heading to the Scarlet Monastery to face off against High Inquisitor Whitemane.

Special Cards

Decklist

Hopefully this'll be the first of many more to come. These only take me like half an hour to do, so they're perfect for when I just have a little bit of time. Any feedback on this fight will be much appreciated and I'll try to implement any criticism moving forwards with this idea. Have a good day and thanks guys!

https://twitter.com/GW_Alec/status/1430579587172294657?s=20

8/31: 2 Warlock changes (upping mana, feels focused)

Seems like we are going to hear from it very soon (not tm)! Some people received an upload notification for it on the official youtube channel and one user even managed to screen record it. I really didn't expected to hear from it so soon, but if anything that makes me even more hyped!

source

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/pamjko/i_was_able_to_record_the_mercenaries_leak/

Edit:

AND IT'S LAUNCHING OCTOBER 12TH!

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/pamdeq/got_this_just_now_in_my_youtube_subscribed_list/ha5k6q2/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

Blizzard often talks about improving the "new player experience" but do they ever do anything?

My daughter (11) recently got back into the game after a couple years absence. She has a very small collection and not much dust or gold to improve it. At Bronze 10, we face Questline Hunter and Questline Warlock, both using all the top-tier epics and legendaries (like Flesh Giant, still an abomination of a card after the nerf). The best way to grow your collection (while staying F2P) is to earn XP, like that juicy 2500 each week for 5 ranked wins. This goal is literally impossible when you're facing these top tier Questline decks. What are these players doing at Bronze 10?!?!?! How is a new player supposed to get a toe-hold in this game?

how this balance update was ever put through is beyond me. by nerfing so many decks substantially while leaving questline warlock nearly untouched (in terms of how the actual changes affect the deck; e.g. the two nerfs on questline warlock did much less to nerf the deck than the single nerf to incanter's flow did to nerf every tempo/combo mage list in both formats) they've paved the way for the deck to completely stomp the meta twice as hard as it was before. this is even more of a problem in wild where:

• evenlock was hit much harder from losing flesh giant than questlock was by the cost increase
• apm/tempo mage decks have a much harder time playing incanters flow while dealing with aggressive warlock/priest/hunter boards
• odd questline hunter somehow went completely untouched, resulting in even more games against drooling brainlets playing the skill equivalent of cookie clicker (sorry not sorry)

i could go on, but you get the picture. for the first time in a very long time, blizzard has butchered a balance update so badly that the meta has devolved into mostly the two same decks not only in one format, but in both of them. furthermore, the decks before this patch such as miracle mage and secret paladin that could stand up to the more overpowered decks without being too powerful (by blizzard's own statistics!) have been nerfed so much harder than their already more powerful counterparts that they've been stomped into a minuscule portion of the meta. so thanks blizzard, and thanks to all the players complaining about uninteractive mage decks, tax paladins and other decks with no actual statistical reason to be nerfed. i hope you enjoy the god awful meta you helped create. i, for one, will not be making legend for the first time in a while, because its not even close to worth the frustration of playing against the same 2-3 decks every single game regardless of what format im playing.

edit: i understand that the tone of this post is apparently too aggressive and i apologize. ill be rewriting my thoughts on this subject in a new, calmer post and will likely delete this one afterwards

never cared too much about BG, But now I want to give a try. A couple of questions

1) can I sell a minion in my possession (how?) or just the ones in the battleground?

2) Is there any way to remove a minion from battleground, without selling it?

thanks

I managed to get it about 5 times, and in all of those games, the opponent conceded before I can finish them off and get the achievement.

Please kindly let people destroy you with the sword for 200EXP. They will be eternally grateful for that. Thank you for listening.

"I Hate Questline Warlock" Warrior

Wild · Control Warrior · by Neoguli · 4 years, 8 months ago

• 1 Athletic Studies x 2
• 1 Iron Hide x 2
• 1 Whirlwind x 2
• 2 Battle Rage x 2
• 2 Bladestorm x 2
• 2 Corsair Cache x 2
• 2 Dead Man's Hand x 2
• 2 Harbor Scamp x 2
• 2 Shield Block x 2
• 3 Bulwark of Azzinoth x 1
• 3 Heavy Plate x 2
• 3 Lord Barov x 1
• 3 Reckless Flurry x 2
• 3 Venomous Scorpid x 2
• 4 Hoard Pillager x 2
• 5 Brawl x 2

6,480 Dust 914 0 Copy Deck Code

After my OoC success of finding a Hunter deck to deal with Darkglare, the news of The Demon Seed making it look like child's play had me going for an attempt to make a deck that can do alright into it without being a full-on Aggro or fast OTK, just as a present for Control players. :D

• Added interactions between Pave the Way (part of the Paladin Questline) and Duels-specific hero powers.

This was in the newest patch notes. Can someone who has the quest check in and show us what this actually means?

I'd love to hear story's from everyone from your first experience and what made you fall in love with Hearthstone!

How do you think the Meta will evolve after the nerf? It seems Elemental Shaman was the less affected among the tier 1/2 decks ...

Hi I have a homebrew Jade Quest Shaman which I want to refine with Bolner.First of all 2 cards I know which are helpfull but I don't own and don't want to craft are Loatheb and the Jade Battlecry+DR Pandaren girl.

So the core is: Corrupt the Waters, every Shaman + Neutral Jade card, Bolner, Shudderwock (most likely + 2 Lighning Bloom)

So now is missing: cards to support the quest plus carcs to stay allive. Can anyone help me?

Here the old version:

### JadeQuest

# Class: Shaman

# Format: Wild

#

# 1x (1) Corrupt the Waters

# 2x (1) Sludge Slurper

# 2x (2) Devolve

# 2x (2) EVIL Totem

# 2x (2) Jade Claws

# 2x (2) Questing Explorer

# 2x (2) Sandstorm Elemental

# 2x (3) Bog Slosher

# 2x (3) Stonehill Defender

# 1x (4) Hex

# 2x (4) Jade Lightning

# 2x (4) Jade Spirit

# 2x (4) Lifedrinker

# 1x (4) Sky Gen'ral Kragg

# 2x (5) Bloodlust

# 2x (7) Jade Chieftain

# 1x (9) Shudderwock

# 

AAEBAaoIBP4F7/cC4agD87cDDZMJ5rsCh7wCz7wC0bwC9r0Cm8IC7/ECi4UDxpkDu6UDz6UD+aUDAA==

# 

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone